Copyright 1882, 1891 by John Bartlett

Copyright 1910, 1914, 1919, 1942 by Anna Sprague DeWolf and Louisa Bartlett Donaldson

Copyright 1937, 1948, © 1955, 1965, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2002, 2012, 2022 by Little, Brown and Company (Inc.)

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PREFACE TO THE NINETEENTH EDITION

WHAT HAS TURNED OUT TO BE THE MOST ENDURING REFERENCE WORK OF ITS KIND BEGAN AS THE PERSONAL HOBBY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOOKSELLER JOHN BARTLETT (1820–1905). His taste for significant “passages, phrases, and proverbs” led him to compile a commonplace book for his own pleasure and for the enlightenment of those customers of his shop in Cambridge who had heard of his wide reading and remarkable memory. In 1855 he gathered his notes into A Collection of Familiar Quotations, only 258 pages long—the first iteration of an editorial project whose first nine editions were overseen by Bartlett himself (by then an editor at Little, Brown and Company, which has been associated with the work ever since), and which today celebrates its nineteenth edition as an indispensable source of information and enjoyment.

Bartlett’s original Familiar Quotations drew from a relatively narrow range of sources. The essential reference points of his culture were the Bible and Shakespeare, and the writers with which he filled out the volume were chiefly British and, to a lesser degree, American. To the seventh edition, which appeared in 1876, Bartlett affixed an apparently self-deprecating motto, extracted from Montaigne: “I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.” In fact Bartlett had laid a solid foundation, grounded in his own taste and scholarship, and in his sense of the larger historical and cultural currents with which his chosen fragments were bound up. The format he established, organized by chronology rather than topic, was to give Bartlett’s, through all subsequent revisions and expansions, the feeling of a coherent narrative. Many a reader, looking for one particular quotation, has been caught up in the work’s historical flow, and has had the sensation of moving seamlessly from one century to another, reviewing an extraordinary succession of voices and the events that impinged on—and were sometimes shaped by—their words.

Bartlett acknowledged that “what is familiar to one class of readers may be quite new to another” and chose “to incur the risk of erring on the side of fullness.” In the process he created not merely a reference work but a remarkably instructive anthology, in which all eras seem part of a common open-ended conversation, and the same perceptions and passions and dilemmas recur, the same rueful recognitions and idealistic hopes. They evolve in unexpected ways while reaffirming deep links with the earliest retrievable expression. Here can be found both generations on generations of cultural sifting and the foreshadowing of future possibilities rehearsed in so many different ways.

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations remains perpetually a work in progress. New voices emerge and, in the light of new circumstances, the past is subjected to ceaseless reassessment. Even the most familiar texts display fresh facets, and what was once neglected—or, perhaps, hidden in plain sight, ignored because overfamiliar—yields unexpected revelations. To tune in to the full range of what Bartlett’s has sought to cover is to be overwhelmed by a sense of continuity despite all historical chasms and cataclysms. These many thousands of shards of human thought define a continuing human present, and a phrase from the remotest source may hit home with the urgency of an instant message: an IM from Sumer perhaps. The quotations gathered here do not only talk to us, they talk to each other across space and time, despite the most radical transformations of society and environment: responding, reiterating, contesting, reinventing.

One thing that has changed ever more rapidly is the range of materials on which Bartlett’s draws. Once dominated by scripture, classical literature, and poetry, it has opened itself over successive editions to ever more varied sources. The narrower channels of the mid-nineteenth century have admitted the multiple voices of mass journalism, recording, movies, broadcasting, and now the Internet and the splintering and ever-mutating byways of social media. The possibilities offered by the digital age are both exhilarating and unsettling. The flood of information old and new is equaled by floods of misinformation and calculated disinformation. Millions of words are made accessible—we watch them proliferate and can even get a readout of precisely how many others have looked at them—and, so it may seem, the most ephemeral communications achieve a weird free-floating immortality.

“Familiar quotation” takes on a different significance in the age of the viral meme. Information is more widely shared than ever and perhaps more quickly consigned to oblivion. As one meme is superimposed ever more quickly on another, we may be approaching a future where (to paraphrase Andy Warhol) every quotation will be familiar for five seconds. We almost drown in unmediated utterance. Any new edition of Bartlett’s must gamble on what to single out from that deluge, hoping at least to capture some sense of the singular turbulence of the moment.

Many figures appear in Bartlett’s for the first time in this nineteenth edition, some that have come into particular prominence in the past decade—Pope Francis, Donald J. Trump, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Julian Assange, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tina Fey, Jeff Bezos, Malala Yusafzai, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Claudia Rankine, Anthony Bourdain, George R.R. Martin, Alison Bechdel—along with others from the recent and not-so-recent past who have articulated one angle or another of this time’s particular imperatives and upheavals. As always, there are those words and phrases that unexpectedly find a wider currency: “the sixth extinction,” “truthiness,” “black swans,” ”surgical strikes,” “the Singularity,” “metadata,” “snark,” “alternative facts,” “basket of deplorables,” “post-truth.” This edition continues to expand the work’s international coverage through writers as influential as Elena Ferrante, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Roberto Bolaño, Clarice Lispector, Haruki Murakami, Kofi Awoonor. It draws on memorable statements by painters, musicians, photographers, architects, filmmakers, chefs, comedians, athletes, entrepreneurs, scientists, religious thinkers, philosophers, activists in many spheres: Richard Dawkins on memes, Rebecca Solnit on mansplaining, Leslie Jamison on empathy, Amitav Ghosh on climate change, Cecilia Vicuña on migrants.

The sources are diverse: poetry and fiction of many sorts, genre writing from crime novels to speculative fiction, plays and screenplays, jokes, interviews, headlines, legal documents, tweets, and the song lyrics which in this time have the same currency as the lyric poetry of John Bartlett’s era. Here too is more than one otherwise almost unknown figure—someone who has given utterance to a phrase that takes on a life of its own, making inroads as only the most eloquent or startling or suggestive or disturbing quotations can.

I must gratefully acknowledge the suggestions of many consultants, friends, colleagues, and writers of every kind whose guidance and scholarship has been invaluable in the preparation of this edition. They include Tracy Behar, David Bordwell, Douglas Crase, David Denby, Kevin Dettmar, Thomas Doherty, Devin Dougherty, Edwin Frank, Kent Jones, Joan Konner, Wendy Lesser, Jonathan Lethem, Tess Lewis, Brian McCarthy, Albert Mobilio, Heather O’Brien, Flaminia Ocampo, Zoë Pagnamenta, Jed Perl, Jed Rasula, Kathryn Rogers, Harold Schechter, Derick Schilling, Barry Schwabsky, and Imogen Sara Smith. I owe a special debt to James Gibbons, whose contribution to this and the previous edition of Bartlett’s has been immeasurable. His boundless curiosity and rigorous judgment, exerted in extensive research and in many discussions on the project’s editorial philosophy, have widened and enriched this volume’s scope at every turn.

GUIDE TO THE USE OF BARTLETT’S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS

• BASIC INFORMATION •

AUTHORS APPEAR CHRONOLOGICALLY IN THE ORDER OF THEIR BIRTH DATES; AUTHORS BORN IN THE SAME YEAR ARE ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY. The quotations for each author are generally in chronological order according to the date of publication (in some instances according to the date of composition). Poetry generally precedes prose for authors who wrote both.

Anonymous quotations are located as follows: early miscellaneous and Latin quotations are placed at about 670 C.E. General anonymous quotations begin immediately after the last dated author and are arranged in roughly chronological order (the precise dates of origin often being unknown). Specific groupings of anonymous quotations—African, Ballads, Cowboy Songs, and so on—follow the general Anonymous section in alphabetical order according to the heading.

A document without a specific author appears near the people with whom it is associated; for example, the Constitution of the United States (1787) appears among its creators, such as George Washington (born in 1732), John Adams (1735), James Madison (1751), and Alexander Hamilton (1755).

To find a particular author, consult the Index of Authors, here; to find a quotation by keyword(s), enter the keyword(s) in the search field. Use the arrows that are next to the search field to navigate to quotations containing the keyword(s).

• QUOTATION SOURCES •

Each quotation has a source line supplying title, date if known (most often that of publication), and other information the reader might find helpful. In the quotations from the Bible and from Shakespeare, the page headings provide blanket sources for the quotations on the particular page, while the source lines provide only chapter and verse or act, scene, and line references.

• FOOTNOTES •

The footnotes supply information about a quotation, such as the original text of a translated quotation, the name of a translator, background comments for the quotation, and other quotations related in phrase or content to the footnoted quotation.

• INDEX OF AUTHORS •

The Index of Authors provides birth and death dates for each author and links to one or more quotations by that author. When an author is better known by a name other than his or her given name, the author is listed under the more familiar name, with the given name provided in square brackets—for example, Bill [William Jefferson] Clinton. Bracketed parts of a name as listed in this index are those not used in the author’s typical “signature”—for example, T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot. The Index of Authors also lists many pseudonyms, with cross-references from the less familiar name to the more familiar—for example, Karen Blixen is cross-referred to Isak Dinesen, the pseudonym under which she wrote. Authors who are quoted only in footnotes have their full names and birth and death dates given in the footnotes.

To find a particular book of the Bible, see the Bible entry, where the books are listed alphabetically. The same is true for Shakespeare; to find any work by Shakespeare, consult the Shakespeare entry. Anonymous quotations are listed under the heading “Anonymous,” as well as by specific groupings, such as Ballads (Anonymous), Cowboy Songs (Anonymous), and so on.

KATHRYN ROGERS

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Aaron, Daniel, 1912–2016

Abbey, Edward, 1927–1989

Abbott, Bud [William], 1895–1974

Abbott, Megan, 1971–

Abdullah, Achmed, 1881–1945

Abelard, Peter, 1079–1142

Abu Muhammad al-Kasim al-Hariri. See Hariri

Abzug, Bella [Savitzky], 1920–1998

Accius, Lucius, 170–86 B.C.E.

Achebe, Chinua, 1930–2013

Acheson, Dean, 1893–1971

Acker, Kathy, 1944–1997

Ackerley, J[oseph] R[andolph], 1896–1967

Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord, 1834–1902

Acuff, Roy, 1903–1992

Adams, Abigail, 1744–1818

Adams, Douglas, 1952–2001

Adams, Franklin P[ierce] [F.P.A.], 1881–1960

Adams, Henry [Brooks], 1838–1918

Adams, James Truslow, 1878–1949

Adams, John, 1735–1826

Adams, John Quincy, 1767–1848

Adams, Lee, 1924–

Adams, Samuel, 1722–1803

Adams, Sarah Flower, 1805–1848

Addams, Charles, 1912–1988

Addams, Jane, 1860–1935

Addison, Joseph, 1672–1719

Ade, George, 1866–1944

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977–

Adler, Lou, 1933–

Adler, [Pearl] Polly, 1900–1962

Adler, Renata, 1937–

Adler, Richard, 1921–2012

Adorno, Theodor, 1903–1969

Ady, Thomas, fl. 1655

Aeschylus, 525–456 B.C.E.

Aesop, fl. c. 550 B.C.E.

African (Anonymous)

Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe, 1807–1873

Agathon, c. 448–400 B.C.E.

Agee, James, 1909–1955

Agesilaus, 444–400 B.C.E.

Agis, 5th century B.C.E.

Agnew, Spiro T[heodore], 1918–1996

Aiken, Conrad, 1889–1973

Akhmatova, Anna [pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko], 1889–1966

Alain. See Chartier, Émile Auguste

Alain de Lille [Alanus de Insulis], d. 1202

Albee, Edward F[rancis], 1857–1930

Albee, Edward [Franklin], 1928–2016

Albers, Anni, 1899–1994

Alberti, Leon Battista, 1404–1472

Alcaeus, c. 625–c. 575 B.C.E.

Alcott, [Amos] Bronson, 1799–1888

Alcott, Louisa May, 1832–1888

Alcuin, c. 732–804

Aldrin, Buzz [Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.], 1930–

Aldus Manutius. See Manutius

Alexander II, 1818–1881

Alexander the Great, 356–323 B.C.E.

Alexander, Cecil Frances, 1818–1895

Alexander, Elizabeth, 1962–

Alexander, Michelle, 1967–

Alexie, Sherman, 1966–

Alexievich, Svetlana, 1948–

Alfonso X [Alfonso the Wise], 1221–1284

Alford, Henry, 1810–1871

Algren, Nelson, 1909–1981

Ali, Muhammad [Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.], 1942–2016

Ali ibn-Abi-Talib, c. 602–661

Alighieri. Dante. See Dante Alighieri

Alinsky, Saul, 1909–1972

Allan, Lewis [Abel Meeropol], 1903–1986

Allen, Ethan, 1738–1789

Allen, Fred [John Florence Sullivan], 1894–1956

Allen, William, 1803–1879

Allen, Woody [Allen Stuart Konigsberg], 1935–

Allingham, William, 1824–1889

Alpert, Herb, 1935–

Als, Hilton, 1960–

Altman, Robert, 1925–2006

Amado, Jorge, 1912–2001

Ambler, Eric, 1909–1998

Ambrose, Saint, c. 340–397

Amenemope, c. 11th century B.C.E.

Améry, Jean [Hans Mayer], 1912–1978

Ames, Fisher, 1758–1808

Amichai, Yehuda, 1924–2000

Amiel, Henri-Frédéric, 1821–1881

Amis, Sir Kingsley, 1922–1995

Ammons, A[rchie] R[andolph], 1926–2001

Anacharsis, fl. c. 600 B.C.E.

Anacreon, c. 570–c. 480 B.C.E.

Anaxagoras, c. 500–428 B.C.E.

Andersen, Hans Christian, 1805–1875

Anderson, Laurie, 1947–

Anderson, Maxwell, 1888–1959

Anderson, Paul Thomas, 1970–

Anderson, Poul, 1926–2001

Anderson, Sherwood, 1876–1941

Anderson, Wes, 1969–

Andreessen, Marc, 1971–

Angelo, Judy Hart, 1956–

Angelou, Maya [Marguerite Johnson], 1928–2014

Anglund, Joan Walsh, 1926–2021

Anka, Paul, 1941–

Anonymous

African

Ballads

Cowboy Songs

Early Miscellaneous

French

Latin

North American Indian

Nursery Rhymes

Russian

Shanties

Spanish

Spirituals

Anselm, Saint, c. 1033–1109

Anthony, Susan B[rownell], 1820–1906

Antigonus, c. 382–301 B.C.E.

Antonioni, Michelangelo, 1912–2007

Apelles, fl. 325 B.C.E.

Apollinaire, Guillaume [Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitsky], 1880–1918

Appelfeld, Aharon, 1932–2018

Appiah, K[wame] Anthony, 1954–

Aquinas, Saint Thomas, c. 1225–1274

Arafat, Yasser, 1929–2004

Arbuckle, Roscoe “Fatty,” 1887–1933

Arbus, Diane, 1923–1971

Archilochus, early 7th century B.C.E.

Archimedes, c. 287–212 B.C.E.

Ardrey, Robert, 1908–1980

Arendt, Hannah, 1906–1975

Ariosto, Ludovico, 1474–1533

Aristophanes, c. 450–385 B.C.E.

Aristotle, 384–322 B.C.E.

Ariwara no Narihira, 823–880

Armstrong, Louis [Satchmo], 1900–1971

Armstrong, Neil [Alden], 1930–2012

Arnaud-Amaury, d. 1225

Arno, Peter, 1904–1968

Arnold, Matthew, 1822–1888

Aron, Raymond, 1905–1983

Arouet, François Marie. See Voltaire

Artaud, Antonin, 1896–1948

Asbury, Herbert, 1889–1963

Ashbery, John, 1927–2017

Ashford, Daisy [Margaret Mary Norman], 1881–1972

Asimov, Isaac, 1920–1992

Assange, Julian, 1971–

Astaire, Fred, 1899–1987

Astor, Nancy [Witcher Langhorne], 1879–1964

Aten, The Great Hymn to the, c. 1350 B.C.E.

Athill, Diana, 1917–2019

Attucks, Crispus, c. 1723–1770

Atwood, Margaret, 1939–

Aubrey, John, 1626–1697

Auden, W[ystan] H[ugh], 1907–1973

Auerbach, Erich, 1892–1957

Augier, Émile, 1820–1889

Augustine, Saint, 354–430

Augustus Caesar, 63 B.C.E.–14 C.E.

Austen, Jane, 1775–1817

Auster, Paul, 1947–

Austin, J. L., 1911–1960

Austin, Mary [Hunter], 1868–1934

Averroës [Ibn Rushd], 1126–1198

Awoonor, Kofi, 1935–2013

Axelrod, George, 1922–2003

Ayckbourn, Alan, 1939–

Baba, Meher, 1894–1969

Babel, Isaac [Emmanuelovich], 1894–1941

Babeuf, François Noël [pseudonym: Gracchus], 1760–1797

Babitz, Eve, 1943–2021

Bacall, Lauren, 1924–2014

Bachelard, Gaston, 1884–1962

Bacon, Francis, 1561–1626

Bacon, Francis, 1909–1992

Bacon, Roger, c. 1220–c. 1292

Baden-Powell, Robert, 1857–1941

Baer, Arthur [Bugs], 1897–1969

Bagehot, Walter, 1826–1877

Bagnold, Enid, 1889–1981

Bailey, Liberty Hyde, 1858–1954

Baker, Howard H., Jr., 1925–2014

Baker, Nicholson, 1957–

Baker, Russell, 1925–2019

Bakewell, Sarah, 1963–

Bakhtin, Mikhail, 1895–1975

Bakunin, Mikhail, 1814–1876

Balanchine, George, 1904–1983

Balderston, John L., 1889–1954

Baldwin, James, 1924–1987

Balfour, Arthur James, 1848–1930

Ball, Hugo, 1886–1927

Ball, John, 1911–1988

Ballads (Anonymous)

Ballard, J[ames] G[raham], 1930–2009

Balliet, Whitney, 1926–2007

Baltzell, E[dward] Digby, 1915–1996

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799–1850

Bangs, Lester [Leslie Conway], 1948–1982

Bankhead, Tallulah [Brockman], 1903–1968

Banks, Ernie, 1931–2015

Banneker, Benjamin, 1731–1806

Bannister, Roger, 1929–2018

Banville, Théodore de, 1823–1891

Baraka, Amiri [LeRoi Jones], 1934–2014

Barbellion, W[ilhelm] N[ero] P[ilate] [pseudonym of Bruce Frederick Cummings], 1889–1919

Barca the Carthaginian. See Maharbal

Barca, Pedro Calderón de la. See Calderón

Barère de Vieuzac, Bertrand, 1755–1841

Baring-Gould, Sabine, 1834–1924

Barlow, John Perry, 1947–

Barnes, Djuna, 1892–1982

Barnes, Julian, 1946–

Barnum, P[hineas] T[aylor], 1810–1891

Barr, William [Pelham], 1950–

Barrie, Sir James M[atthew], 1860–1937

Barry, Philip, 1896–1949

Barrymore, Ethel, 1879–1959

Bartas, Seigneur Du. See Du Bartas

Barth, Alan, 1906–1979

Barth, Karl, 1886–1968

Barthelme, Donald, 1931–1989

Barthes, Roland, 1915–1980

Bartram, William, 1739–1823

Baruch, Bernard M[annes], 1870–1965

Barzun, Jacques, 1907–2012

Bashō [Matsuo Bashō], 1644–1694

Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 1960–1988

Bataille, Georges, 1897–1962

Bates, Katharine Lee, 1859–1929

Bates, Marston, 1906–1974

Bateson, Gregory, 1904–1980

Batuman, Elif, 1977–

Bauby, Jean-Dominique, 1952–1997

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821–1867

Baudrillard, Jean, 1929–2007

Baum, L[yman] Frank, 1856–1919

Bax, Arnold, 1883–1953

Bazin, André, 1918–1958

Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of. See Disraeli

Beamer, Todd, 1968–2001

Beard, Mary, 1955–

Beattie, Ann, 1947–

Beatty, Paul, 1962–

Beaumarchais, Pierre de, 1732–1799

Beaumont, Francis, c. 1584–1616

Beaumont and Fletcher

Beauvoir, Simone de, 1908–1986

Bechdel, Alison, 1960–

Becker, Walter, 1950–

Beckett, Samuel, 1906–1989

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 1803–1849

Bede [Venerable Bede], c. 672–c. 735

Bedford, Sybille, 1911–2006

Bee, Barnard Elliott, 1824–1861

Beecher, Henry Ward, 1813–1887

Beerbohm, Sir Max, 1872–1956

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770–1827

Beeton, Isabella Mary, 1836–1865

Begin, Menachem, 1913–1992

Behn, Aphra, 1640–1689

Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847–1922

Bell, Aubrey F[itz] G[erald], 1882–1950

Bell, Daniel, 1919–2011

Bell, Gertrude, 1868–1926

Bell, William, 1939–

Bellah, James Warner, 1899–1976

Bellamy, Edward, 1850–1898

Bellamy, Francis, 1856–1931

Bellay, Joachim du, 1522–1560

Belloc, Hilaire, 1870–1953

Bellow, Saul, 1915–2005

Bemelmans, Ludwig, 1898–1962

Benchley, Peter, 1940–2006

Benchley, Robert [Charles], 1889–1945

Benda, Julien, 1867–1956

Benedict XVI, Pope [Joseph Ratzinger], 1927–

Benedict, Ruth [Fulton], 1887–1948

Benedict, Saint, 480–543

Benét, Stephen Vincent, 1898–1943

Ben-Gurion, David, 1886–1973

Benjamin, Walter, 1892–1940

Benn, Gottfried, 1886–1956

Bennard, George, 1873–1958

Bennett, Charles, 1899–1995

Benson, A[rthur] C[hristopher], 1862–1925

Bentham, Jeremy, 1748–1832

Bentley, E[dmund] C[lerihew], 1875–1956

Bentsen, Lloyd, 1921–2006

Berger, John, 1926–2017

Bergman, Andrew, 1945–

Bergman, Ingmar, 1918–2007

Bergman, Ingrid, 1915–1982

Bergson, Henri, 1859–1941

Bergstein, Eleanor, 1938–

Berkeley, George, 1685–1753

Berlin, Irving, 1888–1989

Berlin, Lucia, 1936–2004

Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 1909–1997

Berlioz, Hector, 1803–1869

Berman, Marshall, 1940–2013

Bernanke, Ben, 1953–

Bernanos, Georges, 1888–1948

Bernard of Chartres, c. 1100

Bernard, Claude, 1813–1878

Bernard, Saint, 1091–1153

Berners-Lee, Tim, 1955–

Bernhard, Thomas, 1931–1989

Bernhardt, Sarah, 1844–1923

Berns, Bert [Bertrand Russell], 1929–1967

Bernstein, Charles, 1950–

Bernstein, Leonard, 1918–1990

Berra, Yogi [Lawrence Peter], 1925–2015

Berry, Bill, 1958–

Berry, Chuck [Charles Edward Anderson], 1926–2017

Berry, Wendell, 1934–

Berryman, John, 1914–1972

Beston, Henry, 1888–1968

Bethune, Mary McLeod, 1875–1955

Bettelheim, Bruno, 1903–1990

Beveridge, Albert [Jeremiah], 1862–1927

Beyle, Henri. See Stendhal

Beyoncé [Giselle Knowles], 1981–

Bezos, Jeff, 1964–

Bhagavad Gita, 250 B.C.E.–250 C.E.

Biard, Gérard, 1959–

Bible

Apocrypha

Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach)

I Esdras

II Esdras

History of Susanna

Judith

II Maccabees

Song of the Three Holy Children

Tobit

Wisdom of Solomon

New Testament

Acts

Colossians

I Corinthians

II Corinthians

Ephesians

Galatians

Hebrews

James

John

I John

Jude

Luke

Mark

Matthew

I Peter

II Peter

Philemon

Philippians

Revelation

Romans

I Thessalonians

I Timothy

II Timothy

Titus

Old Testament

Amos

I Chronicles

Daniel

Deuteronomy

Ecclesiastes

Esther

Exodus

Ezekiel

Genesis

Habakkuk

Hosea

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Job

Joel

Jonah

Joshua

Judges

I Kings

II Kings

Lamentations

Leviticus

Malachi

Micah

Nahum

Nehemiah

Numbers

Proverbs

Psalms

Ruth,p

I Samuel

II Samuel

Song of Solomon

Zechariah

Biden, Joe [Joseph Robinette], Jr., 1942–

Bierce, Ambrose, 1842–c. 1914

Biko, Steve [Stephen Bantu], 1946–1977

Biles, Simone [Arianne], 1997–

Billings, Josh [pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw], 1818–1885

bin Laden, Osama [Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad], 1957–2011

Binyon, Laurence, 1869–1943

Bion, c. 325–c. 255 B.C.E.

Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 1914–1999

Birchill, Julie, 1959–

Bird, Caroline, 1915–1995

Birkerts, Sven, 1951–

Bishop, Elizabeth, 1911–1979

Bishop, Thomas Brigham, 1835–1905

Bismarck, Otto von, 1815–1898

Black, Hugo La Fayette, 1886–1971

Biss, Eula, c. 1977–

Black Elk [Hehaka Sapa], 1863–1950

Black Hawk, 1767–1838

Blacker, Valentine, 1778–1823

Blackmun, Harry A[ndrew], 1908–1999

Blackstone, Sir William, 1723–1780

Blair, Tony [Anthony Charles Lynton], 1953–

Blackwell, Otis, 1931–2002

Blair, Eric. See Orwell, George

Blake, Charles Dupee, 1846–1903

Blake, Eubie [James Herbert], 1883–1983

Blake, James W., 1862–1935

Blake, William, 1757–1827

Blanch, Lesley, 1904–2007

Bland, James A., 1854–1911

Blane, Ralph, 1914–1995

Blixen, Karen. See Dinesen, Isak

Bloch, Marc, 1886–1944

Blok, Alexander, 1880–1921

Bloom, Allan, 1930–1992

Bloom, Harold, 1930–2019

Bloomberg, Michael, 1942–

Blow, Charles M., 1970–

Blücher, Gebhard Leberecht von, 1742–1819

Bly, Robert, 1926–2021

Boas, Franz, 1858–1942

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313–1375

Boehm, Sydney, 1908–1990

Boethius [Anicius Manlius Severinus], 480–524

Bogan, Louise, 1897–1970

Bogart, John B., 1845–1921

Bohr, Niels, 1885–1962

Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, 1636–1711

Bök, Christian, 1966–

Bolaño [Ávalos], Roberto, 1953–2003

Bolívar, Simón, 1783–1830

Bolt, Robert, 1924–1995

Bolt, Usain, 1986–

Bombeck, Erma [Louise Fiste], 1927–1996

Bonaventure, Saint, c. 1217–1274

Bonfire, Mars [Dennis Edmonton], 1943–

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906–1945

Bonnard, Pierre, 1867–1947

Bontemps, Arna, 1902–1973

Book of Changes, The [I Ching], c. 12th century B.C.E.

Book of Common Prayer, The [American]

Book of Common Prayer, The [English]

Book of the Dead, The, c. 1700–1000 B.C.E.

Boorstin, Daniel [Joseph], 1914–2004

Booth, Connie, 1944–

Booth, John Wilkes, 1838–1865

Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899–1986

Born, Max, 1882–1970

Borrow, George, 1803–1881

Bosquet, Pierre [Jean François Joseph], 1810–1861

Bossidy, John Collins, 1860–1928

Boswell, James, 1740–1795

Boucicault, Dion 1820–1890

Boulanger, Nadia, 1887–1979

Boulay de la Meurthe, Antoine [Jacques Claude Joseph], 1761–1840

Bourdain, Anthony, 1956–2018

Bourgeois, Louise, 1911–2010

Bourke-White, Margaret, 1904–1971

Bourne, Randolph Silliman, 1886–1918

Bouton, Jim [James Alan], 1939–2019

Bowen, Elizabeth, 1899–1973

Bowen, Otis R., 1918–2013

Bowie, David [David Robert Jones], 1947–2016

Bowles, Jane, 1917–1973

Bowles, Paul, 1910–1999

Bowman, Peter, 1917–1985

Boyle, Robert, 1627–1691

Brackett, Charles, 1892–1969

Brackett, Joseph, 1797–1882

Brackett, Leigh, 1915–1978

Bradbury, Ray, 1920–2012

Boone, Daniel, 1734–1820

Bradbury, Ray, 1920–2012

Bradford, John, c. 1510–1555

Bradford, William, 1590–1657

Bradley, Omar, 1893–1981

Bradstreet, Anne, c. 1612–1672

Brainard, Joe, 1942–1994

Brand, Stewart, 1938–

Brahms, Johannes, 1833–1897

Brancusi, Constantin, 1876–1957

Brandeis, Louis D[embitz], 1856–1941

Brant, Sebastian, c. 1458–1521

Braque, Georges, 1882–1963

Braudel, Fernand, 1902–1985

Brecht, Bertolt, 1898–1956

Brennan, Donald G., 1926–1980

Brennan, William J[oseph], Jr., 1906–1997

Breslin, [James Earle] Jimmy, 1928–2017

Breslin, Jimmy, 1930–2017

Bresson, Robert, 1901–1999

Breton, André, 1896–1966

Bridges, Robert, 1844–1930

Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme, 1755–1826

Brock-Broido, Lucie, 1956–2018

Brodkey, Harold [Aaron Roy Weintraub], 1930–1996

Brodsky, Joseph, 1940–1996

Broecker, Wallace, 1931–2019

Brokaw, Tom, 1940–

Bronk, William, 1918–1999

Bronstein, Lev Davidovich. See Trotsky, Leon

Brontë, Charlotte, 1816–1855

Brontë, Emily, 1818–1848

Brooke, Fulke Greville, Lord. See Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke

Brooke, Rupert, 1887–1915

Brooks, Gwendolyn, 1917–2000

Brooks, Louise, 1906–1985

Brooks, Mel [Melvin Kaminsky], 1926–

Brooks, Phillips, 1835–1893

Broonzy, Big Bill [William Lee Conley Bradley], 1898–1958

Brougham, Henry Peter, Baron Brougham and Vaux, 1778–1868

Broun, Heywood [Campbell Jr.], 1888–1939

Brower, David, 1912–2000

Brown, Claude, 1937–2002

Brown, David O., 1960–

Brown, H. Rap [Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin], 1943–

Brown, James, 1934–2006

Brown, John, 1800–1859

Brown, Lew, 1893–1958

Brown, Margaret Wise, 1910–1952

Brown, Rita Mae, 1944–

Brown, Thomas [Tom], 1663–1704

Brown, Thomas Edward, 1830–1897

Brown, William Wells, 1814–1884

Browne, Charles Farrar [pseudonym: Artemus Ward], 1834–1867

Browne, Sir Thomas, 1605–1682

Browne, William, 1591–c. 1645

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 1806–1861

Browning, Robert, 1812–1889

Brownmiller, Susan, 1935–

Broyles, William, Jr., 1944–

Brownson, Orestes A., 1803–1876

Bruce, Lenny [Leonard Alfred Schneider], 1925–1966

Bruner, Jerome S[eymour], 1915–2016

Bruno, Giordano, 1548–1600

Bruyère, Jean de La. See La Bruyère

Bryan, William Jennings, 1860–1925

Bryant, William Cullen, 1794–1878

Bryce, James, 1838–1922

Bryson, Bill, 1951–

Buber, Martin, 1878–1965

Buchan, John, Lord Tweedsmuir, 1875–1940

Buchman, Sidney [Robert], 1902–1975

Büchner, Georg, 1813–1837

Buck, Peter, 1956–

Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of. See Villiers

Buckley, Lord [Richard Myrle Buckley], 1906–1960

Buckley, William F[rank], Jr. 1925–2008

Buffett, Warren, 1930–

Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc de, 1707–1788

Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1891–1940

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, Baron Lytton, 1803–1873

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Robert. See Lytton

Bunn, Alfred, 1796–1860

Bunting, Basil, 1900–1985

Buñuel, Luis, 1900–1983

Bunyan, John, 1628–1688

Burchard, Samuel Dickinson, 1812–1891

Burdick, Eugene, 1918–1965

Burgess, Gelett, 1866–1951

Burgon, John William, 1813–1888

Burgos, Julia de, 1914–1953

Burke, Edmund, 1729–1797

Burke, Kenneth, 1897–1993

Burke, Tarana, 1973–

Burnett, W[illiam] R[iley], 1899–1982

Burney, Fanny, 1752–1840

Burns, Ed, 1946–

Burns, George [Nathan Birnbaum], 1896–1996

Burns, Robert, 1759–1796

Burr, Aaron, 1756–1836

Burris, Roy Edward, 1931–2011

Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1875–1950

Burroughs, John, 1837–1921

Burroughs, William Seward, 1914–1997

Burton, Robert, 1577–1640

Bush, Barbara Pierce, 1925–2018

Bush, George [Herbert Walker], 1924–2018

Bush, George W[alker], 1946–

Bush, Laura, 1946–

Buson, Yosa, 1716–1784

Bussy-Rabutin, Roger de, 1618–1693

Butler, Nicholas Murray, 1862–1947

Butler, Octavia, 1947–2006

Butler, Samuel, 1612–1680

Butler, Samuel, 1835–1902

Butler, Smedley D[arlington], 1881–1940

Butler, William, 1535–1618

Buttigieg, Pete, 1982–

Byatt, Dame A.S. [Antonia Susan Duffy], 1936–

Byrd, Robert C., 1917–2010

Byrne, David, 1952–

Byrom, John, 1692–1763

Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord, 1788–1824

Cabell, James Branch, 1879–1958

Cacoyannis, Michael, 1921–2011

Caecilius Statius, 220–168 B.C.E.

Caen, Herb, 1916–1997

Caesar, Augustus. See Augustus Caesar

Caesar, Gaius. See Caligula

Caesar, [Gaius] Julius, 100–44 B.C.E.

Cage, John, 1912–1992

Cahn, Sammy, 1913–1993

Cain, James M., 1892–1977

Calasso, Roberto, 1941–2021

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 1600–1681

Calhoun, John C[aldwell], 1782–1850

Caligula [Gaius Caesar], 12–41 C.E.

Calisher, Hortense, 1911–2009

Callimachus, c. 300–240 B.C.E.

Calvin, John, 1509–1564

Calvino, Italo, 1923–1985

Cambronne, Pierre Jacques Étienne, Count, 1770–1842

Cammell, Donald, 1934–1996

Campanella, Tommaso, 1568–1639

Campbell, Joseph, 1904–1987

Campbell, Mrs. Patrick [Beatrice Stella Tanner Campbell], 1865–1940

Campbell, Thomas, 1777–1844

Campion, Jane, 1954–

Campion, Thomas, 1567–1620

Camus, Albert, 1913–1960

Canetti, Elias, 1905–1994

Canning, George, 1770–1827

Capa, Robert [Endre Ernö Friedmann], 1913–1954

Čapek, Karel, 1890–1938

Capone, Al[phonse], 1899–1947

Capote, Truman, 1924–1984

Capra, Frank, 1897–1991

Caputo, Philip [Joseph], 1941–

Cardozo, Benjamin Nathan, 1870–1938

Carew, Thomas, c. 1595–c. 1639

Carey, Henry, c. 1687–1743

Carlin, George, 1937–2008

Carlyle, Jane [Baillie] Welsh, 1801–1866

Carlyle, Thomas, 1795–1881

Carmichael, Hoagy, 1899–1981

Carmichael, Stokely [Kwame Ture], 1941–1998

Carnegie, Andrew, 1835–1919

Carnegie, Dale, 1888–1955

Caro, Robert, 1935–

Carr, David, 1956–2015

Carroll, Lewis [pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], 1832–1898

Carson, Anne, 1950–

Carson, Rachel [Louise], 1907–1964

Carson, Wayne [Thompson], 1943–2015

Carter, A. P., 1891–1960

Carter, Angela, 1940–1992

Carter, Chris, 1956–

Carter, Jimmy [James Earl, Jr.], 1924–

Cartier, Jacques, 1491–1557

Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 1908–2004

Carver, Raymond, 1939–1988

Carville, James, 1944–

Cary, Phoebe, 1824–1871

Casanova, de Seingalt, Giacomo Girolamo, 1725–1798

Casement, Sir Roger, 1864–1916

Cash, Johnny, 1932–2003

Caspary, Vera, 1899–1987

Cassady, Neal, 1926–1968

Cassavetes, John, 1929–1987

Castaneda, Carlos, 1925–1998

Castro, Fidel, 1926–2016

Cather, Willa [Sibert], 1873–1947

Cato, Marcus Porcius [Cato the Elder, Cato the Censor], 234–149 B.C.E.

Catt, Carrie Chapman [Lane], 1859–1947

Catullus, Gaius Valerius, 87–c. 54 B.C.E.

Cavafy, C[onstantine] P[eter], 1863–1933

Cavell, Edith [Louisa], 1865–1915

Cavell, Stanley, 1926–2018

Celan [Antschel], Paul, 1920–1970

Céline, Louis Ferdinand [pseudonym of Louis Ferdinand Destouches], 1894–1961

Cendrars, Blaise, 1887–1961

Cervantes, Miguel de, 1547–1616

Césaire, Aimé, 1913–2008

Cézanne, Paul, 1839–1906

Chabon, Michael, 1963–

Chabrol, Claude, 1930–2010

Chamberlain, Neville, 1869–1940

Chambers, Haddon, 1860–1921

Chamfort, Sébastien Roch Nicolas, 1741–1794

Chandler, Raymond, 1888–1959

Chanel, Coco [Gabrielle], 1883–1971

Chang Heng, 78–139 C.E.

Channing, William Ellery, 1780–1842

Chapin, Harry, 1942–1981

Chapin, [Sandra] Sandy, 1934–

Chaplin, Charlie [Sir Charles Spencer], 1889–1977

Chaplin, Ralph, 1887–1961

Chapman, Arthur, 1873–1935

Chapman, George, c. 1559–1634

Chapman, John Jay, 1862–1933

Chapman, Tracy, 1964–

Charbonnier, Stéphane [“Charb”], 1967–2015

Charles II, 1630–1685

Charles V, 1500–1558

Charles IX, 1550–1574

Charles d’Orléans. See Orléans

Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, 1948–

Charles, Hughie, 1907–1995

Charles, Larry, 1956–

Charter of the United Nations

Chartier, Émile Auguste [pseudonym: Alain], 1868–1951

Chase, David, 1945–

Chase, Salmon P[ortland], 1808–1873

Chateaubriand, François René de, 1768–1848

Chatham, William Pitt, Earl of. See Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham

Chatterton, Thomas, 1752–1770

Chatwin, Bruce, 1940–1989

Chaucer, Geoffrey, c. 1343–1400

Chavez, Cesar [Estrada], 1927–1993

Chayevsky, Paddy, 1923–1981

Chazal, Malcolm de, 1902–1981

Cheever, John, 1912–1982

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904

Cheney, Dick [Richard Bruce], 1941–

Chesnut, Mary, 1823–1886

Chesnutt, Charles W[addell], 1858–1932

Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of, 1694–1773

Chesterton, G[ilbert] K[eith], 1874–1936

Chevalier, Sulpice Guillaume. See Gavarni

Chief Joseph. See Joseph

Child, Julia, 1912–2004

Child, Lydia Maria, 1802–1880

Ching Hao, fl. 925

Chisholm, Shirley, 1924–2005

Chomsky, [Avram] Noam, 1928–

Chopin, Kate [Katherine O’Flaherty], 1851–1904

Christgau, Robert, 1942–

Christie, Agatha, 1890–1976

Christine de Pisan, 1363–c. 1434

Christy, David, 1802–c. 1868

Chrysostom, Saint John, c. 345–407

Chuang-tzu, 369–286 B.C.E.

Chuck D [Carlton Douglas Ridenhour], 1960–

Church, Francis Pharcellus, 1839–1906

Churchill, Charles, 1731–1764

Churchill, Sir Winston Spencer, 1874–1965

Ciano, Count Galeazzo, 1903–1944

Cibber, Colley, 1671–1757

Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 106–43 B.C.E.

Cid, Poem of the, 12th century

Cioran, E. M., 1911–1995

Cisneros, Sandra, 1954–

Clare, John, 1793–1864

Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of. See Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon

Clark, William, 1770–1838

Clarke, Arthur C[harles], 1917–2008

Claudel, Paul, 1868–1955

Clausewitz, Karl von, 1780–1831

Clausius, Rudolf [Julius Emanuel], 1822–1888

Clay, Henry, 1777–1852

Cleanthes, c. 330–232 B.C.E.

Cleaver, [Leroy] Eldridge, 1935–1998

Cleese, John, 1939–

Cleghorn, Sarah N[orcliffe], 1876–1959

Cleland, John, 1709–1789

Clemenceau, Georges, 1841–1929

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. See Twain, Mark

Clement of Alexandria, c. 150–c. 215

Cleveland, Grover, 1837–1908

Cliff, Jimmy, 1948–

Clifford, W[illiam] K[ingdon], 1845–1879

Clifton, Lucille, 1936–2010

Clinton, Bill [William Jefferson], 1946–

Clinton, George, 1941–

Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 1947–

Cloud of Unknowing, The, late 14th century

Clough, Arthur Hugh, 1819–1861

Clover, Carol J., 1940–

Clovis, 466–511

Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 1975–

Cobain, Kurt, 1967–1994

Cochran, Johnnie, Jr., 1937–2005

Cocteau, Jean, 1889–1963

Coen, Joel, 1954–

Coen, Ethan, 1957–

Coetzee, J[ohn] M[axwell], 1940–

Coffee, Lenore, 1900–1984

Coffee, Lenore J., 1896–1984

Cohan, George M[ichael], 1878–1942

Cohen, Leonard, 1934–2016

Cohen, Michael, 1966–

Coke, Sir Edward, 1552–1634

Colbert, Stephen, 1964–

Cole, Joe Robert

Cole, Teju, 1975–

Cole, Thomas, 1801–1848

Coleman, Ornette, 1930–2015

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772–1834

Colette [pseudonym of Sidonie Gabrielle Colette], 1873–1954

Collins, Billy, 1941–

Collins, Charles, 1874–1923

Collins, Suzanne, 1962–

Collins, William, 1721–1759

Collins, [William] Wilkie, 1824–1889

Collodi [Carlo Lorenzini], Carlo, 1826–1890

Colman, George, the Younger, 1762–1836

Colombani, Jean-Marie, 1948–

Colton, Charles Caleb, 1780–1832

Coltrane, John, 1926–1967

Colum, Padraic, 1881–1972

Columbus, Christopher, 1451–1506

Comden, Betty, 1917–2006

Comey, James B., 1960–

Comte, Auguste, 1798–1857

Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, 1859–1930

Conant, James Bryant, 1893–1978

Condon, Richard, 1915–1996

Confucius [K’ung Fu-Zi, K’ung the master], 551–479 B.C.E.

Congreve, William, 1670–1729

Connelly, Marc[us Cook], 1890–1980

Connolly, Cyril [Vernon], 1903–1974

Conrad, Joseph, 1857–1924

Conroy, Frank, 1936–2005

Constable, John, 1776–1837

Constantine [Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus], c. 285–337

Constitution of the United States, 1787

Conway, Kellyanne, 1967–

Conwell, Russell H., 1843–1925

Coogler, Ryan, 1986–

Cooke, Sam, 1931–1964

Coolidge, Calvin, 1872–1933

Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789–1851

Copernicus, Nicholas, 1473–1543

Coppel, Alec, 1907–1972

Coppola, Francis Ford, 1939–

Coppola, Roman, 1965–

Corbet, Richard, 1582–1635

Corbusier, Le. See Le Corbusier

Corday, Charlotte [Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont], 1768–1793

Corey, Irwin, 1914–2017

Corneille, Pierre, 1606–1684

Cornford, Frances, 1886–1960

Cornford, Francis Macdonald, 1874–1973

Cornuel, Anne Bigot, 1605–1694

Corso, Gregory, 1930–2001

Cortázar, Julio, 1914–1984

Cortés, Hernán [Hernando Cortez], 1485–1547

Corwin, Thomas, 1794–1865

Cory, William Johnson, 1823–1892

Cosell, Howard [Howard William Cohen], 1918–1995

Costello, Lou [Louis Francis Cristillo], 1906–1959

Coué, Émile, 1857–1926

Coupland, Douglas, 1961–

Courbet, Gustave, 1819–1877

Cousin, Victor, 1792–1867

Cousteau, Jacques-Yves, 1910–1997

Covey, Stephen R., 1932–2012

Coward, Noël, 1899–1973

Cowboy Songs (Anonymous)

Cowley, Abraham, 1618–1667

Cowper, William, 1731–1800

Crabbe, George, 1754–1832

Craig, [Edward] Gordon, 1872–1966

Crane, Hart, 1899–1932

Crane, Stephen, 1871–1900

Crapsey, Adelaide, 1878–1914

Crase, Douglas, 1944–

Crashaw, Richard, c. 1613–1649

Crassus, Marcus Licinius, fl. 70 B.C.E.

Crawford, Robert, 1899–1961

Creelman, James Ashmore, 1894–1941

Creeley, Robert, 1926–2005

Crèvecoeur, Michel Guillaume Jean de [pseudonym: J. Hector St. John], 1735–1813

Crick, Francis [Harry Compton], 1916–2004

Crisp, Quentin [Denis Charles Pratt], 1908–1999

Croce, Benedetto, 1866–1952

Crockett, David, 1786–1836

Cromwell, Oliver, 1599–1658

Cronenberg, David, 1943–

Cronkite, Walter, 1916–2009

Cropper, Steve, 1941–

Crosby, [Harry Lillis Jr.] “Bing,” 1903–1977

Cross, Marian Evans. See Eliot, George

Crowe, Cameron, 1957–

Crowfoot, 1821–1890

Crowley, Aleister, 1875–1947

Crumb, R[obert], 1943–

Crummell, Alexander, 1819–1898

Crutzen, Paul J., 1933–

Cruz, Juana Inés de la, 1651–1695

Cukor, George, 1899–1983

Cullen, Countee, 1903–1946

Cumberland, Richard, 1631–1718

Cummings, E[dward] E[stlin], 1894–1962

Cummings, Elijah, 1951–2019

Cummings, William Thomas, 1903–1944

Cunningham, John M., 1915–2002

Cunningham, Mercier Philip [“Merce”], 1919–2009

Cuomo, Mario, 1932–2015

Curie, Marie, 1867–1934

Curran, John Philpot, 1750–1817

Curry, Bishop Michael, 1953–

Curtis, Sonny, 1937–

Cusk, Rachel, 1967–

Custine, Astolphe Louis Léonard, Marquis de, 1790–1857

Cyprian, Saint, d. 258

Dacre, Harry, d. 1922

Dalai Lama, the [Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Dhondup], 1935–

Dalí, Salvador, 1904–1989

Daly, Mary, 1928–2010

Dammers, Jerry, 1955–

Dana, Richard Henry, 1815–1882

D’Angelo [Michael Eugene Archer], 1974–

Dangerfield, Rodney [Jacob Cohen], 1921–2004

Daniel, Samuel, c. 1562–1619

Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321

Danton, Georges Jacques, 1759–1794

Darrow, Clarence [Seward], 1857–1938

Darwin, Charles Robert, 1809–1882

Darwin, Erasmus, 1731–1802

Daugherty, Harry M[icajah], 1860–1941

Davenport, Guy, 1927–2005

Daves, Delmer, 1904–1977

David, Elizabeth, 1913–1992

David, Larry, 1947–

David, [Harold] Hal, 1921–2012

Davidson, John, 1857–1909

Davies, Sir John, 1569–1626

Davies, John, of Hereford, c. 1565–1618

Davies, Ray [Sir Raymond Douglas], 1944–

Davies, Robertson, 1913–1995

da Vinci, Leonardo. See Leonardo da Vinci

Davis, Bette [Ruth Elizabeth Davis], 1908–1989

Davis, David, 1815–1886

Davis, Elmer, 1890–1958

Davis, Jefferson, 1808–1889

Davis, Lydia, 1947–

Davis, Miles [Miles Dewey Davis III], 1926–1991

Davis, Richard Harding, 1864–1916

Dawkins, Richard, 1941–

Day, Dorothy, 1897–1980

Díaz, Junot, 1968–

Dean, John, 1938–

Debord, Guy, 1931–1994

Debs, Eugene V[ictor], 1855–1926

Debussy, Claude [Achille], 1862–1918

Decatur, Stephen, 1779–1820

Deffand, Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du, 1697–1780

Defoe, Daniel, 1660–1731

de Botton, Alain, 1969–

De Forest, J[ohn] W[illiam], 1826–1906

Degas, Edgar, 1834–1917

De Gaulle, Charles [André Joseph Marie], 1890–1970

de Jouvenel, Bertrand, 1903–1987

Dekker, Thomas, 1572–1632

de Kooning, Willem, 1904–1997

Delaroche, Paul, 1797–1856

Delacroix, Eugène, 1798–1863

Delany [Jr.], Samuel R[ay], 1942–

de la Mare, Walter, 1873–1956

DeLillo, Don, 1936–

Deloria, Vine [Victor], Jr., 1933–2005

Deleuze, Gilles, 1925–1995

Democritus, c. 460–c. 370 B.C.E.

Demosthenes, c. 384–322 B.C.E.

Dempsey, Jack [William Harrison], 1895–1983

Denby, Edwin, 1903–1983

Deng Xiaoping, 1904–1997

Dennis, John, 1657–1734

De Quincey, Thomas, 1785–1859

Derrida, Jacques, 1930–2004

de Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis, 1740–1814

Descartes, René, 1596–1650

Desnos, Robert, 1900–1945

Desmoulins, Camille, 1760–1794

Destouches, Louis Ferdinand. See Céline, Louis Ferdinand

De Sylva, Buddy [George Gard], 1895–1950

Deutsch, Karl, 1912–1992

De Voto, Bernard, 1897–1955

De Vries, Peter, 1910–1993

Dewey, George, 1837–1917

Dewey, John, 1859–1952

De Wolf, Elsie [Lady Mendl], 1865–1950

Diaghilev, Sergei Pavlovich, 1872–1929

Diamond, I. A. L. [Itzek Domnici], 1920–1988

Diamond Sutra, The [Vajracchedika] 2nd century C.E.

Diana [Frances Spencer], Princess of Wales, 1961–1997

Díaz, Porfirio, 1830–1915

Dick, Philip K[indred], 1928–1982

Dickens, Charles, 1812–1870

Dickey, James, 1923–1997

Dickinson, Emily, 1830–1886

Dickinson, John, 1732–1808

Diderot, Denis, 1713–1784

Didion, Joan, 1934–2021

Dietz, Howard, 1896–1983

Dillard, Annie, 1945–

Dillon, Wentworth, Earl of Roscommon. See Roscommon

Dinesen, Isak [pseudonym of Karen Blixen], 1885–1962

Diogenes the Cynic, c. 400–c. 325 B.C.E.

Laertius, fl. c. 200

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, c. 54–c. 7 B.C.E.

Dior, Christian, 1905–1957

di Prima, Diane, 1934–2020

Dirksen, Everett McKinley, 1896–1969

Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804–1881

Divine, Father [George Baker], c. 1882–1965

Dixon, Willie [William James], 1915–1992

Dobson, [Henry] Austin, 1840–1921

Doctorow, E[dgar] L[awrence], 1931–2015

Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge. See Carroll, Lewis

Dolphy, Eric, 1928–1964

Donleavy, J. P., 1926–2017

Donne, John, 1572–1631

Donovan, [Philips Leitch], 1946–

Dooley, Mr. See Dunne

Doolittle, Hilda. See H.D.

d’Orléans, Charles, 1394–1465

Dorn, Edward [Merton], 1929–1999

Dorsey, Thomas A., 1899–1993

Dortort, David, 1916–2010

Dos Passos, John [Roderigo], 1896–1970

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich, 1821–1881

Douglas, Lord Alfred Bruce, 1870–1945

Douglas, Marjory Stoneman, 1890–1998

Douglas, Mary, 1921–2007

Douglas, Norman, 1868–1952

Douglas, William O[rville], 1898–1980

Douglass, Frederick, c. 1818–1895

Dove, Rita, 1952–

Dow, Lorenzo, 1777–1834

Dowson, Ernest, 1867–1900

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 1859–1930

Drake, Ervin [Ervin Maurice Druckman], 1919–2015

Drake, Nick, 1948–1974

Dratler, Jay, 1911–1968

Drayton, Michael, 1563–1631

Dreiser, Theodore, 1871–1945

Drennan, William, 1754–1820

Dresser [Jr.], [Johann] Paul, 1857–1906

Driver, William, 1803–1886

Drucker, Peter, 1909–2005

Drummond, William, 1585–1649

Drummond de Andrade, Carlos, 1902–1987

Dryden, John, 1631–1700

Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste, Seigneur, 1544–1590

Dubček, Alexander, 1921–1992

Dubin, Al[exander], 1891–1945

Du Bois, W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt], 1868–1963

Dubos, René Jules, 1901–1982

Duchamp, Marcel, 1887–1968

Dudevant, Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne. See Sand, George

Duffield, George, 1818–1888

Duke, Vernon [Vladimir Dukelsky], 1903–1969

Dulles, John Foster, 1888–1959

Dumas, Alexandre, the Elder, 1802–1870

Dumas, Alexandre, the Younger, 1824–1895

du Maurier, Daphne, 1907–1989

Dumas, Henry, 1934–1968

Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872–1906

Dunbar, William, c. 1465–c. 1530

Duncan, Isadora, 1877–1927

Duncan, Robert, 1919–1988

Dunne, Finley Peter [Mr. Dooley], 1867–1936

Dunne, John Gregory, 1932–2003

Duras, Marguerite [Marguerite Donnadieu], 1914–1996

Durante, Jimmy [James Francis], 1893–1980

Dürer, Albrecht, 1471–1528

Durkheim, Émile, 1858–1917

Durrell, Lawrence [George], 1912–1990

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich, 1921–1990

Dury, Ian, 1942–2000

Dvořák, Antonín, 1841–1904

Dvorin, Al, 1922–2004

Dworkin, Andrea Rita, 1946–2005

Dyer, Sir Edward, 1543–1607

Dyer, Geoff, 1958–

Dyer, John, 1699–1757

Dylan, Bob [Robert Zimmerman], 1941–

Dzhugashvili, Iosif Vissarionovich. See Stalin

Eames [Jr.], Charles [Ormond], 1907–1978

Earhart [Putnam], Amelia. See Putnam

Earle, Sylvia [Alice], 1935–

Early Miscellaneous (Anonymous)

Eastman, Charles Alexander. See Ohiyesa

Eastwood, Clint [Clinton Eastwood, Jr.], 1930–

Ebb, Fred, 1928–2004

Ebbinghaus, Hermann, 1850–1909

Eberhart, Richard, 1904–2005

Ebert, Roger, 1942–2013

Eckhart, Meister [Eckhart von Hochheim], c. 1260–c. 1327

Eco, Umberto, 1932–2016

Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley, 1882–1944

Eddy, Mary Baker, 1821–1910

Edison, Thomas A[lva], 1847–1931

Edward III, 1312–1377

Edward VIII. See Windsor

Edwards, Edwin, 1927–2021

Edwards, Jonathan, 1703–1758

Egan, Raymond B., 1890–1952

Eggers, Dave, 1970–

Ehrenreich, Barbara, 1941–

Ehrlich, Gretel, 1946–

Ehrlichman, John [Daniel], 1925–1999

Eike von Repgow, fl. c. 1220

Einstein, Albert, 1879–1955

Eiseley, Loren, 1907–1977

Eisenberg, Deborah, 1945–

Eisenhower, Dwight D[avid], 1890–1969

Eleazar ben Jair, d. 73 C.E.

Eliade, Mircea, 1907–1986

Eliot, Charles William, 1834–1926

Eliot, George [pseudonym of Marian Evans Cross], 1819–1880

Eliot, T[homas] S[tearns], 1888–1965

Elizabeth I, 1533–1603

Elizabeth, Queen Mother of England, 1900–2002

Ellington, Duke [Edward Kennedy], 1899–1974

Elliot, Jane, 1727–1805

Elliott, Bob [Robert B.], 1923–2016

Elliott, Ebenezer, 1781–1849

Ellis, Havelock, 1859–1939

Ellison, Harlan, 1934–2018

Ellison, Ralph [Waldo], 1914–1994

Ellsberg, Daniel, 1931–

Ellul, Jacques, 1912–1994

Éluard, Paul [pseudonym of Eugène Grindel], 1895–1952

Emanuel, Rahm, 1959–

Emecheta, Buchi, 1944–

Emerald Tablet. See Tabula Smaragdina

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803–1882

Emmet, Robert, 1778–1803

Emmett, Daniel Decatur, 1815–1904

Empedocles, c. 490–c. 430 B.C.E.

Empson, William, 1906–1984

Engels, Friedrich, 1820–1895

English, Thomas Dunn, 1819–1902

Ennius, Quintus, 239–169 B.C.E.

Eno, Brian, 1948–

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, 1929–

Ephron, Nora, 1941–2012

Epic of Gilgamesh, The, c. 1300–c. 1000 B.C.E.

Epictetus, c. 55–135 C.E.

Epicurus, 341–270 B.C.E.

Epimenides, 6th century B.C.E.

Epstein, Barbara, 1928–2006

Epstein, Julius J., 1909–2000

Epstein, Philip G., 1909–1952

Equi, Elaine, 1953–

Erasmus, Desiderius, c. 1466–1536

Erdrich, [Karen] Louise, 1954–

Eriugena, John Scotus, c. 815–c. 877

Erikson, Erik [Homburger], 1902–1994

Erpenbeck, Jenny, 1967–

Estienne, Henri, c. 1531–1598

Euclid, fl. 300 B.C.E.

Eugenides, Jeffrey, 1960–

Euripides, c. 485–406 B.C.E.

Evangelista, Linda, 1965–

Evans, Bill, 1929–1980

Everson, William, 1912–1994

Faber, Frederick William, 1814–1863

Fabius Maximus, Quintus, c. 275–203 B.C.E.

Fadiman, Anne, 1953–

Fagen, Donald, 1948–

Fairlie, Henry, 1924–1990

Fallaci, Oriana, 1929–2006

Fallersleben, Hoffmann von. See Hoffmann, August Heinrich

Fallodon, Viscount Grey of, Edward 1862–1933

Fanon, Frantz, 1925–1961

Farage, Nigel, 1964–

Faragoh, Francis Edwards, 1898–1966

Farber, Manny, 1917–2008

Farina, Richard, 1937–1966

Farquhar, George, 1678–1707

Farragut, David Glasgow, 1801–1870

Fauci, Anthony [Stephen], 1940–

Faulkner, William, 1897–1962

Fearing, Kenneth, 1902–1961

Feiffer, Jules [Ralph], 1929–

Felder, Don, 1947–2016

Feldman, Morton, 1926–1987

Fellini, Federico, 1920–1993

Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe, 1651–1715

Ferber, Edna, 1885–1968

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence [Monsanto], 1919–2021

Ferguson, Adam, 1723–1816

Ferguson, Niall, 1964–

Fermat, Pierre de, 1601–1665

Fern, Fanny [pseudonym of Sara Payson Parton], 1811–1872

Ferrante, Elena [pseudonym], c. 1943

Feyerabend, Paul, 1924–1994

Fey, Tina, 1970–

Feynman, Richard P[hillips], 1918–1988

Fiedler, Leslie, 1917–2003

Field, Eugene, 1850–1895

Field, Marshall, 1834–1906

Fielding, Henry, 1707–1754

Fields, Dorothy, 1905–1974

Fields, Lew, 1867–1941

Fields, W[illiam] C[laude], 1880–1946

Finger, Bill, 1914–1974

Fisher, M[ary] F[rances] K[ennedy], 1908–1992

FitzGerald, Edward, 1809–1883

Fitzgerald, F[rancis] Scott [Key], 1896–1940

Fitzgerald, Penelope, 1916–2000

Fitzgerald, Zelda, 1900–1948

Flanders, Michael, 1922–1975

Flaubert, Gustave, 1821–1880

Fleming, Sir Alexander, 1881–1955

Fleming, Ian [Lancaster], 1908–1964

Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 1655–1716

Fletcher, John, 1579–1625

See also Beaumont and Fletcher and Shakespeare, Henry VIII

Flood, Curt, 1938–1997

Florian, Jean-Pierre Claris de, 1755–1794

Florio, John, c. 1553–1625

Florus, Lucius Annaeus, fl. 125 C.E.

Flynn, Gillian, 1971–

Foch, Ferdinand, 1851–1929

Fogerty, John, 1945–

Follette Sr., Robert M. La, 1855–1925

Fontaine, Jean de La. See La Fontaine

Foote, Samuel, 1720–1777

Ford, Ford Madox [Hueffer], 1873–1939

Ford, Gerald R[udolph], 1913–2006

Ford, John, c. 1586–1639

Ford, John [John Martin Feeney], 1894–1973

Ford, Lena Guilbert, d. 1918

Ford, Richard, 1944–

Foreman, Carl, 1914–1984

Fornés, María Irene, 1930–2018

Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 1821–1877

Forster, E[dward] M[organ], 1879–1970

Fortescue, John, c. 1395–c. 1479

Foss, Sam Walter, 1858–1911

Foster, Fred, 1931–2019

Foster, Preston, 1935–

Foster, Stephen Collins, 1826–1864

Foucault, Michel, 1926–1984

Fouché, Joseph, 1759–1820

Fowler, F[rancis] G[eorge], 1870–1918

Fowler, Gene, 1890–1960

Fowler, H[enry] W[atson], 1858–1933

Fox, Charles James, 1749–1806

Fox, George, 1624–1691

Fox, Paula, 1923–2017

F.P.A. See Adams, Franklin P[ierce]

Fragments from the Gospel of Thomas, 3rd century

France, Anatole [pseudonym of Jacques Anatole François Thibault], 1844–1924

Francis [François] I, 1494–1547

Francis of Assisi, Saint, c. 1181–1226

Francis Iles [Anthony Berkeley Cox], 1893–1971

Francis, Pope [Jorge Mario Bergoglio], 1936–

Francis, Robert, 1901–1987

Franco, Francisco [Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde, Salgado y Pardo de Andrade], 1892–1975

Frank, Anne, 1929–1945

Frank, Melvin, 1913–1983

Frankfurter, Felix, 1882–1965

Frankl, Viktor, 1905–1997

Franklin, Aretha, 1942–2018

Franklin, Benjamin, 1706–1790

Franklin, [Stella Maria] Miles, 1879–1954

Franklyn, Jill

Franks, General Tommy, 1945–

Franzen, Jonathan, 1959–

Franzoni, David, 1947–

Frayn, Michael, 1933–

Frazer, Sir James George, 1854–1941

Frazier, Darnella, 2003–

Frederick I [Barbarossa], c. 1122–1190

Frederick the Great, 1712–1786

French (Anonymous)

Freneau, Philip, 1752–1832

Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939

Frey, Glenn, 1948–2016

Frida Kahlo [y Calderón], [Magdalena Carmen], 1907–1954

Friedan, Betty [Naomi], 1921–2006

Friedman, Milton, 1912–2006

Friel, Brian, 1929–2015

Frisch, Max, 1911–1991

Froissart, Jean, c. 1337–c. 1405

Fromm, Erich, 1900–1980

Frost, Robert, 1874–1963

Frye, Northrop, 1912–1991

Fuentes, Carlos, 1928–2012

Fukuyama, [Yoshihiro] Francis, 1952–

Fulbright, J[ames] William, 1905–1995

Fuller, Blind Boy [Fulton Allen], 1907–1941

Fuller, Margaret, 1810–1850

Fuller, R[ichard] Buckminster, 1895–1983

Fuller, Samuel, 1911–1997

Fuller, Thomas, 1608–1661

Fuller, Thomas, 1654–1734

Furst, Alan, 1941–

Furthman, Jules, 1888–1966

Fyleman, Rose, 1877–1957

Gábor, Zsa Zsa, 1917–2016

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1900–2002

Gaddis, William, 1922–1998

Gaius Caesar. See Caligula

Gaiman, Neil, 1960–

Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908–2006

Gale, [Michael Robert] Bob, 1951–

Galen, 129–199

Galileo Galilei, 1564–1642

Gallant, Mavis [Leslie de Trafford Young], 1922–2014

Galsworthy, John, 1867–1933

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma], 1869–1948

Gansberg, Martin, 1920–1995

Gao Xingjian, 1940–

Garbo, Greta [Greta Gustafson], 1905–1990

Garcia, Jerry [Jerome John], 1942–1995

García Lorca, Federico, 1898–1936

García Márquez, Gabriel, 1927–2014

Garfield, James A[bram], 1831–1881

Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 1807–1882

Garner, Eric, 1970–2014

Garner, John Nance, 1868–1967

Garrick, David, 1717–1779

Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805–1879

Garvey, Marcus, 1887–1940

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810–1865

Gass, William H[oward], 1924–2017

Gasset, José Ortega y. See Ortega y Gasset

Gates, Bill [William Henry Gates III], 1955–

Gauguin, Paul, 1848–1903

Gaulle, Charles [André Joseph Marie] de. See de Gaulle

Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 1777–1855

Gautier, Théophile, 1811–1872

Gavarni [pseudonym of Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier], 1804–1866

Gawande, Atul, 1965–

Gay, John, 1685–1732

Gaye, Marvin [Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr.], 1939–1984

Geertz, Clifford, 1926–2006

Gehrig, Lou, 1903–1941

Gellhorn, Martha, 1908–1998

Genée, Richard, 1823–1895

Genet, Jean, 1910–1986

George Savile, first Marquess of Halifax, 1633–1695

George V, 1865–1936

George, Henry, 1839–1897

George, Peter, 1924–1966

Geronimo, 1829–1909

Gershwin, George, 1898–1937

Gershwin, Ira, 1896–1983

Ghosh, Amitav, 1956–

Giacosa, Giuseppe, 1847–1906

Giamatti, A. Bartlett, 1938–1989

Gibbon, Edward, 1737–1794

Gibbons, James Sloan, 1810–1892

Gibbons, Stella, 1902–1989

Gibran, Kahlil, 1883–1931

Gibson, William, 1914–2008

Gibson, William, 1948–

Gide, André, 1869–1951

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, c. 1539–1583

Gilbert, William, 1544–1603

Gilbert, Sir W[illiam] S[chwenck], 1836–1911

Gilgamesh, The Epic of, c. 1300–c. 1000 B.C.E.

Gill, Brendan, 1914–1997

Gillespie, Dizzy [John Birks], 1917–1993

Gillespie, Haven, 1888–1975

Gilligan, Carol, 1936–

Gillray, James, c. 1757–1815

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860–1935

Gilmore, John, 1955–

Ginsberg, Allen, 1926–1997

Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 1933–2020

Giovanni, Nikki, 1943–

Giraudoux, Jean, 1882–1944

Gissing, George, 1857–1903

Giuliani, Rudolph W[illiam], 1944–

Gladstone, William Ewart, 1809–1898

Glasgow, Ellen, 1873–1945

Gleick, James, 1954–

Glinka, Mikhail [Ivanovich], 1804–1857

Gloucester, William Henry, Duke of, 1743–1805

Glück, Louise, 1943–

Glyn, Elinor, 1864–1943

Godard, Jean-Luc, 1930–

Godwin, Mike, 1956–

Goebbels, Paul Joseph, 1897–1945

Goering, Hermann, 1893–1946

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749–1832

Goffin, Gerry, 1939–2014

Goffman, Erving, 1922–1982

Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich, 1809–1852

Gold, Jonathan, 1960–2018

Goldbeck, Willis, 1898–1979

Goldberger, Paul, 1950–

Goldin, Nan, 1953–

Golding, William, 1911–1993

Goldman, Emma, 1869–1940

Goldman, William, 1931–2018

Goldsmith, Oliver, c. 1728–1774

Goldstein, Rebecca Newberger, 1950–

Goldwater, Barry, 1909–1998

Goldwyn, Samuel, 1882–1974

Gombrowicz, Witold, 1904–1969

Gompers, Samuel, 1850–1924

Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich, 1812–1891

Góngora y Argote, Luis de, 1561–1627

Gonzáles, Emma, 1999–

Goodis, David, 1917–1967

Goodman, Amy, 1957–

Goodman, Paul, 1911–1972

Goodrich, Frances, 1890–1984

Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich, 1931–

Gordimer, Nadine, 1923–2014

Gordon, Adam Lindsay, 1833–1870

Gordon, Ruth, 1896–1985

Gore, Al [Albert Arnold] Jr., 1948–

Gordon, Major-General Charles C., 1833–1885

Gorenko, Anna Andreyevna. See Akhmatova, Anna

Gorki, Maxim [pseudonym of Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov], 1868–1936

Gorman, Amanda, 1998–

Gornick, Vivian, 1935–

Gorrell, Stuart, 1901–1963

Gospel of Thomas, Fragments from the, 3rd century

Gosse, Sir Edmund [William], 1849–1928

Gottlieb, Carl, 1938–

Gould, Glenn, 1932–1982

Gould, Stephen Jay, 1941–2002

Goulding, Ray [Raymond H.], 1922–1990

Gourmont, Remy de, 1858–1915

Gove, Michael, 1967–

Goya y Lucientes, Francisco José de, 1746–1828

Gracchus. See Babeuf, François Noël

Gracián y Morales, Baltasar, 1601–1658

Graeber, David, 1961–2020

Grafton, Richard, c. 1513–1572

Graham, Katharine [Meyer], 1917–2001

Grahame, Kenneth, 1859–1932

Gramsci, Antonio, 1891–1937

Grandin, Temple, 1947–

Grandmaster Flash [Joseph Saddler], 1958–

Grant, Cary [Archibald Alexander Leach], 1904–1986

Grant, Ulysses S[impson], 1822–1885

Grass, Günter [Wilhelm], 1927–2015

Graves, John Woodcock, 1795–1886

Graves, Robert [Ranke], 1895–1985

Gravy, Wavy, 1936–

Gray, Thomas, 1716–1771

Grealy, Lucy, 1963–2002

Greeley, Horace, 1811–1872

Green, Abel, 1900–1973

Green, Adolph, 1914–2002

Green, Walon, 1936–

Greenberg, Clement, 1909–1994

Greene, Graham, 1904–1991

Greene, Robert, c. 1560–1592

Greenspan, Alan, 1926–

Greer, Germaine, 1939–

Gregory, Augusta, Lady, 1852–1932

Gregory I, Pope, 540–604

Gregory XIII, Pope, 1502–1585

Gregory, Dick [Richard Claxton], 1932–2017

Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, 1554–1628

Grey, Edward, Viscount Grey of Fallodon, 1862–1933

Griffith, Bill, 1944–

Griffith, D[avid] W[ark], 1875–1948

Grindel, Eugène. See Éluard, Paul

Gropius, Walter, 1883–1969

Grossman, Vasily, 1905–1964

Grubb, Davis, 1919–1980

Gruber, Edmund L., 1879–1941

Guare, John, 1938–

Guest, Barbara, 1920–2006

Guest, Edgar A[lbert], 1881–1959

Guevara, [Ernesto] Che, 1928–1967

Guinan, Texas [Mary Louise Cecilia], 1884–1933

Guizot, François, 1787–1874

Gunn, Thom, 1929–2004

Gurganus, Allan, 1947–

Gurney, A. R. [Albert Ramsdell Gurney, Jr.], 1930–2017

Gurney, Ivor, 1890–1937

Guston, Philip, 1913–1980

Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 1928–

Guthrie, Woody [Woodrow Wilson], 1912–1967

Habermas, Jürgen, 1929–

Hackett, Albert, 1900–1995

Haddon, Mark, 1962–

Hadrian [Publius Aelius Hadrianus], 76–138 C.E.

Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich, 1834–1919

Haffner, Carl, 1804–1874

Hagen, Walter C., 1892–1969

Haggard, H[enry] Rider, 1856–1925

Haggard, Merle, 1937–2016

Hague, Frank, 1876–1956

Hahnemann, Samuel, 1755–1843

Haig, Alexander, 1924–2010

Haile Selassie, 1891–1975

Halberstam, David, 1934–2007

Haldane, John Burdon Sanderson, 1892–1964

Hale, Edward Everett, 1822–1909

Hale, Nathan, 1755–1776

Hale, Sarah Josepha, 1788–1879

Haley, Alex, 1921–1992

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 1790–1867

Halsey, William Frederick, Jr., 1882–1959

Hamer, Fannie Lou, 1917–1977

Hamilton, Alexander, 1755–1804

Hamilton, Charles [Vernon], 1929–

Hammerstein, Oscar, II, 1895–1960

Hammett, Dashiell, 1894–1961

Hammond, James Henry, 1807–1864

Han Wu-ti, 157–87 B.C.E.

Hand, Learned, 1872–1961

Handy, W[illiam] C[hristopher], 1873–1958

Hansberry, Lorraine, 1930–1965

Hansen, James, 1941–

Han-Shan, 8th or 9th century

Harari, Yuval Noah, 1976–

Haraway, Donna, 1944–

Harbach, Otto, 1873–1963

Harburg, E. Y. [Isidore Hochberg], 1896–1981

Hard, William, 1878–1962

Hardenberg, Baron Friedrich von. See Novalis

Hardin, Garrett, 1915–2003

Hardwick, Elizabeth, 1916–2007

Hardy, Thomas, 1840–1928

Harington, Sir John, 1561–1612

Hariri, Abu Muhammad al-Kasim al-, 1054–1122

Harlan, John Marshall, 1833–1911

Harper, Robert Goodloe, 1765–1825

Harper, The Song of the, 2600? B.C.E.

Harrington, Michael, 1928–1989

Harris, Joel Chandler, 1848–1908

Harris, Kamala [Devi], 1964–

Harrison, George, 1943–2001

Harrison, Jane Ellen, 1850–1928

Harrison, Jim, 1937–2016

Harrison, Joan, 1907–1994

Harrison, William Henry, 1773–1841

Hart, Basil Henry Liddell. See Liddell Hart

Hart, Lorenz [Milton], 1895–1943

Hart, Moss, 1904–1961

Harte, Bret [Francis Brett Harte], 1836–1902

Hartley, L[esley] P[oles], 1895–1972

Hartmann, General Julius von, 1817–1878

Harvard Crimson

Harvey, William, 1578–1657

Hasegawa Nyozekan, 1875–1969

Hasford, Gustav, 1947–1993

Haskell, Molly, 1939–

Hass, Robert, 1941–

Havel, Václav, 1936–2011

Hawker, Robert Stephen, 1803–1875

Hawking, Stephen [William], 1942–2018

Hawks, Howard, 1896–1977

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804–1864

Hay, Ian [John Hay Beith], 1876–1952

Hay, John Milton, 1838–1905

Hayden, Joseph, fl. 1896

Hayden, Michael V[incent], 1945–

Hayden, Tom, 1939–2016

Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 1786–1846

Hayek, Friedrich August von, 1899–1992

Hayes, John Michael, 1919–2008

Hays, Lee, 1914–1981

Hayes, Terrance, 1971–

Haythe, Justin, 1973–

Hazlitt, William, 1778–1830

H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], 1886–1961

Heaney, Seamus [Justin], 1939–2013

Hearn [Koizumi Yakumo], [Patricio] Lafcadio, 1850–1904

Hearst, Patricia Campbell [Shaw], 1954–

Hearst, William Randolph, 1863–1951

Heath, John, 1758–1810

Heber, Reginald, 1783–1826

Heckroth, Hein, 1901–1970

Hedayat, Sadegh, 1903–1951

Hedges, Chris, 1956–

Hefner, Hugh, 1926–2017

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831

Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976

Heilbroner, Robert L., 1919–2005

Heine, Heinrich, 1797–1856

Heinlein, Robert A., 1907–1988

Heinz, W[ilfred] C[harles], 1915–2008

Heisenberg, Werner Karl, 1901–1976

Hell, Richard [Richard Meyers], 1949–

Heller, Joseph, 1923–1999

Hellman, Lillian, 1905–1984

Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von, 1821–1894

Helmsley, Leona, 1920–2007

Héloise, c. 1098–c. 1164

Helvétius, Claude Adrien, 1715–1771

Hemans, Felicia [Dorothea], 1793–1835

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899–1961

Hemon, Aleksandar, 1964–

Hempel, Amy, 1951–

Hendricks, Jon, 1921–2017

Hendrix, Jimi [James Marshall], 1942–1970

Henley, Don, 1947–2016

Henley, William Ernest, 1849–1903

Henry II, 1133–1189

Henry VI, 1421–1471

Henri IV [Henry of Navarre], 1553–1610

Henri, Robert, 1865–1929

Henry, Buck [Henry Zuckerman], 1930–2020

Henry, Jacob, 1775–1847

Henry, Matthew, 1662–1714

Henry, O. [pseudonym of William Sydney Porter], 1862–1910

Henry, Patrick, 1736–1799

Henryson, Robert, fl. 1480

Hepburn, Katharine, 1907–2003

Heraclitus, c. 540–c. 480 B.C.E.

Herbert, Anne, 1952–

Herbert, Frank, 1920–1986

Herbert, George, 1593–1633

Herbert, Zbigniew, 1924–1998

Herodotus, c. 485–c. 425 B.C.E.

Herr, Michael, 1940–2016

Herrick, Robert, 1591–1674

Herriman, George [Joseph], 1880–1944

Hersey, John, 1914–1993

Herzen, Alexander Ivanovich, 1812–1870

Herzl, Theodor, 1860–1904

Herzog, Arthur, Jr., 1927–1983

Herzog, Werner [Werner H. Stipetić], 1942–

Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 1907–1972

Hesiod, fl. c. 700 B.C.E.

Hesse, Eva, 1936–1970

Hesse, Hermann, 1877–1962

Heti, Sheila, 1976–

Heyman, Edward, 1907–1981

Heyward, DuBose, 1885–1940

Heywood, John, c. 1497–c. 1580

Heywood, Thomas, c. 1574–c. 1641

Hickey, Dave, 1938–2021

Higginbotham, A[loyisus] Leon, Jr., 1928–1998

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823–1911

Highsmith, Patricia, 1921–1995

Hightower, Jim, 1943–

Hijuelos, Oscar, 1951–2013

Hill, Aaron, 1685–1750

Hill, Anita, 1956–

Hill, Geoffrey, 1932–2016

Hill, Joe [Joseph Hillstrom], 1879–1915

Hill, Rowland, 1744–1833

Hillel, fl. 30 B.C.E.–10 C.E.

Hillenbrand, Laura, 1967–

Hilton, James, 1900–1954

Himes, Chester, 1909–1984

Hine, Lewis, 1874–1940

Hinton, S[usan] E[loise], 1948–

Hippocrates, c. 460–377 B.C.E.

Hirohito, Emperor, 1901–1989

Hitchcock, Alfred, 1899–1980

Hitchens, Christopher, 1949–2011

Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945

Hitomaro [Kakinomoto no], c. 662–710

Hoagland, Edward, 1932–

Hoban, Russell, 1925–2011

Hobbes, Thomas, 1588–1679

Hobsbawm, Eric, 1917–2012

Hockney, David, 1937–

Hoffenstein, Samuel, 1890–1947

Hoffer, Eric, 1902–1983

Hoffman, Abbie [Abbott], 1936–1989

Hoffmann, August Heinrich [Hoffmann von Fallersleben], 1798–1874

Hoffmann, Stanley, 1928–2015

Hofmann, Albert, 1906–2008

Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 1874–1929

Hofstadter, Richard, 1916–1970

Hogg, James, 1770–1835

Hohenheim, Theophrastus Bombast von. See Paracelsus

Holder, Eric, 1951–

Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770–1843

Holiday, Billie [Eleanora Fagan], 1915–1959

Hollander, John, 1929–2013

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809–1894

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 1841–1935

Holmes, Richard [Gordon Heath], 1945–

Holzer, Jenny, 1950–

Homer, c. 700 B.C.E.

Hone, Philip, 1780–1851

Hood, Thomas, 1799–1845

Hooke, Robert, 1635–1703

Hooker, Richard, c. 1554–1600

Hooper, Ellen Sturgis, 1816–1848

Hoover, Herbert [Clark], 1874–1964

Hope, A. D. [Alec Derwent], 1907–2000

Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 1844–1889

Hopkins, Jane Ellice, 1836–1904

Hopkinson, Joseph, 1770–1842

Hor. See Suti and Hor

Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus], 65–8 B.C.E.

Horkheimer, Max, 1895–1973

Housman, A[lfred] E[dward], 1859–1936

Hovey, Richard, 1864–1900

Howard, Richard, 1929–

Howard, Sidney, 1891–1939

Howe, Irving, 1920–1993

Howe, Julia Ward, 1819–1910

Howe, Susan, 1937–

Howell, James, c. 1594–1666

Howells, William Dean, 1837–1920

Howitt, Mary, 1799–1888

Hoyle, Edmond, 1672–1769

Huai-nan Tzu, 2nd century B.C.E.

Hubbard, Elbert, 1856–1915

Hudson, W[illiam] H[enry], 1841–1922

Hughes, Charles Evans, 1862–1948

Hughes, Howard, 1905–1976

Hughes, Langston, 1902–1967

Hughes, Robert, 1938–2012

Hughes, Scottie Nell, 1980–

Hughes, Ted [Edward J.], 1930–1998

Hughes, Thomas, 1822–1896

Hugo, Victor, 1802–1885

Huidobro, Vicente, 1893–1948

Humboldt, Alexander von, 1769–1859

Hume, Cyril, 1900–1966

Hume, David, 1711–1776

Humphrey, Hubert H[oratio], Jr., 1911–1978

Hungerford, Margaret Wolfe, 1855–1897

Hunt, G[eorge] W[illiam], c. 1829–1904

Hunt, [James Henry] Leigh, 1784–1859

Hunter, Robert, 1941–

Hupfeld, Herman, 1894–1951

Hurston, Zora Neale, 1891–1960

Huss, John [Jan Hus], c. 1372–1415

Hussein, Saddam [Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti], 1937–2006

Huston, John, 1906–1987

Hustvedt, Siri, 1955–

Hutcheson, Francis, 1694–1746

Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 1899–1977

Hutton, James, 1726–1797

Huxley, Aldous [Leonard], 1894–1963

Huxley, T[homas] H[enry], 1825–1895

Huxtable, Ada Louise, 1921–2013

Huysmans, Joris Karl, 1848–1907

Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 1609–1674

Hyde, Lewis, 1945–

Hymn to the Aten, The Great, c. 1350 B.C.E.

I Ching [The Book of Changes], c. 12th century B.C.E.

Ibarruri, Dolores [pseudonym: La Pasionaria], 1895–1989

Ibsen, Henrik, 1828–1906

Ibycus, fl. c. 580 B.C.E.

Ice Cube [O’Shea Jackson], 1969–

Ickes, Harold L[eClair], 1874–1952

Ignatius of Loyola, Saint. See Loyola, Saint Ignatius of

Illica, Luigi, 1857–1919

Inés de la Cruz, Juana. See Juana Inés de la Cruz

Imperioli, Michael, 1966–

Inge, William Ralph, 1860–1954

Ingersoll, Robert [Green], 1833–1899

Ionesco, Eugène, 1912–1994

Iphicrates, c. 419–348 B.C.E.

Iron, Ralph. See Schreiner, Olive

Irving, John, 1942–

Irving, Washington, 1783–1859

Isherwood, Christopher [William Bradshaw], 1904–1986

Issa, Kobayashi, 1763–1828

Ive, [Jonathan] Jony, 1967–

Ives, Charles [Edward], 1874–1954

Jabès, Edmond, 1912–1991

Jackson, Andrew, 1767–1845

Jackson, Charles, 1903–1968

Jackson, Jesse, 1941–

Jackson, Michael, 1958–2009

Jackson, [Reginald Martinez] Reggie, 1946–

Jackson, Robert H[oughwout], 1892–1954

Jackson, Shirley, 1916–1965

Jackson, Thomas Jonathan [Stonewall], 1824–1863

Jacob, François, 1920–2013

Jacob, Max, 1876–1944

Jacobs, Harriet Ann, 1813–1897

Jacobs, Jane, 1916–2006

Jacobs, Joe, 1896–1940

Jaffe, Rona, 1931–2005

Jagger, Mick [Michael Philip], 1943–

James I, 1566–1625

James, Alice, 1848–1892

James, Clive, 1939–2019

James, C[yril] L[ionel] R[obert], 1901–1989

James, Henry, 1843–1916

James, Marlon, 1970–

James, Rian [Julian Herbert Rothschild], 1899–1953

James, William, 1842–1910

Jameson, Frederic, 1934–

Jamison, Leslie, 1983–

Jarrell, Randall, 1914–1965

Jarry, Alfred, 1873–1907

Jay-Z [Shawn Corey Carter], 1969–

Jeanneret, Charles Édouard. See Le Corbusier

Jeans, Sir James Hopwood, 1877–1946

Jefferies, Richard, 1848–1887

Jeffers, Robinson, 1887–1962

Jefferson, Eddie, 1918–1979

Jefferson, Margo, 1947–

Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826

Jennings, Elizabeth, 1926–2001

Jerome, Jerome K[lapka], 1859–1927

Jerome, Saint, c. 342–420

Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1849–1909

Jobs, Steve, 1955–2011

Johansson, Scarlett, 1984–

John XXIII, Pope [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli], 1881–1963

John, Sir Elton [Reginald Kenneth Dwight], 1947–

John Chrysostom, Saint. See Chrysostom, Saint John

John of Damascus, Saint, c. 675–c. 749

John of the Cross, Saint [San Juan de la Cruz], 1542–1591

John Paul I, Pope [Albino Luciani], 1912–1978

John Paul II, Pope [Karol Wojtyla], 1920–2005

Johns, Jasper, 1930–

Johnson, Andrew, 1808–1875

Johnson, Denis, 1949–2017

Johnson, J. C., 1896–1981

Johnson, James Weldon, 1871–1938

Johnson, Lyndon B[aines], 1908–1973

Johnson, Philip, 1906–2005

Johnson, Robert, 1911–1938

Johnson, Samuel, 1709–1784

Johnson-Sirleaf, Ellen, 1938–

Johst, Hanns, 1890–1978

Jolson, Al, 1886–1950

Jones, John E., III, 1955–

Jones, John Paul, 1747–1792

Jones, LeRoi. See Baraka, Amiri

Jones, Mick [Michael Lewis], 1955–

Jones, Mother [Mary Harris Jones], 1830–1930

Jong, Erica, 1942–

Jonson, Ben, c. 1573–1637

Joplin, Janis, 1943–1970

Jordan, Barbara C., 1936–1996

Jordan, David Starr, 1851–1931

Joseph, Chief, c. 1840–1904

Joseph, Jenny, 1932–2018

Josephus, Flavius [Joseph ben Matthias], 37–95? C.E.

Joubert, Joseph, 1754–1824

Joyce, James, 1882–1941

Juana Inés de la Cruz, 1651–1695

Judt, Tony, 1948–2010

Julavits, Heidi, 1968–

Julian [the Apostate] [Flavius Claudius Julianus], 332–363

Julian of Norwich, c. 1342–after 1416

July, Miranda, 1974–

Jung, Carl Gustav, 1875–1961

Junius, The Letters of, 1769–1771

Juster, Norton, 1929–2021

Justice, Donald, 1925–2004

Juvenal [Decimus Junius Juvenalis], c. 55–c. 130 C.E.

Kael, Pauline, 1919–2001

Kaepernick, Colin, 1987–

Kafka, Franz, 1883–1924

Kagan, Robert, 1958–

Kahn, Gus, 1886–1941

Kahn, Louis, 1901–1974

Kahneman, Daniel, 1934–

Kalmar, Bert, 1884–1947

Kamo no Chōmei, 1153–1216

Kanin, Garson, 1912–1999

Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804

Kaprow, Allan, 1927–2006

Kapuściński, Ryszard, 1932–2007

Karr, Alphonse, 1808–1890

Kasdan, Lawrence, 1949–

Kaufman, Edward, 1893–1955

Kaufman, George S., 1889–1961

Kaufman, Gerald, 1930–2017

Kavan, Anna, 1901–1968

Kavanagh, Patrick, 1905–1967

Kawabata, Yasunari, 1899–1972

Kazantzakis, Nikos, 1883–1957

Kazin, Alfred, 1915–1998

Keats, John, 1795–1821

Keegan, John, 1934–2012

Keeler, Wee Willie [William Henry O’Kelleher], 1872–1923

Kees, Weldon, 1914–1955

Keillor, Garrison, 1942–

Keith, Damon J[erome], 1922–2019

Keller, Helen, 1880–1968

Kelling, George [Lee], 1935–2019

Kelvin, William Thomson, Lord, 1824–1907

Kempe, Margery, c. 1373–1438

Kempton, Murray, 1917–1997

Ken, Thomas, 1637–1711

Kendi, Ibram X., 1982–

Kennan, George F[rost], 1904–2005

Kennedy, Anthony, 1936–

Kennedy, Burt, 1922–2001

Kennedy, Florynce Rae, 1916–2000

Kennedy [Onassis], Jacqueline [Bouvier], 1929–1994

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917–1963

Kennedy, Joseph [Patrick], 1888–1969

Kennedy, Robert F[rancis], 1925–1968

Kenyatta, Jomo [Kamau Wa Ngengi], 1891–1978

Kenyon, Jane, 1947–1995

Kepler, Johannes, 1571–1630

Kerner, Otto, Jr., 1908–1976

Kerouac, Jack, 1922–1969

Kerr, Clark, 1911–2003

Kerry, John [Forbes], 1943–

Kesey, Ken, 1935–2001

Kettering, Charles F[ranklin], 1876–1958

Key, Francis Scott, 1779–1843

Keynes, John Maynard, 1883–1946

Khaldûn, Ibn, 1332–1406

Khomeini, [Ayatolla] Ruholla, 1900–1989

Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeyevich, 1894–1971

Ki-moon, Ban, 1944–

Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855

Kilmer, Joyce, 1886–1918

Kimitake Hiraoka. See Mishima, Yukio

Kimmel, Jimmy, 1967–

Kincaid, Jamaica, 1949–

King, Billie Jean, 1943–

King, Carole, 1942–

King, Henry, 1592–1669

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929–1968

King, Stephen, 1947–

King, Rodney, 1965–2012

Kingsley, Charles, 1819–1875

Kingston, Maxine Hong, 1940–

Kinnell, Galway, 1927–2014

Kinsella, W[illiam] P., 1935–2016

Kinsey, Alfred [Charles], 1894–1956

Kinsley, Michael, 1951–

Kipling, Rudyard, 1865–1936

Kipnis, Laura, 1956–

Kirn, Walter, 1962–

Kirstein, Lincoln, 1907–1996

Kissinger, Henry [Alfred], 1923–

Kitchener, Lord [Aldwyn Roberts], 1922–2000

Kittredge, Walter, 1834–1905

Klee, Paul, 1879–1940

Klein, Naomi, 1970–

Kleinzahler, August, 1949–

Kleist, Heinrich von, 1777–1811

Klemperer, Victor, 1881–1960

Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian von, 1752–1831

Klosterman, Chuck, 1972–

Knausgaard, Karl Ove, 1968–

Kneale, Nigel, 1922–2006

Knott, Bill, 1940–2014

Knowles, John, 1926–2001

Knox, John, c. 1513–1572

Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott, 1888–1957

Knuth, Donald, 1938–

Koch, Howard E., 1901–1995

Koch, Kenneth, 1925–2002

Koehler, Ted, 1894–1973

Koestler, Arthur, 1905–1983

Koethe, John, 1945–

Kołakowski, Leszek, 1927–2009

Kolbert, Elizabeth, 1961–

Kollwitz, Käthe [Schmidt], 1867–1945

Kondo, Marie, 1984–

Koolhaas, Rem, 1944–

Kool Moe Dee [Mohandas Dewese], 1963–

Koran, The, c. 610–632

Kraft, Joseph, 1924–1986

Kramer, Larry, 1935–2020

Kraus, Chris, 1955–

Kraus, Karl, 1874–1936

Krim, Seymour, 1922–1989

Kristofferson, Kris, 1936–

Kristol, Irving, 1920–2009

Krizan, Kim, 1961–

Kronecker, Leopold, 1823–1891

Kropotkin, Prince Pyotr Alekseyevich, 1842–1921

KRS-One [Lawrence Parker], 1965–

Kruger, Barbara, 1945–

Krugman, Paul, 1953–

Krutch, Joseph Wood, 1893–1970

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth, 1926–2004

Kubrick, Stanley, 1928–1999

Kuhn, Thomas, 1922–1996

Kumin, Maxine [Winokur], 1925–2014

Kundera, Milan, 1929–

Kunitz, Stanley, 1905–2006

Kurtzman, Harvey, 1924–1993

Kurzweil, Ray[mond], 1948–

Kushner, Rachel, 1968–

Kushner, Tony, 1956–

Kyd, Thomas, 1558–1594

Labrunie, Gérard. See Nerval

La Bruyère, Jean de, 1645–1696

Lacan, Jacques, 1901–1981

Lacydes, fl. c. 241 B.C.E.

Lady Gaga [Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta], 1986–

La Fontaine, Jean de, 1621–1695

La Guardia, Fiorello H[enry], 1882–1947

Lagerfeld, Karl, 1933–2019

Laing, R[onald] D[avid], 1927–1989

Lamar, Kendrick, 1987–

Lamarck, Jean Baptiste, 1744–1829

Lamartine, Alphonse de, 1790–1869

Lamb, Lady Caroline, 1785–1828

Lamb, Charles, 1775–1834

La Mettrie, Julien Offray de, 1709–1751

Lampedusa, Giuseppe di, 1896–1957

Lance, Bert [Thomas Bertram], 1931–2013

Land, Edwin [Herbert], 1909–1991

Landers, Ann [Esther P. Lederer], 1918–2002

Landesman, Fran, 1927–2011

Landon, Letitia Elizabeth, 1802–1838

Landor, Walter Savage, 1775–1864

Landrieu, Mitch, 1960–

Lange, Dorothea, 1895–1965

Langer, Susanne K., 1895–1985

Langland, William, c. 1330–c. 1400

Langley, Noel, 1911–1981

Lanier, Jaron, 1960–

Lanier, Sidney, 1842–1881

Lanzmann, Claude, 1925–2018

Lao-tzu, c. 604–c. 531 B.C.E.

La Pasionaria. See Ibarruri

Laplace, Pierre Simon de, 1749–1827

Lardner, John, 1912–1960

Lardner, Ring, 1885–1933

Lardner, Ring, Jr., 1915–2000

Larkin, Philip, 1922–1985

Larner, Jeremy, 1937–

La Rochefoucauld, François, Duc de, 1613–1680

La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, François Alexandre Frédéric, Duc de, 1747–1827

Larsen, Nella, 1891–1964

Larson, Jonathan, 1960–1996

Lasch, Christopher, 1932–1994

Laski, Harold [Joseph], 1893–1950

Latimer, Hugh, c. 1485–1555

Latin (Anonymous)

Latouche, John [Treville], 1914–1956

Latour, Bruno, 1947–

Laurence, William L[eonard], 1888–1977

Lauper, Cyndi [Cynthia Ann Stephanie], 1953–

Lautréamont, Comte de [pseudonym of Isidore Ducasse], 1846–1870

Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 1741–1801

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, 1743–1794

Lawrence, D[avid] H[erbert], 1885–1930

Lawrence, James, 1781–1813

Lawrence, Jerome, 1915–2004

Lawrence, T[homas] E[dward], 1888–1935

Lazarus, Emma, 1849–1887

Leacock, Stephen [Butler], 1869–1944

Leadbelly [Huddie Ledbetter], 1888–1949

Leakey, Richard [Erskine Frere], 1944–2022

Leapor, Mary, 1722–1746

Lear, Edward, 1812–1888

Leary, Timothy, 1920–1996

Lease, Mary Ellen [Mary Elizabeth], 1850–1933

Lebowitz, Fran, 1950–

Lec, Stanislaw J[erzy], 1909–1966

Le Carré, John [pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell], 1931–2021

Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, 1838–1903

Le Corbusier [pseudonym of Charles Édouard Jeanneret], 1887–1965

Ledbetter, Huddie. See Leadbelly

Lederer, Charles, 1906–1976

Lederer, William, 1912–2009

Lee Kuan Yew, 1923–2015

Lee, Charles, 1731–1782

Lee, Harper, 1926–2016

Lee, Henry [Light-Horse Harry], 1756–1818

Lee, Richard Henry, 1732–1794

Lee, Robert E., 1918–1994

Lee, Robert E[dward], 1807–1870

Lee, Robert N., 1890–1964

Lee, Stan [Stanley Martin Lieber], 1922–2018

Leeuwenhoek, Anton van, 1632–1723

Legman, Gershon, 1917–1999

Le Guin, Ursula K[roeber], 1929–2018

Lehman, David, 1948–

Lehman, Ernest, 1915–2005

Lehref, Tom [Thomas Andrew], 1928–

Leiber, Jerry, 1933–2011

Leifer, Carol, 1956–

Leigh, Carolyn, 1926–1983

Leigh, Fred W., 1871–1924

LeMay, Curtis [Emerson], 1906–1990

Lemkin, Raphael, 1900–1959

L’Enclos, Ninon de, 1620–1705

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich [pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov], 1870–1924

Lennon, John [Ono], 1940–1980

Lennox, Annie, 1954–

Leonard, Elmore, 1925–2013

Leonard, John, 1939–2008

Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519

Leoncavallo, Ruggiero, 1858–1919

Leone, Sergio, 1929–1989

Leonidas of Tarentum, c. 290–c. 220 B.C.E.

Leopold, Aldo, 1887–1948

Leopardi, [Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro] Giacomo, 1798–1837

Lermontov, Mikhail Yurievich, 1814–1841

Lerner, Alan Jay, 1918–1986

Lerner, Ben, 1979–

Lesage, Alain René, 1668–1747

Lessing, Doris, 1919–2013

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 1729–1781

Lethem, Jonathan, 1964–

Letterman, David, 1947–

Letters of Junius, The. See Junius

Levant, Oscar, 1906–1972

Levertov, Denise, 1923–1999

Levi, Primo, 1919–1987

Levinas, Emmanuel, 1906–1995

Levine, Philip, 1928–2015

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1908–2009

Lévis, Gaston Pierre Marc, Duc de, 1764–1830

Levy, Deborah, 1959–

Lewis, Bernard, 1916–2018

Lewis, C[live] S[taples], 1898–1963

Lewis, Sam M., 1885–1959

Lewis, Sinclair, 1885–1951

LeWitt, Sol, 1928–2007

Leybourne, George, 1842–1886

Li, Yiyun, 1972–

Liberace, Wladziu Valentino [Lee], 1919–1987

Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 1742–1799

Liddell Hart, Basil Henry, 1895–1970

Liebling, A[bbott] J[oseph], 1904–1963

Ligotti, Thomas, 1953–

Ligeti, Györgi, 1923–2006

Lightfoot, Gordon, 1938–

Ligne, Charles Joseph, Prince de, 1735–1814

Liliuokalani, Lydia Kamekeha, 1838–1917

Lincoln, Abbey [Anna Marie Wooldridge], 1930–2010

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 1906–2001

Lindbergh, Charles A[ugustus], 1902–1974

Lindner, Robert, 1914–1956

Lindsay, Vachel, 1879–1931

Linklater, Richard, 1960–

Linnaeus [Carl von Linné], 1707–1778

Li Po, 701–762

Lippmann, Walter, 1889–1974

Lisle, [Claude] Joseph Rouget de. See Rouget de Lisle

Lispector, Clarice, 1920–1977

Lissitzky, El [Lazar Markovich], 1890–1941

Little Richard [Richard Penniman], 1932–2020

Litvinov, Maxim Maximovich, 1876–1951

Liu An. See Huai-nan Tzu

Liu Xiaobo, 1955–2017

Livy [Titus Livius], 59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.

Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 1847–1903

Locke, Alain, 1886–1954

Locke, John, 1632–1704

Lodge, David, 1935–

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 1850–1924

Lodge, Thomas, c. 1558–1625

Loesser, Frank, 1910–1969

Logan, 1725–1780

Logan, John, 1961–

Logau, Friedrich von, 1604–1655

London, Jack [John Griffith], 1876–1916

Long, Huey, 1893–1935

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1807–1882

Longinus, 1st century C.E.

Longus, 3rd century?

Longworth, Alice [Lee] Roosevelt, 1884–1980

Loos, Adolf, 1870–1933

Loos, Anita, 1888–1981

Lopate, Phillip, 1943–

Lopez, Robert, 1975–

Lorca, Federico García. See García Lorca

Lorde, Audre, 1934–1992

Loren, Sophia, 1934–

Lorenz, Edward N., 1917–2008

Lott, Trent, 1941–

Louis XIV, 1638–1715

Louis XVIII, 1755–1824

Louis C.K. [Louis Székely], 1967–

Louis, Joe [Joseph Louis Borrow], 1914–1981

Love, Mike, 1941–

Love Songs of the New Kingdom, c. 1550–1080 B.C.E.

Lovecraft, H[oward] P[hillips], 1890–1937

Lovelace, Richard, 1618–1658

Lovell, Jim [James] A., Jr., 1928–

Lovelock, James, 1919–

Lowell, Amy, 1874–1925

Lowell, James Russell, 1819–1891

Lowell, Robert [Traill Spence], 1917–1977

Lowry, Malcolm, 1909–1957

Loy, Mina, 1882–1966

Loyola, Saint Ignatius of, 1491–1556

Lubitsch, Ernst, 1892–1947

Lucan, 39–65 C.E.

Lucas, George [W., Jr.], 1944–

Luce, Henry, 1898–1967

Lucretius [Titus Lucretius Carus], 99–55 B.C.E.

Ludendorff, Erich [Friedrich Wilhelm], 1865–1937

Ludlam, Charles, 1943–1987

Lumet, Sidney, 1924–2011

Lurie, Alison, 1926–2020

Luther, Martin, 1483–1546

Luxemburg, Rosa, 1870–1919

Lyell, Sir Charles, 1797–1875

Lyly, John, c. 1554–1606

Lynch, Loretta, 1959–

Lynd, Helen Merrell, 1896–1982

Lynd, Robert S[taughton], 1892–1970

Lynn, Loretta, 1932–

Lyte, Henry Francis, 1793–1847

Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Baron. See Bulwer-Lytton

Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of [pseudonym: Owen Meredith], 1831–1891

MacArthur, Douglas, 1880–1964

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord, 1800–1859

MacDiarmid, Hugh [Christopher Murray Grieve], 1892–1978

Macdonald, Dwight, 1906–1982

Macdonald, George, 1824–1905

Macdonald, Ross [Kenneth Millar], 1915–1983

MacDougall, Ranald, 1915–1973

Machado, Antonio, 1875–1939

Machado, Joaquim, de Assis, 1839–1908

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469–1527

Mackay, Charles, 1814–1889

MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1929–

Macklin, Charles, c. 1697–1797

Maclean, Norman, 1902–1990

MacLeish, Archibald, 1892–1982

Macleod, Fiona. See Sharp, William

Mac-Mahon, Marie Edme Patrice Maurice, Comte de, 1808–1893

MacMillan, Harold, 1894–1986

MacNeice, Louis, 1907–1963

Maddow, Ben, 1909–1992

Madison, James, 1751–1836

Madoff, [Bernard] Bernie, 1938–2021

Madonna [Louise Ciccone], 1958–

Maeterlinck, Maurice, 1862–1949

Magee, John G[illespie], Jr., 1922–1941

Magna Carta, 1215

Magritte, René [François Ghislain], 1898–1967

Maguire, William A., 1890–1953

Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 1840–1914

Maharbal [Barca the Carthaginian], fl. 210 B.C.E.

Mahon, Derek, 1941–2020

Mailer, Norman, 1923–2007

Maimonides [Moses ben Maimon], 1135–1204

Maistre, Joseph de, 1753–1821

Malamud, Bernard, 1914–1986

Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1884–1942

Malcolm X [El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz], 1925–1965

Malcolm, Janet, 1934–2021

Mallarmé, Stéphane, 1842–1898

Mallory, George Leigh, 1886–1924

Malory, Sir Thomas, d. 1471

Malraux, André, 1901–1976

Malthus, Thomas Robert, 1766–1834

Maltz, Albert, 1908–1985

Mamet, David, 1947–

Man Ray [Emmanuel Rudnitzky], 1890–1976

Mandela, Nelson [Rolihlahla], 1918–2013

Mandelstam, Nadezhda, 1899–1980

Mandelstam, Osip Emilevich, 1891–1938

Mandeville, Bernard, 1670–1733

Mangan, James Clarence, 1803–1849

Manguso, Sarah, 1974–

Manilius, Marcus, 1st century C.E.

Mankiewicz, Herman J[acob], 1897–1953

Mankiewicz, Joseph L[eo], 1909–1993

Mankoff, Bob [Robert], 1944–

Manley, Mary de la Rivière, 1663–1724

Mann, Horace, 1796–1859

Mann, Thomas, 1875–1955

Manrique, Jorge, 1440–1479

Mansfield, Katherine, 1888–1923

Manson, Charles, 1934–2017

Mantel, Hilary, 1952–

Manuel, Richard, 1943–1986

Manutius, Aldus, 1449–1515

Mao Tse-tung, 1893–1976

March, Joseph Moncure, 1899–1977

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 121–180

Marcus, Greil, 1945–

Marcy, William Learned, 1786–1857

Marinell, LeRoy, c. 1942–

Marinetti, F. T., 1876–1944

Marion, George, Jr., 1899–1968

Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de, 1688–1763

Markham, Beryl, 1902–1986

Markham, Edwin, 1852–1940

Markstein, George, 1929–1987

Marley, Bob, 1945–1981

Marlowe, Christopher, 1564–1593

Marquand, John P[hillips], 1893–1960

Márquez, Gabriel García. See García Márquez

Marquis, Don[ald Robert Perry], 1878–1937

Marryat, Frederick, 1792–1848

Marsh, George Perkins, 1801–1882

Marshall, George C[atlett], 1880–1959

Marshall, John, 1755–1835

Marshall, Thomas Riley, 1854–1925

Marshall, Thurgood, 1908–1993

Marston, John, c. 1575–c. 1634

Marston, William Moulton, 1893–1947

Martí [y Perez], José [Julian], 1853–1895

Martial [Marcus Valerius Martialis], c. 40–c. 104 C.E.

Martin, Civilla Durfee, 1866–1948

Martin, George R. R., 1948–

Martin, Hugh, 1914–2011

Martin, Mardik, 1937–2019

Martin, Steve, 1945–

Martineau, Harriet, 1802–1876

Martinson, Harry, 1904–1978

Marvell, Andrew, 1621–1678

Marx, Groucho [Julius Henry], 1895–1977

Marx, Jeff, 1970–

Marx, Karl, 1818–1883

Mary Stuart [Mary, Queen of Scots], 1542–1587

Mary Tudor [Mary I], 1516–1558

Maslow, Abraham, 1908–1970

Maschwitz, Eric, 1901–1969

Masefield, John, 1878–1967

Mason, Donald Francis, 1913–1990

Mason, George, 1725–1792

Massinger, Philip, 1583–1640

Masters, Edgar Lee, 1869–1950

Mather, Cotton, 1663–1728

Matheson, Richard, 1926–2013

Mathews, Harry, 1930–2017

Matisse, Henri, 1869–1954

Matlovich, Leonard, 1943–1988

Matsuo Bashō. See Bashō

Maugham, W[illiam] Somerset, 1874–1965

Mauldin, Bill [William Henry], 1921–2003

Maurer, David W., 1906–1981

Maxwell [Keepers, Jr.], William, 1908–2000

Maxwell, James Clerk, 1831–1879

Mayakovski, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1893–1930

Mayfield, Curtis, 1942–1999

McAllister, [Samuel] Ward, 1827–1895

McAuliffe, A[nthony] C[lement], Gen., 1898–1975

McBride, James, 1957–

McCain, John, 1936–2018

McCain, Meghan, 1984–

McCann, Colum, 1965–

McCarthy, Cormac, 1933–

McCarthy, Joseph R[aymond], 1908–1957

McCarthy, Mary [Therese], 1912–1989

McCartney, Sir Paul, 1942–

McClatchy, J. D., 1945–2018

McClellan, George B[rinton], 1826–1885

McConnell, [Addison] Mitch[ell], III, 1942–

McCord, David, 1897–1997

McCourt, Frank [Francis], 1930–2009

McCoy, Horace, 1897–1955

McCrae, John, 1872–1918

McCullers, Carson [Smith], 1917–1967

McDaniels, Eugene [Gene], 1935–2011

McDonald, [Joseph Allen] Country Joe, 1942–

McEvilley, Thomas, 1939–2013

McEwan, Ian, 1948–

McGinley, Phyllis, 1905–1977

McGovern, George, 1922–2012

McKay, Claude, 1890–1948

McKibben, Bill, 1960–

McKinley, William, 1843–1901

McLean, Don[ald], 1945–

McLuhan, Marshall [Herbert], 1911–1980

McMurtry, Larry, 1936–2021

McNamara, Robert S[trange], 1916–2009

McNulty, John, 1895–1956

McPhee, John, 1931–

MC Ren [Lorenzo Patterson], 1969–

McVie, Christine [Christine Anne Perfect], 1943–

Mead, Margaret, 1901–1978

Mearns, Hughes, 1875–1965

Medawar, Sir Peter Brian, 1915–1987

Medvedev, Zhores Aleksandrovich, 1925–

Mehlman, Peter, 1956–

Meir, Golda, 1898–1978

Meleager, 1st century B.C.E.

Mellon, Andrew, 1855–1937

Melville, Herman, 1819–1891

Menander, c. 342–292 B.C.E.

Mencius [Meng-tzu], 372–289 B.C.E.

Mencken, H[enry] L[ouis], 1880–1956

Menken, Adah Isaacs, 1835–1868

Mercer, Johnny, 1909–1976

Mercier, Louis Sébastien, 1740–1814

Meredith, George, 1828–1909

Meredith, Owen. See Lytton, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of

Merikare, The Teaching for, c. 2135–2040 B.C.E.

Merkel, Angela, 1954–

Merrill, James [Ingram], 1926–1995

Merton, Thomas, 1915–1968

Merwin, W[illiam] S[tanley], 1927–2019

Messaien, Olivier, 1908–1992

Mettrie, Julien Offray de La. See La Mettrie

Meurier, Gabriel, 1530–1601

Michaels, Leonard, 1933–2003

Michelangelo [Buonarroti], 1475–1564

Michelet, Jules, 1798–1874

Michnik, Adam, 1946–

Middleton, Thomas, 1580–1627

Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 1886–1969

Miles, Alfred Hart, 1883–1956

Miles, Charles Austin, 1868–1946

Miles, William Porcher, 1822–1899

Milgram, Stanley, 1933–1984

Milius, John, 1944–

Milk, Harvey, 1930–1978

Mill, John Stuart, 1806–1873

Millar, Margaret, 1915–1994

Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 1892–1950

Miller, Alice, 1923–2010

Miller, Alice Duer, 1874–1942

Miller, Arthur, 1915–2005

Miller, Henry, 1891–1980

Miller, Joaquin [pseudonym of Cincinnatus Hiner or Heine], c. 1841–1913

Miller, Merle, 1919–1986

Miller, William, 1810–1872

Mills, C[harles] Wright, 1916–1962

Mills, Mike, 1958–

Milne, A[lan] A[lexander], 1882–1956

Milosz, Czeslaw, 1911–2004

Milton, John, 1608–1674

Mimnermus, c. 650–c. 590 B.C.E.

Miner, Charles, 1780–1865

Minkowski, Hermann, 1864–1909

Minow, Newton N[orman], 1926–

Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de, 1749–1791

Miranda, Lin-Manuel, 1980–

Miró, Joan, 1893–1983

Mishima, Yukio, 1925–1970

Missal, The Roman

Mistral, Gabriela [Lucila Godoy Alcayaga], 1889–1957

Mitchell, Joni, 1943–

Mitchell, Joseph [Quincy], 1908–1996

Mitchell, Margaret, 1900–1949

Mitchum, Robert, 1917–1997

Mitford, Jessica, 1917–1996

Miyamoto Musashi. See Musashi, Miyamoto

Mizner, Wilson, 1876–1933

Moehringer, [John Joseph] J. R., 1964–

Mohr, Joseph, 1792–1848

Mola, Emilio, 1887–1937

Molière [pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin], 1622–1673

Moltke, Helmuth von, 1800–1891

Momaday, N[avarre] Scott, 1934–

Momand, [Arthur R.] Pop, 1887–1987

Momigliano, Arnaldo, 1908–1987

Monet, Claude, 1840–1926

Monod, Jacques, 1910–1976

Monroe, James, 1758–1831

Monk, Thelonious, 1917–1982

Montagu, M[ontague] F[rancis] Ashley, 1905–1999

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 1689–1762

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 1533–1592

Montale, Eugenio, 1896–1981

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de, 1689–1755

Montessori, Maria, 1870–1952

Montgomery, Sir Bernard Law, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, 1887–1976

Montherlant, Henry de, 1895–1972

Montgomery, L[ucy] M[aud], 1874–1908

Monty Python’s Flying Circus, 1969–1974

Monzaemon, Chikamatsu, 1653–1725

Moody, William Vaughn, 1869–1910

Moonves, Leslie, 1949–

Moore, Clement Clarke, 1779–1863

Moore, Edward, 1712–1757

Moore, G[eorge] E[dward], 1873–1958

Moore, Gordon, 1929–

Moore, Lorrie [Marie Lorena], 1957–

Moore, Marianne, 1887–1972

Moore, Michael, 1954–

Moore, Thomas, 1779–1852

Morandi, Giorgio, 1890–1964

Moravia, Alberto [Alberto Pincherle], 1907–1990

Mordaunt, Thomas Osbert, 1730–1809

More, Sir Thomas, 1478–1535

Morell, Thomas, 1703–1784

Morgan, J[ohn] P[ierpont], 1837–1913

Morgan, Robin, 1941–

Morgenthau, Hans J[oachim], 1904–1980

Morison, Elting E[lmore], 1909–1995

Morison, Samuel Eliot, 1887–1976

Morley, Christopher, 1890–1957

Morley, John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn, 1838–1923

Morris, Errol, 1948–

Morris, George Pope, 1802–1864

Morris, Gouverneur, 1752–1816

Morris, William, 1834–1896

Morrison, Herbert, 1905–1989

Morris, Jan [born James Humphrey Morris], 1926–2020

Morrison, Jim, 1943–1971

Morrison, Toni [Chloe Anthony Wofford], 1931–2019

Morrison, Van [Sir George Ivan], 1945–

Morse, Samuel F[inley] B[reese], 1791–1872

Morton, [Ferdinand] Jelly Roll, c. 1885–1941

Morton, Thomas, 1764–1838

Moses ben Maimon. See Maimonides

Mother Ann Lee, 1736–1784

Mother Teresa [Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu], 1910–1997

Motley, John Lothrop, 1814–1877

Mott, Lucretia [Coffin], 1793–1880

Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 1927–2003

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756–1791

Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903–1990

Muir, Alexander, 1830–1906

Muir, Edwin, 1887–1959

Muir, John, 1838–1914

Mueller, Robert, 1944–

Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903–1990

Müller, F[riedrich] Max, 1823–1900

Mulholland, William, 1855–1935

Mulvey, Laura, 1941–

Mumford, Lewis, 1895–1990

Munch, Edvard, 1863–1944

Munro, Alice, 1931–

Munro, Hector Hugh. See Saki

Münster, Ernst Friedrich Herbert von, 1766–1839

Murakami, Haruki, 1949–

Murasaki Shikibu, c. 978–c. 1031

Murdoch, Iris, 1919–1999

Murray, Albert, 1916–2013

Murrow, Edward R[oscoe], 1908–1965

Musashi, Miyamoto, c. 1584–1645

Muschamp, Herbert, 1947–2007

Musil, Robert [von Edler], 1880–1942

Musk, Elon, 1971–

Musset, Alfred de, 1810–1857

Mussolini, Benito, 1883–1945

Myles, Eileen, 1949–

Myrdal, Gunnar, 1898–1987

Nabokov, Vladimir, 1899–1977

Nafisi, Azar, 1948–

Nagel, Thomas, 1937–

Nairne, Carolina Oliphant, Baroness, 1766–1845

Nanak Dev Ji, 1469–1539

Napoleon I [Napoleon Bonaparte], 1769–1821

Nas [Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones], 1973–

Nash, Ogden, 1902–1971

Nashe, Thomas, 1567–1601

Neale, John Mason, 1818–1866

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 1889–1964

Nelson, Horatio, Viscount Nelson, 1758–1805

Nelson, Maggie, 1973–

Nemerov, Howard, 1920–1991

Némirovsky, Irène, 1903–1942

Nero [Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus], 37–68 C.E.

Neruda, Pablo [Neftalí Ricardo Reyes y Basualto], 1904–1973

Nerval, Gérard de [pseudonym of Gérard Labrunie], 1808–1855

New England Primer, The

Newman, Barnett, 1905–1970

Newman, Cardinal John Henry, 1801–1890

Newton, Sir Isaac, 1642–1727

Newton, John, 1725–1807

Nicholas I [Nicholas Pavlovich], Czar, 1796–1855

Nicholson, William, 1948–

Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1892–1971

Niedecker, Lorine, 1903–1970

Niemoeller, Martin, 1892–1984

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900

Nightingale, Florence, 1820–1910

Nimitz, Chester William, 1885–1966

Nin, Anaïs, 1903–1977

Nixon, Richard M[ilhous], 1913–1994

Nkrumah, Kwame, 1909–1972

Nobel, Alfred, 1833–1896

Nochlin, Linda, 1931–2017

Nolan, Christopher, 1970–

Noonan, Peggy [Margaret Ellen], 1950–

Norquist, Grover, 1956–

Norris [Jr.], [Benjamin] Frank[lin], 1870–1902

Norris, George William, 1861–1944

North American Indian (Anonymous)

Norworth, Jack, 1879–1959

Novalis [pseudonym of Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg], 1772–1801

Noyes, Alfred, 1880–1958

Nugent, Frank S., 1908–1965

Nursery Rhymes (Anonymous)

Nye, Bill [Edgar Wilson], 1850–1896

Nyerere, Julius K[ambarage], 1921–1999

Nyro, Laura, 1947–1997

Oakeshott, Michael, 1901–1990

Oates, Joyce Carol, 1938–

Obama, Barack [Hussein], 1961–

Obama, Michelle, 1964–

Oberg, Kalervo, 1901–1973

O’Brien, Edna, 1930–

O’Brien, Michael, 1939–2016

O’Brien, Flann [Brian O’Nolan], 1911–1966

O’Brien, Tim, 1946–

O’Casey, Sean, 1880–1964

Ocampo, Silvina, 1903–1993

Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 1989–

Occam [Ockham], William of, c. 1285–c. 1349

Ochs, Adolph S[imon], 1858–1935

Ochs, Phil, 1940–1976

O’Connor, Flannery, 1925–1964

O’Connor, Sandra Day, 1930–

Odets, Clifford, 1906–1963

Offill, Jenny, 1968–

O’Hara, Frank, 1926–1966

O’Hara, John, 1905–1970

O’Hara, Theodore, 1820–1867

Ohiyesa [Charles Alexander Eastman], 1858–1939

O’Keeffe, Georgia, 1887–1986

O’Keeffe, John, 1747–1833

O’Kelly, Dennis, 1720–1787

Oldenburg, Claes, 1929–

Oldys, William, 1696–1761

Oliphant, Carolina, Baroness Nairne. See Nairne

Oliver, John, 1977–

Oliver, Mary, 1935–2019

Oliveros, Pauline, 1932–2016

Olmsted, Frederick Law, 1822–1903

Olsen, Ole, 1892–1963

Olsen, Tillie, 1913–2007

Olson, Charles, 1910–1970

O’Neill, Eugene, 1888–1953

O’Neill, Thomas P. [Tip], Jr., 1912–1994

Ono no Komachi, 9th century

Opie, Iona [Margaret Balfour], 1923–2017

Oppen, George, 1908–1984

Oppenheimer, J[ulius] Robert, 1904–1967

Orbán, Viktor, 1963–

Orczy, Baroness Emmuska, 1865–1947

Origo, Iris, 1902–1988

Orléans, Charles d’, 1394–1465

O’Rourke, P[atrick] J[ake], 1947–

Ortega y Gasset, José, 1883–1955

Orton, Joe [John Kingsley], 1933–1967

Orwell, George [pseudonym of Eric Blair], 1903–1950

Osborne, John [James], 1929–1994

Osceola, 1804–1838

O’Shaughnessy, Arthur William Edgar, 1844–1881

Osler, Sir William, 1849–1919

O’Sullivan, John Louis, 1813–1895

Oswalt, Patton, 1969–

Otis, James, 1725–1783

Otto, Rudolf, 1869–1937

Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso], 43 B.C.E.–c. 18 C.E.

Owen, Wilfred, 1893–1918

Ozick, Cynthia, 1928–

Packard, Vance, 1914–1996

Packer, George, 1960–

Pagels, Elaine, 1943–

Paglia, Camille, 1947–

Paige, Satchel [Leroy], c. 1906–1982

Paine, Albert Bigelow, 1861–1937

Paine, Thomas, 1737–1809

Palahniuk, Chuck [Charles Michael], 1962–

Paley, Grace, 1922–2007

Pali Canon, The, c. 500–c. 250 B.C.E.

Palin, Sarah, 1964–

Palmer, Thomas H., 1782–1861

Palmerston, Henry John Temple, Viscount, 1784–1865

Paltrow, Gwyneth, 1972–

Pamuk, Orhan, 1952–

Panama, Norman, 1914–2003

Pankhurst, Emmeline, 1858–1928

Paracelsus [pseudonym of Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim], c. 1493–1541

Parish, Mitchell, 1900–1993

Parker [Jr.], Charlie [Charles Christopher], 1920–1955

Parker, Dorothy, 1893–1967

Parker, John, 1729–1775

Parker, Ross, 1914–1974

Parker, Theodore, 1810–1860

Parker, Trey, 1969–

Parkinson, C[yril] Northcote, 1909–1993

Parkman, Francis, 1823–1893

Parks, Larry, 1914–1975

Parks, Rosa, 1913–2005

Parnell, Thomas, 1679–1718

Parra, Nicanor, 1914–2018

Parton, Dolly, 1946–

Parton, Sara Payson Willis. See Fern, Fanny

Pascal, Blaise, 1623–1662

Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 1922–1975

Pasternak, Boris, 1890–1960

Pasteur, Louis, 1822–1895

Patchen, Kenneth, 1911–1972

Pater, Walter, 1839–1894

Paterson, Andrew Barton [Banjo], 1864–1941

Patmore, Coventry, 1823–1896

Patten, George Washington, c. 1808–1882

Patton, George S[mith], 1885–1945

Paul, Elliot, 1891–1958

Pauling, Linus [Carl], 1901–1994

Pavese, Cesare, 1908–1950

Payne, Alexander, 1961–

Payne, John Howard, 1791–1852

Payne, Leon, 1917–1969

Paz, Octavio, 1914–1998

Peacock, Thomas Love, 1785–1866

Peary, Robert E[dwin], 1856–1920

Peckinpah, Sam, 1925–1984

Peele, George, 1556–1596

Péguy, Charles, 1873–1914

Pei, I[eoh] M[ing], 1917–2019

Peirce, Charles Sanders, 1839–1914

Pelecanos, George, 1957–

Pelikan, Jaroslav, 1923–2006

Pell, Claiborn, 1918–2009

Pelosi, Nancy, 1940–

Penn, William, 1644–1718

Pennac, Daniel [Daniel Pennacchioni], 1944–

Pepys, Samuel, 1633–1703

Percy, Walker, 1916–1990

Perec, Georges, 1936–1982

Perelman, S[idney] J[oseph], 1904–1979

Perényi, Eleanor, 1918–2009

Periander, d. 585 B.C.E. See Seven Sages, The

Pericles, c. 495–429 B.C.E.

Perillo, Lucia, 1958–2016

Perkins, Carl, 1932–1998

Perl, Jed, 1951–

Perry, Oliver Hazard, 1785–1819

Persius [Aulus Persius Flaccus], 34–62 C.E.

Peshkov, Aleksei Maksimovich.See Gorki, Maxim

Pessoa, Fernando, 1888–1935

Pétain, Henri Philippe, 1856–1951

Peter, Laurence J[ohnston], 1919–1990

Petit, Philippe, 1949–

Petrarch [Francesco Petrarca], 1304–1374

Petronius, Gaius [Petronius Arbiter], d. c. 66 C.E.

Petry, Ann, 1908–1997

Phaedrus, fl. c. 8 C.E.

Philby, [Harold] “Kim”, 1912–1988

Philip VI [Philip of Valois], 1293–1350

Phillips, Adam, 1954–

Phillips, Kevin, 1940–

Phillips, Wendell, 1811–1884

Phocion, c. 402–317 B.C.E.

Piaget, Jean, 1896–1980

Picasso, Pablo, 1881–1973

Pickett, George Edward, 1825–1875

Pickett, Wilson, 1941–2006

Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 1463–1494

Pierson, Frank R., 1925–2012

Piglia, Ricardo, 1941–2017

Piketty, Thomas, 1971–

Pileggi, Nicholas, 1933–

Pinckney, Darryl, 1953–

Pindar, c. 518–c. 438 B.C.E.

Pinter, Harold, 1930–2008

Piper, Watty [Mabel Caroline Bragg], 1870–1945

Pirandello, Luigi, 1867–1936

Pirsig, Robert M[aynard], 1928–2017

Pitavals, François Goyot de, 1673–1743

Pitkin, William, 1878–1953

Pitt, William, 1759–1806

Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 1708–1778

Pittacus, c. 650–c. 570 B.C.E. See Seven Sages, The

Pizarnik, Alejandra, 1936–1972

Planck, Max, 1858–1947

Plant, Robert, 1948–

Plath, Sylvia, 1932–1963

Plato, c. 428–348 B.C.E.

Plautus, Titus Maccius, 254–184 B.C.E.

Pliny the Elder [Gaius Plinius Secundus], 23–79 C.E.

Pliny the Younger [Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus], c. 61–c. 112 C.E.

Plotinus, 205–270

Plunkitt, George Washington, 1842–1924

Plutarch, 46–120 C.E.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849

Poem of the Cid, 12th century

Pogue, Charles Edward, 1950–

Poincaré, Jules Henri, 1854–1912

Polanyi, Michael, 1891–1976

Pollan, Michael, 1955–

Pollock, Jackson, 1912–1956

Polonksy, Abraham, 1910–1999

Polybius, fl. c. 200–c. 118 B.C.E.

Pomfret, John, 1667–1702

Pompadour, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de, 1721–1764

Pompey [Gnaeus Pompeius], 106–48 B.C.E.

Ponsot, Marie, 1921–2019

Pope, Alexander, 1688–1744

Popper, Karl, 1902–1994

Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste. See Molière

Porchia, Antonio, 1886–1968

Porter, Cole [Albert], 1891–1964

Porter, Horace, 1837–1921

Porter, Katherine Anne, 1890–1980

Porter, William Sydney. See Henry, O.

Portis, Charles, 1933–2020

Portnoy, Gary, 1956–

Posner, Richard, 1939–

Post, Emily, 1873–1960

Potter, Beatrix, 1866–1943

Potter, Stephen, 1900–1969

Pottier, Eugène, 1816–1887

Pound, Ezra, 1885–1972

Pound, Roscoe, 1870–1964

Powdermaker, Hortense, 1896–1970

Powell, Anthony, 1905–2000

Powell, Colin, 1937–2021

Powell, Dawn, 1896–1965

Powell, Michael, 1905–1990

Powers, John A., 1922–1980

Powers, Richard, 1957–

Pratchett, Terry, 1948–2015

Prince [Rogers Nelson], 1958–2016

Prescott, William, 1726–1795

Prescott, William Hickling, 1796–1859

Presley, Elvis, 1935–1977

Pressburger, Emeric, 1902–1988

Priestley, J. B., 1894–1984

Primary Chronicle, The, 1040–1118

Prior, Matthew, 1664–1721

Pritchett, V[ictor] S[awdon], 1900–1997

Procter, Adelaide Anne, 1825–1864

Propertius, Sextus, c. 54 B.C.E.–2 C.E.

Protagoras, c. 485–c. 410 B.C.E.

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 1809–1865

Proulx, [Edna] Annie, 1935–

Proust, Marcel, 1871–1922

Pryor, Richard, 1940–2005

Ptahhotep, 24th century B.C.E.

Ptolemy [Claudius Ptolemaeus], c. 100–178

Publilius Syrus, 1st century B.C.E.

Pullman, Philip, 1946–

Punch

Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich, 1799–1837

Putin, Vladimir, 1952–

[Putnam], Amelia Earhart, 1898–1937

Puzo, Mario, 1920–1999

Pyle, Ernie, 1900–1945

Pynchon, Thomas, 1937–

Pyrrhus, c. 318–272 B.C.E.

Pythagoras, c. 582–500 B.C.E.

Pytheas, fl. 330 B.C.E.

Quant, Mary, 1934–

Quarles, Francis, 1592–1644

Queneau, Raymond, 1903–1976

Quesnay, François, 1694–1774

Quignard, Pascal, 1948–

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas, 1863–1944

Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 1772–1864

Quine, W[illard] V[an Orman], 1908–2000

Quintilian [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus], c. 35–c. 100 C.E.

Ra, Sun [Herman Poole Blount], 1914–1993

Rabelais, François, c. 1494–1553

Rabin, Yitzhak, 1922–1995

Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné, Marie de. See Sévigné

Racine, Jean, 1639–1699

Radcliffe, Ann, 1764–1823

Radiguet, Raymond, 1903–1923

Rado, James [James Radomski], 1939–

Ragni, Gerome, 1942–1991

Rainsborough, Thomas, d. 1648

Ralegh, Sir Walter, c. 1552–1618

Ramone, Joey [Jeffry Ross Hyman], 1951–2001

Rand, Ayn, 1905–1982

Randall, James Ryder, 1839–1908

Randolph, John, 1773–1833

Ranke, Leopold von, 1795–1886

Rankin, Jeannette, 1880–1973

Rankine, Claudia, 1963–

Ransom, John Crowe, 1888–1974

Rauschenberg, Robert, 1925–2008

Ravel, Maurice, 1875–1937

Rawls, John, 1921–2002

Ray, John, 1627–1705

Ray, Nicholas [Raymond Nicholas Kienzle], 1911–1979

Rayburn, Sam [Taliaferro], 1882–1961

Raymond, Eric S., 1957–

Razaf, Andy, 1895–1973

Reagan, Ronald [Wilson], 1911–2004

Red Cloud, 1822–1909

Red Jacket [Sagoyewatha], c. 1758–1830

Redding, Otis, 1941–1967

Reddy, Helen, 1941–2020

Reed, Henry, 1914–1986

Reed, John, 1887–1920

Reed, Lou [Lewis Allan], 1942–2013

Rees, Martin, 1942–

Reich, Charles A[lan], 1928–2019

Reich, Steve, 1936–

Reinert, Al, 1947–

Reinhardt, Ad[olph Frederick], 1913–1967

Reinhardt, Betty, 1909–1954

Remarque, Erich Maria, 1898–1970

Remy, Saint [Remigius], c. 438–c. 533

Renan, [Joseph] Ernest, 1823–1892

Renard, Jules, 1864–1910

Renault, Mary [Eileen Mary Challans], 1905–1983

Renoir, Jean, 1894–1979

Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 1841–1919

Repgow. See Eike von Repgow

Reps, Paul, 1895–1990

Reverdy, Pierre, 1889–1960

Revere, Paul, 1735–1818

Reza, Yasmina, 1959–

Reznikoff, Charles, 1894–1976

Rhodes, Cecil [John], 1853–1902

Rhys, Jean, 1890–1979

Ribicoff, Abraham [Alexander], 1910–1998

Ricardo, David, 1772–1823

Ricci, Matteo, 1552–1610

Rice, Condoleezza, 1954–

Rice, Grantland, 1880–1954

Rice, Tim, 1944–

Rich, Adrienne, 1929–2012

Richards, Ann Willis, 1933–2006

Richards, Keith, 1943–

Richie, Lionel, 1949–

Richler, Mordecai, 1931–2001

Richman, Jonathan, 1951–

Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich [Jean Paul], 1763–1825

Riding [Jackson], Laura, 1901–1991

Riesman, David, 1909–2002

Riesner, Dean, 1918–2002

Riley, James Whitcomb, 1849–1916

Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875–1926

Rimbaud, Arthur, 1854–1891

Riqueti, Honoré Gabriel, Comte de Mirabeau. See Mirabeau

Riskin, Robert, 1897–1955

Rivarol, Antoine de, 1753–1801

Rivers, Joan [Joan Alexandra Molinsky], 1933–2014

Rivette, Jacques, 1928–2016

Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 1922–2008

Robertson, Robbie [Jaime Royal Klegerman], 1943–

Robeson, Paul, 1898–1976

Robespierre, Maximilien, 1758–1794

Robin, Leo, 1900–1984

Robinson, Casey [Kenneth C.], 1903–1979

Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 1869–1935

Robinson, Jackie [Jack Roosevelt], 1919–1972

Robinson, Joan [Violet], 1903–1983

Robinson, Kim Stanley, 1952–

Robinson, Marilynne, 1943–

Robinson, Smokey [William Robinson, Jr.], 1940–

Rochefoucauld, François, Duc de La. See La Rochefoucauld François, Duc de

Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, François Alexandre Frédéric, Duc de La. See La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, 1647–1680

Rockefeller, John Davison, 1839–1937

Rockne, Knute [Kenneth], 1888–1931

Roddenberry, Gene [Eugene Wesley], 1921–1991

Rodriguez, Richard, 1944–

Roethke, Theodore, 1908–1963

Rogers, Fred, 1928–2003

Rogers, Samuel, 1763–1855

Rogers, Will[iam Penn Adair], 1879–1935

Roland de la Platière, Jeanne Manon Phlipon [Madame Roland], 1754–1793

Rommel, Erwin, 1891–1944

Ronsard, Pierre de, 1524–1585

Rooney, Sally, 1991–

Roosevelt, [Anna] Eleanor, 1884–1962

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 1882–1945

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858–1919

Root, George Frederick, 1820–1895

Rorty, Richard, 1931–2007

Roscommon, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of, c. 1633–1685

Rose, Fred, 1898–1954

Rose, Ruth, 1896–1978

Rosenberg, Harold, 1906–1978

Rosenberg, Isaac, 1890–1918

Ross, Harold [Wallace], 1892–1951

Ross, Jerry, 1926–1955

Ross, Lillian, 1918–2017

Rossetti, Christina Georgina, 1830–1894

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828–1882

Rossi, Alice S[chaerr], 1922–2009

Rossini, Giacomo [Antonio], 1792–1868

Rostand, Edmond, 1868–1918

Rostand, Jean, 1894–1977

Roth, Philip, 1933–2018

Rothenberg, Jerome, 1931–

Rothko, Mark [Markus Yakovlevich Rotkovich], 1903–1970

Rotten, Johnny [John Lydon], 1956–

Rouget de Lisle, [Claude] Joseph, 1760–1836

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778

Routh, Martin Joseph, 1755–1854

Rowe, Nicholas, 1674–1718

Rowlandson, Mary, c. 1637–c. 1710/1711

Rowling, J[oanne] K[athleen], 1965–

Roy Campbell, [Ignatius Royston Dunnachie], 1901–1957

Ruby, Harry, 1895–1974

Ruefle, Mary, 1952–

Rukeyser, Muriel, 1913–1980

Rulfo [Vizcaíno], Juan [Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez], 1917–1986

Rumi, Jalal Al-Din, 1207–1273

Rumsfeld, Donald, 1932–2021

Runyon, [Alfred] Damon, 1884–1946

Rushdie, [Ahmed] Salman, 1947–

Rusk, Dean, 1909–1994

Ruskin, John, 1819–1900

Russ, Joanna, 1937–2011

Russell, Bertrand, Earl Russell, 1872–1970

Russell, Lord John, 1792–1878

Russell, Sir William Howard, 1820–1907

Russian (Anonymous)

Rutherford, Ernest, 1871–1937

Ryerson, Florence, 1892–1965

Ryle, Gilbert, 1900–1976

Ryoi, Asai, c. 1612–1691

Ryskind, Morrie, 1895–1985

Sabatini, Rafael, 1875–1950

Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von, 1836–1895

Sachs, Nelly, 1891–1970

Sacks, Oliver, 1933–2015

Sadat, Anwar al-, 1918–1981

Sagan, Carl, 1934–1996

Said, Edward, 1935–2003

Sainte-Beuve, Charles-Augustin, 1804–1869

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, 1900–1944

Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Léon de, 1767–1794

Saint Laurent, Yves, 1936–2008

Saintsbury, George, 1845–1933

Sakharov, Andrei Dmitrievich, 1921–1989

Saki [pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro], 1870–1916

Salinger, J[erome] D[avid], 1919–2010

Sallust [Gaius Sallustius Crispus], 86–34 B.C.E.

Salter, James, 1925–2015

Samuelson, Paul A., 1915–2009

Sand, George [pseudonym of Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant], 1804–1876

Sandberg, Sheryl, 1969–

Sandburg, Carl, 1878–1967

Sanders, Bernie [Bernard], 1941–

Sanders, George, 1906–1972

Sanders, Pharoah [Ferrell], 1940–

Sanger, Margaret, 1883–1966

Santayana, George, 1863–1952

Sante, Lucy, 1954–

Sapir, Edward, 1884–1939

Sappho, fl. c. 612 B.C.E.

Saroyan, William, 1908–1981

Sarris, Andrew, 1928–2012

Sarton, May [Eleanore Marie Sarton], 1912–1995

Sartre, Jean Paul, 1905–1980

Sasse, Ben, 1972–

Sassoon, Siegfried, 1886–1967

Sauer, Carl O[rtwin], 1889–1975

Saunders, George, 1958–

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 1857–1913

Savile, George, 1633–1695

Savio, Mario, 1942–1996

Say, Jean-Baptiste, 1767–1832

Sayers, Dorothy L[eigh], 1893–1957

Sayre, Wallace Stanley, 1905–1972

Scalia, Antonin, 1936–2016

Scammon, Richard M., 1915–2001

Scarry, Elaine, 1946–

Schawlow, Arthur Leonard, 1921–1999

Schelling, Thomas, 1921–2016

Schiaparelli, Elsa, 1890–1973

Schiff, Adam, 1960–

Schiller, Johann [Christoph] Friedrich von, 1759–1805

Schlegel, Friedrich von, 1772–1829

Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 1768–1834

Schlesinger, Arthur M[eier], Jr., 1917–2007

Schliemann, Heinrich, 1822–1890

Schlosser, Eric, 1959–

Schmidt, Eric, 1955–

Schmitt, Carl, 1888–1985

Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874–1951

Scholem, Gershom, 1897–1982

Scholl, Sophie, 1921–1943

Schomburg, Arthur A., 1874–1938

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1788–1860

Schrader, Paul, 1946–

Schreiner, Olive [Emilie Albertina] [pseudonym: Ralph Iron], 1855–1920

Schrödinger, Erwin, 1887–1961

Schubert, Franz, 1797–1828

Schulberg, Budd, 1914–2009

Schulz, Bruno, 1892–1942

Schulz, Charles M[onroe], 1922–2000

Schumacher, E[rnst] F[riedrich], 1911–1977

Schumann, Robert [Alexander], 1810–1856

Schumpeter, Joseph Alois, 1883–1950

Schurz, Carl, 1829–1906

Schuyler, James, 1923–1991

Schwartz, Delmore, 1913–1966

Schweitzer, Albert, 1875–1965

Sciascia, Leonardo, 1921–1989

Scorsese, Martin, 1942–

Scott, Charles Prestwich, 1846–1932

Scott, Robert Falcon, 1868–1912

Scott, Sir Walter, 1771–1832

Scott, Winfield, 1786–1866

Scott-Heron, Gil, 1949–2011

Scruton, Roger, 1944–

Scully, Vincent, 1920–2017

Sears, Edmund Hamilton, 1810–1876

Seattle, c. 1786–1866

Sebald, W[infried] G[eorg], 1944–2001

Secondat, Charles de, Baron de Montesquieu. See Montesquieu

Sedaris, David, 1956–

Seeger, Alan, 1888–1916

Seeger, Pete [Peter], 1919–2014

Seferis, George [Giorgios Sefiriades], 1900–1971

Segal, Erich, 1937–2010

Segar, Elzie Crisler, 1894–1938

Seibert, T. Laurence, 1877–1917

Seidel, Frederick, 1936–

Seinfeld, Jerry [Jerome], 1954–

Seingalt, Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de. See Casanova

Selassie. See Haile Selassie

Selden, John, 1584–1654

Selzer, Richard, 1928–2016

Sen, Amartya, 1933–

Sendak, Maurice, 1928–2012

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, c. 4 B.C.E.–65 C.E.

Serling, Rod, 1924–1975

Service, Robert William, 1874–1958

Sesame Street, 1969–

Sessions, Jeff[erson Beauregard] [III], 1946–

Seth, Vikram, 1952–

Seuss, Dr. [Theodor Seuss Geisel], 1904–1991

Seven Sages, The: Bias, Chilon, Cleobulus, Periander, Pittacus, Solon, Thales, c. 650–c. 550 B.C.E.

Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de, 1626–1696

Seward, William Henry, 1801–1872

Sexton, Anne, 1928–1974

Seymour, James, 1895–1976

Shaffer, Peter, 1926–2016

Shahn, Ben, 1898–1969

Shange, Ntozake, 1948–2018

Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616

All’s Well That Ends Well

Antony and Cleopatra

As You Like It

Comedy of Errors, The

Coriolanus

Cymbeline

Hamlet

Julius Caesar

King Henry IV, Part I

King Henry IV, Part II

King Henry V

King Henry VI, Part I

King Henry VI, Part II

King Henry VI, Part III

King Henry VIII

King John

King Lear

King Richard II

King Richard III

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Macbeth

Measure for Measure

Merchant of Venice, The

Merry Wives of Windsor, The

Midsummer-Night’s Dream, A

Much Ado About Nothing

Othello

Pericles

Phoenix and the Turtle, The

Rape of Lucrece, The

Romeo and Juliet

Sonnets

Taming of the Shrew, The

Tempest, The

Timon of Athens

Titus Andronicus

Troilus and Cressida

Twelfth-Night

Two Gentlemen of Verona, The

Venus and Adonis

Winter’s Tale, The

Shalamov, Varlam, 1907–1982

Shanties (Anonymous)

Shapiro, Harvey, 1924–2013

Shapiro, Karl, 1913–2000

Sharp, William [pseudonym: Fiona Macleod], 1855–1905

Shaw, George Bernard, 1856–1950

Shaw, Henry Wheeler. See Billings, Josh

Shaw, Irwin, 1913–1984

Shawn, Wallace, 1943–

Sheed, Wilfrid, 1930–2011

Sheldon, Charles M[onroe], 1857–1946

Shelley, Mary [Wollstonecraft], 1797–1851

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822

Shelton, Gilbert, 1940–

Shepard, Sam [Rogers IV], 1943–2017

Sheridan, Philip Henry, 1831–1888

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 1751–1816

Sherman, John, 1823–1900

Sherman, Sidney, 1805–1873

Sherman, William Tecumseh, 1820–1891

Sherrill, Billy, 1936–2015

Sherwood, Robert E[mmet], 1896–1955

Shih Nai-An, 13th century

Shirky, Clay, 1964–

Shirley, James, 1596–1666

Shūsaku Endō, 1923–1996

Shuster, Joe, 1914–1992

Shyamalan, M. Night, 1970–

Sidney, Algernon, 1622–1683

Sidney, Sir Philip, 1554–1586

Siegel, Jerry, 1914–1996

Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph, 1748–1836

Silko, Leslie Marmon, 1948–

Silone [Secondino Tranquilli], Ignazio, 1900–1978

Silverman, Sime, 1873–1933

Silvers, Robert B., 1929–2017

Simenon, Georges, 1903–1989

Simic, Charles, 1938–

Simmel, Georg, 1858–1918

Simon, Carly, 1945–

Simon, David, 1960–

Simon, Herbert, 1916–2001

Simon, Neil, 1927–2018

Simon, Paul, 1941–

Simone, Nina [Eunice Kathleen Waymon], 1933–2003

Simonides, c. 556–468 B.C.E.

Simpson, George Gaylord, 1902–1984

Simpson, Duchess of Windsor [Wallis Simpson], 1896–1986

Sinatra, Frank, 1915–1998

Sinclair, Upton [Beall], 1878–1968

Singer, Isaac Bashevis, 1904–1991

Singer, Peter, 1946–

Siodmak, Curt, 1902–2000

Sirk, Douglas, 1900–1987

Sissman, L[ouis] E[dward], 1928–1976

Sitting Bull, c. 1831–1890

Sitwell, Edith, 1887–1964

Skelton, John, c. 1460–1529

Sledge, Eugene B., Jr., 1923–2001

Slick, Grace [Grace Barnett Wing], 1939–

Sloan, P. F. [Philip Gary “Flip”], 1945–2015

Sloane [III], William [Milligan], 1906–1974

Smart, Christopher, 1722–1771

Smedley, Francis Edward, 1818–1864

Smith, Adam, 1723–1790

Smith, Alexander, 1830–1867

Smith, Alfred [Emanuel], 1873–1944

Smith, Anna Deavere, 1950–

Smith, Betty [Wehner], 1904–1972

Smith, Dodie [Dorothy Gladys], 1896–1990

Smith, Edgar, 1857–1938

Smith, Logan Pearsall, 1865–1946

Smith, Margaret Chase, 1897–1995

Smith, Miles, 1554–1624

Smith, Oliver P., Maj. Gen. USMC, 1893–1977

Smith, Patti [Patricia Lee], 1946–

Smith, Samuel Francis, 1808–1895

Smith, Stevie [Margaret Florence], 1902–1971

Smith, Sydney, 1771–1845

Smith, Zadie, 1975–

Smithson, James, 1765–1829

Smithson, Robert, 1938–1973

Smollett, Tobias, 1721–1771

Snicket, Lemony [pseudonym of Daniel Handler], 1970–

Snodgrass, W[illiam] D[eWitt], 1926–2009

Snow, Sir C[harles] P[ercy], 1905–1980

Snowden, Edward [Joseph], 1983–

Snyder, Gary, 1930–

Snyder, Timothy, 1969–

Socrates, 469–399 B.C.E.

Soderbergh, Steven, 1963–

Solnit, Rebecca, 1961–

Solomon, Andrew, 1963–

Solon, c. 638–c. 559 B.C.E.See also Seven Sages, The

Solt, Andrew, 1916–1990

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Isayevich, 1918–2008

Sondheim, Stephen, 1930–2021

Song of the Harper, The, 2600? B.C.E.

Sontag, Susan, 1933–2004

Sophocles, c. 495–406 B.C.E.

Soros, George, 1930–

Sotomayor, Sonia, 1954–

Soule, John Babsone Lane, 1815–1891

Southern, Terry, 1924–1995

Southey, Robert, 1774–1843

Southwell, Robert, c. 1561–1595

Sowell, Thomas, 1930–

Soyinka, Wole [Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka], 1934–

Spanish (Anonymous)

Spark, Muriel, 1918–2006

Speckled Snake, c. 1729–1829

Spencer, Herbert, 1820–1903

Spencer, Scott, 1945–

Spender, Stephen, 1909–1995

Spengler, Oswald, 1880–1936

Spenser, Edmund, 1552–1599

Spicer, Jack, 1925–1965

Spillane, Mickey [Frank Morrison], 1918–2006

Spinoza, Benedict or Baruch 1632–1677

Spirituals (Anonymous)

Spock, Benjamin [McLane], 1903–1998

Spooner, William Archibald, 1844–1930

Springsteen, Bruce, 1949–

Staël, Germaine de [Anna Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël-Holstein], 1766–1817

Stafford, Jean, 1915–1979

Stalin, Joseph [Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili], 1878–1953

Stallings, Laurence, 1894–1968

Stamp, Josiah, 1880–1941

Stander, Lionel [Jay], 1908–1994

Standing Bear, Luther, 1868–1939

Stanhope, Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield. See Chesterfield

Stanislavski, Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev, 1863–1938

Stanley, Sir Henry Morton, 1841–1904

Stanton, Charles E., 1859–1933

Stanton, Edwin McMasters, 1814–1869

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1815–1902

Stark, Freya, 1893–1993

Stark, John, 1728–1822

Statius, Caecilius. See Caecilius Statius

Steele, Sir Richard, 1672–1729

Stefano, Joseph, 1922–2006

Steffens, Lincoln, 1866–1936

Stegner, Wallace, 1909–1993

Stein, Gertrude, 1874–1946

Stein, Herbert, 1916–1999

Steinbeck, John [Ernst], 1902–1968

Steinberg, Norman, 1939–

Steinem, Gloria, 1934–

Steiner, George, 1929–2020

Steiner, Peter, 1940–

Steingraber, Sandra, 1959–

Stendhal [pseudonym of Henri Beyle], 1783–1842

Stengel, Casey [Charles Dillon], c. 1890–1975

Sternberg [born Jonas Sternberg], Josef von, 1894–1969

Sterne, Laurence, 1713–1768

Stesichorus, c. 630–c. 555 B.C.E.

Stevens, George, 1904–1975

Stevens, John Paul, 1920–2019

Stevens, Thaddeus, 1792–1868

Stevens, Wallace, 1879–1955

Stevenson, Adlai E[wing], 1900–1965

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850–1894

Stewart, Dave, 1952–

Stewart, Donald Ogden, 1894–1980

Stewart, Jon [Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz], 1962–

Stewart, Potter, 1915–1985

Stickney, Trumbull, 1874–1904

Stieglitz, Alfred, 1864–1946

Stiglitz, Joseph, 1943–

Stilwell, Joseph Warren, 1883–1946

Stills, Stephen, 1945–

Stimson, Henry L[ewis], 1867–1950

Sting [Gordon Matthew Sumner], 1951–

Stipe, Michael, 1960–

Stockman, David Allen, 1946–

Stockton, Frank [Richard], 1834–1902

Stoermer, Eugene F., 1934–2012

Stoker, Bram [Abraham], 1847–1912

Stoller, Mike, 1933–

Stone, Harlan Fiske, 1872–1946

Stone, I[sidor] F[einstein], 1907–1989

Stone, Matt, 1971–

Stone, Oliver, 1946–

Stone, Robert, 1937–2015

Stone, Sly [Sylvester Stewart], 1943–

Stopes, Marie, 1880–1958

Stoppard, Tom, 1937–

Story, Joseph, 1779–1845

Stoughton, William, 1631–1701

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811–1896

Strachey, [Giles] Lytton, 1880–1932

Strand, Mark, 1934–2014

Strauss, Leo, 1899–1973

Stravinsky, Igor, 1882–1971

Strayhorn, Billy, 1915–1967

Strindberg, August, 1849–1912

Strummer, Joe [John Graham Mellor], 1952–2002

Strunk, William, Jr., 1869–1946

Strzok, Peter, 1970–

Stuart, Mary. See Mary Stuart [Mary, Queen of Scots]

Sturges, Preston [Edmund Preston Biden], 1898–1959

Sturgeon, Theodore, 1918–1985

Styron, William, 1925–2006

Suckling, Sir John, 1609–1642

Suetonius [Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus], c. 69–c. 140 C.E.

Sullivan, John Jeremiah, 1974–

Sullivan, Louis Henri, 1856–1924

Sumner, Charles, 1811–1874

Sumner, William Graham, 1840–1910

Sun-tzu, c. 4th century B.C.E.

Sun Yat-sen, 1866–1925

Suskind, Ron, 1959–

Suti and Hor, 15th–14th centuries B.C.E.

Svevo, Italo [pseudonym of Aron Ettore Schmitz], 1861–1928

Swann, Donald, 1923–1994

Swenson, May, 1913–1989

Swift, Jonathan, 1667–1745

Swimme, Brian, 1950–

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 1837–1909

Swope, Herbert Bayard, 1882–1958

Sydenham, Thomas, 1624–1689

Symonds, John Addington, 1840–1893

Symons, Arthur, 1865–1945

Synge, John Millington, 1871–1909

Syrus, Publilius. See Publilius Syrus

Szent-Györgyi von Nagyrapolt, Albert, 1893–1986

Szilard, Leo, 1898–1964

Szymborska, Wislawa, 1924–2012

Tabula Smaragdina [Emerald Tablet], 2nd or 3rd century C.E.

Tacitus, Cornelius, c. 56–c. 120 C.E.

Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861–1941

Taibbi, Matt, 1970–

Takamura, Kōtarō, 1883–1956

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 1960–

Talese, Gay, 1932–

Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice de, 1754–1838

Talmud, The, compiled c. 6th century

Tan, Amy, 1952–

Taney, Roger B., 1777–1864

T’ao Chien, 365–427

Tarantino, Quentin, 1963–

Tarkington, Booth, 1869–1946

Tarkovsky, Andrei, 1932–1986

Tartt, Donna, 1963–

Tate, James, 1943–2015

Tate, Nahum, 1652–1715

Taupin, Bernie, 1950–

Taylor, Ann, 1782–1866

Taylor, Edward, c. 1644–1729

Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 1856–1915

Taylor, James, 1948–

Taylor, Jane, 1783–1824

Taylor, Jeremy, 1613–1667

Taylor, Samuel A., 1912–2000

Taylor, Tell, 1876–1937

Taylor, Zachary, 1784–1850

Teaching for Merikare, The, c. 2135–2040 B.C.E.

Teasdale, Sara, 1884–1933

Tecumseh, 1768–1813

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 1881–1955

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 1809–1892

Terence [Publius Terentius Afer], c. 190–159 B.C.E.

Teresa, Mother [Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu], 1910–1977

Teresa of Ávila, Saint, 1515–1582

Terkel, Studs [Louis], 1912–2008

Tertullian [Quintus Septimius Tertullianus], c. 160–240

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811–1863

Thales, c. 640–c. 546 B.C.E. See Seven Sages, The

Tharp, Twyla, 1941–

Thatcher, Margaret [Hilda Roberts], 1925–2013

Thayer, Ernest L[awrence], 1863–1940

The Notorious B.I.G. [Christopher Wallace], 1972–1997

Themistocles, c. 528–c. 462 B.C.E.

Theocritus, c. 310–250 B.C.E.

Theognis, fl. c. 545 B.C.E.

Theophrastus, d. 278 B.C.E.

Thibault, Jacques Anatole François. See France, Anatole

Thiel, Peter, 1967–

Thiele, Bob, 1922–1996

Thomas à Kempis, 1380–1471

Thomas Aquinas, Saint. See Aquinas

Thomas, Clarence, 1948–

Thomas, Dylan, 1914–1953

Thomas, Edward, 1878–1917

Thomas, Edwin

Thomas, Leon, 1937–1999

Thomas, Lewis, 1913–1993

Thomas, Norman [Mattoon], 1884–1968

Thompson, Sir D’Arcy Wentworth, 1860–1948

Thompson, E[dward] P[almer], 1924–1993

Thompson, Francis, 1859–1907

Thompson, Hunter S., 1937–2005

Thompson, Jim, 1906–1977

Thomson, David, 1941–

Thomson, James, 1700–1748

Thomson, James, 1834–1882

Thomson, Virgil, 1896–1989

Thomson, William, Lord Kelvin. See Kelvin

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817–1862

Thorpe, Rose Hartwick, 1850–1939

Thucydides, c. 460–400 B.C.E.

Thunberg, Greta, 2003–

Thurber, James, 1894–1961

Thurman, Uma, 1970–

Tibullus, Albius, c. 54–c. 19 B.C.E.

Tichborne, Chidiock, c. 1558–1586

Tillerson, Rex, 1952–

Tillich, Paul [Johannes], 1886–1965

Tillman, Lynne, 1947–

Tilly, Charles, 1929–2008

Tilton, Theodore, 1835–1907

Timberlake, Justin, 1981–

Timrod, Henry, 1828–1867

Titus Vespasianus, c. 41–81 C.E.

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805–1859

Todorov, Tzvetan, 1939–2017

Toffler, Alvin, 1928–2016

Tóibín, Colm, 1955–

Tokugawa Iemitsu, 1604–1651

Toland, John, 1670–1722

Tolkien, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel], 1892–1973

Tolstoy, Leo Nikolayevich, 1828–1910

Tomalin, Nicholas [Osborne], 1931–1973

Tomlinson, H[enry] M[ajor], 1873–1958

Toombs, Rudy [Rudolph], c. 1914–1962

Toomer, Jean, 1894–1967

Toplady, Augustus Montague, 1740–1778

Toscanini, Arturo, 1867–1957

Tosches, Nick, 1949–2019

Tosh, Peter, 1944–1987

Ture, Kwame. See Carmichael, Stokely

Tourneur, Cyril, 1575–1626

Towne, Robert [Robert Bertram Schwartz], 1934–

Townshend, Pete [Peter], 1945–

Toynbee, Arnold Joseph, 1889–1975

Traherne, Thomas, c. 1637–1674

Trakl, Georg, 1887–1914

Tranströmer, Tomas [Gösta], 1931–2015

Traven, B., 1890–1969

Travis, Merle, 1917–1983

Trevor, William, 1928–2016

Trillin, Calvin, 1935–

Trilling, Diana, 1905–1996

Trilling, Lionel, 1905–1976

Trinder, Tommy, 1909–1989

Trollope, Anthony, 1815–1882

Trollope, Frances [Milton], 1780–1863

Tronchin, Theodore, 1709–1781

Trotsky, Leon [Lev Davidovich Bronstein], 1879–1940

Trudeau, Garry, 1948–

Trudeau, Justin, 1971–

Trudeau, Pierre, 1919–2000

Truffaut, François, 1932–1984

Truman, Harry S., 1884–1972

Trumbo, Dalton, 1905–1976

Trump, Donald J[ohn], 1946–

Truth, Sojourner [Isabella Van Wagener], c. 1797–1883

Tsvetaeva, Marina, 1892–1941

Tubman, Harriet, c. 1820–1913

Tuchman, Barbara W., 1912–1989

Tucker, Josiah, 1712–1799

Tucker, Mary Evelyn, 1949–

Tucker, Sophie, c. 1884–1966

Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard, 1821–1873

Tudor, Mary. See Mary Tudor

Tupper, Martin Farquhar, 1810–1889

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich, 1818–1883

Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, Baron de l’Aulne, 1727–1781

Turing, Alan Mathison, 1912–1954

Turner, Frederick Jackson, 1861–1932

Turner, J[oseph] M[allard] W[illiam], 1775–1851

Turner, Nat, 1800–1831

Tusser, Thomas, c. 1524–1580

Tutu, Desmond, 1931–2021

Twain, Mark [pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens], 1835–1910

Tweed, William Marcy [Boss Tweed], 1823–1878

Tyler, Parker, 1904–1974

Tynan, Kenneth, 1927–1980

Tyndall, John, 1820–1893

Tyson, Mike [Michael Gerard], 1966–

Tyson, Neil deGrasse, 1958–

Tzara, Tristan, 1896–1963

Udall, Stewart [Lee], 1920–2010

Uger, Alan, 1940–

Ullman, Harlan, 1941–

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, 1938–

Ulyanov, Vladimir Ilyich. See Lenin

Unamuno, Miguel de, 1864–1936

Ungaretti, Giuseppe, 1888–1970

United Nations, Charter of the

United States, Constitution of the. See Constitution of the United States

Upanishads, The, c. 800–500 B.C.E.

Updike, John, 1932–2009

Ussher, James, 1581–1656

V, 1953–

Valéry, Paul, 1871–1945

Vallejo, César, 1892–1938

Vanbrugh, Sir John, 1664–1726

Vance, J. D., 1984–

Vandenberg, Arthur, 1884–1951

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 1794–1877

Vanderbilt, William H[enry], 1821–1885

Vandiver, Willard Duncan, 1854–1932

Van Doren, Charles, 1926–2019

Van Druten, John, 1901–1957

Van Gogh, Vincent, 1853–1890

Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 1888–1927

Varda, Agnès, 1928–2019

Varèse, Edgard, 1883–1965

Varro, Marcus Terentius, 116–27 B.C.E.

Vasari, Giorgio, 1511–1574

Vaughan, Henry, 1622–1695

Vaux, Calvert, 1824–1895

Vaux, Sir Thomas, 1510–1556

Veblen, Thorstein, 1857–1929

Vega, Lope de, 1562–1635

Vegetius [Flavius Vegetius Renatus], fl. c. 375

Venerable Bede. See Bede

Venturi, Robert [Charles], 1925–2018

Verdi, Giuseppe, 1813–1901

Verlaine, Paul, 1844–1896

Verne, Jules, 1828–1905

Vespucci, Amerigo, 1454–1512

Vest, George Graham, 1830–1904

Vichy-Chamrond, Marie de, Marquise du Deffand. See Deffand

Vico, Giovanni Battista [Giambattista], 1668–1744

Victoria, 1819–1901

Vicuña, Cecilia, 1947–

Vidal, Gore, 1925–2012

Viertel, Salka, 1889–1978

Viet Thanh Nguyen, 1971–

Vigny, Alfred de, 1797–1863

Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, 1628–1687

Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, Philippe Auguste, 1838–1889

Villon, François, 1431–c. 1465

Vincent of Lérins, Saint, d. c. 450

Vinci, Leonardo da. See Leonardo da Vinci

Vinge, Vernor, 1944–

Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro], 70–19 B.C.E.

Voltaire [pseudonym of François Marie Arouet], 1694–1778

Von Hayek, Friedrich [August], 1899–1992

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr., 1922–2007

Voss, Johann Heinrich, 1751–1826

Wachtel, Waddy, 1947–

Wade, James, Jr., 1930–

Wagener, Isabella Van. See Truth, Sojourner

Wagner, Jane, 1935–

Wagner, Richard, 1813–1883

Waits, Tom, 1949–

Walcott, Derek, 1930–2017

Wald, Malvin, 1917–2008

Waldman, Anne, 1945–

Walker, Alice, 1944–

Walker, James J., 1881–1946

Walker, Kara, 1969–

Walker, Margaret, 1915–1998

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 1823–1913

Wallace, David Foster, 1962–2008

Wallace, George [Corley], 1919–1998

Wallace, Henry A[gard], 1888–1965

Wallace, William Ross, 1819–1881

Wallas, Graham, 1858–1932

Waller, Edmund, 1606–1687

Waller-Bridge, Phoebe, 1986–

Waller, Thomas [Fats], 1904–1943

Walpole, Horace, 1717–1797

Walpole, Sir Robert, 1676–1745

Walser, Robert, 1878–1956

Walther von der Vogelweide, c. 1170–c. 1230

Walton, Izaak, 1593–1683

Wang Wei, 701–761

Ward, Artemus. See Browne, Charles Farrar

Ward, Jesmyn, 1977–

Warhol, Andy, 1927–1987

Warner, Anna Bartlett, 1827–1915

Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829–1900

Warren, Earl, 1891–1974

Warren, Elizabeth [Ann], 1949–

Warren, Robert Penn, 1905–1989

Warshow, Robert, 1917–1955

Washington, Booker T[aliaferro], 1856–1915

Washington, George, 1732–1799

Washington, Ned, 1901–1976

Wasserstein, Wendy, 1950–2006

Waters, Alice, 1944–

Waters, John, 1946–

Waters, Roger, 1943–

Watson, James Dewey, 1928–

Watson, John B., 1878–1958

Wattenberg, Ben J., 1933–2015

Watts, Alan, 1915–1973

Watts, Isaac, 1674–1748

Waugh, Evelyn, 1903–1966

Wayne, John [Marion Mitchell Morrison], 1907–1979

Webb, Jack [John Randolph], 1920–1982

Weber, Joseph, 1867–1942

Weber, Max, 1864–1920

Webster, Daniel, 1782–1852

Webster, John, c. 1580–c. 1625

Wedgwood, C[icely] V[eronica], 1910–1997

Wedgwood, Josiah, 1730–1795

Weil, Simone, 1909–1943

Weinberg, Jack, 1940–

Weinberg, Steven, 1933–

Weinberger, Eliot, 1949–

Weiner, Matthew, 1965–

Weinreich, Max, 1893–1969

Weisman, Alan, 1947–

Weiss, George David, 1921–2010

Wei T’ai, 11th century

Weil, Joseph [“Yellow Kid”], 1875–1976

Welch, Joseph N[ye], 1890–1960

Welch, Lew [Lewis Barrett], 1926–1971

Welles, [George] Orson, 1915–1985

Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 1769–1852

Wells, H[erbert] G[eorge], 1866–1946

Welty, Eudora, 1909–2001

Wenders, Wim [Ernst Wilhelm], 1945–

Wesley, Charles, 1707–1788

Wesley, John, 1703–1791

West, Kanye, 1977–

West, Mae, 1893–1980

West, Nathanael, 1903–1940

West, Rebecca [Cicely Isabel Fairfield], 1892–1983

Westcott, Edward Noyes, 1846–1898

Westlake, Donald [pseudonym: Richard Stark], 1933–2008

Weston, Edward, 1886–1958

Whalen, Philip, 1923–2002

Wharton, Edith [Newbold Jones], 1862–1937

Wheatley, Phillis, 1753–1784

Whedon, Joss, 1964–

Wheeler, Elmer, 1906–1968

Wheeler, John Archibald, 1911–2008

Whewell, William, 1794–1866

Whistler, James McNeill, 1834–1903

White, Edmund, 1940–

White, E[lwyn] B[rooks], 1899–1985

White, Patrick, 1912–1990

White, T[erence] H[anbury], 1906–1964

White, William Allen, 1868–1944

Whitehead, Alfred North, 1861–1947

Whitehead, Colson, 1969–

Whiting, William, 1825–1878

Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1807–1892

Whittinton, Robert, c. 1480–c. 1530

Whyte, William H[ollingsworth], Jr., 1917–1999

Wiener, Norbert, 1894–1964

Wieners, John, 1934–2002

Wiesel, Elie, 1928–2016

Wilbur, Richard [Purdy], 1921–2017

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 1850–1919

Wilde, Oscar [Fingal O’Flahertie Wills], 1854–1900

Wilder, Billy [Samuel], 1906–2002

Wilder, Thornton [Niven], 1897–1975

Will, George F[rederick], 1941–

Willard, Emma, 1787–1870

William I [William the Silent], 1533–1584

William III, Prince of Orange, 1650–1702

William of Occam. See Occam

William of Wykeham. See Wykeham, William of

Williams, Alexander [Clubber], 1839–1917

Williams, Bert, 1874–1922

Williams, Hank, 1923–1953

Williams, Harry, 1874–1924

Williams, John [Edward], 1922–1994

Williams, Margery, 1881–1944

Williams, Marjorie, 1958–2005

Williams, Raymond, 1921–1988

Williams, Robin, 1951–2014

Williams, Roger, c. 1603–1683

Williams, Tennessee [Thomas Lanier], 1911–1983

Williams, William Carlos, 1883–1963

Willingham, Calder, 1922–1995

Willis, Ellen, 1941–2006

Willkie, Wendell L[ewis], 1892–1944

Wills, Garry, 1934–

Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester. See Rochester

Wilson, August, Jr., 1945–2005

Wilson, Bill, 1895–1971

Wilson, Brian, 1942–

Wilson, Charles E[rwin], 1890–1961

Wilson, Colin, 1931–2013

Wilson, Edmund, 1895–1972

Wilson, E[dward] O[sborne], 1929–2021

Wilson, Harold, 1916–1995

Wilson, Michael, 1914–1978

Wilson, Sloan, 1920–2003

Wilson, William Julius, 1935–

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856–1924

Winchell, Walter, 1897–1972

Windsor, Edward, Duke of [Edward VIII], 1894–1972

Winehouse, Amy, 1983–2011

Winnicott, D[onald] W[oods], 1896–1971

Winthrop, John, 1588–1649

Winthrop, Robert Charles, 1809–1894

Wister, Owen, 1860–1938

Wither, George, 1588–1667

Wittgenstein, Ludwig [Josef Johann], 1889–1951

Wodehouse, [Sir] P[elham] G[renville], 1881–1975

Wolf, Christa, 1929–2011

Wolfe, Gene, 1931–2019

Wolfe, Thomas, 1900–1938

Wolfe, Tom [Thomas Kennerly, Jr.], 1931–2018

Wollstonecraft [Godwin], Mary, 1759–1797

Womack, Bobby [Robert Dwayne], 1944–2014

Wonder, Stevie [Stevland Hardaway Judkins, later Morris], 1950–

Wood, Grant, 1891–1942

Woodward, C[omer] Vann, 1908–1999

Woodworth, Samuel, 1785–1842

Woolf, Edgar Allan, 1881–1948

Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941

Woollcott, Alexander, 1887–1943

Woolman, John, 1720–1772

Woolsey, John M[unro], 1877–1945

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 1771–1855

Wordsworth, William, 1770–1850

Work, H[enry] C[lay], 1832–1884

Wotton, Sir Henry, 1568–1639

Wren, Sir Christopher, 1632–1723

Wright, C[arolyn] D., 1949–2016

Wright, Charles, 1935–

Wright, Fanny [Frances], 1795–1852

Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1869–1959

Wright, James, 1927–1980

Wright, Orville, 1871–1948

Wright, Richard, 1908–1960

Wright, Wilbur, 1867–1912

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, c. 1503–1542

Wycherley, William, 1641–1715

Wycliffe, John, c. 1330–1384

Wykeham, William of, 1324–1404

Wylie, Elinor [Hoyt], 1885–1928

Wynette, Tammy [Virginia Wynette Pugh], 1942–1998

Xenophanes, c. 570–c. 475 B.C.E.

Xenophon, c. 430–c. 355 B.C.E.

Xi Jinping, 1953–

Yates, Richard, 1926–1992

Yates, Sally, 1960–

Yeats, William Butler, 1865–1939

Yellen, Jack, 1892–1991

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny Alexandrovich, 1933–2017

Yitzhak, Avraham Ben, 1883–1950

Yoshida Kenkō, 1283–1350

Yost, Dorothy, 1899–1967

Young, Brigham, 1801–1877

Young, Edward, 1683–1765

Young, Joe, 1889–1939

Young, Kevin, 1970–

Young, Neil, 1945–

Young, Waldemar, 1878–1938

Young, Whitney M[oore], Jr., 1921–1971

Youngman, Henny, 1906–1998

Yourcenar, Marguerite, 1903–1987

Yousafzai, Malala, 1997–

Yutang, Lin, 1895–1976

Zagajewski, Adam, 1945–2021

Zamoyski, Jan, 1542–1605

Zangwill, Israel, 1864–1926

Zanuck, Darryl F., 1902–1979

Zapata, Emiliano, 1879–1919

Zappa, Frank, 1940–1993

Zappa, Moon Unit, 1967–

Zavattini, Cesare, 1902–1989

Zeami Motokiyo, 1363–1443

Zemeckis, Robert, 1951–

Zeno, 335–263 B.C.E.

Zeuxis, fl. 400 B.C.E.

Zevon, Warren, 1947–2003

Ziegler, Ronald L., 1939–2003

Zinn, Howard, 1922–2010

Zinsser, Hans, 1878–1940

Zola, Émile, 1840–1902

Zuckerberg, Mark, 1984–

Zweig, Stefan, 1881–1942

Familiar Quotations

The Song of the Harper¹

2600? B.C.E.

There is no one who can return from there,

To describe their nature, to describe their dissolution,

That he may still our desires,

Until we reach the place where they have gone.

St. 5

Remember: it is not given to man to take his goods with him.

No one goes away and then comes back.

St. 10

Ptahhotep

Twenty-fourth century B.C.E.

Teach him what has been said in the past; then he will set a good example to the children of the magistrates, and judgment and all exactitude shall enter into him. Speak to him, for there is none born wise.

The Maxims of Ptahhotep,² introduction

Follow your desire as long as you live and do not perform more than is ordered; do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.… When riches are gained, follow desire, for riches will not profit if one is sluggish.

The Maxims of Ptahhotep, 11

One who is serious all day will never have a good time, while one who is frivolous all day will never establish a household.

The Maxims of Ptahhotep, 25

Be cheerful while you are alive.

The Maxims of Ptahhotep, 34

The Teaching for Merikare³

c. 2135–2040 B.C.E.

Do justice, that you may live long upon earth. Calm the weeper, do not oppress the widow, do not oust a man from his father’s property, do not degrade magnates from their seats. Beware of punishing wrongfully; do not kill, for it will not profit you.

Parable 8

Instill the love of you into all the world, for a good character is what is remembered.

Parable 24

The Book of the Dead

c. 1700–1000 B.C.E.

Hail to you gods…

On that day of the great reckoning.

Behold me, I have come to you,

Without sin, without guilt, without evil,

Without a witness against me,

Without one whom I have wronged.…

Rescue me, protect me,

Do not accuse me before the great god!

I am one pure of mouth, pure of hands.

The Address to the Gods⁴

Love Songs of the New Kingdom

c. 1550–1080 B.C.E.

My love for you is mixed throughout my body…

So hurry to see your lady,

like a stallion on the track,

or like a falcon swooping down to its papyrus marsh.

Heaven sends down the love of her

as a flame falls in the hay.

Song⁵ no. 2

Sweet pomegranate wine in my mouth

is bitter as the gall of birds.

But your embraces

alone give life to my heart;

may Amun give me what I have found

for all eternity.

Song no. 12

Suti and Hor¹

Fifteenth–fourteenth centuries B.C.E.

Creator uncreated.

Sole one, unique one, who traverses eternity,

Remote one, with millions under his care;

Your splendor is like heaven’s splendor.

First Hymn to the Sun God

The Great Hymn to the Aten²

c. 1350 B.C.E.

Splendid you rise in heaven’s lightland,

O living Aten, creator of life!

St. 1

Every lion comes from its den,

All the serpents bite;

Darkness hovers, earth is silent,

As their maker rests in lightland.

Earth brightens when you dawn in lightland,

When you shine as Aten of daytime;

As you dispel the dark,

As you cast your rays,

The Two Lands are in festivity.

Awake they stand on their feet,

You have roused them.

St. 2, 3

How many are your deeds,

Though hidden from sight,

O Sole God beside whom there is none!

You made the earth as you wished, you alone.

St. 5

The Epic of Gilgamesh

c. 1300–c. 1000 B.C.E.

From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death. What is there between the master and the servant when both have fulfilled their doom?³

Sec. 4, The Search for the Everlasting Life

I Ching⁴ [The Book of Changes]

c. Twelfth century B.C.E.

The mountain rests on the earth: the image of Splitting Apart. Thus those above can ensure their position only by giving generously to those below.

Bk. I, ch. 23, Po / Splitting Apart

Fire in the lake: the image of Revolution.

I, 49, Ko / Revolution (Molting)

Wind over lake: the image of Inner Truth.

I, 61, Chung Fu / Inner Truth

Amenemope

c. Eleventh century B.C.E.

The truly silent, who keeps apart,

He is like a tree grown in a meadow.

It greens, it doubles its yield,

It stands in front of its lord.

Its fruit is sweet, its shade delightful,

Its end comes in the garden.

The Instruction of Amenemope⁵, ch. 4

Do not set your heart on wealth…

Do not strain to seek increase,

What you have, let it suffice you.

If riches come to you by theft,

They will not stay the night with you.…

They made themselves wings like geese,

And flew away to the sky.

The Instruction of Amenemope, 7

The Holy Bible⁶ The Old Testament⁷

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light:⁸ and there was light.

The First Book of Moses, Called Genesis, chapter 1, verses 1–3

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

1:5

And God saw that it was good.

1:10

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

1:26

Male and female created he them.

1:27

Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

1:28

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made.

2:2

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

2:7

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.

2:8

The tree of life also in the midst of the garden.

2:9

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

2:17

It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

2:18

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman.

2:21–22

Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.

2:23

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

2:24–25

Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field.

3:1

Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

3:5

And they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.¹

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

3:7–8

The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

3:12

What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

3:13–14

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

3:15

In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.

3:16

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

Genesis 3:19–20

So he drove out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

3:24

And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

4:2

Am I my brother’s keeper?

4:9

The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.

4:10

A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

4:12

My punishment is greater than I can bear.

4:13

And the Lord set a mark upon Cain.

4:15

And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod.

4:16

Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents.

4:20

Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.

4:21

Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.

4:22

And Enoch walked with God.

5:24

And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years.

5:27

And Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

5:32

There were giants in the earth in those days… mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

6:4

Make thee an ark of gopher wood.

6:14

And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark.

6:19

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

7:12

But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot.

8:9

And, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off.

8:11

For the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.

8:21

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

8:22

Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

9:6

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

9:13

Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.

10:9

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.

11:9

Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee… for we be brethren.

13:8

Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.

13:12

In a good old age.

15:15

His [Ishmael’s] hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.

16:12

Thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.

17:5

My Lord, if now I have found favor in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant.

18:3

But his [Lot’s] wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

19:26

My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.

22:8

Behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

22:13

Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents.

25:27

And he [Esau] sold his birthright unto Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils.

25:33–34

The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.

27:22

Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing.

27:35

He [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

28:12

Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.

28:16

This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

28:17

Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.

29:20

And Laban said, This heap [of stones] is a witness between me and thee this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed;

And Mizpah; for he said, The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.

31:48–49

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

32:24

I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

32:26

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.

32:30

Behold, this dreamer cometh.

37:19

They stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colors.

37:23

The Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand.

39:3

And she [Potiphar’s wife] caught him by his garment, saying, Lie with me: and he left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out.

39:12

The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one.

And the seven thin and ill-favored kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine.

41:26–27

Then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

42:38

But Benjamin’s mess was five times so much as any of theirs.

43:34

Wherefore have ye rewarded evil for good?

44:4

God forbid.

44:7

The man in whose hand the cup is found, he shall be my servant.

44:17

And he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck.

45:14

And ye shall eat the fat of the land.

45:18

And they came into the land of Goshen.

46:28

But I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their buryingplace. And he said, I will do as thou hast said.

47:30

Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.

49:4

I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.

49:18

Unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills.

49:26

Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

The Second Book of Moses, Called Exodus 1:8

She took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch.

2:3

I have been a stranger in a strange land.

2:22

Behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

3:2

Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

3:5

And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

3:6

A land flowing with milk and honey.

3:8

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.

3:14

I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.

4:10

Let my people go.

5:1

Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick.

5:7

Thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Pharaoh, and it shall become a serpent.

7:9

They [Pharaoh’s wise men] cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.

And he hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

7:12–13

This is the finger of God.

8:19

Darkness which may be felt.

10:21

Yet will I bring one plague more upon Pharaoh, and upon Egypt.

11:1

Your lamb shall be without blemish.

12:5

And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

12:8

And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord’s passover.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord.

12:11–12

This day [Passover] shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations.

12:14

Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread.

12:15

There was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

12:30

Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Exodus 13:3

And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.

13:21

And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.

14:22

I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation.

15:1–2

The Lord is a man of war.

15:3

Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.

15:6

Thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed them as stubble.

And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.

15:7–8

Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, and when we did eat bread to the full.

16:3

It is manna.

16:15

I am the Lord thy God.

20:2¹

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

20:3–4

For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

20:5–7

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work:

But the seventh day… thou shalt not do any work.

20:8–10

Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Thou shalt not kill.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

20:12–17

But let not God speak with us, lest we die.

20:19

He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.

21:12

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

21:24

Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way.

23:20

A stiffnecked people.

32:9

Who is on the Lord’s side? let him come unto me.

32:26

Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

33:20

And he [Moses] was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

34:28

Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is cloven-footed, and cheweth the cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat.

The Third Book of Moses, Called Leviticus 11:3

And the swine… is unclean to you.

Of their flesh shall ye not eat.

11:7–8

Let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.

16:10

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.

And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard, neither shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger.

19:9–10

Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people.

19:16

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.¹

19:18

Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof:² it shall be a jubilee unto you.

25:10

The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:

The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

The Fourth Book of Moses, Called Numbers 6:24–26

Sent to spy out the land.

13:16

And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years.

14:33

Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly.

20:11

He whom thou blessest is blessed.

22:6

The Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee?

22:28

Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!

23:10

God is not a man, that he should lie.

23:19

What hath God wrought!³

23:23

How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!

24:5

Be sure your sin will find you out.

32:23

I call heaven and earth to witness.

The Fifth Book of Moses, Called Deuteronomy 4:26

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.

6:4

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.

6:5–7

Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God.

6:16

The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself.

7:6

Man doth not live by bread only,¹ but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.

8:3

For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land.

8:7

A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;

A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.

8:8–9

A dreamer of dreams.

13:1

The wife of thy bosom.

13:6

The poor shall never cease out of the land.

15:11

Thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor’s standing corn.

23:25

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.

25:4

And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations.

28:37

In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning!

28:67

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God.

29:29

I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

30:19

He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth.

32:4

Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.

32:15

As thy days, so shall thy strength be.

33:25

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

33:27

No man knoweth of his [Moses’] sepulcher unto this day.

34:6

Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

The Book of Joshua 1:9

And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan.

3:17

Mighty men of valor.

6:2

And it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city [Jericho].

6:20

His fame was noised throughout all the country.

Joshua 6:27

Hewers of wood and drawers of water.

9:21

Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.

10:12

Old and stricken in years.

13:1

I am going the way of all the earth.

23:14

They shall be as thorns in your sides.

The Book of Judges 2:3

Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him [Sisera], and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground; for he was fast asleep, and weary: so he died.

4:21

I Deborah arose… I arose a mother in Israel.

5:7

Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive.

5:12

The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.

5:20

She [Jael] brought forth butter in a lordly dish.

5:25

At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.

5:27

The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots?

5:28

Have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two?

5:30

The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.

7:18

Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?

8:2

Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right.

12:6

There was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion.

14:8

Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.

14:14

If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.

14:18

He smote them hip and thigh.

15:8

With the jawbone of an ass… have I slain a thousand men.

15:16

The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.

16:9

The Philistines took him [Samson], and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.

16:21

Strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be… avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

16:28

So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

16:30

From Dan even to Beersheba.

20:1

All the people arose as one man.

20:8

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

21:25

Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

The Book of Ruth 1:16

Let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves.

2:7

Go not empty unto thy mother in law.

3:17

In the flower of their age.

The First Book of Samuel 2:33

The Lord called Samuel: and he answered, Here am I.

3:4

Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.

3:9

Be strong, and quit yourselves like men.

4:9

And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken.

4:21

Is Saul also among the prophets?

10:11

God save the king.

10:24

A man after his own heart.

13:14

Every man’s sword was against his fellow.

14:20

But Jonathan heard not when his father charged the people with the oath: wherefore he put forth the end of the rod that was in his hand, and dipped it in an honeycomb, and put his hand to his mouth; and his eyes were enlightened.

14:27

For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

16:7

I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart.

17:28

Let no man’s heart fail because of him [Goliath].

17:32

Go, and the Lord be with thee.

17:37

And he [David]… chose him five smooth stones out of the brook.

17:40

So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone.

17:50

Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.

18:7

And Jonathan… loved him [David] as he loved his own soul.

20:17

Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked.

24:13

I have played the fool.

26:21

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon.

The Second Book of Samuel 1:20

Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.

1:23

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!

1:25

Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!

1:26–27

Abner… smote him under the fifth rib.

2:23

Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man [Abner] fallen this day in Israel?

3:38

And David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals.

6:5

Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it… and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah.

6:6

David danced before the Lord.

6:14

Tarry at Jericho until your beards be grown.

10:5

Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle.

11:15

The poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb.

12:3

Thou art the man.

12:7

Now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

12:23

For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.

14:14

Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

18:33

The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer.

22:2

David the son of Jesse… the sweet psalmist of Israel.

23:1

Went in jeopardy of their lives.

23:17

A wise and an understanding heart.

The First Book of the Kings 3:12

Many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude.

4:20

Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree.

4:25

He [Solomon] spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five.

4:32

The wisdom of Solomon.

4:34

So that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house,¹ while it was in building.

6:7

A proverb and a byword among all people.

9:7

When the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon… she came to prove him with hard questions.

10:1

The half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard.

10:7

Once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.

10:22

King Solomon loved many strange women.

11:1

My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.

12:11

To your tents, O Israel.

12:16

He [Elijah] went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.

17:5

And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.

17:6

An handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse.

17:12

And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail.

17:16

How long halt ye between two opinions?

18:21

Either he [Baal] is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.

I Kings 18:27

There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.

18:44

And he girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab.

18:46

But the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

19:11–12

Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.

20:11

Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?

21:20

The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.

21:23

But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.

21:25

I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd.

22:17

Feed him [Micajah] with bread of affliction, and with water of affliction, until I come in peace.

22:27

There appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.

The Second Book of the Kings 2:11

The chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more.

2:12

He [Elisha] took up also the mantle of Elijah.

2:13

There is death in the pot.

4:40

Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?

8:13

What hast thou to do with peace? turn thee behind me.

9:18

The driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.

9:20

Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window.

9:30

The angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed.

19:35–36

Set thine house in order.

20:1

I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.

21:13

His mercy endureth for ever.

The First Book of the Chronicles 16:41

The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts.

28:9

Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.

29:11

For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.

29:14

Our days on the earth are as a shadow.

29:15

He [David] died in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honor.

29:28

They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon.

The Book of Nehemiah 4:17

And he [Ezra] read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law.

8:3

Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.

9:17

Mordecai rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes.

The Book of Esther 4:1

The man whom the king delighteth to honor.

6:6

They hanged Haman on the gallows.

7:10

One that feared God, and eschewed evil.

The Book of Job 1:1

Satan came also.

1:6

And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

1:7

Doth Job fear God for nought?

1:9

And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

1:15

Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

1:21

Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.

2:4

Curse God, and die.

2:9

Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.

3:3

For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves.

3:13–14

There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

3:17

Who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?

4:7

Fear came upon me, and trembling.

4:14

Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.

4:15

Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?

4:17

Wrath killeth the foolish man, and envy slayeth the silly one.

5:2

Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

5:7

He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

5:13

For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field: and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.

5:23

Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.

5:26

How forcible are right words!

6:25

My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.

7:6

He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.

7:10

I would not live alway: let me alone: for my days are vanity.

7:16

But how should man be just with God?

9:2

The land of darkness and the shadow of death.

10:21

Canst thou by searching find out God?

11:7

And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday.

11:17

No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.

12:2

The just upright man is laughed to scorn.

12:4

But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee:

Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.

12:7–8

With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding.

12:12

He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.

12:22

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.

13:15

Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.

He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.

14:1–2

But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

14:10

If a man die, shall he live again?

14:14

Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind?

15:2

Miserable comforters are ye all.

16:2

My days are past.

17:11

I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister.

17:14

The king of terrors.

18:14

I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.

19:20

Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!

19:23

I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:¹

And though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

19:25–26

Seeing the root of the matter is found in me.

19:28

Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under his tongue.

20:12

Suffer me that I may speak; and after that I have spoken, mock on.

21:3

Shall any teach God knowledge?

21:22

They are of those that rebel against the light.

24:13

The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered.

24:20

Yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?

Job 25:5–6

But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?

28:12

The land of the living.

28:13

The price of wisdom is above rubies.

28:18

Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.

28:28

I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.

29:13

I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.

29:15

I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.

30:23

I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.

30:29

My desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book.

31:35

Great men are not always wise.

32:9

For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.

32:18

One among a thousand.

33:23

Far be it from God, that he should do wickedness.

34:10

He multiplieth words without knowledge.

35:16

Fair weather cometh out of the north.

37:22

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up now thy loins like a man.

38:1–3

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

38:4

The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

38:7

Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.

38:11

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?

38:16

Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?

38:28

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?

38:31

Canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?

38:32

Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven.

38:37

Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?

39:19

He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men.

39:21

He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.

He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

39:24–25

Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?

She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place.

From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off.

Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.

39:27–30

Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee?

40:4

Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.

40:15

Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?

41:1

Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.

His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.

41:14–15

His heart is as firm as a stone; yea as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

41:24

He maketh the deep to boil like a pot.

41:31

Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.

41:33

He is a king over all the children of pride.

41:34

I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.

42:5

So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning.

42:12

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

The Book of Psalms 1:1–4

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2:1

Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

2:12

Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.

4:6

I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep.

4:8

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies; that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.

8:2–5

How excellent is thy name in all the earth.

8:9

Flee as a bird to your mountain.

11:1

How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord?

13:1

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.

14:1 and 53:1

Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

15:1

He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.

15:4

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.

16:6

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.

17:8

He rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

18:10

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.

19:1–2

Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,

Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.

His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.

19:4–6

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

19:9–10

Cleanse thou me from secret faults.

19:12

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

19:14

Thou hast given him his heart’s desire.

21:2

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?¹ why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

22:1

They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

22:18

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

23

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

24:1–4

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.

24:7

Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.

24:10

The Lord is my light² and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

27:1

Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.

27:3

The Lord is my strength and my shield.

28:7

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

29:2

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

Psalms 30:5

I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.

31:12

My times are in thy hand.

31:15

From the strife of tongues.

31:20

Sing unto him a new song; play skillfully with a loud noise.

33:3

O taste and see that the Lord is good.

34:8

Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.

34:13–14

Rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions.

35:17

How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God!

36:7

The meek shall inherit the earth.

37:11

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

37:25

I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself³ like a green bay tree.

37:35

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

37:37

For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore.

38:2

I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.

39:1

My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned.

39:3

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.

39:4

Every man at his best state is altogether vanity.

39:5

Surely every man walketh in a vain show: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.

39:6

For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.

O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.

39:12–13

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.

42:1–2

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me?

42:5

Deep calleth unto deep.

42:7

My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

45:1

The king’s daughter is all glorious within.

45:13

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

46:1–2

There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.

46:4–5

Be still, and know that I am God.

46:10

Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

50:10

I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

51:5¹

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

51:7

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

51:10

And take not thy holy spirit from me.

51:11

Open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.

51:15

A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

51:17

Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.

55:6

We took sweet counsel together.

55:14

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.

55:21

They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear;

Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.

58:4–5

Thou hast showed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.

60:3

Moab is my washpot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe: Philistia, triumph thou because of me.

60:8

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

61:2

He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defense; I shall not be moved.

62:6

Thou renderest to every man according to his work.

62:12

My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.

63:1

Thou crownest the year with thy goodness.

65:11

Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands.

66:1

We went through fire and through water.

66:12

God setteth the solitary in families.

68:6

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.

71:9

He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.

72:6

His enemies shall lick the dust.

72:9

His name shall endure for ever.

72:17

A stubborn and rebellious generation.

78:8

Man did eat angels’ food.

78:25

But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

82:7

How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!

84:1

They go from strength to strength.

84:7

A day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

84:10

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

85:10

Lord, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?

88:14

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

90:1–6

We spend our years as a tale that is told.

90:9

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

90:10

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

90:12

Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

90:17

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.

Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

91:1–7

He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

91:11–13

The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

92:12

Mightier than the noise of many waters.

93:4

O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.

For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.

In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.

The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker.

For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

Psalms 95:1–7

O sing unto the Lord a new song.

96:1

The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.

97:1

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

100

My days are consumed like smoke.

102:3

I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

102:7

As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.

103:11

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

103:15–16

Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind.

104:3

Wine that maketh glad the heart of man.

104:15

The cedars of Lebanon.

104:16

He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.

Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.

The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.

The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.

Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening.

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.

There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.

These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season.

104:19–27

The people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.

105:40

Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

107:10

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.

107:23

They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths.

107:26

They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.

107:27

For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.

I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust.

109:22–23

Thou hast the dew of thy youth.

110:3

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

111:10

From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord’s name is to be praised.

113:3

The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.

114:4

They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not.

They have ears, but they hear not.

115:5–6

I said in my haste, All men are liars.

116:11

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.

116:15

The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

118:22

This is the day which the Lord hath made.

118:24

Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

118:26

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

119:105

I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.

120:7

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

121

I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.

122:1

Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.

122:7

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

126:5–6

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.

127:1

He giveth his beloved sleep.

127:2

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.

127:4–5

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.

130:1

My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning.

130:6

I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids.

132:4

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

133:1

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

137:1–6

O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thought afar off.

139:1–2

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

139:7–10

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

139:12

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

139:14

They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent.

140:3

Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.

145:16

The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.

145:18

Put not your trust in princes.

146:3

He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.

147:4

Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.

Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.

Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.

Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.

150:3–6

To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.

The Proverbs 1:4

My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.

1:10

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets.

1:20

Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honor.

3:16

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

3:17

Be not afraid of sudden fear.

3:25

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

4:7

The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

4:18

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

4:23

The lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

5:3–4

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:

Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,

Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

Proverbs 6:6–8

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:

So shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, and thy want as an armed man.

6:10–11

Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.

6:25

Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?

6:27–28

Jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.

6:34

He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter.

7:22

I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.

8:17

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.

9:1

Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee: rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.

9:8

Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

9:17

A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

10:1

Blessings are upon the head of the just: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked.

The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.

10:6–7

Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.

10:12

In the multitude of counsellors there is safety.

He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it.

11:14–15

He that trusteth in his riches shall fall.

11:28

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.

11:29

A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.

12:4

A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

12:10

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.

12:15

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.

13:12

The way of transgressors is hard.

13:15

The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul.

13:19

He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

13:24

The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.

14:10

Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful.

14:13

The prudent man looketh well to his going.

14:15

In all labor there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.

14:23

Righteousness exalteth a nation.

14:34

A soft answer turneth away wrath.

15:1

A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.

15:13

He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.

Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.

15:15–17

A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife.

15:18

A word spoken in due season, how good is it!

15:23

Before honor is humility.

15:33 and 18:12

A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.

16:9

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

16:18

The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

16:31–32

Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker.

17:5

He that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.

17:9

Whoso rewardeth evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house.

17:13

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

17:22

He that hath knowledge spareth his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit.

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise.

17:27–28

A fool’s mouth is his destruction.

18:7

A wounded spirit who can bear?

18:14

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.

18:19

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.

18:22

A man that hath friends must show himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

18:24

Wealth maketh many friends.

19:4

A foolish son is the calamity of his father: and the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.

19:13

He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord.

19:17

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging.

20:1

It is an honor for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling.

20:3

Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them.

20:11–12

It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer: but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth.

20:14

Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.

20:17

Meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips.

20:19

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.

21:9 and 25:24

A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.

22:1

Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

22:6

The borrower is servant to the lender.

22:7

Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge.

For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they shall withal be fitted in thy lips.

22:17–18

Rob not the poor, because he is poor: neither oppress the afflicted in the gate.

22:22

Remove not the ancient landmark.

22:28

Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.

22:29

Labor not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.

23:4

Riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.

23:5

As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

23:7

The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

23:21

Despise not thy mother when she is old.

23:22

Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

23:31–32

A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength.

24:5

If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.

24:10

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.

25:11

If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink:

For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.

25:21–22

As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.

25:25

For men to search their own glory is not glory.

25:27

Answer a fool according to his folly.

26:5

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.

The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets.

26:11–13

Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.

26:27

Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

27:1

Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth.

27:2

Open rebuke is better than secret love.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.

Proverbs 27:5–6

To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.

27:7

Better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.

27:10

Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

27:17

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.

28:1

He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.

28:20

He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.

28:26

He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack.

28:27

A fool uttereth all his mind.

29:11

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

29:18

A man’s pride shall bring him low: but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit.

29:23

Give me neither poverty nor riches.

30:8

Accuse not a servant unto his master.

30:10

There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not:

The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.

30:18–19

Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.

Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.

31:6–7

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her.

31:10–11

Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.

31:23

Strength and honor are her clothing.

31:25

In her tongue is the law of kindness.

She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.

Her children arise up, and call her blessed.

31:26–28

Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.

Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.

Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

31:29–31

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

The sun also ariseth.

Ecclesiastes; or, The Preacher 1:2–5

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

1:7

The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

1:8

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

1:9

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

1:11

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

1:14–15

In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

1:18

Wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.

2:13

One event happeneth to them all.

2:14

How dieth the wise man? as the fool.

2:16

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

3:1–8

Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.

4:2

Better is a handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.

4:6

A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

4:12

Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king.

4:13

God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.

5:2

Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

5:5

The sleep of a laboring man is sweet… but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.

5:12

As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor, which he may carry away in his hand.

5:15

A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.

7:1

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting.

7:2

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

7:4

As the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool.

7:6

Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.

7:8

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

7:14

Be not righteous over much.

7:16

There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.

7:20

And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands.

7:26

One man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.

7:28

God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

7:29

There is no discharge in that war.

8:8

A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.¹

8:15

A living dog is better than a dead lion.

For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

9:4–5

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

9:10

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.

9:11–12

A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.

10:19

A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.

10:20

Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.

11:1

He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.

11:4

In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand.

11:6

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth.

11:9

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,

And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low.

12:1–4

The almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail; because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

12:5–7

The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies.

Ecclesiastes 12:11

Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

12:12–14

The song of songs, which is Solomon’s.

The Song of Solomon 1:1

I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

1:5

O thou fairest among women.

1:8

I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

2:1

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.

2:3

His banner over me was love.

Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.

2:4–5

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

2:10–12

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.

2:15

Until the day break, and the shadows flee away.

2:17 and 4:6

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.

3:1

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.

4:5

Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.

4:7

How much better is thy love than wine!

4:10

Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

4:16

My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.

5:4

His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

5:16

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?

6:10

Return, return, O Shulamite.

6:13

Thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.

7:2

Thy neck is as a tower of ivory.

7:4

Like the best wine… that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.

7:9

I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.

7:10

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.

8:6

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

8:7

Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

8:14

The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.

The Book of the Prophet Isaiah 1:3

The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

1:5

As a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.

1:8

Bring no more vain oblations.

1:13

And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.

1:15

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

Come now, and let us reason together… though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

1:17–18

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.¹

2:4

In that day a man shall cast his idols… to the moles and to the bats.

2:20

Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils.

2:22

The stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water.

3:1

What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces and grind the faces of the poor?

3:15

Walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet.

3:16

In that day seven women shall take hold of one man.

4:1

My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill.

5:1

And he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!

5:7–8

Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink.

5:11

Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope.

5:18

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.

5:20

I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

6:1–2

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

6:3

Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

6:5

I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

6:8

Then said I, Lord, how long?

6:11

Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

7:14

For a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offense.

8:14

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

9:2

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.

9:6–7

The ancient and honorable, he is the head.

9:15

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

11:1–2

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.

11:6–9

For the Lord JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.

12:2

And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.

13:11

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!

14:12

Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms.

14:16

The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters.

17:13

And they shall fight every one against his brother.

19:2

The burden of the desert of the sea. As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it cometh from the desert, from a terrible land.

21:1

Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.

21:9

Watchman, what of the night?

21:11

Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.¹

22:13

I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place.

22:23

Whose merchants are princes.

23:8

As with the maid, so with her mistress.

24:2

For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress.

25:4

A feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees.

Isaiah 25:6

He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces.

25:8

Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.

26:2–3

Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust.

26:19

Hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

26:20

Leviathan that crooked serpent… the dragon that is in the sea.

27:1

For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little.

28:10

We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.

28:15

It shall be a vexation only to understand the report.

28:19

They are drunken, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink.

29:9

Their strength is to sit still.

Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.

30:7–8

The bread of adversity, and the water of affliction.

30:20

This is the way, walk ye in it.

30:21

Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness.

32:1

And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadows of a great rock in a weary land.

32:2

An habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.

34:13

The desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

35:1

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.

35:5–6

Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

35:10

Thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed.

36:6

Incline thine ear, O Lord, and hear.

37:17

I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.

38:15

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.

40:1

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

40:2–3

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.

40:4

The voice said, Cry. And he said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.

40:6

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

40:8

Get thee up into the high mountain… say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!

40:9

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.

40:11

The nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance.

40:15

Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning?

40:21

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk, and not faint.

40:31

They helped every one his neighbor; and every one said to his brother, Be of good courage.

41:6

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.

42:3

Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?

45:9

Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.

48:10

O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.

48:18

There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.

48:22

Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion.

51:11

Thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling.

51:17

Therefore hear now this.

51:21

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace.

52:7

They shall see eye to eye.

52:8

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

53:3

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.

53:4

All we like sheep have gone astray.

53:6

He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.

53:7

Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.

55:1

Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people.

55:4

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.

55:7

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

55:8

Peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near.

57:19

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

60:1

A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation.

60:22

Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

61:3

I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.

63:3

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf.

64:6

We all are the work of thy hand.

64:8

I am holier than thou.

65:5

For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.

65:17

And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them.

They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat.

65:21–22

As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.

66:13

They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbor’s wife.

The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah 5:8

Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.

5:21

But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart.

5:23

Saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

6:14 and 8:11

Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein.

6:16

Amend your ways and your doings.

7:3 and 26:13

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

8:20

Is there no balm in Gilead?

8:22

Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men!

9:2

Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:

But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me.

9:23–24

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?

13:23

Our backslidings are many; we have sinned against thee.

14:7

Her sun is gone down while it was yet day.

15:9

A man of strife and a man of contention.

15:10

The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond.

17:1

Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.

For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

17:5–8

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Jeremiah 17:9

As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.

17:11

Thou art my hope in the day of evil.

17:17

O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.

22:29

A curse, and an astonishment, and a hissing, and a reproach.

29:18

The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.

31:29

With my whole heart and with my whole soul.

32:41

And seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not.

45:5

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow!

The Lamentations of Jeremiah 1:1

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her.

1:2

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.

1:12

Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

3:19

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

3:27

As it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel 1:16

As is the mother, so is her daughter.

16:44

The king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way.

21:21

The valley… was full of bones… and lo, they were very dry.

37:1–2

Can these bones live?

37:3

O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

37:4

Every man’s sword shall be against his brother.

38:21

His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.

The Book of Daniel 2:33

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.

3:23

Nebuchadnezzar… was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen.

4:33

Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords.

5:1

And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.

TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

5:25–28

According to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.

6:12

They brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions.

6:16

So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God.

6:23

The Ancient of days.

7:9 and 7:13

Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

12:4

Ye are the sons of the living God.

Hosea 1:10

Like people, like priest.

4:9

After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.

6:2

He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

6:3

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

6:6

They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

8:7

Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity.

10:13

I drew them with… bands of love.

11:4

I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.

12:10

I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction.¹

13:14

Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

Joel 2:28

Multitudes in the valley of decision.

3:14

They sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes.

Amos 2:6

Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

3:3

Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.

6:1

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Jonah 1:17

What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Micah 6:8

The faces of them all gather blackness.²

Nahum 2:10

Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

Habakkuk 2:2

The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.

2:11

The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.

2:20

Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?

Zechariah 1:5

I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven.

2:6

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.

4:6

For who hath despised the day of small things?

4:10

Behold, thy King cometh unto thee… lowly, and riding upon an ass.

9:9

Prisoners of hope.

9:12

So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

11:12

What are these wounds in thine hands?… Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

13:6

Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?

Malachi 2:10

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.

3:1

Behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven.

4:1

Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.

4:2

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

4:5

The Apocrypha¹

And when they are in their cups, they forget their love both to friends and brethren, and a little after draw out swords.

I Esdras 3:22

Great is Truth, and mighty above all things.²

4:41

What is past I know, but what is for to come I know not.

II Esdras 4:46

Now therefore keep thy sorrow to thyself, and bear with a good courage that which hath befallen thee.

10:15

I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out.

14:25

If thou hast abundance, give alms accordingly: if thou have but a little, be not afraid to give according to that little.

Tobit 4:8

Put on her garments of gladness.

Judith 10:3

The ear of jealousy heareth all things.

The Wisdom of Solomon 1:10

Our time is a very shadow that passeth away.

2:5

Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds, before they be withered.³

2:8

For God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity.

Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world.

2:23–24

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them.

In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery,

And their going from us to be utter destruction: but they are in peace.

For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality.

And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.

Solomon 3:1–5

Even so we in like manner, as soon as we were born, began to draw to our end.

5:13

For the hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away with the wind… and passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day.

5:14

For the very true beginning of her [wisdom] is the desire of discipline; and the care of discipline is love.

6:17

And when I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature; and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do.

7:3

All men have one entrance into life, and the like going out.

7:6

The light that cometh from her [wisdom] never goeth out.

7:10

Who can number the sand of the sea, and the drops of rain, and the days of eternity?

The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, 1:2

To whom hath the root of wisdom been revealed?

1:6

For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, long-suffering, and very pitiful, and forgiveth sins, and saveth in time of affliction.

2:11

The greater thou art, the more humble thyself.

3:18

Many are in high place, and of renown: but mysteries are revealed unto the meek.

3:19

Seek not out the things that are too hard for thee, neither search the things that are above thy strength.

3:21

Be not curious in unnecessary matters: for more things are showed unto thee than men understand.

3:23

Profess not the knowledge… that thou hast not.

A stubborn heart shall fare evil at the last.

3:25–26

Defraud not the poor of his living, and make not the needy eyes to wait long.

4:1

Wisdom exalteth her children, and layeth hold of them that seek her.

He that loveth her loveth life.

4:11–12

Observe the opportunity.

4:20

Be not as a lion in thy house, nor frantic among thy servants.

Let not thine hand be stretched out to receive, and shut when thou shouldest repay.

4:30–31

Set not thy heart upon thy goods; and say not, I have enough for my life.

5:1

Winnow not with every wind, and go not into every way.

5:9

Let thy life be sincere.

5:11

If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first.

6:7

A faithful friend is a strong defense: and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure.

6:14

A faithful friend is the medicine of life.

6:16

If thou seest a man of understanding, get thee betimes unto him, and let thy foot wear the steps of his door.

6:36

Whatsoever thou takest in hand, remember the end, and thou shalt never do amiss.

7:36

Rejoice not over thy greatest enemy being dead, but remember that we die all.

8:7

Miss not the discourse of the elders.

8:9

Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.

9:10

Pride is hateful before God and man.

10:7

He that is today a king tomorrow shall die.

10:10

Pride was not made for men, nor furious anger for them that are born of a woman.

10:18

Be not overwise in doing thy business.

10:26

Many kings have sat down upon the ground; and one that was never thought of hath worn the crown.

11:5

In the day of prosperity there is a forgetfulness of affliction: and in the day of affliction there is no more remembrance of prosperity.

11:25

Judge none blessed before his death.

11:28

A friend cannot be known in prosperity: and an enemy cannot be hidden in adversity.

12:8

He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.

13:1

How agree the kettle and the earthen pot together?

13:2

All flesh consorteth according to kind, and a man will cleave to his like.

13:16

A rich man beginning to fall is held up of his friends: but a poor man being down is thrust also away by his friends.

13:21

The heart of a man changeth his countenance, whether it be for good or evil.

13:25

So is a word better than a gift.

18:16

Be not made a beggar by banqueting upon borrowing.

18:33

He that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little.

19:1

Whether it be to friend or foe, talk not of other men’s lives.

19:8

A man’s attire, and excessive laughter, and gait, show what he is.

19:30

A tale out of season [is as] music in mourning.

22:6

I will not be ashamed to defend a friend.

22:25

Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.

28:18

Better is the life of a poor man in a mean cottage, than delicate fare in another man’s house.

29:22

There is no riches above a sound body.

30:16

Gladness of the heart is the life of a man, and the joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days.

30:22

Envy and wrath shorten the life, and carefulness bringeth age before the time.

30:24

Watching for riches consumeth the flesh, and the care thereof driveth away sleep.

31:1

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words.

32:8

Consider that I labored not for myself only, but for all them that seek learning.

33:17

Leave not a stain in thine honor.

33:22

Let the counsel of thine own heart stand.

37:13

Honor a physician with the honor due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him: for the Lord hath created him.

38:1

When the dead is at rest, let his remembrance rest; and be comforted for him, when his spirit is departed from him.

38:23

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.

44:1

All these were honored in their generations, and were the glory of their times.

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.

And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.

44:7–9

Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.

44:14

His word burned like a lamp.

48:1

O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and exalt him above all for ever.

The Song of the Three Holy Children 35

Daniel had convicted them of false witness by their own mouth.

The History of Susanna 61

It is a foolish thing to make a long prologue, and to be short in the story itself.

The Second Book of the Maccabees 2:32

When he was at the last gasp.

7:9

Speech finely framed delighteth the ears.

15:39

The New Testament¹

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1:23

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

2:1–2

They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and… they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

2:11–12

Out of Egypt have I called my son.

Matthew 2:15

Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

2:18

He shall be called a Nazarene.

2:23

Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

3:2

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

3:3

And his meat was locusts and wild honey.

3:4

O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

3:7

Now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

3:10

The Spirit of God descending like a dove.

3:16

This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

3:17

And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

4:2

The people which sat in darkness saw great light.

4:16

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

4:19

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

5:3–11²

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?

5:13

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.

5:14–17

Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

5:18

Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.

5:28–30

Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne:

Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool.

5:34–35

Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

5:39

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

5:44

He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

5:45

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

5:48

When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.

6:3

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.¹

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

6:9–13

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

6:19–20

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

6:21

The light of the body is the eye.

6:22

If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

6:23

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

6:24

Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns.

6:25–26

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

6:27

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.

6:28

Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

6:29

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

6:33

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

6:34

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

7:1

With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

7:2–3

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye.

7:5

Neither cast ye your pearls before swine.

7:6

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

7:7

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?

7:9

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.²

7:12

Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

7:13–14

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

7:15

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

7:16

By their fruits ye shall know them.

7:20

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

7:21

[The house] fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

7:25

A foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.

7:26

But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

8:12

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

8:20

Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.

8:22

Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?

8:26

He saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom.

9:9

They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

9:12

I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

9:13

Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?

9:15

Neither do men put new wine into old bottles.

9:17

The maid is not dead, but sleepeth.

9:24

The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.

9:37

Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

10:6

Freely ye have received, freely give.

10:8

Whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.

10:14

Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

Matthew 10:16

Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.

10:22

The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.

10:24

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

10:29–30

I came not to send peace, but a sword.

10:34

He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.

He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

10:38–39

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

11:15

The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.

11:19

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

11:28–30

He that is not with me is against me.

12:30

The tree is known by his fruit.

12:33

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

12:34

Behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

12:42

Some seeds fell by the way side.

13:4

Because they had no root, they withered away.

13:6

But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

13:8

The care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches.

13:22

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed.

13:31

Pearl of great price.

13:46

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind.

13:47

Is not this the carpenter’s son?

13:55

A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.

13:57

[Salome] the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod.

14:6

Give me here John Baptist’s head in a charger.

14:8

We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.

14:17

And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.

14:20

And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.

14:25

Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.

14:27

O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

14:31

Of a truth thou art the Son of God.

14:33

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

15:11

They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

15:14

The dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.

15:27

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.

16:2

The signs of the times.

16:3

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

16:16

Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

16:18–19

Get thee behind me, Satan.

16:23

Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

16:25–26

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

18:3

He rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.

18:13

Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

18:20

Until seventy times seven.

18:22

What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

19:6

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.

19:21

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

19:24

Many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.

19:30

Borne the burden and heat of the day.

20:12

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?

20:15

Overthrew the tables of the moneychangers.

21:12

My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

21:13

They made light of it.

22:5

Many are called, but few are chosen.

22:14

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

22:21

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.¹

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

22:37–40

Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

23:12

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin.

23:23

Blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

23:24

Whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones.

23:27

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

23:37

Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nation shall rise against nation.

24:6–7

Abomination of desolation.

24:15

Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

24:28

And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet.

24:31

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

24:35

The one shall be taken, and the other left.

24:40

Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.

And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.

25:1–2

Well done, thou good and faithful servant… enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

25:21

Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

25:29

Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness.

25:30

And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.

25:32

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

25:35–36

Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

25:40

There came unto him [Jesus] a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

26:7

To what purpose is this waste?

26:8

For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

26:11

What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.

26:15

My time is at hand.

26:18

Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

26:21

And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?

Matthew 26:22

It had been good for that man [Judas] if he had not been born.

26:24

Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it;

For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.

26:26–29

My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.

26:38

O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.

26:39

Could ye not watch with me one hour?

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

26:40–41

Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

26:45

He came to Jesus, and said, Hail, Master; and kissed him.

26:49

All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

26:52

Thy speech bewrayeth thee.

26:73

Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew.

And Peter remembered the word of Jesus… Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.¹ And he went out, and wept bitterly.

26:74–75

The potter’s field, to bury strangers in.

27:7

Have thou nothing to do with that just man.

27:19

Let him be crucified.

27:22

[Pilate] took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

27:24

His blood be on us, and on our children.

27:25

A place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull.

27:33

This is Jesus the King of the Jews.

27:37

He saved others; himself he cannot save.

27:42

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?¹

27:46

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.

27:51

His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.

28:3

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

28:19

Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.

28:20

There cometh one mightier than I [John the Baptist] after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

The Gospel According to Saint Mark 1:7

Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk.

2:9

The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.

2:27

If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

3:25

The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

4:28

What manner of man is this?

4:41

My name is Legion: for we are many.

5:9

And the unclean spirits went out, and entered the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea… and were choked in the sea.

5:13

Clothed, and in his right mind.

5:15

My little daughter lieth at the point of death.

5:23

Knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him.

5:30

I see men as trees, walking.

8:24

Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

9:24

Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.

10:14

Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers.

12:40

And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites.

12:42

Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:

Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.

13:35–36

He is risen.

16:6

Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

16:15

Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.

The Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:28

For with God nothing shall be impossible.

1:37

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

1:42

My soul doth magnify the Lord.

1:46

For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

1:48

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.

1:51–52

He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

1:53

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people.

1:68

As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began:

That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us.

1:70–71

Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

1:78–79

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

2:7

There were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

2:8–11

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

2:14

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.

2:29

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

2:32

Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

2:49

Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

2:52

[The devil] showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

4:5

For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:

And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

4:10–11

Physician, heal thyself.

4:23

Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!

6:26

Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.

7:47

And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

7:50

Nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest.

8:17

No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.

9:62

Nor scrip, nor shoes.

10:4

Peace be to this house.

10:5

The laborer is worthy of his hire.

10:7

I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

10:18

Many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

10:24

A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves.

10:30

A certain Samaritan… had compassion on him.

10:33

Go, and do thou likewise.

10:37

But Martha was cumbered about much serving.

10:40

But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Luke 10:42

This is an evil generation: they seek a sign.

11:29

Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

12:19

Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.

12:20

Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning.

12:35

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

12:48

The poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.

14:21

Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

14:28

Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.

15:6

[The prodigal son] wasted his substance with riotous living.

15:13

Bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it.

15:23

For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

15:24

Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.

15:31

What shall I do?… I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.

16:3

The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

16:8

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.

16:10

The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.

16:22

Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.

16:26

It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea.

17:2

The kingdom of God is within you.

17:21

Remember Lot’s wife.

17:32

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

18:10

God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.

18:11

God be merciful to me a sinner.

18:13

Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee.

19:22

If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.

19:40

He is not a God of the dead, but of the living.

20:38

In your patience possess ye your souls.

21:19

The Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

21:27

This do in remembrance of me.

22:19

Not my will, but thine, be done.

22:42

For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

23:31

The place, which is called Calvary.

23:33

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

23:34

Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

23:42

To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

23:43

Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

23:46

He gave up the ghost.

23:46

He was a good man, and a just.

23:50

Why seek ye the living among the dead?

24:5

Their words seemed to them as idle tales.

24:11

Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us?

24:32

The Lord is risen indeed.

24:34

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Gospel According to Saint John 1:1

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

1:5

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

1:6

The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

1:9

The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.

1:14

No man hath seen God at any time.

1:18

Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

1:29

Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?

1:46

Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

1:51

Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

2:4

The water that was made wine.

2:9

This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.

2:11

When he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple.

2:15

Make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.

2:16

Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

3:3

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

3:8

How can these things be?

3:9

God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

3:16

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.

4:7

The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

4:23

He was a burning and a shining light.

5:35

Search the scriptures.

5:39

What are they among so many?

6:9

Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.

6:12

I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

6:35

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.

6:63

Judge not according to the appearance.

7:24

Never man spake like this man.

7:46

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

8:7

Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

8:11

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

8:12

The truth shall make you free.

8:32

Ye are of your father the devil… there is no truth in him.… he is a liar, and the father of it.

8:44

I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

9:4

Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.

9:25

I am the door.

10:9

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

10:10

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

10:11

Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.

10:16

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

11:25–26

Jesus wept.

11:35

It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people.

11:50

Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him,

Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

12:4–5

Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

12:35

That thou doest, do quickly.

13:27

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another.

13:34

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

14:1–2

I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

14:3

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

14:6

I will not leave you comfortless.

14:18

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

14:27

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.

15:16

Whither goest thou?¹

16:5

Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.

16:24

Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

16:33

Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?

18:38

Now Barabbas was a robber.

18:40

Behold the man!²

19:5

Woman, behold thy son!

19:26

It is finished.

19:30

Touch me not.³

20:17

Then saith he to Thomas… be not faithless, but believing.

20:27

Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

20:29

Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.

The Acts of the Apostles 2:2

There appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues.

2:3–4

Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee.

3:6

And distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

4:35

If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought:

But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.

5:38–39

Thy money perish with thee.

8:20

In the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.

8:23

Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.

9:1

Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

9:4

It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

9:5

He is a chosen vessel unto me.

9:15

Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales.

9:18

What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

10:15

God is no respecter of persons.

10:34

The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.

14:11

We also are men of like passions with you.

14:15

Come over into Macedonia, and help us.

16:9

Certain lewd fellows of the baser sort.

17:5

Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

17:22–23

God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.

17:24–26

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

17:28

Your blood be upon your own heads.

18:6

And Gallio, cared for none of those things.

18:17

Mighty in the Scriptures.

18:24

We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.

19:2

All with one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.

19:34

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

20:35

I [Paul] am… a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.

21:39

Brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel.

22:3

And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, But I was free born.

22:28

God shall smite thee, thou whited wall.

23:3

Revilest thou God’s high priest?

23:4

I [Paul] am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.

23:6

A conscience void of offense toward God, and toward men.

24:16

When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.

24:25

I appeal unto Caesar.

25:11

Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

26:24

I am not mad… but speak forth the words of truth and soberness.

26:25

For this thing was not done in a corner.

26:26

Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.

26:28

Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself.

The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans 2:1

These, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.

2:14

The things that are more excellent.

2:18

Where no law is, there is no transgression.

4:15

Who against hope believed in hope.

4:18

Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

5:20

Death hath no more dominion over him.

6:9

I speak after the manner of men.

6:19

The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life.

6:23

The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

7:19

Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

7:24

Heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.

8:17

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

8:22

All things work together for good to them that love God.

8:28

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

8:29–30

If God be for us, who can be against us?

8:31

Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.

8:33

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

8:35

Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

8:38–39

Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?

9:21

For who hath known the mind of the Lord?

11:34

I beseech you therefore, brethren… that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

12:1

Let love be without dissimulation.

12:9

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.

12:10

Given to hospitality.

12:13

Be not wise in your own conceits.

Recompense to no man evil for evil.

12:16–17

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

12:18

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

12:19

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

12:21

The powers that be are ordained of God.

13:1

Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

Owe no man anything, but to love one another.

13:7–8

Love is the fulfilling of the law.

13:10

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.

Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.

But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.¹

13:12–14

Doubtful disputations.

14:1

Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.

Romans 14:5

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.

14:7–8

Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace.

14:19

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.

15:1

God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 1:27

As it is written,² Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.

2:9

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.

3:6

We are laborers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry.

3:9

Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

3:13

For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

3:17

We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.

4:9

Absent in body, but present in spirit.

5:3

A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

5:6

For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

5:7

It is better to marry than to burn.

7:9

The fashion of this world passeth away.

7:31

Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.

8:1

I am made all things to all men.

9:22

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?

9:24

Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

10:12

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.

10:23

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.

10:26

If a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her.

11:15

Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

11:24

This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

11:25

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity,¹ I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

13:1

Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

13:2–4

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth.

13:7–8

We know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

13:9–13

If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

14:8

Let all things be done decently and in order.

14:40

And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God I am what I am.

15:8–10

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

15:20–22

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

15:26

Evil communications corrupt good manners.

15:33

Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.

15:36

One star differeth from another star in glory.

15:41

It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.

15:42

The first man is of the earth, earthy.

15:47

Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

15:51–53

Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

15:54–55

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

16:13

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.

16:22

Not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians 3:6

Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech.

3:12

The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

4:18

We walk by faith, not by sight.

5:7

Now is the accepted time.

6:2

By honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report.

6:8

As having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

6:10

God loveth a cheerful giver.

9:7

Though I be rude in speech.

11:6

For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.

11:19

Forty stripes save one.

11:24

A thorn in the flesh.

12:7

My strength is made perfect in weakness.

12:9

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.

13:14

The right hands of fellowship.

The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians 2:9

Weak and beggarly elements.

4:9

It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing.

4:18

Ye are fallen from grace.

5:4

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

5:17

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

Meekness, temperance.

5:22–23

Every man shall bear his own burden.

6:5

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

6:7

Let us not be weary in well doing.

6:9

To be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.

The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians 3:16

Carried about with every wind of doctrine.

4:14

We are members one of another.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

4:25–26

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

5:19

Put on the whole armor of God.

6:11

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

6:12–13

To live is Christ, and to die is gain.

The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians 1:21

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

2:12

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

2:13

This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark.

3:13–14

Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

3:19

The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

4:7

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

4:8

I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

4:11

By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible… all things were created by him, and for him:

And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians 1:16–17

Touch not; taste not; handle not.

2:21

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.

3:2

Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.

3:11

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.

3:21

Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt.

4:6

Luke, the beloved physician.

4:14

Labor of love.

The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians 1:3

Study to be quiet, and to do your own business.

4:11

The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

5:2

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

5:5

Putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.

5:8

Pray without ceasing.

5:17

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

5:21

The law is good, if a man use it lawfully.

The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy 1:8

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

1:15

For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?

3:5

Not greedy of filthy lucre.

3:8

Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.

4:2

Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.

4:4

Refuse profane and old wives’ fables.

4:7

Let them learn first to show piety at home.

5:4

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

5:8

They learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.

5:13

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.

5:23

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

6:7

The love of money is the root of all evil.¹

6:10

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life.

6:12

Rich in good works.

6:18

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.

6:20

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

The Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy 1:7

A workman that needeth not to be ashamed.

2:15

Be instant in season, out of season.

4:2

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.

4:7

The Lord reward him according to his works.

4:14

Unto the pure all things are pure.

The Epistle of Paul to Titus 1:15

Making mention of thee always in my prayers.

The Epistle of Paul to Philemon 1:4

Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.

The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews 1:7

The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

4:12

Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age.

5:14

They crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

6:6

Without shedding of blood is no remission.

9:22

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

11:1

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses… let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.

12:1–2

Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.

12:6

The spirits of just men made perfect.

12:23

Let brotherly love continue.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

13:1–2

The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.

13:6

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

13:8

For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.

13:14

To do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

13:16

Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.

The General Epistle of James 1:4–5

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

1:8

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life.

1:12

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

1:17

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

1:19–20

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.

1:22

Unspotted from the world.

1:27

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

2:26

How great a matter a little fire kindleth!

3:5

The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil.

3:8

This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.

3:15

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

4:7

What is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

4:14

Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

5:7

Ye have heard of the patience of Job.

5:11

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

5:16

Hope to the end.

The First Epistle General of Peter 1:13

The Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work.

1:17

All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:

But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

1:24–25

Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

2:11

Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.

2:17

Ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.

3:4

Giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel.

3:7

Charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

I Peter 4:8

A crown of glory that fadeth not away.

5:4

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

5:8

And the day star arise in your hearts.

The Second Epistle General of Peter 1:19

The dog is turned to his own vomit again.

2:22

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

The First Epistle General of John 1:5

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

1:8

If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:

And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

2:1–2

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

2:15

He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

2:22

Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

3:17

He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.

4:8

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.

4:18

Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

The General Epistle of Jude 13

I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The Revelation of Saint John the Divine 1:9

What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia.

1:11

And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks.

1:12

His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

1:15

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.

1:17

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

1:18

I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.

2:4

To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life.

2:7

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

2:10

He shall rule them with a rod of iron.

2:27

I will give him the morning star.

2:28

I will not blot out his name out of the book of life.

3:5

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.

3:15–16

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock.

3:20

The first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

4:7–8

Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

4:11

A book… sealed with seven seals.

5:1

He went forth conquering, and to conquer.

6:2

Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

6:8

Four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth.

7:1

Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.

7:3

All nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.

7:9

These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the lamb.

7:14

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.

7:16

The name of the star is called Wormwood.

8:11

The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

11:15

There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

And prevailed not.

12:7–8

The great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.

12:9

No man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast.

13:17

The voice of many waters.

14:2

Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city.

14:8

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord… that they may rest from their labours.

14:13

And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

16:16

He is Lord of lords, and King of kings.

17:14

He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

19:15

Another book was opened, which is the book of life.

20:12

I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

21:1–2

God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

21:4

There shall be no night there.

22:5

He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

And, behold, I come quickly.

22:11–12

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

22:13

The Roman Missal¹

Introibo ad altare Dei [I will go in to the altar of God].

Antiphon

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa [Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault].

Confession of Sins

Dominus vobiscum [The Lord be with you].

Et cum spiritu tuo [And with your spirit].

Antiphon

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis [Eternal rest give them, O Lord: and let perpetual light shine upon them].

Mass for the Dead

Dies irae, dies illa / Solvet saeclum in favilla / Teste David cum Sibylla [Day of wrath, that day, the earth will dissolve in ashes, as David and the Sibyl say].²

Mass for the Dead

Kyrie eleison [Lord, have mercy on us].

Kyrie

Gloria in excelsis Deo. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis [Glory to God in the highest. And on earth peace to men of good will].

Gloria

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis; Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis; Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem [Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us; Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, give us peace].

Communion

Hoc est enim Corpus meum [For this is My Body].

Consecration

Hic est enim calix Sanguinis mei, novi et aeterni testamenti: mysterium fidei: qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum [For this is the chalice of My Blood, of the new and eternal covenant; the mystery of faith; which shall be shed for you and for many unto the forgiveness of sins].

Consecration

O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem [O happy fault, which has deserved to have such and so mighty a Redeemer].³

Exsultet on Holy Saturday

The Book of Common Prayer [American]⁴

Movable feasts.

Tables and Rules, p. xxxi

Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed.

Morning Prayer, Easter, p. 5

The Scripture moveth us, in sundry places, to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness.

Morning Prayer, Minister’s Opening Words, p. 5

We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.

Morning Prayer, A General Confession, p. 6

We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.

Morning Prayer, A General Confession, p. 6

Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.

Morning Prayer, A General Confession, p. 6

Who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live.

Morning Prayer, The Declaration of Absolution, p. 7

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

Morning Prayer, Venite, p. 9

In his hand are all the corners of the earth; and the strength of the hills is his also.

The sea is his, and he made it; and his hands prepared the dry land.

Morning Prayer, Venite, p. 9

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Morning Prayer, Gloria Patri, p. 9

We praise thee, O God.⁵

Morning Prayer, Te Deum, p. 10

The noble army of martyrs.

Morning Prayer, Te Deum, p. 10

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead: He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty: From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost: The holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints: The Forgiveness of sins: The Resurrection of the body: And the Life everlasting.

Morning Prayer, Apostles’ Creed, p. 15

Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man.

Morning Prayer, Nicene Creed, p. 16

O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom; Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies.

Morning Prayer, A Collect for Peace, p. 17

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations.

Morning Prayer, A Prayer for All Conditions of Men, p. 18

We commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body, or estate.

Morning Prayer, A Prayer for All Conditions of Men, p. 19

We, thine unworthy servants, do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us, and to all men; We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all, for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.

Morning Prayer, A General Thanksgiving, p. 19

Almighty God, who… dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests; Fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them.

Morning Prayer, A Prayer of Saint Chrysostom, p. 20

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.

Evening Prayer, A Collect for Aid Against Perils, p. 31

From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness,

Good Lord, deliver us.

The Litany, p. 54

From all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The Litany, p. 54

From battle and murder, and from sudden death.

The Litany, p. 54

Give to all nations unity, peace, and concord.

The Litany, p. 56

The kindly fruits of the earth.

The Litany, p. 57

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name.

Holy Communion, The Collect, p. 67

Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life.

Holy Communion, To those who come to receive the Holy Communion, p. 75

We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.

Holy Communion, General Confession, p. 75

Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee.

Holy Communion, Proper Preface, p. 77

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.

Holy Communion, The Invocation, p. 81

The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Holy Communion, Blessing, p. 84

Miserable sinners.

Holy Communion, The Exhortations, p. 86

Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest [the Scriptures].

The Second Sunday in Advent, The Collect, p. 92

Dost thou, therefore, in the name of this Child, renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the sinful desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them?

Holy Baptism, To the Godfathers and Godmothers, p. 276

An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

Offices of Instruction, Questions on the Sacraments, p. 292

Is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God.

Solemnization of Matrimony, p. 300

If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.

Solemnization of Matrimony, p. 300

Wilt thou… forsaking all others, keep thee only unto [him; her], so long as ye both shall live?

Solemnization of Matrimony, p. 301

To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

Solemnization of Matrimony, p. 301

With this Ring I thee wed.

Solemnization of Matrimony, p. 302

Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.

Solemnization of Matrimony, p. 303

In the midst of life we are in death.

Burial of the Dead, p. 332

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life.

Burial of the Dead, p. 333

The iron entered into his soul.

The Psalter, Psalm 105:18, p. 471

The Book of Common Prayer [English]¹

Give peace in our time, O Lord.

Morning Prayer, Versicles

Grant that the old Adam in this Child may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in him.

Public Baptism of Infants, Blessing on the Child

To love, cherish, and to obey.

Solemnization of Matrimony

With all my worldly goods I thee endow.

Solemnization of Matrimony

The Upanishads²

c. 800–500 B.C.E.

Lead me from the unreal to the real!

Lead me from darkness to light!

Lead me from death to immortality!³

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.3.28

The gods love the obscure and hate the obvious.⁴

Brihadaranyaka, 4.2.2

Da da da⁵ (that is) Be subdued, Give, Be merciful.³

Brihadaranyaka, 5.2.3

If the slayer thinks he slays,

If the slain thinks he is slain,

Both these do not understand:

He slays not, is not slain.⁶

Katha Upanishad, 2.19

Om.⁷

Passim

Shanti.⁸

Passim

The little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars; fire and lightning and winds are there; and all that now is and all that is not: for the whole universe is in Him [Atman, the Spirit] and He dwells within our heart.⁹

Chandogya Upanishad, 8.1

Homer

c. 700 B.C.E.

Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus’ son Achilles, a destroying wrath which brought upon the Achaeans myriad woes, and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes.

The Iliad, bk. I, l. 1

And the plan of Zeus was being accomplished.

Iliad, I, l. 5

A dream, too, is from Zeus.

Iliad, I, l. 63

He knew the things that were and the things that would be and the things that had been before.

Iliad, I, l. 70

If you are very valiant, it is a god, I think, who gave you this gift.

Iliad, I, l. 178

Speaking, he addressed her with winged words.

Iliad, I, l. 201

Whoever obeys the gods, to him they particularly listen.

Iliad, I, l. 218

From his [Nestor’s] tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey.

Iliad, I, l. 249

Rosy-fingered dawn appeared, the early-born.

Iliad, I, l. 477 and elsewhere

The son of Kronos [Zeus] spoke, and bowed his dark brow, and immortal locks fell forward from the lord’s deathless head, and he made great Olympus tremble.

Iliad, I, l. 528

Unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods.¹

Iliad, I, l. 599

A councilor ought not to sleep the whole night through, a man to whom the populace is entrusted, and who has many responsibilities.

Iliad, II, l. 24

Proud is the spirit of Zeus-fostered kings—their honor comes from Zeus, and Zeus, god of council, loves them.

Iliad, II, l. 196

A multitude of rulers is not a good thing. Let there be one ruler, one king.

Iliad, II, l. 204

I could not tell nor name the multitude, not even if I had ten tongues, ten mouths, not if I had a voice unwearying and a heart of bronze were in me.

Iliad, II, l. 488

Yet with his powers of augury he [Chromis] did not save himself from dark death.

Iliad, II, l. 859

The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside.

Iliad, III, l. 65

Young men’s minds are always changeable, but when an old man is concerned in a matter, he looks both before and after.

Iliad, III, l. 108

Like cicadas, which sit upon a tree in the forest and pour out their piping voices, so the leaders of the Trojans were sitting on the tower.

Iliad, III, l. 151

There is no reason to blame the Trojans and the well-greaved Achaeans that for such a woman [Helen] they long suffer woes.

Iliad, III, l. 156

Words like winter snowflakes.

Iliad, III, l. 222

The sun, which sees all things and hears all things.

Iliad, III, l. 277

Son of Atreus, what manner of speech has escaped the barrier of your teeth?

Iliad, IV, l. 350

He lives not long who battles with the immortals, nor do his children prattle about his knees when he has come back from battle and the dread conflict.

Iliad, V, l. 407

Not at all similar are the race of the immortal gods and the race of men who walk upon the earth.

Iliad, V, l. 441

Great-hearted Stentor with brazen voice, who could shout as loud as fifty other men.

Iliad, V, l. 785

A generation of men is like a generation of leaves: the wind scatters some leaves upon the ground, while others the burgeoning wood brings forth—and the season of spring comes on. So of men one generation springs forth and another ceases.

Iliad, VI, l. 146

Always to be bravest and to be preeminent above others.

Iliad, VI, l. 208

Victory shifts from man to man.

Iliad, VI, l. 339

May men say, “He is far greater than his father,” when he returns from battle.

Iliad, VI, l. 479

Smiling through tears.

Iliad, VI, l. 484

Attach a golden chain from heaven, and all of you take hold of it, you gods and goddesses, yet would you not be able to drag Zeus the most high from heaven to earth.

Iliad, VIII, l. 19

Hades is relentless and unyielding.

Iliad, IX, 1. 158

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Iliad, IX, l. 312

Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man; the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike.

Iliad, IX, l. 318

To be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.

Iliad, IX, l. 443

Prayers are the daughters of mighty Zeus, lame and wrinkled and slanting-eyed.

Iliad, IX, l. 502

It was built against the will of the immortal gods, and so it did not last for long.

Iliad, XII, l. 8

The single best augury is to fight for one’s country.

Iliad, XII, l. 243

There is a strength in the union even of very sorry men.

Iliad, XIII, l. 237

There is a fullness of all things, even of sleep and of love.

Iliad, XIII, l. 636

You will certainly not be able to take the lead in all things yourself, for to one man a god has given deeds of war, and to another the dance, to another the lyre and song, and in another wide-sounding Zeus puts a good mind.

Iliad, XIII, l. 729

It is not possible to fight beyond your strength, even if you strive.

Iliad, XIII, l. 787

She [Aphrodite] spoke and loosened from her bosom the embroidered girdle of many colors into which all her allurements were fashioned. In it was love and in it desire and in it blandishing persuasion which steals the mind even of the wise.

Iliad, XIV, l. 214

Sleep, the brother of Death.¹

Iliad, XIV, l. 231 and XVI, l. 672

Ocean, who is the source of all.

Iliad, XIV, l. 246

It is not unseemly for a man to die fighting in defense of his country.²

Iliad, XV, l. 496

Of men who have a sense of honor, more come through alive than are slain, but from those who flee comes neither glory nor any help.

Iliad, XV, l. 563

The outcome of the war is in our hands; the outcome of words is in the council.

Iliad, XVI, l. 630

But he, mighty man, lay mightily in the whirl of dust, forgetful of his horsemanship.

Iliad, XVI, l. 775

Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it.

Iliad, XVII, l. 32

The most preferable of evils.³

Iliad, XVII, l. 105

Surely there is nothing more wretched than a man, of all the things which breathe and move upon the earth.

Iliad, XVII, l. 446

Sweeter it [wrath] is by far than the honeycomb dripping with sweetness, and spreads through the hearts of men.

Iliad, XVIII, l. 109

I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown.

Iliad, XVIII, l. 120

The Erinyes, who exact punishment of men underground if one swears a false oath.

Iliad, XIX, l. 259

Not even Achilles will bring all his words to fulfillment.

Iliad, XX, l. 369

Miserable mortals who, like leaves, at one moment flame with life, eating the produce of the land, and at another moment weakly perish.

Iliad, XXI, l. 463

It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair. But when dogs shame the gray head and gray chin and nakedness of an old man killed, it is the most piteous thing that happens among wretched mortals.

Iliad, XXII, l. 71

Then the father held out the golden scales, and in them he placed two fates of dread death.

Iliad, XXII, l. 209

There are no compacts between lions and men, and wolves and lambs have no concord.

Iliad, XXII, l. 262

By the ships there lies a dead man, unwept, unburied: Patroclus.

Iliad, XXII, l. 386

The fates have given mankind a patient soul.

Iliad, XXIV, l. 49

Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals: that they live in grief while they themselves are without cares; for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus of the gifts which he gives, one of evils and another of blessings.

Iliad, XXIV, l. 525

Tell me, muse, of the man of many resources who wandered far and wide after he sacked the holy citadel of Troy, and he saw the cities and learned the thoughts of many men, and on the sea he suffered in his heart many woes.

The Odyssey, bk. I, l. 1

By their own follies they perished, the fools.

Odyssey, I, l. 7

Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies.

Odyssey, I, l. 32

Surely these things lie on the knees of the gods.¹

Odyssey, I, l. 267

You ought not to practice childish ways, since you are no longer that age.

Odyssey, I, l. 296

For rarely are sons similar to their fathers: most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.

Odyssey, II, l. 276

Gray-eyed Athena sent them a favorable breeze, a fresh west wind, singing over the wine-dark sea.

Odyssey, II, 420

A young man is embarrassed to question an older one.

Odyssey, III, l. 24

The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

Odyssey, III, l. 147

A small rock holds back a great wave.

Odyssey, III, l. 296

No mortal could vie with Zeus, for his mansions and his possessions are deathless.

Odyssey, IV, l. 78

She [Helen] threw into the wine which they were drinking a drug which takes away grief and passion and brings forgetfulness of all ills.

Odyssey, IV, l. 220

The immortals will send you to the Elysian plain at the ends of the earth, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys is. There life is supremely easy for men. No snow is there, nor ever heavy winter storm, nor rain, and Ocean is ever sending gusts of the clear-blowing west wind to bring coolness to men.

Odyssey, IV, l. 563

Olympus, where they say there is an abode of the gods, ever unchanging: it is neither shaken by winds nor ever wet with rain, nor does snow come near it, but clear weather spreads cloudless about it, and a white radiance stretches above it.²

Odyssey, VI, l. 42

May the gods grant you all things which your heart desires, and may they give you a husband and a home and gracious concord, for there is nothing greater and better than this—when a husband and wife keep a household in oneness of mind, a great woe to their enemies and joy to their friends, and win high renown.

Odyssey, VI, l. 180

All strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift, though small, is precious.

Odyssey, VI, l. 207

Their ships are swift as a bird or a thought.

Odyssey, VII, l. 36

We are quick to flare up, we races of men on the earth.

Odyssey, VII, l. 307

Evil deeds do not prosper; the slow man catches up with the swift.

Odyssey, VIII, l. 329

Even if you gods, and all the goddesses too, should be looking on, yet would I be glad to sleep with golden Aphrodite.

Odyssey, VIII, l. 341

Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.

Odyssey, VIII, l. 479

Thus she spoke; and I longed to embrace my dead mother’s ghost. Thrice I tried to clasp her image, and thrice it slipped through my hands, like a shadow, like a dream.³

Odyssey, XI, l. 204

They strove to pile Ossa on Olympus, and on Ossa Pelion with its leafy forests, that they might scale the heavens.⁴

Odyssey, XI, l. 315

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.

Odyssey, XI, l. 379

There is nothing more dread and more shameless than a woman who plans such deeds in her heart as the foul deed which she plotted when she contrived her husband’s murder.

Odyssey, XI, l. 427

In the extravagance of her evil she has brought shame both on herself and on all women who will come after her, even on one who is virtuous.

Odyssey, XI, l. 432

Therefore don’t you be gentle to your wife either. Don’t tell her everything you know, but tell her one thing and keep another thing hidden.

Odyssey, XI, l. 441

I should rather labor as another’s serf, in the home of a man without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all the departed dead.

Odyssey, XI, l. 489

Friends, we have not till now been unacquainted with misfortunes.

Odyssey, XII, l. 208

It is tedious to tell again tales already plainly told.

Odyssey, XII, l. 452

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.

Odyssey, XIV, l. 463

It is equally wrong to speed a guest who does not want to go, and to keep one back who is eager. You ought to make welcome the present guest, and send forth the one who wishes to go.

Odyssey, XV, l. 72

Even his griefs are a joy long after to one that remembers all that he wrought and endured.

Odyssey, XV, l. 400

Bad herdsmen ruin their flocks.

Odyssey, XVII, l. 246

Wide-sounding Zeus takes away half a man’s worth on the day when slavery comes upon him.

Odyssey, XVII, l. 322

Then dark death seized Argus, as soon as he had seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.

Odyssey, XVII, l. 326

The gods, likening themselves to all kinds of strangers, go in various disguises from city to city, observing the wrongdoing and the righteousness of men.

Odyssey, XVII, l. 485

Nothing feebler than a man does the earth raise up, of all the things which breathe and move on the earth, for he believes that he will never suffer evil in the future, as long as the gods give him success and he flourishes in his strength; but when the blessed gods bring sorrows too to pass, even these he bears, against his will, with steadfast spirit, for the thoughts of earthly men are like the day which the father of gods and men brings upon them.

Odyssey, XVIII, l. 130

Men flourish only for a moment.

Odyssey, XIX, l. 328

Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind. For fleeting dreams have two gates: one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the one of sawn ivory are deceptive, bringing tidings which come to nought, but those which issue from the one of polished horn bring true results when a mortal sees them.

Odyssey, XIX, l. 560

Endure, my heart: you once endured something even more dreadful.

Odyssey, XX, l. 18

Your heart is always harder than a stone.

Odyssey, XXIII, l. 103

Therefore the fame of her excellence will never perish, and the immortals will fashion among earthly men a gracious song in honor of faithful Penelope.

Odyssey, XXIV, l. 196

Hesiod

fl. c. 700 B.C.E.

With the muses of Helicon let us begin our singing.

The Theogony, l. 1

They once taught Hesiod beauteous song, when he was shepherding his sheep below holy Helicon.

Theogony, l. 22

We know how to speak many falsehoods which resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.

Theogony, l. 27

On his tongue they pour sweet dew, and from his mouth flow gentle words.

Theogony, l. 83

Love, who is most beautiful among the immortal gods, the melter of limbs, overwhelms in their hearts the intelligence and wise counsel of all gods and all men.

Theogony, l. 120

From their eyelids as they glanced dripped love.

Theogony, l. 910

There was not after all a single kind of strife, but on the earth there are two kinds: one of them a man might praise when he recognized her, but the other is blameworthy.

Works and Days, l. 11

Potter bears a grudge against potter, and craftsman against craftsman, and beggar is envious of beggar, and bard of bard.

Works and Days, l. 25

Fools, they do not even know how much more is the half than the whole.

Works and Days, l. 40

He harms himself who does harm to another, and the evil plan is most harmful to the planner.

Works and Days, l. 265

Badness you can get easily, in quantity: the road is smooth, and it lies close by. But in front of excellence the immortal gods have put sweat, and long and steep is the way to it, and rough at first. But when you come to the top, then it is easy, even though it is hard.

Works and Days, l. 287

A bad neighbor is a misfortune, as much as a good one is a great blessing.

Works and Days, l. 346

If you should put even a little on a little, and should do this often, soon this too would become big.

Works and Days, l. 361

At the beginning of a cask and at the end take your fill; in the middle be sparing.

Works and Days, l. 368

The dawn speeds a man on his journey, and speeds him too in his work.

Works and Days, l. 579

Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.

Works and Days, l. 694

Gossip is mischievous, light and easy to raise, but grievous to bear and hard to get rid of. No gossip ever dies away entirely, if many people voice it: it too is a kind of divinity.

Works and Days, l. 761

Archilochus

Early seventh century B.C.E.

I have saved myself—what care I for that shield? Away with it! I’ll get another one no worse.

Fragment 6

Old women should not seek to be perfumed.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Pericles¹

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.²

Fragment 103

Mimnermus

c. 650–c. 590 B.C.E.

What life is there, what delight, without golden Aphrodite?³

Fragment 1

The Seven Sages⁴

c. 650–c. 550 B.C.E.

Know thyself.

Inscription at the Delphic Oracle. From PLUTARCH, Morals

Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage.⁵

PERIANDER. From PLUTARCH, Morals, The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men, sec. 14

Nothing too much.⁶

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. I, sec. 63

Do not speak ill of the dead.⁷

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, I, 70

Not even the gods fight against necessity.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, I, 77

Rule will show the man.

BIAS. From ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. V, ch. 1

Solon

c. 638–c. 559 B.C.E.

Many evil men are rich, and good men poor, but we shall not exchange with them our excellence for riches.

Fragment 4

Poets tell many lies.

Fragment 21

I grow old ever learning many things.

Fragment 22

Until he is dead, do not yet call a man happy, but only lucky.

From HERODOTUS,⁸ The Histories, bk. I, ch. 32

Stesichorus

c. 630–c. 555 B.C.E.

This tale is not true: you [Helen] did not even board the well-benched ships, and you did not go to the citadel of Troy.⁹

From PLATO, Phaedrus, sec. 243

Alcaeus

c. 625–c. 575 B.C.E.

Wine, dear boy, and truth.¹

Fragment 66

Wine is a peep-hole on a man.

Fragment 104

Let us run into a safe harbor.

Fragment 120

Anacharsis

fl. c. 600 B.C.E.

[On learning that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick:] The passengers are just that distance from death.²

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. 1, Anacharsis, sec. 5

[Anacharsis] laughed at him [Solon] for imagining the dishonesty and covetousness of his countrymen could be restrained by written laws, which were like spiders’ webs, and would catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but easily be broken by the mighty and rich.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Solon

In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.³

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Solon

Sappho⁴

fl. c. 612 B.C.E.

Deathless Aphrodite on your rich-wrought throne.⁵

Fragment 1

Equal to the gods seems to me that man who sits facing you and hears you nearby sweetly speaking and softly laughing. This sets my heart to fluttering in my breast, for when I look on you a moment, then can I speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a cold sweat bathes me, and a trembling seizes me all over, and I am paler than grass, and I feel that I am near to death.

Fragment 2

The stars about the lovely moon hide their shining forms when it lights up the earth at its fullest.

Fragment 4

I loved you once long ago, Athis… you seemed to me a small, ungainly child.

Fragments 40–41

The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.⁶

Fragment 94

Sweet mother, I cannot ply the loom, vanquished by desire for a youth through the work of soft Aphrodite.

Fragment 114

As an apple reddens on the high bough; high atop the highest bough the apple pickers passed it by—no, not passed it by, but they could not reach it.⁷

Fragment 116

Hesperus, you herd homeward whatever Dawn’s light dispersed: you herd sheep—herd goats—herd children home to their mothers.⁸

Fragment 120

Lao-tzu

c. 604–c. 531 B.C.E.

The Tao [Way] that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth;

The Named is the mother of all things.

Therefore let there always be non-being, so we may see their subtlety,

And let there always be being, so we may see their outcome.

The two are the same,

But after they are produced, they have different names.

They both may be called deep and profound.

Deeper and more profound,

The door of all subtleties!

The Way of Lao-tzu,⁹ ch. 1

When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,

There arises the recognition of ugliness.

When they all know the good as good,

There arises the recognition of evil.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 2

Heaven and Earth are not humane.

They regard all things as straw dogs.¹

The Way of Lao-tzu, 5

The spirit of the valley never dies.

It is called the subtle and profound female.

The gate of the subtle and profound female

Is the root of Heaven and Earth.

It is continuous, and seems to be always existing.

Use it and you will never wear it out.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 6

The best [man] is like water.

Water is good; it benefits all things and does not compete with them.

It dwells in [lowly] places that all disdain.

This is why it is so near to Tao.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 8

To produce things and to rear them,

To produce, but not to take possession of them,

To act, but not to rely on one’s own ability,

To lead them, but not to master them—

This is called profound and secret virtue.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 10

He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 13

To yield is to be preserved whole.

To be bent is to become straight.

To be empty is to be full.

To be worn out is to be renewed.

To have little is to possess.

To have plenty is to be perplexed.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 22

Tao invariably takes no action, and yet there is nothing left undone.

Reversion is the action of Tao.

Weakness is the function of Tao.

All things in the world come from being.

And being comes from non-being.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 40

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world.

Non-being penetrates that in which there is no space.

Through this I know the advantage of taking no action.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 43

He who knows does not speak.

He who speaks does not know.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 56

The more laws and order are made prominent,

The more thieves and robbers there will be.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 57

Tao is the storehouse of all things.

It is the good man’s treasure and the bad man’s refuge.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 62

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.²

The Way of Lao-tzu, 64

I have three treasures. Guard and keep them:

The first is deep love,

The second is frugality,

And the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world.

Because of deep love, one is courageous.

Because of frugality, one is generous.

Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 67

Heaven’s net is indeed vast.

Though its meshes are wide, it misses nothing.

The Way of Lao-tzu, 73

Epimenides

Sixth century B.C.E.

All Cretans are liars.

Attributed

Pythagoras

c. 582–500 B.C.E.

Friends share all things.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers,³ bk. VIII, sec. 10

Don’t eat your heart.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VIII, 17

Reason is immortal, all else mortal.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VIII, 30

Ibycus⁴

fl. c. 580 B.C.E.

There is no medicine to be found for a life which has fled.

Fragment 23

An argument needs no reason, nor a friendship.

Fragment 40

Aesop¹

fl. c. 550 B.C.E.

The lamb… began to follow the Wolf in the Sheep’s clothing.

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.²

The Milkmaid and Her Pail

I am sure the grapes are sour.³

The Fox and the Grapes

Little friends may prove great friends.

The Lion and the Mouse

Slow and steady wins the race.⁴

The Hare and the Tortoise

Familiarity breeds contempt.⁵

The Fox and the Lion

The boy cried “Wolf, wolf!” and the villagers came out to help him.⁴

The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.⁴

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

The Jay and the Peacock

People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.

The Dog in the Manger

It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

A huge gap appeared in the side of the mountain. At last a tiny mouse came forth.⁶

The Mountain in Labor

Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

The Wolf and the Lamb

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

The Dog and the Shadow

Who shall bell the cat?

The Rats and the Cat

Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find—nothing.

The Goose with the Golden Eggs

Put your shoulder to the wheel.

Hercules and the Wagoner

The gods help them that help themselves.⁷

Hercules and the Wagoner

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.⁸

The Old Man and Death

Union gives strength.

The Bundle of Sticks

While I see many hoof-marks going in, I see none coming out.… It is easier to get into the enemy’s toils than out again.

The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts

Theognis

fl. c. 545 B.C.E.

One finds many companions for food and drink, but in a serious business a man’s companions are very few.

Elegies, l. 115

The best of all things for earthly men is not to be born and not to see the beams of the bright sun; but if born, then as quickly as possible to pass the gates of Hades, and to lie deep buried.

Elegies, l. 425

No man takes with him to Hades all his exceeding wealth.

Elegies, l. 725

Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought.

Elegies, l. 985

Anacreon

c. 570–c. 480 B.C.E.

Bring water, bring wine, boy! Bring flowering garlands to me! Yes, bring them, so that I may try a bout with love.

Fragment 27

I both love and do not love, and am mad and am not mad.

Fragment 79

War spares not the brave, but the cowardly.

Epigram from the Greek Anthology

Xenophanes

c. 570–c. 475 B.C.E.

Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and a reproach among men.

Fragment 11

If cattle and horses, or lions, had hands, or were able to draw with their feet and produce the works which men do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make the gods’ bodies the same shape as their own.

Fragment 15

One god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in shape nor even in thought.

Fragment 23

It takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. IX

Simonides

c. 556–468 B.C.E.

It is hard to be truly excellent, four-square in hand and foot and mind, formed without blemish.

Fragment 4

The city is teacher of the man.¹

Fragment 53

Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,

That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.²

Fragment 92

If to die honorably is the greatest

Part of virtue, for us fate’s done her best.

Because we fought to crown Greece with freedom

We lie here enjoying timeless fame.

For the Athenian Dead at Plataia³

We did not flinch but gave our lives to save

Greece when her fate hung on a razor’s edge.

Cenotaph at the Isthmos³

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry painting that speaks.

From PLUTARCH, Morals, De Gloria Atheniensium, III, 346

Confucius [K’ung Fu-zi, K’ung the Master]

551–479 B.C.E.

A young man’s duty is to behave well to his parents at home and to his elders abroad.

Analects,⁴ 1:6

A man who

Treats his betters as betters,

Wears an air of respect,

Who into serving father and mother

Knows how to put his whole strength,

Who in the service of his prince will lay down his life,

Who in intercourse with friends is true to his word—others may say of him that he still lacks education, but I for my part should certainly call him an educated man.

Analects, 1:7

First and foremost he must learn to be faithful to his superiors, to keep promises, to refuse the friendship of all who are not like him. And if he finds he has made a mistake, then he must not be afraid of admitting the fact and amending his ways.

Analects, 1:8

He who rules by moral force is like the pole-star, which remains in its place while all the lesser stars do homage to it.

Analects, 2:1

What is over and done with, one does not discuss. What has already taken its course, one does not criticize; what already belongs to the past, one does not censure.

Analects, 3:21

In the morning, hear the Way; in the evening, die content!

Analects, 4:8

In the presence of a good man, think all the time how you may learn to equal him. In the presence of a bad man, turn your gaze within!

Analects, 4:17

Moral force never dwells in solitude; it will always bring neighbors.

Analects, 4:25

He who seeks only coarse food to eat, water to drink, and bent arm for pillow, will without looking for it find happiness to boot. Any thought of accepting wealth and rank by means that I know to be wrong is as remote from me as the clouds that float above.

Analects, 7:15

I for my part am not one of those who have innate knowledge. I am simply one who loves the past and who is diligent in investigating it.

Analects, 7:19

Till you have learned to serve men, how can you serve ghosts? Till you know about the living, how are you to know about the dead?

Analects, 11:11

To go too far is as bad as not to go far enough.

Analects, 11:15

You are there to rule, not to slay. If you desire what is good, the people will at once be good. The essence of the gentleman is that of wind; the essence of small people is that of grass. And when a wind passes over the grass, it cannot choose but bend.

Analects, 12:19

Imperturbable, resolute, tree-like, slow to speak—such a one is near to Goodness.

Analects, 13:27

The knight of the Way who thinks only of sitting quietly at home is not worthy to be called a knight.

Analects, 14:3

He who will not worry about what is far off will soon find something worse than worry close at hand.

Analects, 15:11

The demands that a gentleman makes are upon himself; those that a small man makes are upon others.

Analects, 15:20

Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.¹

Analects, 15:23

He who does not understand the will of Heaven cannot be regarded as a gentleman. He who does not know the rites cannot take his stand. He who does not understand words, cannot understand people.

Analects, 20:3

Heraclitus

c. 540–c. 480 B.C.E.

All is flux, nothing stays still.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. IX, sec. 8, and PLATO, Cratylus, sec. 402A

Nothing endures but change.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, IX, 8, and PLATO, Cratylus, 402A

It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.

On the Universe,² fragment 1

Nature is wont to hide herself.

On the Universe, 10

Much learning does not teach understanding.

On the Universe, 16

This world… ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.

On the Universe, 20

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

On the Universe, 36

You could not step twice into the same rivers;³ for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

On the Universe, 41

The opposite is beneficial; from things that differ comes the fairest attunement; all things are born through strife.

On the Universe, 46

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

On the Universe, 59

The road up and the road down is one and the same.

On the Universe, 69

Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.

On the Universe, 77

For when is death not within ourselves?… Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old.

On the Universe, 78

The people should fight for their law as for a wall.

On the Universe, 100

It is better to hide ignorance, but it is hard to do this when we relax over wine.

On the Universe, 108

A man’s character is his fate.

On the Universe, 121

Themistocles

c. 528–c. 462 B.C.E.

Tuning the lyre and handling the harp are no accomplishments of mine, but rather taking in hand a city that was small and inglorious and making it glorious and great.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Themistocles, sec. 2

The wooden wall is your ships.¹

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Themistocles, 10

Strike, but hear me.²

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Themistocles, 11

I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.³

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Themistocles, 21

He who commands the sea has command of everything.

From CICERO, Ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus), bk. X, letter 8

[Upon being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer:] Which would you rather be—a victor in the Olympic games, or the announcer of the victor?

From PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Themistocles

Aeschylus

525–456 B.C.E.

I would far rather be ignorant than knowledgeable of evils.

The Suppliants, l. 453

“Reverence for parents” stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.

The Suppliants, l. 707

His resolve is not to seem, but to be, the best.

The Seven Against Thebes [467 B.C.E.], l. 592

I pray the gods some respite from the weary task of this long year’s watch that lying on the Atreidae’s roof on bended arm, doglike, I have kept, marking the conclave of all the night’s stars, those potentates blazing in the heavens that bring winter and summer to mortal men, the constellations, when they wane, when they rise.

Agamemnon [458 B.C.E.], l. 1

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

Agamemnon, l. 177

She [Helen] brought to Ilium her dowry, destruction.

Agamemnon, l. 406

It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.

Agamemnon, l. 832

Only when man’s life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man happy.

Agamemnon, l. 928

Alas, I am struck a deep mortal blow!

Agamemnon, l. 1343

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.

Agamemnon, l. 1364

Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?

Agamemnon, l. 1485

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Agamemnon, l. 1668

Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another’s might.

The Libation Bearers, l. 103

What is pleasanter than the tie of host and guest?

The Libation Bearers, l. 702

Myriad laughter of the ocean waves.

Prometheus Bound, l. 89

For somehow this is tyranny’s disease, to trust no friends.

Prometheus Bound, l. 224

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

Prometheus Bound, l. 378

Time as he grows old teaches all things.

Prometheus Bound, l. 981

God’s mouth knows not how to speak falsehood, but he brings to pass every word.

Prometheus Bound, l. 1030

On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.⁴

Prometheus Bound, l. 1089

Pindar

c. 518–c. 438 B.C.E.

Water is best. But gold shines like fire blazing in the night, supreme of lordly wealth.

Olympian Odes, no. I, l. 1

The days that are still to come are the wisest witnesses.

Olympian Odes, I, l. 51

If any man hopes to do a deed without God’s knowledge, he errs.

Olympian Odes, I, l. 104

Do not peer too far.

Olympian Odes, I, l. 184

I have many swift arrows in my quiver which speak to the wise, but for the crowd they need interpreters. The skilled poet is one who knows much through natural gift, but those who have learned their art chatter turbulently, vainly, against the divine bird of Zeus.

Olympian Odes, II, l. 150

I will not steep my speech in lies; the test of any man lies in action.¹

Olympian Odes, IV, l. 27

The issue is in God’s hands.

Olympian Odes, XIII, l. 147

Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.

Pythian Odes, no. III, l. 109

Creatures of a day, what is a man? What is he not? Mankind is a dream of a shadow. But when a god-given brightness comes, a radiant light rests on men, and a gentle life.

Pythian Odes, VIII, l. 135

When toilsome contests have been decided, good cheer is the best physician, and songs, the sage daughters of the Muses, soothe with their touch.

Nemean Odes, no. IV, l. 1

Words have a longer life than deeds.

Nemean Odes, IV, l. 10

One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.

Nemean Odes, VI, l. 1

If one but tell a thing well, it moves on with undying voice, and over the fruitful earth and across the sea goes the bright gleam of noble deeds ever unquenchable.

Isthmian Odes, no. IV, l. 67

O bright and violet-crowned and famed in song, bulwark of Greece, famous Athens, divine city!

Fragment 76

Unsung, the noblest deed will die.²

Fragment 120

Anaxagoras

c. 500–428 B.C.E.

The descent to Hades is the same from every place.³

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. 2, sec. 6

The Pali Canon⁴

c. 500–c. 250 B.C.E.⁵

All that is comes from the mind; it is based on the mind, it is fashioned by the mind.⁶

Suttapitaka. Dhammapada, ch. 1, verse 1

Avoid what is evil; do what is good; purify the mind—this is the teaching of the Awakened One [Buddha].⁶

Suttapitaka. Dhammapada, 14:183

Better to live alone; with a fool there is no companionship. With few desires live alone and do no evil, like an elephant in the forest roaming at will.

Suttapitaka. Dhammapada, 23:330

Be lamps [or islands] unto yourselves. Be a refuge unto yourselves. Do not turn to any external refuge. Hold fast to the teaching [dhamma] as a lamp.⁶

Suttapitaka. Mahaparinibbana-sutta, 2:33

Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence.

Suttapitaka. Mahaparinibbana-sutta, 6:10

This noble eightfold path… right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplation.⁷

Suttapitaka. Dhammacakkappavattanasutta, verse 4

The wise and moral man

Shines like a fire on a hilltop,

Making money like the bee,

Who does not hurt the flower.⁸

Suttapitaka. Singalavada-sutta, Digha Nikaya, 3:180

I go for refuge to the Buddha.

I go for refuge to the Doctrine.

I go for refuge to the Order [of monks].

Traditional (liturgical), passim

We are what we think, having become what we thought.⁹

Ten Twin Verses, no. 1

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love—this is an old rule.¹⁰

Twin Verses, no. 5

Pericles¹

c. 495–429 B.C.E.

Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Pericles, sec. 18

Trees, though they are cut and lopped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Pericles, 33

Sophocles²

c. 495–406 B.C.E.

Silence gives the proper grace to women.

Ajax, l. 293

Nobly to live, or else nobly to die,

Befits proud birth.³

Ajax, l. 480

Of all human ills, greatest is fortune’s wayward tyranny.³

Ajax, l. 486

For kindness begets kindness evermore,

But he from whose mind fades the memory

Of benefits, noble is he no more.³

Ajax, l. 522

Men of ill judgment oft ignore the good

That lies within their hands, till they have lost it.³

Ajax, l. 964

It is not righteousness to outrage

A brave man dead, not even though you hate him.

Ajax, l. 1344

For God hates utterly

The bray of bragging tongues.

Antigone⁴ [c. 442 B.C.E.], l. 123

Our ship of state, which recent storms have threatened to destroy, has come safely to harbor at last.

Antigone, l. 163

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare—I have no use for him, either.

Antigone, l. 181

Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.⁵

Antigone, l. 277

Money: There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

Antigone, l. 295

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong!

Antigone, l. 323

Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none

More wonderful than man.

Antigone, l. 333 (Ode I)

It is a good thing

To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure

To bring death to a friend.

Antigone, l. 437

But all your [Creon’s] strength is weakness itself against

The immortal unrecorded laws of God.

They are not merely now: they were and shall be

Forever, beyond man utterly.

Antigone, l. 452

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

Antigone, l. 563

Anarchy, anarchy! Show me a greater evil!

This is why cities tumble and the great houses rain down,

This is what scatters armies!

Antigone, l. 672

Reason is God’s crowning gift to man.

Antigone, l. 684

Love, unconquerable,

Waster of rich men, keeper

Of warm lights and all-night vigil

In the soft face of a girl:

Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!

Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,

And mortal man, in his one day’s dusk,

Trembles before your glory.

Antigone, l. 781 (Ode III)

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;

No wisdom but in submission to the gods.

Big words are always punished,

And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

Antigone, l. 1347, closing lines

Ships are only hulls, high walls are nothing,

When no life moves in the empty passageways.

Oedipus Rex⁶ [c. 430 B.C.E.], l. 56

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be

When there’s no help in truth!

Oedipus Rex, l. 316

The tyrant is a child of Pride

Who drinks from his great sickening cup

Recklessness and vanity,

Until from his high crest headlong

He plummets to the dust of hope.¹

Oedipus Rex, l. 872

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

Oedipus Rex, l. 1230

Time eases all things.

Oedipus Rex, l. 1515

Look upon Oedipus

This is the king who solved the famous riddle [of the Sphinx].²

Oedipus Rex, l. 1524

Let every man in mankind’s frailty

Consider his last day; and let none

Presume on his good fortune until he find

Life, at his death, a memory without pain.

Oedipus Rex, l. 1529

A prudent mind can see room for misgiving, lest he who prospers should one day suffer reverse.

Trachiniae (Women of Trachis) [c. 430 B.C.E.], l. 296

They are not wise, then, who stand forth to buffet against Love; for Love rules the gods as he will, and me.

Trachiniae, l. 441

Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

Trachiniae, l. 592

Death is not the worst; rather, in vain

To wish for death, and not to compass it.

Electra [c. 418 B.C.E.], l. 1008

War never slays a bad man in its course,

But the good always!³

Philoctetes [409 B.C.E.], l. 436

Stranger in a strange country.

Oedipus at Colonus⁴ [c. 406 B.C.E.], l. 184

The good befriend themselves.

Oedipus at Colonus, l. 309

        The immortal

Gods alone have neither age nor death!

All other things almighty Time disquiets.

Oedipus at Colonus, l. 607

Not to be born surpasses thought and speech.

The second best is to have seen the light

And then to go back quickly whence we came.

Oedipus at Colonus, l. 1224

            One word

Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:

That word is love.

Oedipus at Colonus, l. 1616

It made our hair stand up in panic fear.

Oedipus at Colonus, l. 1625

A remedy too strong for the disease.

Tereus, fragment 514⁵

To him who is in fear everything rustles.

Acrisius, fragment 58

No man loves life like him that’s growing old.

Acrisius, fragment 64

A woman’s vows I write upon the wave.

Unknown Drama, fragment 694

Empedocles

c. 490–c. 430 B.C.E.

At one time through love all things come together into one, at another time through strife’s hatred they are borne each of them apart.

Fragment 17

The blood around men’s heart is their thinking.

Fragment 105

Euripides⁶

c. 485–406 B.C.E.

Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.

Alcestis⁷ [438 B.C.E.], l. 238

        A second wife

is hateful to the children of the first;

a viper is not more hateful.

Alcestis, l. 309

A sweet thing, for whatever time,

to revisit in dreams the dear dead we have lost.

Alcestis, l. 355

Oh, if I had Orpheus’ voice and poetry

with which to move the Dark Maid and her Lord,

I’d call you back, dear love, from the world below.

I’d go down there for you. Charon or the grim

King’s dog could not prevent me then

from carrying you up into the fields of light.

Alcestis, l. 358

Light be the earth upon you, lightly rest.

Alcestis, l. 462

        God, these old men!

How they pray for death! How heavy

they find this life in the slow drag of days!

And yet, when Death comes near them,

You will not find one who will rise and walk with him, not one whose years are still a burden to him.

Alcestis, l. 669

Today’s today. Tomorrow, we may be

ourselves gone down the drain of Eternity.

Alcestis, l. 788

My mother was accursed the night she bore me,

and I am faint with envy of all the dead.

Alcestis, l. 865

I have found power in the mysteries of thought,

exaltation in the chanting of the Muses;

I have been versed in the reasonings of men;

but Fate is stronger than anything I have known.

Alcestis, l. 962

Time cancels young pain.

Alcestis, l. 1085

Slight not what’s near through aiming at

what’s far.

Rhesus [c. 435 B.C.E.], l. 482

There is no benefit in the gifts of a bad man.

Medea¹ [431 B.C.E.], l. 618

When love is in excess it brings a man no honor

nor any worthiness.

Medea, l. 627

What greater grief than the loss of one’s

native land.

Medea, l. 650

We know the good, we apprehend it clearly,

but we can’t bring it to achievement.

Hippolytus² [428 B.C.E.], l. 380

There is one thing alone

that stands the brunt of life throughout its course:

a quiet conscience.

Hippolytus, l. 426

In this world second thoughts, it seems, are best.³

Hippolytus, l. 435

Love distills desire upon the eyes,

love brings bewitching grace into the heart

of those he would destroy.

I pray that love may never come to me

with murderous intent,

in rhythms measureless and wild.

Not fire nor stars have stronger bolts

than those of Aphrodite sent

by the hand of Eros, Zeus’s child.

Hippolytus, l. 525

My tongue swore, but my mind was still unpledged.

Hippolytus, l. 612

Would that I were under the cliffs, in the secret

hiding-places of the rocks,

that Zeus might change me to a winged bird.

Hippolytus, l. 732

I would win my way to the coast,

apple-bearing Hesperian coast

of which the minstrels sing,

where the Lord of the Ocean

denies the voyager further sailing,

and fixes the solemn limit of Heaven

which giant Atlas upholds.

There the streams flow with ambrosia

by Zeus’s bed of love,

and holy Earth, the giver of life,

yields to the gods rich blessedness.⁴

Hippolytus, l. 742

In a case of dissension, never dare to judge till you’ve heard the other side.

Heraclidae⁵ [The Children of Heracles, c. 428 B.C.E.] (quoted by ARISTOPHANES, Wasps)

Leave no stone unturned.

Heraclidae

        I care for riches, to make gifts

To friends, or lead a sick man back to health

With ease and plenty. Else small aid is wealth

For daily gladness; once a man be done

With hunger, rich and poor are all as one.

Electra⁴ [413 B.C.E.], l. 427

The day for honest men, the night for thieves.

Iphigenia in Tauris⁵ [c. 412 B.C.E.], l. 1026

Mankind… possesses two supreme blessings. First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth—whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her there came the son of Semele, who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man. For filled with that good gift, suffering mankind forgets its grief; from it comes sleep; with it oblivion of the troubles of the day. There is no other medicine for misery.

The Bacchae (Bacchants)¹ [c. 407 B.C.E.], l. 274

Slow but sure moves the might of the gods.

The Bacchae, l. 882

Humility, a sense of reverence before the sons of heaven—

of all the prizes that a mortal man might win,

these, I say, are wisest; these are best.

The Bacchae, l. 1150

A bad beginning makes a bad ending.

Aeolus,² fragment 32

The nobly born must nobly meet his fate.³

Alcymene, fragment 100

When good men die their goodness does not perish,

But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,

All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.

Temenidae,⁴ fragment 734

Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.⁵

Phoenix (quoted by ARISTOPHANES, Thesmophoriazusae), fragment 809

Who knows but life be that which men call death,

And death what men call life?

Phrixus,⁶ fragment 830

        The gods

Visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.⁷

Phrixus, fragment 970

Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.⁸

Fragment

These men won eight victories over the Syracusans when the favor of the gods was equal for both sides.

Epitaph for the Athenians Slain in Sicily

Herodotus

c. 485–c. 425 B.C.E.

Men trust their ears less than their eyes.

The Histories,⁹ bk. I, ch. 8

A woman takes off her claim to respect along with her garments.

Histories, I, 8

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.

Histories, I, 87

[The Persians] deliberate about the gravest matters when they are drunk.

Histories, I, 133

It was a kind of Cadmean victory.¹⁰

Histories, I, 166

For great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.

Histories, II, 120

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

Histories, II, 173

It is better to be envied than pitied.

Histories, III, 52

Envy is born in a man from the start.

Histories, III, 80

Force has no place where there is need of skill.

Histories, III, 127

It is the gods’ custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.¹

Histories, VII, 10

Haste in every business brings failures.

Histories, VII, 10

When life is so burdensome, death has become for man a sought-after refuge.

Histories, VII, 46

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

Histories, VII, 49

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

Histories, VII, 50

Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed.²

Histories, VIII, 98

The king’s might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.

Histories, VIII, 140

This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.

Histories, IX, 16

In soft regions are born soft men.

Histories, IX, 122

Protagoras

c. 485–c. 410 B.C.E.

Man is the measure of all things.

Fragment 1

There are two sides to every question.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. IX, sec. 51

Agis

Fifth century B.C.E.

The Lacedemonians are not wont to ask how many the enemy are, but where they are.

From PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Agis

Socrates³

469–399 B.C.E.

Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, “How many things I have no need of!”

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. II, sec. 25

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, II, 27

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, II, 31

My divine sign indicates the future to me.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, II, 32

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.⁴

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, II, 32

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.⁵

From PLUTARCH, Morals, How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems, 4

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

From PLUTARCH, Morals, On Banishment

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

From PLATO, Phaedo (Socrates’ last words)

Democritus

c. 460–c. 370 B.C.E.

Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine.

Fragment 18

In truth we know nothing, for truth lies in the depth.

Fragment 117

By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space.

Fragment 125

Word is a shadow of deed.

Fragment 145

Hippocrates

c. 460–377 B.C.E.

I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.… I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.… In whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets. Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain forever reputation among all men for my life and for my art.

The Physician’s Oath¹

As to diseases make a habit of two things—to help, or at least, to do no harm.²

Epidemics, bk. I, ch. 11

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

Precepts,¹ ch. 1

Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time.

Precepts, 1

Sometimes give your services for nothing, calling to mind a previous benefaction or present satisfaction. And if there be an opportunity of serving one who is a stranger in financial straits, give full assistance to all such. For where there is love of man, there is also love of the art. For some patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover their health simply through their contentment with the goodness of the physician. And it is well to superintend the sick to make them well, to care for the healthy to keep them well, also to care for one’s own self, so as to observe what is seemly.

Precepts, 6

Medicine is the most distinguished of all the arts, but through the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who casually judge such practitioners, it is now of all the arts by far the least esteemed.

Law, bk. I

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Law, IV

Idleness and lack of occupation tend—nay are dragged—towards evil.

Decorum, bk. I

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

Regimen in Health,¹ bk. IX

Life is short, the art long,³ opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.

Aphorisms,¹ sec. I, 1

For extreme diseases extreme strictness of treatment is most efficacious.

Aphorisms, I, 6

Many admire, few know.

Regimen,¹ bk. I, sec. 24

Male and female have the power to fuse into one solid, both because both are nourished in both and because soul is the same thing in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.

Regimen, I, 28

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

Regimen, IV, 87

Thucydides

c. 460–400 B.C.E.

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians; he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.

The History of the Peloponnesian War⁴ [431–413 B.C.E.], bk. I, sec. 1

With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labor from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eyewitnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but I shall be content if it is judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it. My history has been composed to be an everlasting possession, not the showpiece of an hour.

Peloponnesian War, I, 22

What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.

Peloponnesian War¹, I, 23

The great wish of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great wish of others to save their own pocket. Slow in assembling, they devote a very small fraction of the time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come of his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays.

Peloponnesian War, I, 141

Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we carry the same spirit into our daily relations with one another.… Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the restraint of reverence; we are obedient to whomsoever is set in authority, and to the laws, more especially to those which offer protection to the oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame.

Peloponnesian War, II, 37 (Funeral Oration of Pericles)

We are lovers of beauty without extravagance, and lovers of wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome.

Peloponnesian War, II, 40

But the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.

Peloponnesian War, II, 40

We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.²

Peloponnesian War, II, 40

In a word I claim that our city as a whole is an education to Greece.

Peloponnesian War, II, 41

Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action… So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchers, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy’s onset.

Peloponnesian War, II, 43

Great is the glory of the woman who occasions the least talk among men, whether of praise or of blame.

Peloponnesian War, II, 45

We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered, that lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals.³

Peloponnesian War, III, 37 (Address of Cleon to the Athenians)

War is a stern teacher. In depriving them of the power of easily satisfying their daily wants, it brings most people’s minds down to the level of their actual circumstances.

Peloponnesian War, III, 82

You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.⁴

Peloponnesian War, V, 17

Men make the city, and not walls or ships without men in them.

Peloponnesian War, VII, 77 (Address of Nicias to the Athenians at Syracuse)

This was the greatest event in the war, or, in my opinion, in Greek history; at once most glorious to the victors and most calamitous to the conquered. They were beaten at all points and altogether; their sufferings in every way were great. They were totally destroyed—their fleet, their army, everything—and few out of many returned home. So ended the Sicilian expedition.

Peloponnesian War, VIII, 87

Aristophanes

c. 450–385 B.C.E.

When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends.

Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.

Knights [424 B.C.E.], ll. 92–95

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.

Knights, l. 217

To make the worse appear the better reason.

Clouds [423 B.C.E.], l. 114 and elsewhere

Haven’t you sometimes seen a cloud that looked like a centaur?

Or a leopard perhaps? Or a wolf? Or a bull?¹

Clouds, l. 346

Old men are children for a second time.

Clouds, l. 1417

This is what extremely grieves us, that a man who never fought

Should contrive our fees to pilfer, one who for his native land

Never to this day had oar, or lance, or blister in his hand.

Wasps² [422 B.C.E.], l. 1117

You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.

Peace [421 B.C.E.], l. 1083

[On the nightingale:] Lord Zeus, listen to the little bird’s voice; he has filled the whole thicket with honeyed song.

Birds [414 B.C.E.], l. 223

Bringing owls to Athens.

Birds, l. 301

The wise learn many things from their enemies.

Birds, l. 375

Mankind, fleet of life, like tree leaves, weak creatures of clay, unsubstantial as shadows, wingless, ephemeral, wretched, mortal and dreamlike.¹

Birds, l. 685

Somewhere, what with all these clouds, and all this air,

There must be a rare name, somewhere… How do you like “Cloud-Cuckoo-Land”?¹

Birds, l. 817

Halcyon days.³

Birds, l. 1594

A woman’s time of opportunity is short, and if she doesn’t seize it, no one wants to marry her, and she sits watching for omens.

Lysistrata [411 B.C.E.], l. 596

There is no animal more invincible than a woman, nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless.

Lysistrata, l. 1014

These impossible women! How they do get around us!

The poet was right: can’t live with them, or without them!¹

Lysistrata, l. 1038

Under every stone lurks a politician.⁴

Thesmophoriazusae (Women of the Festival) [410 B.C.E.], l. 530

Shall I crack any of those old jokes, master,

At which the audience never fail to laugh?

Frogs¹ [405 B.C.E.], l. 1

Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax.

Frogs, l. 209 and elsewhere

A savage-creating stubborn-pulling fellow,

Uncurbed, unfettered, uncontrolled of speech,

Unperiphrastic, bombastiloquent.⁵

Frogs, l. 837

High thoughts must have high language.

Frogs, l. 1058

Who knows whether living is dying, and breathing

Is eating, and sleeping is a wool blanket?

Frogs, l. 1477

I am amazed that anyone who has made a fortune should send for his friends.

Plutus [c. 388 B.C.E.], l. 340

A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers.

Plutus, l. 1151

Agathon

c. 448–400 B.C.E.

This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.

From ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. VI, ch. 2

Agesilaus

444–400 B.C.E.

If all men were just, there would be no need of valor.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Agesilaus, sec. 23

Xenophon

c. 430–c. 355 B.C.E.

Apollo said that everyone’s true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

Recollections of Socrates, bk. I, ch. 3, sec. 1

The sea! The sea!¹

Anabasis, bk. IV, ch. 7, sec. 24

I knew my son was mortal.²

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. II, sec. 55

Zeuxis

fl. 400 B.C.E.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

From PLINY THE ELDER, Natural History

Plato³

c. 428–348 B.C.E.

We who of old left the booming surge of the Aegean lie here in the mid-plain of Ecbatana: farewell, renowned Eretria once our country; farewell, Athens nigh to Euboea; farewell, dear sea.⁴

Epitaph from The Greek Anthology

Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry.

Phaedrus, sec. 279

Friends have all things in common.

Phaedrus, 279

And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

Symposium, sec. 211

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

Symposium, 212

Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own. Such is the charge.

Apology, sec. 24

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

Apology, 38

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another… Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

Apology, 40

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Apology, 41

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

Apology, 42

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away… A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

Phaedo,⁵ sec. 62

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

Phaedo, 72

Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are going to the god they serve.⁶

Phaedo, 85

The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

Phaedo, 91

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Phaedo, 91

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

The Republic, bk. I, sec. 329–D

No physician, insofar as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere moneymaker.

Republic, I, 342–D

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

Republic, I, 343–D

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

Republic, I, 344–C

The beginning is the most important part of the work.¹

Republic, I, 377–B

The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.

Republic, III, 409–B

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Republic, III, 413–C

How, then, might we contrive… one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?²

Republic, III, 414–C

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

Republic, IV, 422–A

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.

Republic, IV, 425–B

What is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman’s life, and thirty in a man’s?

Republic, V, 460–E

Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils—no, nor the human race, as I believe—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.

Republic, V, 473–C

Let there be one man who has a city obedient to his will, and he might bring into existence the ideal polity about which the world is so incredulous.

Republic, V, 502–B

Behold! human beings living in an underground den.… Like ourselves… they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.

Republic, VII, 515–B

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Republic, VII, 529

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

Republic, VII, 531–E

Solon was under a delusion when he said that a man when he grows old may learn many things—for he can no more learn much than he can run much; youth is the time for any extraordinary toil.

Republic, VII, 536–D

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

Republic, VII, 536–E

Let early education be a sort of amusement; you will then be better able to find out the natural bent.

Republic, VII, 537

Oligarchy: A government resting on a valuation of property, in which the rich have power and the poor man is deprived of it.

Republic, VIII, 550–C

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Republic, VIII, 558–C

Democracy passes into despotism.³

Republic, VIII, 562–A

The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness… This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.

Republic, VIII, 565–C

In the early days of his power, he is full of smiles, and he salutes everyone whom he meets.

Republic, VIII, 566–D

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

Republic, VIII, 566–E

There are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them.

Republic, X, 601–D

No human thing is of serious importance.

Republic, X, 604–C

The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.

Republic, X, 608–D

If a person shows that such things as wood, stones, and the like, being many are also one, we admit that he shows the coexistence of the one and many, but he does not show that the many are one or the one many; he is uttering not a paradox but a truism.

Parmenides, sec. 129

If a man, fixing his attention on these and the like difficulties, does away with ideas of things and will not admit that every individual thing has its own determinate idea which is always one and the same, he will have nothing on which his mind can rest; and so he will utterly destroy the power of reasoning.

Parmenides, 135

You cannot conceive the many without the one.

Parmenides, 166

Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

Theaetetus, sec. 150

He [the philosopher] does not hold aloof in order that he may gain a reputation; but the truth is, that the outer form of him only is in the city: his mind, disdaining the littlenesses and nothingnesses of human beings, is “flying all abroad” as Pindar says, measuring earth and heaven and the things which are under and on the earth and above the heaven, interrogating the whole nature of each and all in their entirety, but not condescending to anything which is within reach.

Theaetetus, 173

I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block of wax, which is of different sizes in different men; harder, moister, and having more or less of purity in one than another, and in some of an intermediate quality.… Let us say that this tablet is a gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses; and that when we wish to remember anything which we have seen, or heard, or thought in our own minds, we hold the wax to the perceptions and thoughts, and in that material receive the impression of them as from the seal of a ring; and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we forget and do not know.

Theaetetus, 191

Let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds—some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere.… We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, this receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know.

Theaetetus, 197

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.

Laws, 808

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Laws, 888

And this which you deem of no moment is the very highest of all: that is whether you have a right idea of the gods, whereby you may live your life well or ill.

Laws, 888

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his conviction.

Laws, 888

Iphicrates

c. 419–348 B.C.E.

My family history begins with me, but yours ends with you.¹

From PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Iphicrates

Phocion

c. 402–317 B.C.E.

Have I inadvertently said some evil thing?²

From PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Phocion, sec. 10

Diogenes the Cynic

c. 400–c. 325 B.C.E.

[When asked by Alexander if he wanted anything:] Stand a little out of my sun.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Alexander, sec. 14

Plato having defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the Academy, and said, “This is Plato’s man.”¹ On which account this addition was made to the definition: “With broad flat nails.”

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes, sec. 6

[When asked what was the proper time for supper:] If you are a rich man, whenever you please; and if you are a poor man, whenever you can.²

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes, 6

I am looking for an honest man.³

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes, 6

The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.⁴

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes, 6

Aristotle⁵

384–322 B.C.E.

Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. V, sec. 17

Hope is a waking dream.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V, 18

What soon grows old? Gratitude.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V, 18

Beauty is the gift of God.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V, 19

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.⁶

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V, 20

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.⁷

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V, 21

We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.⁸

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V, 21

Education is the best provision for old age.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V, 21

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

Physics,⁹ bk. IV, ch. 12

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

On the Heavens, bk. I, ch. 5

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

On the Parts of Animals, bk. I, ch. 5

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Metaphysics, bk. I, ch. 1

The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

Metaphysics, I, 7

The actuality of thought is life.

Metaphysics, XII, 7

It is of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.

Metaphysics, XII, 9

While both [Plato and truth] are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.¹⁰

Nicomachean Ethics, bk. I, ch. 6

One swallow does not make a summer.¹

Nicomachean Ethics, I, 7

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Nicomachean Ethics, II, 1

It is possible to fail in many ways… while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult—to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult).

Nicomachean Ethics, II, 6

We must as second best… take the least of the evils.

Nicomachean Ethics, II, 9

A man is the origin of his action.

Nicomachean Ethics, III, 3

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Nicomachean Ethics, VIII, 1

To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.

Nicomachean Ethics, IX, 9

We make war that we may live in peace.

Nicomachean Ethics, X, 7

With regard to excellence, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.

Nicomachean Ethics, X, 9

Man is by nature a political animal.

Politics, bk. I, ch. 2

Nature does nothing uselessly.²

Politics, I, 2

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Politics, I, 2

The two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection [are] that a thing is your own and that it is your only one.

Politics, II, 4

It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

Politics, II, 7

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

Politics, II, 8

Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.

Politics, II, 8

They should rule who are able to rule best.

Politics, II, 11

A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange.… Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

Politics, III, 9

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

Politics, IV, 4

The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.

Politics, IV, 11

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Politics, V, 1

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

Politics, V, 2

In revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interests are at stake.

Politics, V, 3

Well begun is half done.³

Politics, V, 4

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Politics, VI, 2

Law is order, and good law is good order.

Politics, VII, 4

Evils draw men together.

Rhetoric, bk. I, ch. 6

It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

Rhetoric, II, 22

A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself… with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

Poetics, ch. 6

A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.

Poetics, 7

Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Poetics, 9

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

Poetics, 24

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.¹

Eudemian Ethics, bk. VII, ch. 2

Demosthenes

c. 384–322 B.C.E.

Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue.

First Olynthiac, sec. 11

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.²

Third Olynthiac, sec. 19

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man’s actions are, such must be his spirit.

Third Olynthiac, 33

I decline to buy repentance at the cost of ten thousand drachmas.³

From AULUS GELLIUS, Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights), bk. I, ch. 8

Antigonus

c. 382–301 B.C.E.

But how many ships do you reckon my presence to be worth?⁴

From PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Antigonus

[When described by Hermodotus as “Son of the Sun”:] My valet is not aware of this.

From PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Antigonus

Mencius [Meng-tzu]

372–289 B.C.E.

When one by force subdues men, they do not submit to him in heart. They submit, because their strength is not adequate to resist.

Works,⁵ bk. II, pt. 1, ch. 3, v. 2

The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head.

Works, IV, 1:5

The people turn to a benevolent rule as water flows downwards, and as wild beasts fly to the wilderness.

Works, IV, 1:9.2

The path of duty lies in what is near, and man seeks for it in what is remote.

Works, IV, 1:11

Sincerity is the way of Heaven.

Works, IV, 1:12.2

There are three things which are unfilial, and to have no posterity is the greatest of them.

Works, IV, 1:26.1

Men must be decided on what they will not do, and then they are able to act with vigor in what they ought to do.

Works, IV, 2:8

The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute—he simply speaks and does what is right.

Works, IV, 2:11

The great man is he who does not lose his child’s-heart.

Works, IV, 2:12

The tendency of man’s nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards.

Works, VI, 1:2.2

The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind.

Works, VI, 1:11.4

When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil.

Works, VI, 2:15.2

Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.

Works, VII, 1:27.1

The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are next; the sovereign is the lightest.

Works, VII, 2:14.1

Chuang-tzu

369–286 B.C.E.

For all men strive to grasp what they do not know, while none strive to grasp what they already know; and all strive to discredit what they do not excel in, while none strive to discredit what they do excel in. This is why there is chaos.⁶

Opening Trunks; or, A Protest Against Civilization

Great understanding is broad and unhurried; little understanding is cramped and busy. Great words are clear and limpid; little words are shrill and quarrelsome.

Discussion on Making All Things Equal⁷

Joy, anger, grief, delight, worry, regret, fickleness, inflexibility, modesty, willfulness, candor, insolence—music from empty holes, mushrooms springing up in dampness, day and night replacing each other before us, and no one knows where they sprout from. Let it be! Let it be!

Discussion on Making All Things Equal

People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds, but is there any difference, or isn’t there?

Discussion on Making All Things Equal

All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless!

In the World of Men¹

He who delights in bringing success to things is not a sage; he who has affections is not benevolent; he who looks for the right time is not a worthy man; he who cannot encompass both profit and loss is not a gentleman; he who thinks of conduct and fame and misleads himself is not a man of breeding; and he who destroys himself and is without truth is not a user of men.

The Great and Venerable Teacher¹

Be cautious of what is within you; block off what is outside you, for much knowledge will do you harm.

Let It Be, Leave It Alone¹

Sun-tzu

c. Fourth century B.C.E.

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.

The Art of War.² Strategic Assessments

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Art of War. Strategic Assessments

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities.… It is best to win without fighting.

Art of War. Planning a Siege

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.

Art of War. Emptiness and Fullness

Pytheas

fl. 330 B.C.E.

They smell of the lamp.³

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Demosthenes, sec. 8

Alexander the Great

356–323 B.C.E.

[At Achilles’ tomb:] O fortunate youth, to have found Homer as the herald of your glory!

From CICERO, Pro Archia (In Defense of the Poet Archias), sec. 24

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Alexander, sec. 14

Apelles

fl. 325 B.C.E.

Not a day without a line.⁴

Proverbial from PLINY THE ELDER, Natural History, bk. XXXV, ch. 36

A cobbler should not judge above his last.⁵

Proverbial from PLINY THE ELDER, Natural History, XXXV, 85

Menander

c. 342–292 B.C.E.

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

Lady of Andros, fragment 50⁶

Riches cover a multitude of woes.

The Boeotian Girl, fragment 90

Whom the gods love dies young.⁷

The Double Deceiver, fragment 125

The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.⁸

The Girl Who Gets Flogged, fragment 422

Deus ex machina [A god from the machine].⁹

The Woman Possessed with a Divinity, fragment 227

I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.¹

Unidentified fragment 545

The man who runs may fight again.²

Monostikoi (Single Lines)

Epicurus

341–270 B.C.E.

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. X, sec. 125

Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, X, 128

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living wisely, well, and justly, and impossible to live wisely, well, and justly without living pleasurably.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, X, 140

It is possible to get protection against other things, but when it comes to death, all of us human beings live in a city without walls.

Aphorism; attributed³ [Vatican Collection of Aphorisms]

Theophrastus

d. 278 B.C.E.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.⁴

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. V, sec. 40

Zeno

335–263 B.C.E.

[When asked, “What is a friend?”] Another I.⁵

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. VII, sec. 23

Cleanthes

c. 330–232 B.C.E.

For we are your offspring.

Hymn to Zeus, l. 4

Lead me, Zeus, and you, Fate, wherever you have assigned me. I shall follow without hesitation; but even if I am disobedient and do not wish to, I shall follow no less surely.

From EPICTETUS, Enchiridion, sec. 53

Euclid

fl. 300 B.C.E.

Q.E.D. [Quod erat demonstrandum: Which was to be proved.]

Elements, bk. I, proposition 5⁶

[To Ptolemy I:] There is no royal road to geometry.⁷

From PROCLUS, Commentary on Euclid, prologue

Bion

c. 325–c. 255 B.C.E.

Old age is the harbor of all ills.

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk. IV, sec. 47

The road to Hades is easy to travel.⁸

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, IV, 49

Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.

From PLUTARCH, Morals, On Water and Land Animals, 7

Pyrrhus

c. 318–272 B.C.E.

Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.¹

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Pyrrhus, sec. 21

Theocritus

c. 310–250 B.C.E.

Sweet is the whispering music of yonder pine that sings.

Idylls,² no. I

Our concern be peace of mind: some old crone let us seek,

To spit on us for luck and keep unlovely things afar.

Idylls, VII

Cicala to cicala is dear, and ant to ant,

And kestrels dear to kestrels, but to me the Muse and song.

Idylls, IX

The frog’s life is most jolly, my lads; he has no care

Who shall fill up his cup; for he has drink enough to spare.

Idylls, X

Verily great grace may go

With a little gift; and precious are all things that come from friends.

Idylls, XXVIII

Callimachus

c. 300–240 B.C.E.

Big book, big bore.³

From The Greek Anthology, PETER JAY, ed., introduction to Callimachus

You’re⁴ walking by the tomb of Battiades,

Who knew well how to write poetry, and enjoy

Laughter at the right moment, over the wine.

From The Greek Anthology, PETER JAY, ed., no. 150, On Himself⁵

Someone spoke of your death, Heraclitus.⁶ It brought me

Tears, and I remembered how often together

We ran the sun down with talk… somewhere

You’ve long been dust, my Halicarnassian friend.

But your Nightingales live on. Though the Death-world

Claws at everything, it will not touch them.⁵

From The Greek Anthology, PETER JAY, ed., no. 152

Leonidas of Tarentum

c. 290–c. 220 B.C.E.

Far from Italy, far from my native Tarentum

I lie; and this is the worst of it—worse than death.

An exile’s life is no life. But the Muses loved me.

For my suffering they gave me a honeyed gift:

My name survives me. Thanks to the sweet Muses

Leonidas will echo throughout all time.⁷

From The Greek Anthology, PETER JAY, ed., no. 189

Archimedes

c. 287–212 B.C.E.

Eureka! [I have found it!]⁸

From VITRUVIUS POLLIO [first century B.C.E.], De Architectura, bk. IX, sec. 10

Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth.⁹

From PAPPUS OF ALEXANDRIA, Collectio, bk. VIII, prop. 10, sec. 11

Quintus Fabius Maximus

c. 275–203 B.C.E.

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold an office.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Fabius Maximus, sec. 5

Lacydes

fl. c. 241 B.C.E.

[When asked late in life why he was studying geometry:] If I should not be learning now, when should I be?

From DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Lacydes, sec. 5

Titus Maccius Plautus

254–184 B.C.E.

What is yours is mine, and all mine is yours.

Trinummus (A Three-Bob Day),¹ act II, sc. ii, l. 48

Not by age but by character is wisdom acquired.

Trinummus, II, ii, l. 88

Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only.²

Truculentus (The Churl), act IV, sc. iv, l. 15

No guest is so welcome in a friend’s house that he will not become a nuisance after three days.³

Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Soldier), act III, sc. i, l. 144

No man is wise enough by himself.

Miles Gloriosus, III, iii, l. 885

Nothing is there more friendly to a man than a friend in need.⁴

Epidicus, act III, sc. iii, l. 44

Practice yourself what you preach.⁵

Asinaria (Asses Galore), act III, sc. iii, l. 644

Maharbal [Barca the Carthaginian]

fl. 210 B.C.E.

You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but not how to use it.⁶

From LIVY, History, bk. XXII, ch. 51

Bhagavad Gita⁷

250 B.C.E.– 250 C.E.⁸

For certain is death for the born

And certain is birth for the dead;

Therefore over the inevitable

Thou shouldst not grieve.⁹

Chapter 2, verse 27

This embodied [soul] is eternally unslayable

In the body of everyone, son of Bharata;

Therefore all beings

Thou shouldst not mourn.

Likewise having regard for thine own [caste] duty

Thou shouldst not tremble;

For another, better thing than a fight required of duty

Exists not for a warrior.

2:30

On action alone be thy interest,

Never on its fruits.

Let not the fruits of action be thy motive,

Nor be thy attachment to inaction.¹⁰

2:47

Who sees Me in all,

And sees all in Me,

For him I am not lost,

And he is not lost for Me.¹¹

6:30

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One [Krishna].¹²

11:12

I am mighty, world-destroying Time.

11:32

Quintus Ennius

239–169 B.C.E.

No sooner said than done—so acts your man of worth.

Annals, bk. 9 (quoted by PRISCIANUS)

Let no one pay me honor with tears, nor celebrate my funeral rites with weeping.

From CICERO, De Senectute (On Old Age), ch. XX, sec. 73

The ape, vilest of beasts, how like to us.¹

From CICERO, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), bk. I, ch. 35

No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.

Iphigenia. From CICERO, De Divinatione, bk. II, ch. 13

Marcus Porcius Cato [Cato the Elder, Cato the Censor]

234–149 B.C.E.

A farm is like a man—however great the income, if there is extravagance but little is left.

On Agriculture,² bk. I, sec. 6

Even though work stops, expenses run on.

On Agriculture, XXXIX, 2

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.³

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Cato, sec. 8

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Cato, 9

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Cato, 19

Carthage must be destroyed.⁴

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Cato, 27

Grasp the subject, the words will follow.⁵

From GAIUS JULIUS VICTOR [fourth century B.C.E.], Ars Rhetorica, ch. II, sec. 1

Caecilius Statius

220–168 B.C.E.

He plants trees to benefit another generation.⁶

Synephebi (Fellow Youths). Quoted by CICERO in De Senectute (On Old Age), sec. VII

Polybius

fl. c. 200–c. 118 B.C.E.

From this point onwards history becomes an organic whole: the affairs of Italy and of Africa are connected with those of Asia and of Greece, and all events bear a relationship and contribute to a single end.⁷

History, bk. I, sec. 3

Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.

History, X, 36

There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.

History, XVIII, 43

Terence⁸ [Publius Terentius Afer]

c. 190–159 B.C.E.

Moderation in all things.⁹

Andria (The Lady of Andros), l. 61

Hence these tears.¹⁰

Andria, l. 126

Lovers’ quarrels are the renewal of love.¹¹

Andria, l. 555

Charity begins at home.¹

Andria, l. 635

I am a man: nothing human is alien to me.²

Heauton Timoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor), l. 77

Draw from others the lesson that may profit yourself.³

Heauton Timoroumenos, l. 221

Some people ask, “What if the sky were to fall?”⁴

Heauton Timoroumenos, l. 719

Extreme law is often extreme injustice.⁵

Heauton Timoroumenos, l. 796

While there’s life, there’s hope.

Heauton Timoroumenos, l. 981

In fact, nothing is said that has not been said before.

Eunuchus (The Eunuch), l. 41 (Prologue)

I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.

Eunuchus, l. 243

I don’t care one straw.⁶

Eunuchus, l. 411

He is wise who tries everything before arms.

Eunuchus, l. 789

I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won’t; when you won’t, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.

Eunuchus, l. 812

Fortune helps the brave.⁷

Phormio, l. 203

So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way.⁸

Phormio, l. 454

I bid him look into the lives of men as though into a mirror, and from others to take an example for himself.

Adelphoe (The Brothers), l. 415

Huai-nan Tzu⁹ [The Creation of the Universe]

Second century B.C.E.

Before heaven and earth had taken form all was vague and amorphous. Therefore it was called the Great Beginning. The Great Beginning produced emptiness and emptiness produced the universe.… The combined essences of heaven and earth became the yin and yang, the concentrated essences of the yin and yang became the four seasons, and the scattered essences of the four seasons became the myriad creatures of the world.

Huai-nan Tzu, 3:1a

Lucius Accius

170–86 B.C.E.

Let them hate, so long as they fear.¹⁰

Fragment

Han Wu-ti¹¹

157–87 B.C.E.

The sound of her silk skirt has stopped.

On the marble pavement dust grows.

Her empty room is cold and still.

Fallen leaves are piled against the doors.

    Longing for that lovely lady

How can I bring my aching heart to rest?

On the death of his mistress¹²

Marcus Terentius Varro

116–27 B.C.E.

The longest part of the journey is said to be the passing of the gate.

On Agriculture (De Re Rustica),¹ bk. I, sec. ii, l. 6

Not all who own a harp are harpers.

On Agriculture, II, i, 3

It was divine nature which gave us the country, and man’s skill that built the cities.²

On Agriculture, III, i, 4

Marcus Licinius Crassus

fl. 70 B.C.E.

Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Crassus, ch. 26

Meleager

First century B.C.E.

Farewell, Morning Star, herald of dawn, and quickly come again as the Evening Star, bringing secretly her whom thou takest away.³

Epigram from the Greek Anthology

Marcus Tullius Cicero

106–43 B.C.E.

How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?⁴

In Catilinam (Against Catiline), oration I, ch. 1

O tempora! O mores! [Oh the times! The customs!]

In Catilinam, I, 2

He has departed, withdrawn, gone away, broken out.⁵

In Catilinam, II, 1

I am a Roman citizen.⁶

In Verrem (Against Gaius Verres), oration V, ch. 57

Law stands mute in the midst of arms.⁷

Pro Milone (In Defense of Milo), sec. 11

Cui bono? [To whose advantage?]⁸

Pro Milone, 32

These studies are a spur to the young, a delight to the old; an ornament in prosperity, a consoling refuge in adversity; they are pleasure for us at home, and no burden abroad; they stay up with us at night, they accompany us when we travel, they are with us in our country visits.

Pro Archia Poeta (In Defense of the Poet Archias), sec. 16

Leisure with dignity.⁹

Pro Publio Sestio (In Defense of Publius Sestius), sec. 98

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.

De Oratore (On Oratory), bk. II, ch. IX, sec. 36

The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice.

De Oratore, II, XV, 62

The freedom of poetic license.¹⁰

De Oratore, III, XXXVIII, 153

For just as some women are said to be handsome though without adornment, so this subtle manner of speech, though lacking in artificial graces, delights us.

Orator, 78

Nothing quite new is perfect.

Brutus (History of Famous Orators), sec. 71

There were poets before Homer.

Brutus, 71

The aim of forensic oratory is to teach, to delight, to move.

De Optimo Genere Oratorum (The Best Kind of Orator), sec. 16

While there’s life, there’s hope.¹¹

Ad Atticum (To Atticus), bk. IX, letter 10

What is more agreeable than one’s home?¹²

Ad Familiares (To Friends), bk. IV, letter 8

There is nothing so ridiculous but some philosopher has said it.

De Divinatione, bk. II, sec. 119

I would rather be wrong with Plato than right with such men as these [the Pythagoreans].

Tusculanae Disputationes (Tusculan Disputations), bk. I, sec. 17

O philosophy, you leader of life.¹

Tusculanae Disputationes, V, 2

The highest good.²

De Officiis (On Moral Duties), bk. I, sec. 2

Never less idle than when wholly idle, nor less alone than when wholly alone.

De Officiis, III, 1

The people’s good is the highest law.³

De Legibus (On the Laws), bk. III, sec. 3

He used to raise a storm in a teapot.⁴

De Legibus, III, 16

Let the punishment match the offense.⁵

De Legibus, III, 20

The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.

De Amicitia (On Friendship), ch. XVII

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

De Amicitia, XXI

Give me a young man in whom there is something of the old, and an old man with something of the young: guided so, a man may grow old in body, but never in mind.

De Senectute (On Old Age), sec. XI

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

De Senectute, XXIII

Endless money forms the sinews of war.⁶

Philippics, oration V, sec. 5

Pompey [Gnaeus Pompeius]

106–48 B.C.E.

More worship the rising than the setting sun.⁷

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Pompey, sec. 14

A dead man cannot bite.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Pompey, 77

[Gaius] Julius Caesar

100–44 B.C.E.

All Gaul is divided into three parts.⁸

De Bello Gallico (The Gallic Wars),⁹ bk. I, sec. 1

Men willingly believe what they wish.¹⁰

De Bello Gallico, III, 18

I love treason but hate a traitor.¹¹

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Romulus, sec. 17

I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected.¹²

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Caesar, sec. 10

I had rather be the first man among these fellows than the second man in Rome.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Caesar, 11

The die is cast.¹³

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Caesar, 32

Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Caesar and his fortune in your boat.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Caesar, 38

The Ides of March have come.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Caesar, 63

[In answer to a question as to what sort of death was the best:] A sudden death.

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Caesar, 63

I came, I saw, I conquered.¹⁴

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Julius, sec. 37

You also, Brutus my son.¹

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Julius, 82

It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.²

From PLUTARCH, Lives, Antony, sec. 11

Lucretius [Titus Lucretius Carus]

99–55 B.C.E.

Mother of Aeneas and his race, darling of men and gods, nurturing Venus.

De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things),³ bk. I, l. 1 (Invocation)

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 7

The lively power of his mind prevailed, and forth he marched far beyond the flaming walls of the heavens,⁴ as he traversed the immeasurable universe in thought and imagination.

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 72

Such evil deeds could religion prompt.⁵

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 101

Nothing can be created from nothing.⁶

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 155

The first beginnings of things cannot be distinguished by the eye.

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 268

The ring on the finger becomes thin beneath by wearing, the fall of dripping water hollows the stone.⁷

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 312

Nature works by means of bodies unseen.

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 328

Material objects are of two kinds, atoms and compounds of atoms. The atoms themselves cannot be swamped by any force, for they are preserved indefinitely by their absolute solidity.⁸

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 518

On a dark theme I trace verses full of light, touching all the muses’ charm.⁹

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 933

Truths kindle light for truths.

De Rerum Natura, I, l. 1117

Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation: not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive what ills you are free from yourself is pleasant.¹⁰

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 1

O miserable minds of men! O blind hearts! In what darkness of life, in what great dangers ye spend this little span of years!¹¹

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 14

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 54

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortals live dependent one upon another. Some nations increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and like runners pass on the torch of life.¹²

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 75

So far as it goes, a small thing may give analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 123

All things must needs be borne on through the calm void, moving at equal rate with unequal weights.⁹

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 238

Never trust her at any time when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 558

What once sprung from the earth sinks back into the earth.¹

De Rerum Natura, II, l. 999

That fear of Acheron be sent packing which troubles the life of man from its deepest depths, suffuses all with the blackness of death, and leaves no delight clean and pure.

De Rerum Natura, III, 1. 37

So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

De Rerum Natura, III, l. 55

For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.

De Rerum Natura, III, l. 87

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.²

De Rerum Natura, III, l. 830

Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?¹

De Rerum Natura, III, l. 938

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

De Rerum Natura, III, l. 1087

What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.³

De Rerum Natura, IV, l. 637

From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even amid the flowers.¹

De Rerum Natura, IV, l. 1133

But if one should guide his life by true principles, man’s greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

De Rerum Natura, V, l. 1117

Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared.

De Rerum Natura, V, l. 1140

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

De Rerum Natura, V, l. 1152

Gaius Valerius Catullus

87–c. 54 B.C.E.

To whom am I to present my pretty new book, freshly smoothed off with dry pumice stone? To you, Cornelius: for you used to think that my trifles were worth something, long ago.

Carmina,⁴ poem I, l. 1

May it live and last for more than one century.

Carmina, I, l. 10

Mourn, ye Graces and Loves, and all you whom the Graces love. My lady’s sparrow is dead, the sparrow, my lady’s pet.⁵

Carmina, III, l. 1

Now he goes along the dark road, thither whence they say no one returns.

Carmina, III, l. 11

But these things are past and gone.⁶

Carmina, IV, l. 25

Let us live and love, my Lesbia, and value at a penny all the talk of crabbed old men. Suns may set and rise again: for us, when our brief light has set, there’s the sleep of perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses.⁷

Carmina, V, l. 1

Poor Catullus, you should cease your folly.

Carmina, VIII, l. 1

But you, Catullus, be resolved and firm.

Carmina, VIII, l. 19

And let her not look to find my love, as before; my love, which by her fault has dropped like a flower on the meadow’s edge, when it has been touched by the plow passing by.

Carmina, XI, l. 21

Over head and heels.⁸

Carmina, XX, l. 9

Whatever it is, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he smiles: it is a malady he has, neither an elegant one as I think, nor in good taste.

Carmina, XXXIX, l. 6

There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.

Carmina, XXXIX, l. 16

Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!

Carmina, XLIII, l. 8

Now spring brings back balmy warmth.⁹

Carmina, XLVI, l. 1

Catullus, the worst of all poets, gives you [Marcus Tullius] his warmest thanks; he being as much the worst of all poets as you are the best of all patrons.

Carmina, XLIX, l. 4

He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if it may be, seems to surpass the very gods, who sitting opposite you again gazes at you and hears you sweetly laughing.

Carmina, LI, l. 1

What an eloquent manikin!¹

Carmina, LIII, l. 5

I would see a little Torquatus, stretching his baby hands from his mother’s lap, smile a sweet smile at his father with lips half parted.

Carmina, LXI, l. 216

The evening is come; rise up, ye youths. Vesper from Olympus now at last is just raising his long-looked-for light.

Carmina, LXII, l. 1

What is given by the gods more desirable than the fortunate hour?²

Carmina, LXII, l. 30

Not unknown am I to the goddess [Venus] who mingles with her cares a sweet bitterness.

Carmina, LXVIII, l. 17

It is not fit that men should be compared with gods.

Carmina, LXVIII, l. 141

What a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.

Carmina, LXX, l. 3

Leave off wishing to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking that anyone can ever become grateful.

Carmina, LXXIII, l. 1

It is difficult suddenly to lay aside a long-cherished love.

Carmina, LXXVI, l. 13

I hate and I love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it and I am in torment.³

Carmina, LXXXV, l. 1

Wandering through many countries and over many seas, I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies, to present you with the last guerdon of death, and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes.

Carmina, CI, l. 1

And forever, O my brother, hail and farewell!⁴

Carmina, CI, l. 10

Sallust [Gaius Sallustius Crispus]

86–34 B.C.E.

All our power lies in both mind and body; we employ the mind to rule, the body rather to serve; the one we have in common with the Gods, the other with the brutes.

The War with Catiline⁵ [c. 42 B.C.E.], sec. 1

Covetous of others’ possessions, he [Catiline] was prodigal of his own.⁶

The War with Catiline, 5

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

The War with Catiline, 10

In truth, prosperity tries the souls even of the wise.⁷

The War with Catiline, 11

Thus in the highest position there is the least freedom of action.⁸

The War with Catiline, 51

On behalf of their country, their children, their altars, and their hearths.⁹

The War with Catiline, 59

The soul is the captain and ruler of the life of mortals.¹⁰

The War with Jugurtha⁵ [c. 40 B.C.E.], sec. 1

The splendid achievements of the intellect, like the soul, are everlasting.

The War with Jugurtha, 2

A city for sale and soon to perish if it finds a buyer!¹¹

The War with Jugurtha, 35

Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro]

70–19 B.C.E.

A god has brought us this peace.

Eclogues, no. I, l. 6

To compare great things with small.

Eclogues, I, l. 23

Happy old man!¹²

Eclogues, I, l. 46

Ah Corydon, Corydon, what madness has caught you?

Eclogues, II, l. 69

A sad thing is a wolf in the fold, rain on ripe corn, wind in the trees, the anger of Amaryllis.

Eclogues, III, l. 80

A snake lurks in the grass.¹

Eclogues, III, l. 93

Let us raise a somewhat loftier strain!²

Eclogues, IV, l. 1

The great cycle of the ages is renewed. Now Justice returns, returns the Golden Age; a new generation now descends from on high.³

Eclogues, IV, l. 5

We have made you [Priapus] of marble for the time being.

Eclogues, VII, l. 35

We are not all capable of everything.⁴

Eclogues, VIII, l. 63

Draw Daphnis from the town, my songs, draw Daphnis home.

Eclogues, VIII, l. 68

Hylax barks in the doorway.

Eclogues, VIII, l. 107

Your descendants shall gather your fruits.⁵

Eclogues, IX, l. 50

Time bears away all things, even our minds.

Eclogues, IX, l. 51

Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.

Eclogues, IX, l. 64

This last labor grant me, O Arethusa.

Eclogues, X, l. 1

What if Amyntas is dark? Violets are dark, too, and hyacinths.

Eclogues, X, l. 38

Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to Love.⁶

Eclogues, X, l. 69

Utmost [farthest] Thule.⁷

Georgics, no. I, l. 30

Look with favor upon a bold beginning.⁸

Georgics, I, l. 40

O farmers, pray that your summers be wet and your winters clear.

Georgics, I, l. 100

Practice and thought might gradually forge many an art.

Georgics, I, l. 133

Thrice they tried to pile Ossa on Pelion, yes, and roll up leafy Olympus upon Ossa; thrice the Father of Heaven split the mountains apart with his thunderbolt.

Georgics, I, l. 281

Frogs in the marsh mud drone their old lament.

Georgics, I, l. 378

Not every soil can bear all things.

Georgics, II, l. 109

Ah too fortunate farmers, if they knew their own good fortune!

Georgics, II, l. 458

May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.

Georgics, II, l. 485

Happy the man who could search out the causes of things.⁹

Georgics, II, l. 490

And no less happy he who knows the rural gods.¹⁰

Georgics, II, l. 493

This life the old Sabines knew long ago; Remus knew it, and his brother.

Georgics, II, l. 532

The best day… is the first to flee.¹¹

Georgics, III, l. 66

Years grow cold to love.

Georgics, III, l. 97

Time is flying never to return.¹²

Georgics, III, l. 284

All aglow is the work.¹³

Georgics, IV, l. 169

A sudden madness came down upon the unwary lover [Orpheus]—forgivable, surely, if Death knew how to forgive.

Georgics, IV, l. 488

I who once played shepherds’ songs and in my brash youth sang of you, O Tityrus, beneath the spreading beech.¹

Georgics, IV, l. 565

Of arms and the man I sing.²

Aeneid, bk. I, l. 1

Can heavenly minds yield to such rage?

Aeneid, I, l. 11

So vast was the struggle to found the Roman state.

Aeneid, I, l. 33

Night, pitch-black, lies upon the deep.

Aeneid, I, l. 89

O thrice and four times blessed!³

Aeneid, I, l. 94

Fury provides arms.

Aeneid, I, l. 150

You have suffered worse things; God will put an end to these also.

Aeneid, I, l. 199

Perhaps someday it will be pleasant to remember even this.⁴

Aeneid, I, l. 203

The organizer a woman.⁵

Aeneid, I, l. 364

Her walk revealed her as a true goddess.

Aeneid, I, l. 405

How happy those whose walls already rise!

Aeneid, I, l. 437

Here are the tears of things; mortality touches the heart.⁶

Aeneid, I, l. 462

I make no distinction between Trojan and Tyrian.

Aeneid, I, l. 574

A mind aware of its own rectitude.⁷

Aeneid, I, l. 604

As long as rivers shall run down to the sea, or shadows touch the mountain slopes, or stars graze in the vault of heaven, so long shall your honor, your name, your praises endure.

Aeneid, I, l. 607

I have known sorrow and learned to aid the wretched.

Aeneid, I, l. 630

Unspeakable, O Queen, is the sorrow you bid me renew.

Aeneid, II, l. 3

Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.⁸

Aeneid, II, l. 49

From a single crime know the nation.

Aeneid, II, l. 65

I shudder to say it.⁹

Aeneid, II, l. 204

O fatherland, O Ilium home of the gods, O Troy walls famed in battle!

Aeneid, II, l. 241

We have been Trojans; Troy has been.

Aeneid, II, l. 325

There is but one safety to the vanquished—to hope not safety.

Aeneid, II, l. 354

Our foes will provide us with arms.

Aeneid, II, l. 391

The gods thought otherwise.¹⁰

Aeneid, II, l. 428

Thrice would I have thrown my arms about her neck, and thrice the ghost embraced fled from my grasp: like a fluttering breeze, like a fleeting dream.¹¹

Aeneid, II, l. 793

O accurst craving for gold!

Aeneid, III, l. 57

Rumor flies.¹²

Aeneid, III, l. 121

I feel again a spark of that ancient flame.¹³

Aeneid, IV, l. 23

Deep in her breast lives the silent wound.

Aeneid, IV, l. 67

A woman is always a fickle, unstable thing.¹⁴

Aeneid, IV, l. 569

Thus, thus, it is joy to pass to the world below.¹⁵

Aeneid, IV, l. 660

Naked in death upon an unknown shore.

Aeneid, V, l. 871

Yield not to evils, but attack all the more boldly.

Aeneid, VI, l. 95

It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air—there’s the rub, the task.¹

Aeneid, VI, l. 126

Faithful Achates.²

Aeneid, VI, l. 158 and elsewhere

Death’s brother, Sleep.

Aeneid, VI, l. 278

Unwillingly I left your land, O Queen.³

Aeneid, VI, l. 460

Had I a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, a voice of iron and a chest of brass, I could not tell all the forms of crime, could not name all the types of punishment.

Aeneid, VI, l. 625

That happy place, the green groves of the dwelling of the blest.

Aeneid, VI, l. 638

The spirit within nourishes, and the mind, diffused through all the members, sways the mass and mingles with the whole frame.

Aeneid, VI, l. 726

Each of us bears his own Hell.

Aeneid, VI, l. 743

Others, I take it, will work better with breathing bronze and draw living faces from marble; others will plead at law with greater eloquence, or measure the pathways of the sky, or forecast the rising stars. Be it your concern, Roman, to rule the nations under law (this is your proper skill) and establish the way of peace; to spare the conquered and put down the mighty from their seat.

Aeneid, VI, l. 847

Give me handfuls of lilies to scatter.⁴

Aeneid, VI, l. 883

There are two gates of Sleep. One is of horn, easy of passage for the shades of truth; the other, of gleaming white ivory, permits false dreams to ascend to the upper air.

Aeneid, VI, l. 893

Prayed to the Genius of the place.

Aeneid, VII, l. 136

We descend from Jove; in ancestral Jove Troy’s sons rejoice.

Aeneid, VII, l. 219

If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.

Aeneid, VII, l. 312

An old story, but the glory of it is forever.

Aeneid, IX, l. 79

To have died once is enough.

Aeneid, IX, l. 140

I cannot bear a mother’s tears.

Aeneid, IX, l. 289

No day shall erase you from the memory of time.⁵

Aeneid, IX, l. 593

Good speed to your youthful valor, boy! So shall you scale the stars!⁶

Aeneid, IX, l. 641

Fortune favors the brave.⁷

Aeneid, X, l. 284

Believe one who has proved it. Believe an expert.⁸

Aeneid, XI, l. 283

His limbs were cold in death; his spirit fled with a groan, indignant, to the shades below.

Aeneid, XII, l. 951

One composed of many.⁹

Minor Poems. Moretum (Rustic Dinner), l. 104

Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says; “I am coming.”

Minor Poems. Copa (Dancing Girl), l. 38

Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]

65–8 B.C.E.

How comes it, Maecenas, that no man living is content with the lot that either his choice has given him, or chance has thrown in his way, but each has praise for those who follow other paths?

Satires, bk. I [35 B.C.E.], no. i, l. 1

The story’s about you.¹⁰

Satires, I, i, l. 69

There is measure in all things.¹¹

Satires, I, i, l. 106

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

Satires, I, i, l. 117

And all that tribe.¹²

Satires, I, ii, l. 2

The limbs of a dismembered poet.¹

Satires, I, iv, l. 62

A man without a flaw.²

Satires, I, v, l. 32

As crazy as hauling timber into the woods.

Satires, I, x, l. 34

This used to be among my prayers³—a piece of land not so very large, which would contain a garden, and near the house a spring of ever-flowing water, and beyond these a bit of wood.

Satires, II [30 B.C.E.], vi, l. 1

O nights and feasts of the gods!⁴

Satires, II, vi, l. 65

In Rome you long for the country; in the country—oh inconstant!—you praise the distant city to the stars.

Satires, II, vii, l. 28

Happy the man who far from schemes of business, like the early generations of mankind, works his ancestral acres with oxen of his own breeding, from all usury free.

Epodes [c. 29 B.C.E.], no. II, st. 1

You ask me why a soft numbness diffuses all my inmost senses with deep oblivion, as though with thirsty throat I’d drained the cup that brings the sleep of Lethe.

Epodes, XIV, st. 1

But if you name me among the lyric bards, I shall strike the stars with my exalted head.

Odes, bk. I [23 B.C.E.], no. i, last lines

The half of my own soul.⁵

Odes, I, iii, l. 8

No ascent is too steep for mortals. Heaven itself we seek in our folly.

Odes, I, iii, l. 37

Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man’s cottage door and at the palaces of kings.

Odes, I, iv, l. 13

Life’s brief span forbids us to enter on far-reaching hopes.⁶

Odes, I, iv, l. 15

What slender youth, bedewed with liquid odors,

Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,

Pyrrha? For whom bind’st thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness?⁷

Odes, I, v, l. 1

Never despair.⁸

Odes, I, vii, l. 27

Tomorrow once again we sail the Ocean Sea.⁹

Odes, I, vii, last line

Leave all else to the gods.¹⁰

Odes, I, ix, l. 9

Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth, and set down as gain each day that Fortune grants.

Odes, I, ix, l. 13

Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!¹¹

Odes, I, xi, last line

Happy, thrice happy and more, are they whom an unbroken bond unites and whose love shall know no sundering quarrels so long as they shall live.

Odes, I, xiii, l. 17

O fairer daughter of a fair mother!¹²

Odes, I, xvi, l. 1

Grant me, sound of body and of mind, to pass an old age lacking neither honor nor the lyre.

Odes, I, xxxi, last lines

A grudging and infrequent worshipper of the gods.¹³

Odes, I, xxxiv, l. 1

Now is the time for drinking, now the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot.¹⁴

Odes, I, xxxvii, l. 1

Persian luxury, boy, I hate.¹⁵

Odes, I, xxxviii, l. 1

Cease your efforts to find where the last rose lingers.¹⁶

Odes, I, xxxviii, l. 3

In adversity remember to keep an even mind.¹⁷

Odes, II [23 B.C.E.], iii, l. 1

We are all driven into the same fold.¹⁸

Odes, II, iii, l. 25

Whoever cultivates the golden mean¹⁹ avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.

Odes, II, x, l. 5

It is the mountaintop that the lightning strikes.

Odes, II, x, l. 11

Nor does Apollo always stretch the bow.¹

Odes, II, x, l. 19

I hate the common herd of men and keep them afar. Let there be sacred silence: I, the Muses’ priest, sing for girls and boys songs not heard before.

Odes, III [23 B.C.E.], i, l. 1

It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.²

Odes, III, ii, l. 13

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant’s threatening countenance.

Odes, III, iii, l. 1

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

Odes, III, iv, l. 65

Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

Odes, III, vi, l. 46

With you I should love to live, with you be ready to die.³

Odes, III, ix, last line

Gloriously perjured,⁴ a maiden famous to all time.⁵

Odes, III, xi, l. 35

I would not have borne this in my hot youth when Plancus was consul.⁶

Odes, III, xiv, l. 27

A pauper in the midst of wealth.⁷

Odes, III, xvi, l. 28

He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, “I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine.”⁸

Odes, III, xxix, l. 41

I have built a monument more lasting than bronze.⁹

Odes, III, xxx, l. 1

I shall not wholly die.¹⁰

Odes, III, xxx, l. 6

I am not what I was in the reign of the good Cinara. Forbear, cruel mother of sweet loves.¹¹

Odes, IV [13 B.C.E.], i, l. 3

The centuries roll back to the ancient age of gold.

Odes, IV, ii, l. 39

We are but dust and shadow.

Odes, IV, vii, l. 16

Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all are overwhelmed in eternal night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a sacred poet.¹²

Odes, IV, ix, l. 25

It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion.

Odes, IV, xii, l. 27

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

Epistles, bk. I [c. 20 B.C.E.], epistle i, l. 14

Make money, money by fair means if you can, if not, by any means money.¹³

Epistles, I, i, l. 66

The people are a many-headed beast.¹⁴

Epistles, I, i, l. 76

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!

Epistles, I, ii, l. 40

The covetous man is ever in want.

Epistles, I, ii, l. 56

Anger is a short madness.

Epistles, I, ii, l. 62

Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise. As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me, in a fine state, fat and sleek, a true hog of Epicurus’ herd.

Epistles, I, iv, l. 13

You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.

Epistles, I, iv, l. 24

They change their clime, not their disposition, who run across the sea.

Epistles, I, xi, l. 27

He is not poor who has enough of things to use. If it is well with your belly, chest and feet, the wealth of kings can give you nothing more.

Epistles, I, xii, l. 4

Harmony in discord.¹

Epistles, I, xii, l. 19

For joys fall not to the rich alone, nor has he lived ill, who from birth to death has passed unknown.

Epistles, I, xvii, l. 9

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.²

Epistles, I, xviii, l. 71

It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire.

Epistles, I, xviii, l. 84

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

Epistles, I, xix, l. 2

And seek for truth in the groves of Academe.³

Epistles, II [14 B.C.E.], ii, l. 45

Barefaced poverty drove me to writing verses.

Epistles, II, ii, l. 51

The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

Epistles, II, ii, l. 55

I have to submit to much in order to pacify the touchy tribe of poets.⁴

Epistles, II, ii, l. 102

“Painters and poets,” you say, “have always had an equal license in bold invention.” We know; we claim the liberty for ourselves and in turn we give it to others.

Epistles, III (Ars Poetica) [c. 15 B.C.E.], l. 9

It was a wine jar when the molding began: as the wheel runs round why does it turn out a water pitcher?

Epistles, III, l. 21

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Epistles, III, l. 25

Scholars dispute and the case is still before the courts.⁵

Epistles, III, l. 78

Foot-and-a-half-long words.⁶

Epistles, III, l. 97

If you wish me to weep, you yourself

Must first feel grief.⁷

Epistles, III, l. 102

Taught or untaught, we all scribble poetry.

Epistles, III, l. 117

The mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth.⁸

Epistles, III, l. 139

From the egg.⁹

Epistles, III, l. 147

In the midst of things.¹⁰

Epistles, III, l. 148

A praiser of past time.¹¹

Epistles, III, l. 173

Let a play have five acts, neither more nor less.

Epistles, III, l. 189

He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure, by delighting and instructing the reader at the same time.

Epistles, III, l. 343

Sometimes even good old Homer nods.¹²

Epistles, III, l. 359

As in painting, so in poetry.¹³

Epistles, III, l. 361

He has defiled his father’s grave.

Epistles, III, l. 471

Augustus Caesar

63 B.C.E.–14 C.E.

Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!¹

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Augustus, sec. 23

More haste, less speed.²

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Augustus, 25

Well done is quickly done.³

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Augustus, 25

I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Augustus, 28

After this time I surpassed all others in authority, but I had no more power than the others who were also my colleagues in office.

Res Gestae Divi Augusti (The Deeds of the Divine Augustus), bk. I, sec. 34

Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.

From PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Caesar Augustus

Livy [Titus Livius]

59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.

We can endure neither our evils nor their cures.⁴

History, prologue

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind.⁵

History, prologue

Better late than never.⁶

History, bk. IV, sec. 23

Beyond the Alps lies Italy.⁷

History, XXI, 30

Our ancestors refused to allow any woman to transact even private business without a guardian to represent her; women had to be under the control of fathers, brothers, or husbands. But we (heaven preserve us!) are now allowing them even to take part in politics, and actually to appear in the Forum and to be present at our meetings and assemblies!… Give a free rein to their undisciplined nature, to this untamed animal, and then expect them to set a limit on their own license!⁸

History, XXXIV, 2

Publilius Syrus⁹

First century B.C.E.

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

Maxim 1

He doubly benefits the needy who gives quickly.

Maxim 6

To do two things at once is to do neither.

Maxim 7

A god could hardly love and be wise.¹⁰

Maxim 25

Many receive advice, few profit by it.

Maxim 149

While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.

Maxim 185

For a good cause, wrongdoing is virtuous.¹¹

Maxim 244

You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.¹²

Maxim 262

What is left when honor is lost?

Maxim 265

When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.

Maxim 275

When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.

Maxim 277

Fortune is like glass—the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.

Maxim 280

There are some remedies worse than the disease.¹³

Maxim 301

A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.¹

Maxim 357

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Maxim 358

The bow too tensely strung is easily broken.

Maxim 388

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.²

Maxim 402

No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety.

Maxim 406

The judge is condemned when the criminal is absolved.³

Maxim 407

Practice is the best of all instructors.⁴

Maxim 439

He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.

Maxim 459

Never find your delight in another’s misfortune.

Maxim 467

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

Maxim 469

A rolling stone gathers no moss.⁵

Maxim 524

Never promise more than you can perform.

Maxim 528

No one should be judge in his own case.⁶

Maxim 545

Nothing can be done at once hastily and prudently.

Maxim 557

We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.

Maxim 559

It is only the ignorant who despise education.

Maxim 571

Do not turn back when you are just at the goal.⁷

Maxim 580

No man is happy who does not think himself so.⁸

Maxim 584

Never thrust your own sickle into another’s corn.⁹

Maxim 593

You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.

Maxim 596

Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

Maxim 633

Money alone sets all the world in motion.

Maxim 656

It is a very hard undertaking to seek to please everybody.

Maxim 675

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

Maxim 847

Better be ignorant of a matter than half know it.

Maxim 865

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

Maxim 914

You need not hang up the ivy branch over the wine that will sell.¹⁰

Maxim 968

It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery.

Maxim 995

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.¹¹

Maxim 1070

Speech is a mirror of the soul: as a man speaks, so is he.

Maxim 1073

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

c. 54–c. 7 B.C.E.

The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples.

Ars Rhetorica, ch. XI, sec. 2

Sextus Propertius

c. 54 B.C.E.–2 C.E.

Never change when love has found its home.

Elegies, bk. I, elegy i, l. 36

The seaman’s story is of tempest, the plowman’s of his team of bulls; the soldier tells his wounds, the shepherd his tale of sheep.

Elegies, II, i, l. 43

What though strength fails? Boldness is certain to win praise. In mighty enterprises, it is enough to have had the determination.¹

Elegies, II, x, l. 5

Let no one be willing to speak ill of the absent.²

Elegies, II, xix, l. 32

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.³

Elegies, II, xxxiii, l. 43

There is something beyond the grave; death does not end all, and the pale ghost escapes from the vanquished pyre.⁴

Elegies, IV, vii, l. 1

Albius Tibullus

c. 54–c. 19 B.C.E.

May I look on you when my last hour comes; may I hold you, as I sink, with my failing hand.⁵

Elegies, bk. I, elegy i, l. 59

Jupiter laughs at the perjuries of lovers.⁶

Elegies, III, vi, l. 49

Ovid [Publius Ovidius Naso]

43 B.C.E.–c. 18 C.E.

I have faith that yields to none, and ways without reproach, and unadorned simplicity, and blushing modesty.

Amores (The Loves), bk. I, poem iii, l. 13

The rest who does not know?⁷

Amores, I, v, l. 25

Every lover is a warrior, and Cupid has his camps.⁸

Amores, I, ix, l. 1

Run slowly, horses of the night.⁹

Amores, I, xiii, l. 39

Stay far hence, far hence, you prudes!¹⁰

Amores, II, i, l. 3

So I can’t live either without you or with you.¹¹

Amores, III, xi, l. 39

They come to see; they come that they themselves may be seen.¹²

Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), bk. I, l. 99

It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe there are.¹³

Ars Amatoria, I, l. 637

To be loved, be lovable.

Ars Amatoria, II, l. 107

Nothing is stronger than habit.

Ars Amatoria, II, l. 345

Perhaps too my name will be joined to theirs¹⁴ [the names of famous poets].

Ars Amatoria, III, l. 339

Now there are fields of corn where Troy once was.

Heroides (Letters from Heroines), letter I, l. 53

[Chaos] A rough, unordered mass of things.¹⁵

Metamorphoses, bk. I, l. 7

Your lot is mortal: not mortal is what you desire.

Metamorphoses, II, l. 56

You will be safest in the middle.¹

Metamorphoses, II, l. 137

I am Actaeon: recognize your master!²

Metamorphoses, III, l. 230

The cause is hidden, but the result is well known.³

Metamorphoses, IV, l. 287

I see and approve better things, but follow worse.⁴

Metamorphoses, VII, l. 20

The gods have their own rules.⁵

Metamorphoses, IX, l. 500

Time the devourer of all things.⁶

Metamorphoses, XV, l. 234

And now I have finished a work that neither the wrath of love, nor fire, nor the sword, nor devouring age shall be able to destroy.

Metamorphoses, XV, l. 871

Resist beginnings; the prescription comes too late when the disease has gained strength by long delays.

Remedia Amoris (Cures for Love), l. 91

Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe then.⁷

Remedia Amoris, l. 143

Poetry comes fine-spun from a mind at peace.

Tristia, bk. I, poem i, l. 39

So long as you are secure you will count many friends; if your life becomes clouded you will be alone.

Tristia, I, ix, l. 5

He who lives well, lives hidden.⁸

Tristia, III, iv, 25

Whatever I tried to write was verse.

Tristia, IV, x, l. 26

It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.

Epistulae Ex Ponto (Black Sea Letters), bk. II, letter iii, l. 14

Note too that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.

Epistulae Ex Ponto, II, ix, l. 47

Hillel

fl. 30 B.C.E.–10 C.E.

What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.⁹

From Talmud. Shabbath

God says: If you come to My House, I will come to yours.

From Talmud. Sukkah¹⁰

If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

From Talmud. The Wisdom of the Fathers¹¹

The more flesh, the more worms. The more possessions, the more worry.

From Talmud. The Wisdom of the Fathers

Phaedrus

fl. c. 8 C.E.

Submit to the present evil, lest a greater one befall you.

Fables,¹² bk. I, fable 2, l. 31

It has been related that dogs drink at the river Nile running along, that they may not be seized by the crocodiles.¹³

Fables, I, 25, l. 3

Things are not always what they seem.¹⁴

Fables, IV, 2, l. 5

To add insult to injury.

Fables, V, l. 3

Lucius Annaeus Seneca¹⁵

c. 4 B.C.E.–65 C.E.

Nothing will remain where it now stands. The old age of the world will level all, carry all away with itself. Not just mankind, but places, regions, continents—all these will be its sport.… Cities will it drag down into deep chasms, shatter with earthquakes, infect with plague-bearing winds summoned from its depths. It will swallow up with floods every inhabited place; it will kill every living thing on the submerged earth; it will burn and destroy mortal life with immense tongues of flame.

Consolation to Marcia

What fools these mortals be.¹

Epistles, letter 1, l. 3

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Epistles, 2, l. 2

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak to God as if men were listening.

Epistles, 10, l. 5

The best ideas are common property.

Epistles, 12, l. 11

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.

Epistles, 22, l. 17

A great pilot can sail even when his canvas is rent.

Epistles, 30, l. 3

Man is a reasoning animal.

Epistles, 41, l. 8

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

Epistles, 45, l. 1

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he receives praise.

Epistles, 52, l. 12

Not lost, but gone before.²

Epistles, 63, l. 16

All art is but imitation of nature.

Epistles, 65, l. 3

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Epistles, 84, l. 13

The pilot… who has been able to say, “Neptune, you shall never sink this ship except on an even keel,” has fulfilled the requirements of his art.³

Epistles, 85, l. 33

I was shipwrecked before I got aboard.

Epistles, 87, l. 1

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Epistles, 88, l. 45

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

Epistles, 95, l. 30

A great step towards independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.

Epistles, 123, l. 3

Time discovers truth.⁴

Moral Essays. On Anger, ch. 2, sec. 22

Whom they have injured they also hate.⁵

Moral Essays. On Anger, 2, 33

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.⁶

Moral Essays. On the Tranquillity of the Mind, 17, 10

A great fortune is a great slavery.

Moral Essays. To Polybius on Consolation, 6, 5

Wherever the Roman conquers, there he dwells.

Moral Essays. To Helvia on Consolation, 7, 7

You roll my log, and I will roll yours.

Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudi (The Gourdification of The Divine Claudius), sec. 9

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Hercules Furens (Mad Hercules), act I, sc. i, l. 255

An age will come after many years when the Ocean will loose the chains of things, and a huge land lie revealed; when Tiphys⁷ will disclose new worlds and Thule no more be the ultimate.⁸

Medea, II, ii, l. 374

A good mind possesses a kingdom.

Thyestes, l. 380

Marcus Manilius

First century C.E.

[Human reason] freed men’s minds from wondering at portents by wresting from Jupiter his bolts and power of thunder, and ascribing to the winds the noise and to the clouds the flame.¹

Astronomica,² bk. I, l. 102

Who could know heaven save by heaven’s gift and discover God save one who shares himself in the divine?

Astronomica, II, l. 115

Caligula [Gaius Caesar]

12–41 C.E.

Strike so that he may feel he is dying.³

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Caligula, sec. 30

Would that the Roman people had a single neck [to cut off their head].⁴

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Caligula, 30

Pliny the Elder [Gaius Plinius Secundus]

23–79 C.E.

In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.

Natural History, bk. I, dedication, sec. 22

Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough.⁵

Natural History, II, 234

It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.⁶

Natural History, VII, 1

Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.⁷

Natural History, VII, 2

To laugh, if but for an instant only, has never been granted to man before the fortieth day from his birth, and then it is looked upon as a miracle of precocity.

Natural History, VII, 2

Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.

Natural History, VII, 4

With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.

Natural History, VII, 5

Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?

Natural History, VII, 6

The human features and countenance, although composed of but some ten parts or little more, are so fashioned that among so many thousands of men there are no two in existence who cannot be distinguished from one another.⁸

Natural History, VII, 8

There is always something new out of Africa.⁹

Natural History, VIII, 17

When a building is about to fall down, all the mice desert it.¹⁰

Natural History, VIII, 103

The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.

Natural History, XVIII, 31

With a grain of salt.¹¹

Natural History, XXIII, 8

Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?¹

Natural History, XXVIII, 23

Persius [Aulus Persius Flaccus]

34–62 C.E.

The stomach is the teacher of the arts and the dispenser of invention.²

Satires, prologue, l. 10

Tell, priests, what is gold doing in a holy place?

Satires, no. II, l. 69

Meet the disease at its first stage.³

Satires, III, l. 64

Gaius Petronius [Petronius Arbiter]

d. c. 66 C.E.

He has joined the great majority.⁴

Satyricon, sec. 42

A man who is always ready to believe what is told him will never do well.

Satyricon, 43

One good turn deserves another.

Satyricon, 45

I have seen with my own eyes the Sybil of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, “What do you want?” she answered, “I want to die.”⁵

Satyricon, 48

Not worth his salt.

Satyricon, 57

My heart was in my mouth.

Satyricon, 62

Beauty and wisdom are rarely conjoined.

Satyricon, 94

The studied spontaneity of Horace.⁶

Satyricon, 118

Quintilian [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]

c. 35–c. 100 C.E.

We give to necessity the praise of virtue.⁷

Institutio Oratoria, bk. I, ch. 8, sec. 14

A liar should have a good memory.⁸

Institutio Oratoria, IV, 2, 91

For it is feeling and force of imagination that makes us eloquent.⁹

Institutio Oratoria, X, 7, 15

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.¹⁰

Institutio Oratoria, X, 7, 21

Flavius Josephus [Joseph ben Matthias]

37–95? C.E.

Everyone ought to worship God according to his own inclinations, and not to be constrained by force.

Life,¹¹ ch. 23

While I am alive I shall never be in such slavery as to forgo my own kindred, or forget the laws of our forefathers.

The Wars of the Jews,¹¹ bk. VI, ch. 8

Eleazar ben Jair

d. 73 C.E.

Let us spare nothing but our provisions. For they will be a testimonial when we are dead, that we were not subdued for want of necessaries; but that, according to our original resolution, we have preferred death before slavery.

Speech at Masada. From JOSEPHUS, The Wars of the Jews, bk. VII, ch. 8

Nero [Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus]

37–68 C.E.

What an artist dies with me!¹

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Nero, sec. 49

Lucan

39–65 C.E.

If the victor had the gods on his side, the vanquished had Cato.²

The Civil War, bk. I, l. 128

There stands the shadow of a glorious name.³

The Civil War, I, l. 135

Thinking nothing done while anything remained to be done.⁴

The Civil War, II, l. 657

More was lost than mere life and existence.⁵

The Civil War, VII, l. 639

We all praise fidelity; but the true friend pays the penalty when he supports those whom Fortune crushes.

The Civil War, VIII, l. 485

A name illustrious and revered by nations.⁶

The Civil War, IX, l. 203

Is the dwelling place of God anywhere but in the earth and sea, the air and sky, and virtue? Why seek we further for deities? Whatever you see, whatever you touch, that is Jupiter.

The Civil War, IX, l. 578

The very ruins have been destroyed.⁷

The Civil War, IX, l. 969

Longinus

First century C.E.

Sublimity is the echo of a noble mind.

On the Sublime, sec. 9

In the Odyssey one may liken Homer to the setting sun, of which the grandeur remains without the intensity.

On the Sublime, 9

Martial [Marcus Valerius Martialis]

c. 40–c. 104 C.E.

My poems are naughty, but my life is pure.⁸

Epigrams,⁹ bk. I, poem 4, l. 8

Tomorrow’s life is too late. Live today.

Epigrams, I, 15, l. 12

Some good, some so-so, and lots plain bad: that’s how a book of poems is made, my friend.

Epigrams, I, 16, l. 1

I don’t like you, Sabidius, I can’t say why; But I can say this: I don’t like you, Sabidius.¹⁰

Epigrams, I, 32, l. 1

Stop abusing my verses, or publish some of your own.

Epigrams, I, 91, l. 2

Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.

Epigrams, III, 42, l. 4

The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved in amber, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar.¹¹

Epigrams, IV, 32, l. 1

They praise those verses, yes, but read something else.

Epigrams, IV, 49, l. 10

Our days pass by, and are scored against us.¹²

Epigrams, V, 20, l. 13

A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere.

Epigrams, VII, 73, l. 6

You puff the poets of other days,

The living you deplore.

Spare me the accolade: your praise

Is not worth dying for.

Epigrams, VIII, 69, l. 1

Virtue extends our days: he lives two lives who relives his past with pleasure.

Epigrams, X, 23, l. 8

You’re obstinate, pliant, merry, morose, all at once. For me there’s no living with you, or without you.¹³

Epigrams, XII, 46, l. 1

The country in town.¹⁴

Epigrams, XII, 57, l. 21

Titus Vespasianus

c. 41–81 C.E.

Friends, I have lost a day.¹

From SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Titus, sec. 8

Plutarch

46–120 C.E.

The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

On Listening²

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.³

Lives, Aemilius Paulus, sec. 5

A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, “Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?” holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made. “Yet,” added he, “none of you can tell where it pinches me.”⁴

Lives, Aemilius Paulus, 29

Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

Lives, Sertorius, sec. 16

Medicine, to produce health, has to examine disease; and music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.

Lives, Demetrius, sec. 1

It is wise to be silent when occasion requires, and better than to speak, though never so well.⁵

Morals, On the Training of Children

An old doting fool, with one foot already in the grave.

Morals, On the Training of Children

He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach.⁶

Morals, On Garrulity

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world; but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.⁷

Morals, On Superstition

Antiphanes said merrily that in a certain city the cold was so intense that words were congealed as soon as spoken, but that after some time they thawed and became audible; so that the words spoken in winter were articulated next summer.

Morals, On Man’s Progress in Virtue

When the candles are out all women are fair.⁸

Morals, Conjugal Precepts

Like watermen, who look astern while they row the boat ahead.⁹

Morals, Whether ’Twas Rightfully Said, Live Concealed

The great god Pan is dead.

Morals, Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers

I am whatever was, or is, or will be; and my veil no mortal ever took up.¹⁰

Morals, On Isis and Osiris

For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.

Morals, Against Colotes

Pythagoras, when he was asked what time was, answered that it was the soul of this world.

Morals, Platonic Questions

Epictetus

c. 55–135 C.E.

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone;¹nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

Discourses,² bk. I, ch. 14

No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Discourses, I, 15

Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to a humble and grateful mind.

Discourses, I, 16

Were I a nightingale, I would sing like a nightingale; were I a swan, like a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must sing hymns of praise to God.

Discourses, I, 16

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task.

Discourses, I, 27

Only the educated are free.

Discourses, II, 1

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

Discourses, II, 17

Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, “Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.”

Discourses, II, 18

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Discourses, III, 23

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.

The Encheiridion,² 15

Juvenal [Decimus Junius Juvenalis]

c. 55–c. 130 C.E.

It is hard not to write satire.³

Satire I, l. 30

Honesty is praised and starves.⁴

Satire I, l. 74

If nature refuses, indignation will produce verses.⁵

Satire I, l. 79

All the doings of mankind, their wishes, fears, anger, pleasures, joys, and varied pursuits, form the motley subject of my book.

Satire I, l. 85

Censure pardons the raven, but is visited upon the dove.⁶

Satire II, l. 63

No one becomes depraved in a moment.⁷

Satire II, l. 83

Grammarian, rhetorician, geometrician, painter, trainer, soothsayer, rope-dancer, physician, magician—he knows everything. Tell the hungry little Greek to go to heaven; he’ll go.

Satire III, l. 76

Bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous.⁸

Satire III, l. 152

We all live in a state of ambitious poverty.

Satire III, l. 182

A rare bird on earth, comparable to a black swan.⁹

Satire VI, l. 165

I wish it, I command it. Let my will take the place of reason.¹⁰

Satire VI, l. 223

We are now suffering the evils of a long peace. Luxury, more deadly than war, broods over the city, and avenges a conquered world.¹¹

Satire VI, l. 292

But who is to guard the guards themselves?¹²

Satire VI, l. 347

An inveterate and incurable itch for writing besets many, and grows old in their sick hearts.

Satire VII, l. 51

Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having.¹

Satire VIII, l. 83

The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things—bread and circuses!²

Satire X, l. 79

You should pray for a sound mind in a sound body.³

Satire X, l. 356

For revenge is always the delight of a mean spirit, of a weak and petty mind! You may immediately draw proof of this—that no one rejoices more in revenge than a woman.

Satire XIII, l. 189

The greatest reverence is due the young.⁴

Satire XIV, l. 47

Cornelius Tacitus

c. 56–c. 120 C.E.

The images of the most illustrious families… were carried before it [the bier of Julia]. Those of Brutus and Cassius were not displayed; but for that reason they shone with preeminent luster.

Annals,⁵ bk. III, sec. 76

He had talents equal to business, and aspired no higher.

Annals, VI, 39

What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent.

Annals, XI, 24

The man who gave them their name, Christus, had been executed during the rule of Tiberius by the [prefect] Pontius Pilatus. The pernicious superstition had been temporarily suppressed, but it was starting to break out again, not just in Judaea, the starting point of the curse, but in Rome as well, where all that is abominable and shameful in the world flows together and gains popularity. And so, at first, those who confessed were apprehended, and subsequently, on the disclosures they made, a huge number were found guilty—more because of their hatred of mankind than because they were arsonists.⁶

Annals, XV, 44

[Of Petronius:] Nero… looked up to him as a decisive authority in matters of taste.⁷

Annals, XVI, 18

It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.

Histories, bk. I, 1

[Of Servius Galba:] He seemed more important than a private citizen while he was a private citizen, and in the opinion of all he was capable of rule—if he had not ruled.

Histories, I, 49

The desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.⁸

Histories, IV, 6

The gods are on the side of the stronger.⁹

Histories, IV, 17

Whatever is unknown is taken for marvelous;¹⁰ but now the limits of Britain are laid bare.

Agricola, sec. 30

Where they make a desert, they call it peace.¹¹

Agricola, 30

Think of your forefathers and posterity.¹²

Agricola, 32

Fortune favored him… in the opportune moment of his death.

Agricola, 45

Pliny the Younger [Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus]

c. 61–c. 112 C.E.

Modestus said of Regulus that he was “the biggest rascal that walks upon two legs.”

Letters, bk. I, letter 5

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this—that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That’s right. I am quite well.

Letters, I, 11

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.¹³

Letters, II, 15

This expression of ours, “Father of a family.”¹⁴

Letters, V, 19

That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.¹

Letters, VIII, 9

His only fault is that he has no fault.²

Letters, IX, 26

Suetonius [Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus]

c. 69–c. 140 C.E.

Hail, Emperor, we who are about to die salute you.³

Lives of the Caesars, Claudius, sec. 21

Hadrian [Publius Aelius Hadrianus]

76–138 C.E.

Little soul, wandering, gentle guest and companion of the body, into what places will you now go, pale, stiff, and naked, no longer sporting as you did!⁴

Ad Animam Suam (Hadrian’s Address to His Soul)

Chang Heng

78–139 C.E.

Heaven is like an egg, and the earth is like the yolk of the egg.⁵

Saying

Lucius Annaeus Florus

fl. 125 C.E.

Each year new consuls and proconsuls are made; but not every year is a king or a poet born.⁶

De Qualitate Vitae (The Quality of Life), fragment 8

Ptolemy [Claudius Ptolemaeus]

c. 100–178

Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.

Tetrabiblos,⁷ bk. I, sec. 1

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

121–180

This Being of mine, whatever it really is, consists of a little flesh, a little breath, and the part which governs.

Meditations,⁸ II, 2

You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.

Meditations, II, 5

Remember that no man loses other life than that which he lives, nor lives other than that which he loses.

Meditations, II, 14

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Meditations, II, 14

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

Meditations, II, 14

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

Meditations, II, 17

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Meditations, III, 7

By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.

Meditations, IV, 3

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Meditations, IV, 3

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

Meditations, IV, 18

Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.

Meditations, IV, 20

All that is harmony for you, my Universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for you is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. All things come of you, have their being in you, and return to you.

Meditations, IV, 23

Love the little trade which you have learned, and be content with it.

Meditations, IV, 31

All is ephemeral—fame and the famous as well.

Meditations, IV, 35

Search men’s governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

Meditations, IV, 38

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

Meditations, IV, 43

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man—yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Meditations, IV, 48

In the morning, when you are sluggish about getting up, let this thought be present: “I am rising to a man’s work.”

Meditations, V, 1

A man makes no noise over a good deed, but passes on to another as a vine to bear grapes again in season.

Meditations, V, 6

Live with the gods.

Meditations, V, 27

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

Meditations, VI, 54

One universe made up of all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason, shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth.

Meditations, VII, 9

It is man’s peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.

Meditations, VII, 22

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Meditations, VII, 67

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.

Meditations, VIII, 16

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

Meditations, IX, 3

A wrongdoer is often a man who has left some thing undone, not always one who has done something.

Meditations, IX, 5

Galen

129–199

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

On the Natural Faculties,¹ bk. I, sec. 2

It was, of course, a grand and impressive thing to do, to mistrust the obvious, and to pin one’s faith in things which could not be seen!

On the Natural Faculties, I, 13

That which is grows, while that which is not becomes.

On the Natural Faculties, II, 3

The Diamond Sutra [Vajracchedika]

Second century C.E.

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.²

Attributed to Nagarjuna

Diogenes Laertius

fl. c. 200

Time is the image of eternity.

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Plato, bk. III, sec. 73

There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from custom is the unwritten law.

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Plato, III, 86

Tabula Smaragdina [Emerald Tablet]

Second or third century C.E.

Whatever is below is like that which is above, and whatever is above is like that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of one thing.³

Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus

Clement of Alexandria

c. 150–c. 215

To write all things in a book is to leave a sword in the hands of a child.¹

The Stromata (Miscellanies), bk. 1

Tertullian [Quintus Septimius Tertullianus]

c. 160–240

O witness of the soul naturally Christian.

Apologeticum, sec. 17

See how these Christians love one another.²

Apologeticum, 39

We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.³

Apologeticum, 50

Man is one name belonging to every nation upon earth. In them all is one soul though many tongues. Every country has its own language, yet the subjects of which the untutored soul speaks are the same everywhere.

De Testimonio Animae (Testimony of the Soul)

Mother Church.⁴

Ad Martyras (To the Martyrs), sec. 1

Truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by persuading.

Adversus Valentinianos (Against the Valentinians), sec. 1

Truth does not blush.⁵

Adversus Valentinianos, 3

It is to be believed because it is absurd.⁶

De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ), sec. 5

It is certain because it is impossible.⁷

De Carne Christi, 5

Out of the frying pan into the fire.⁸

De Carne Christi, 6

One man’s religion neither harms nor helps another man.

Ad Scapulam (To Scapula [the name of a proconsul]), 2

It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.

Ad Scapulam, 2

I must dispel vanity with vanity.

Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion), IV, 30

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?⁹

De Praescriptione Haereticorum (Prescription Against Heretics), ch. 7, sec. 9

Fragments from the Gospel of Thomas

Third century

Jesus saith, Wherever there are two, they are not without God, and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him. Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me, cleave the wood and there am I.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri,¹⁰ pt. I, no. 1, Sayings of Jesus, fifth saying

Jesus saith, Ye ask who are those that draw us to the kingdom, if the kingdom is in Heaven?… The fowls of the air, and all beasts that are under the earth or upon the earth, and the fishes of the sea, these are they which draw you, and the kingdom of Heaven is within you.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri, 4, no. 654, New Sayings of Jesus, second saying

Saint Cyprian

d. 258

He cannot have God for his father who has not the Church for his Mother.¹

De Unitate Ecclesiae (On Church Unity) [251], ch. 6

There is no salvation outside the Church.²

Letter 73 [c. 256]

Plotinus

205–270

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

Enneads,³ bk. II, treatise iii, sec. 7

One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.

Enneads, II, iii, 8

Longus

Third century?

There was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see.

Daphnis and Chloe, proem, ch. 2

He is so poor that he could not keep a dog.

Daphnis and Chloe, 15

Constantine [Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus]

c. 285–337

In this sign shalt thou conquer.⁴

From EUSEBIUS, Life of Constantine, bk. I, ch. 28

Julian [the Apostate] [Flavius Claudius Julianus]

332–363

You have conquered, Galilean.⁵

From THEODORET, Church History, bk. III, ch. 20

Saint Ambrose

c. 340–397

When you are at Rome live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.⁶

Ambrose’s advice to Saint Augustine. From JEREMY TAYLOR, Ductor Dubitantium (The Rule of Conscience) [1660], pt. I, bk. 1, rule 5

Saint Jerome

c. 342–420

The friendship that can cease has never been real.

Letter 3⁷

It is easier to mend neglect than to quicken love.

Letter 7

Love knows nothing of order.

Letter 7

The fact is that my native land is a prey to barbarism, that in it men’s only God is their belly, that they live only for the present, and that the richer a man is the holier he is held to be.

Letter 7

An unstable pilot steers a leaking ship, and the blind is leading the blind straight to the pit. The ruler is like the ruled.

Letter 7

No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow.

Letter 14

If there is but little water in the stream, it is the fault, not of the channel, but of the source.

Letter 17

You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian.⁸

Letter 22

It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.⁹

Letter 27

The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end.

Letter 48

Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, “Why do you not practice what you preach?”¹⁰

Letter 48

Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.¹

Letter 52

A fat paunch never breeds fine thoughts.²

Letter 52

That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.

Letter 52

It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

Letter 53

Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice.³

Letter 54

The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.

Letter 54

A literal translation from one language into another obscures the sense.

Letter 57

I have always revered not crude verbosity but holy simplicity.⁴

Letter 57

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

Letter 58

The Roman world is falling,⁵ yet we hold our heads erect instead of bowing our necks.

Letter 60

Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.

Letter 60

Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?

Letter 107

Christians are not born but made.⁶

Letter 107

For they wished to fill the winepress of eloquence not with the tendrils of mere words but with the rich grape juice of good sense.

Letter 125

The privileges of a few do not make common law.⁷

Exposition on Jona

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.⁸

On the Epistle to the Ephesians

Saint John Chrysostom

c. 345–407

Hell is paved with priests’ skulls.

De Sacerdotio (On the Priesthood) [c. 390]

No one can harm the man who does himself no wrong.⁹

Letter to Olympia

Vegetius [Flavius Vegetius Renatus]

fl. c. 375

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.¹⁰

De Rei Militari (Concerning Military Matters), bk. III, prologue

Saint Augustine

354–430

Truth dwells in the inner man.

Of True Religion [c. 390]

The weakness of little children’s limbs is innocent, not their souls.

Confessions [397–401], bk. I, ch. 7

To Carthage I came, where all about me resounded a caldron of dissolute loves.

Confessions, III, 1

I was in love with loving.

Confessions, III, 1

In the usual course of study I had come to a book of a certain Cicero.

Confessions, III, 4

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

Confessions, VIII, 7

Take up, read! Take up, read!¹¹

Confessions, VIII, 12

What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.

Confessions, XI

Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.

Confessions, X, 27

Give what you command, and command what you will.

Confessions, X, 29

Hear the other side.¹

De Duabus Animabus (Concerning Two Souls), ch. XIV

I would not have believed the gospel had not the authority of the Church moved me.

Against the Epistle of Manichaeus, Called Fundamenti [c. 397], ch. 5

Necessity has no law.

Soliloquiorum. Animae ad Deum [c. 410], 2

We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

Sermons, no. 3

Anger is a weed; hate is the tree.

Sermons, 58

The dove loves when it quarrels; the wolf hates when it flatters.

Sermons, 64

Rome has spoken; the case is closed.²

Sermons, 131

He who created you without you will not justify you without you.

Sermons, 169

The most glorious city of God.

The City of God [415], vol. I, preface

Our time for this life is nothing other than a race to death.

The City of God, vol. XIII, ch. 10

Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.

The City of God, XIV, ch. 28

For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?

Enchiridion [after 420], pt. XI

T’ao Chien

365–427

I built my hut in a zone of human habitation,

Yet near me there sounds no noise of horse or coach. Would you know how that is possible?

A heart that is distant creates a wilderness around it.³

Untitled poem

I have done my plowing:

I have sown my seed.

Again I have time to sit and read my books.⁴

Reading the Book of Hills and Seas

Saint Vincent of Lérins

d. c. 450

[That faith is catholic] which has been believed always, everywhere, and by all.⁴

Commonitorium, ch. 2

Saint Remy [Remigius]

c. 438–c. 533

Henceforward burn what thou hast worshipped, and worship what thou hast burned.

Said to Clovis at his baptism [496]

Clovis

466–511

God of Clotilda,⁵ if you grant me victory I shall become a Christian.⁶

Legendary vow before battle

Saint Benedict

480–543

We are therefore about to establish a school of the Lord’s service in which we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome.

Rule of Saint Benedict, prologue

Boethius [Anicius Manlius Severinus]

480–524

For in all adversity of fortune, it is the most unhappy kind of misfortune to have been happy.

The Consolation of Philosophy,⁷ bk. II, prose 4, l. 4

From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend—

Path, motive, guide, original and end.⁸

The Consolation of Philosophy, III, verse 9, l. 27

Who can give law to lovers? Love is a greater law to itself.

The Consolation of Philosophy, III, verse 12, l. 47

Pope Gregory I

540–604

[They answered that they were called Angles.] It is well, for they have the faces of angels, and such should be the co-heirs of the angels in heaven.¹

From BEDE, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, bk. II, ch. 1

The Talmud²

compiled c. sixth century

The day is short, the labor long, the workers are idle, and reward is great, and the Master is urgent.

Mishna. The Wisdom of the Fathers

Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.

Mishna. Sanhedrin

Ali ibn-Abi-Talib³

c. 602–661

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,

And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.

A Hundred Sayings

The Koran⁴

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being,

the All-merciful, the All-compassionate,

the Master of the Day of Doom.

Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succor.

Guide us in the straight path,

the path of those whom Thou hast blessed,

not of those against whom Thou art wrathful,

nor of those who are astray.

Sura 1

Do not veil the truth with vanity, nor conceal the truth wittingly.

2:42

We believe in God, and in that which has been sent down on us and sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the Prophets, of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender.⁵

2:135–136

A believing slave is better than an idolater, even though ye admire him.

2:221

God will not take you to task for vain words in your oaths, but He will take you to task for what your hearts have earned.

2:225

Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, though you should be in raised-up towers.

4:80

I [Muhammad] have no power to profit for myself except as God will… I am only a warner, and a bearer of good tidings to a people who believe.

7:188

God is enough for me: there is no God but He. In Him I have put my trust.

9:129

In the alternation of night and day, and what God has created in the heavens and the earth—surely there are signs for a god-fearing people.

10:6

Surely God wrongs not men anything, but themselves men wrong.

10:44

Not so much as the weight of an ant in earth or heaven escapes from thy Lord.

10:61

God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves.

13:11

We [God] have sent no messenger save with the tongue of his people, that he might make clear to them.

14:4

A good word is as a good tree—its roots are firm, and its branches are in heaven; it gives its produce every season by the leave of its Lord.… And the likeness of a corrupt word is as a corrupt tree—uprooted from the earth.… God confirms those who believe with the firm word, in the present life and in the world to come; and God leads astray the evildoers; and God does what He will.

14:24–27

The only thing We [God] say to a thing, when We desire it, is that We say to it, “Be,” and it is.

16:40

Set not up with God another god, or thou wilt sit condemned and forsaken. The Lord has decreed you shall not serve any but Him, and be good to parents… speak unto them words respectful, and lower to them the wing of humbleness out of mercy and say, “My Lord, have mercy upon them, as they raised me up when I was little.”

17:23–24

Walk not on the earth exultantly; certainly thou wilt never tear the earth open, nor attain the mountains in height.

17:37

They will question thee concerning the soul. Say: “The spirit is the concern of my Lord, and you have been given of knowledge nothing except a little.”

17:85

They say: “We will not believe thee till thou makest a spring to gush forth from the earth for us, or… bringest God and the angels as a surety.”… And naught prevented men from believing when the guidance came to them, but that they said, “Has God sent forth a mortal as Messenger?” Say: “Had there been in the earth angels walking at peace, We would have sent down upon them out of heaven an angel as Messenger.”

17:90–95

And do not say, regarding anything, “I am going to do that tomorrow,” but only, “If God will.”¹

18:23–24

Wealth and children are the adornment of this present world; but the abiding things, the deeds of righteousness, are better with God in reward, and better in hope.

18:46

Man says, “What, when I am dead shall I then be brought forth alive?” Will not man remember that We created him aforetime, when he was nothing?

19:66–67

Have not the unbelievers then beheld that the heavens and the earth were a mass all sewn up, and then We unstitched them and of water fashioned every living thing? Will they not believe?

21:30

O men, if you are in doubt as to the Resurrection, surely We created you of dust, then of a sperm drop, then of a blood clot, then of a lump of flesh.… And thou beholdest the earth blackened; then, when We send down water upon it, it quivers, and swells, and puts forth herbs of every joyous kind.

22:5

We [God] charge not any soul save to its capacity.

23:62

God is the light of the heavens and of the earth. His light is like a niche in which is a lamp—the lamp encased in glass—the glass, as it were, a glistening star. From a blessed tree it is lighted, the olive neither from the East nor of the West, whose oil would well nigh shine out, even though fire touched it not. It is light upon light. God guideth whom He will to His light, and God setteth forth parables to men.²

24:35

As for the unbelievers, their works are as a mirage in a spacious plain which the man athirst supposes to be water, till, when he comes to it, he finds it is nothing; there indeed he finds God, and He pays him his account in full; and God is swift at the reckoning.

Or they are as shadows upon a sea obscure, covered by a billow above which is a billow, above which are clouds, shadows piled upon one another; when he puts forth his hand, wellnigh he cannot see it. And to whomsoever God assigns no light, no light has he.

24:39–40

Thou shalt see the mountains that thou supposest fixed, passing by like clouds.

27:88

Thou truly canst not guide whom thou lovest; but God guideth whom He will; and He best knoweth those who yield to guidance.³

28:55

The present life is naught but a diversion and a sport; surely the Last Abode is Life, did they but know.

29:64

Whosoever submits his will to God and performs good deeds, has laid hold of the most firm handle, and unto God is the issue of all affairs.

31:22

Though all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea—and seven seas after it to replenish it, yet would the Words of God not be spent.

31:27

We offered this trust⁴ to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refused to carry it and were afraid of it; and man carried it. Surely he is sinful, very foolish.

33:72

He makes the night to enter into the day and makes the day to enter into the night, and He has subjected the sun and the moon, each of them, to a stated term.

35:13

So today no soul shall be wronged anything, and you shall not be recompensed, except according to what you have been doing.

36:54

They say, “There is nothing but our present life; we die, and we live, and nothing but Time destroys us.” Of that they have no knowledge; they merely conjecture.

45:24

O believers, let not any people scoff at another people who may be better than they;… And find not fault with one another, neither revile one another.

49:10–13

The Bedouins say, “We believe.” Say: “You do not believe; rather say, ‘We surrender,’; for belief has not yet entered your hearts.”

49:14

We [God] created Man, and We know what his soul whispers within him; and We are nearer to him than his jugular vein.

50:16

O tribe of [spirits] and of men, if you are able to pass through the confines of heaven and earth, pass through them! You shall not pass through them except with [the Lord’s] authority.

55:33

He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; He has knowledge of everything.

57:3

Let every soul consider what it has forwarded for the morrow. And fear God: God is aware of the things you do.

59:18

What, is he who walks prone upon his face better guided than he who walks upright on a straight path?

67:22

Man shall be a clear proof against himself, even though he offer his excuses.

75:14

Recite: In the name of thy Lord who created,

Created Man of a blood clot.

Recite: And thy Lord is the most

Generous, who taught by the Pen,

Taught Man that he knew not.

96:1–5

Whoso has done an atom’s weight of good shall see it; and whoso has done an atom’s weight of evil shall see it.

99:7–8

Say: “He is God, One God, the Everlasting Refuge, who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, and equal to Him is not anyone.”

112

Anonymous: Early Miscellaneous

Whatever kind of word thou speakest the like shalt thou hear.

The Greek Anthology,¹ bk. IX, 382

Envy slays itself by its own arrows.

The Greek Anthology, X, 111

Give me today, and take tomorrow.

Quoted, and condemned, by Saint Chrysostom

I came to the place of my birth, and cried, “The friends of my youth, where are they?” And echo answered, “Where are they?”

Arab saying

If only, when one heard

That Old Age was coming

One could bolt the door,

Answer “Not at home”

And refuse to meet him!

Kokinshu (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems)² [905]

Anonymous: Latin

Ab urbe condita [Since the founding of the city (Rome)].

Saying

Absit omen [May it not be an omen].

Saying

Acta est fabula [The play is over].

Said at ancient dramatic performances and quoted by Augustus on his deathbed

Actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea [The act is not criminal unless the intent is criminal].

Legal maxim

Ad astra per aspera [To the stars through hardships].

Proverb

Adeste, fideles,

Laeti triumphantes;

Venite, venite in Bethlehem.

[O come, all ye faithful,

Joyful and triumphant,

O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.]

Hymn [eighteenth century]

Bis dat qui cito dat [He gives twice who gives promptly].³

Saying

Cave ab homine unius libri [Beware the man of one book].

Quoted by ISAAC D’ISRAELI [1766–1848] in Curiosities of Literature [1791–1793]

Cave canem [Beware of the dog].

Proverb

Caveat emptor [Let the buyer beware].

Proverb

Cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit cras amet [Tomorrow let him love who has never loved and tomorrow let him who has loved love].

Pervigilium Veneris (The Vigil of Venus) [c. 350], refrain

Cucullus non facit monachum [The cowl does not make a monk].⁴

Medieval proverb

Cuius regio eius religio [He who controls the area controls the religion].

Proverb

De gustibus non disputandum [There is no accounting for tastes].

Proverb

De minimis non curat lex [The law is not concerned with trifles].

Legal maxim

Deus vult [God wills it].

Motto of the Crusades [1095]

Dis manibus sacrum¹ [Sacred to the departed spirit(s)].

Tombstone inscription

Divide et impera [Divide and rule].

Ancient political maxim cited by MACHIAVELLI

Errare humanum est [To err is human].

Saying

Et in Arcadia ego [I too am in Arcadia].²

Inscription on a tomb in a painting [c. 1623] by GUERCINO [1591–1666]

Ex ungue leonem [From his claw one can tell a lion].³

Saying

Fiat justitia ruat coelum [Let justice be done though heaven should fall].⁴

Proverb, sometimes attributed to LUCIUS CALPURNIUS PISO CAESONINUS [d. 43 B.C.E.]

Finis coronat opus [The end crowns the work].

Saying

Flagrante delicto [“Red-handed”].

Saying

Gaudeamus igitur,

Iuvenes dum sumus.

[Let us live then and be glad

While young life is before us.]

Students’ song [c. 1267]

Habeas corpus [You are to produce the person⁵].

Legal phrase

Hannibal ad portas [Hannibal is at the gates]!

Saying

In vino veritas [In wine is truth].

Proverb quoted by PLATO, Symposium, sec. 217

Ipse dixit [He himself said it].

Phrase of “proof”

Ius est ars boni et aequi [Legal justice is the art of the good and the fair].

Saying

Mater artium necessitas [Necessity is the mother of invention].

Saying

Mors ultima ratio [Death is the final accounting].

Saying

Nemo me impune lacessit [No one provokes me with impunity].

Motto of the Crown of Scotland

Nihil nimis [Nothing in excess].⁶

Saying

Non multa sed multum [Not many but much].⁷

Proverb

Orate est laborare, laborare est orare [To pray is to work, to work is to pray].

Ancient motto of the Benedictine order

Parvis e glandibus quercus [Tall oaks from little acorns grow].

Saying

Piscem natare doces [You’re teaching a fish to swim].

Saying

Post coitum omne animal triste [Every creature is sad after coitus].

Saying

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc [After this, therefore because of this].

Definition of fallacy in logic

Primus inter pares [First among equals].

Saying

Pro bono publico [For the public good].

Saying

Quos [or Quem] deus vult perdere prius dementat [Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad].

Saying

Requiescat in pace⁸ [May he rest in peace; May she rest in peace].

Saying

Res iudicata pro veritate habetur [A matter that has been legally decided is considered true].

Legal maxim

Ruat coelum, fiat voluntas tua [Though heaven should fall, let thy will be done].

Proverb

Semper fidelis [Ever faithful].

Saying

Sic semper tyrannis⁹ [Thus always to tyrants].

Saying

Sit tibi terra levis¹⁰ [May the earth rest lightly on you].

Tombstone inscription

Summum ius summa iniuria [Extreme justice is extreme injustice].¹

Legal maxim cited by CICERO in De Officiis, bk. I, sec. 33

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis [Times change, and we change with them too].²

From the Epigrammata [1615] of JOHN OWEN [c. 1564–1622]

Testis unus testis nullus [A single witness is no witness].

Legal maxim

Ubi bene ibi patria [Where one is happy, there’s one’s homeland].

Saying

Urbi et orbi [To the city³ and to the world].

Apostolic blessing

Vade in pace [Go in peace].

End of confessional absolution

Vae victis [Woe to the conquered]!

From LIVY, History, bk. V, sec. 48, as said by Brennus to the Romans

Volenti non fit iniuria [To a person who consents no injustice is done].

Legal maxim

[Kakinomoto no] Hitomaro

c. 662–710

Though I grieve, there is no help;

Vainly I long to see her.

Men tell me that my wife is

In the mountains of Hagai—

Thither I go,

Toiling along the stony path;

But it avails me not,

For of my wife, as she lived in this world,

I find not the faintest shadow.⁴

The Manyôshu [late eighth century], bk. 2, poem 210-2

Bede [Venerable Bede]

c. 672–c. 735

No reptiles are found there [in Ireland], and no snake can live there; for, though often carried thither out of Britain, as soon as the ship comes near the shore, and the scent of the air reaches them, they die.

Ecclesiastical History of the English People, bk. I, ch. 1

One day some merchants who had recently arrived in Rome displayed their many wares in the marketplace. Among the crowd who thronged to buy was Gregory, who saw among other merchandise some boys exposed for sale. These had fair complexions, fine-cut features and beautiful hair. Looking at them with interest, he enquired from what country and what part of the world they came. “They come from the island of Britain,” he was told.…“What is the name of this race?” “They are called Angles,” he was told. “That is appropriate,” he said, “for they have angelic faces.”⁵

Ecclesiastical History of the English People, II, 1

The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant.

Ecclesiastical History of the English People, II, 13

However excellent the verses, it is impossible to translate them from one language into another without losing much of their beauty and dignity.

Ecclesiastical History of the English People, IV, 24

Saint John of Damascus

c. 675–c. 749

God is a sea of infinite substance.⁶

De Fide Orthodoxa (On the Orthodox Faith), bk. I, ch. 9

Li Po

701–762

Drunk we lie down in empty hills,

heaven and earth our quilt and pillow.⁷

A Night with a Friend

Wang Wei

701–761

Empty hills, no one in sight,

only the sound of someone talking;

late sunlight enters the deep wood,

shining over the green moss again.¹

Deer Fence

I have just seen you go down the mountain.

I close the wicker gate in the setting sun.

The grass will be green again in coming spring,

But will the wanderer ever return?

Departure²

Alcuin

c. 732–804

The voice of the people is the voice of God.³

Letter to Charlemagne [800 C.E.]

Here halt, I pray you, make a little stay,

O wayfarer, to read what I have writ,

And know by my fate what thy fate shall be.

What thou art now, wayfarer, world renowned,

I was: what I am now, so shall thou be.

The world’s delight I followed with a heart

Unsatisfied: ashes am I, and dust.

His own epitaph⁴

Han-Shan

Eighth or ninth century

Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;

Forever flowing, like a passing river.

Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:

Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.⁵

Cold Mountain Poems, no. 10

John Scotus Eriugena

c. 815–c. 877

We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.

Periphyseon [c. 866], book II

Ariwara no Narihira

823–880

That it is a road

Which some day we all travel

I had heard before,

Yet I never expected

To take it so soon myself.

Ise Monogatari [The Tales of Ise]⁶

Ono no Komachi

Ninth century

The flowers withered,

Their color faded away,

While meaninglessly

I spent my days in the world

And the long rains were falling.

Kokinshu (Collection of Ancient and Modern Poems)⁷ [905]

This night of no moon

There is no way to meet him.

I rise in longing—

My breast pounds, a leaping flame,

My heart is consumed in fire.

Kokinshu

Ching Hao

fl. 925

There are Six Essentials in painting. The first is called spirit; the second, rhythm; the third, thought; the fourth, scenery; the fifth, the brush; and the last is the ink.

Notes on Brushwork⁸

Resemblance reproduces the formal aspect of objects, but neglects their spirit; truth shows the spirit and substance in like perfection.

Notes on Brushwork

Murasaki Shikibu

c. 978–c. 1031

[The art of the novel] happens because the storyteller’s own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.

The Tale of Genji [c. 1000]⁹

Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.

The Tale of Genji

Or let us look at calligraphy. A man without any great skill can stretch out this line and that in the cursive style and give an appearance of boldness and distinction. The man who has mastered the principles and writes with concentration may, on the other hand, have none of the eye-catching tricks; but when you take the trouble to compare the two the real thing is the real thing.

The Tale of Genji

It is a very uncertain world, and it always has been, particularly for women. They are like bits of driftwood.

The Tale of Genji

The Primary Chronicle¹

1040–1118

The Chuds, the Slavs, and the Krivchians then said to the peoples of Rus: “Our whole land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.”

Annal for the years 860–862: Invitation of the Varangians to Novgorod

It is the Russians’ joy to drink; we cannot do without it.

Annal for the year 987: Vladimir’s Christianization of Russia

Saint Anselm

c. 1033–1109

God is that, the greater than which cannot be conceived.²

Proslogion, ch. 3

Wei T’ai

Eleventh century

Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in the words; this is how poetry enters deeply into us.³

From Poems of the Late T’ang [1965]

Abu Muhammad al-Kasim al-Hariri

1054–1122

We praise Thee, O God,

For whatever perspicuity of language Thou hast taught us

And whatever eloquence Thou hast inspired us with.

Makamat. Prayer

Peter Abelard

1079–1142

O what their joy and their glory must be,

Those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see!⁴

Hymnus Paraclitensis

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.

Letter 8, Abelard to Heloise

Saint Bernard

1091–1153

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.

Epistle 106

I have liberated my soul.⁵

Epistle 371

Hell is full of good intentions or desires.⁶

Attributed. From SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES [1567–1622], Letter 74

Heloise

c. 1098–c. 1164

Riches and power are but gifts of blind fate, whereas goodness is the result of one’s own merits.

Letter 2, Heloise to Abelard

Poem of the Cid¹

Twelfth century

Were his lord but worthy, God, how fine a vassal.

l. 20

Thus parted the one from the others as the nail from the flesh.

l. 375

Bernard of Chartres

c. 1100

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.²

Cited in JOHN OF SALISBURY [c. 1115–1176], The Metalogicon [1159], bk. 3, ch. 4

Frederick I [Barbarossa]

c. 1122–1190

An emperor is subject to no one but God and Justice.

From JULIUS WILHELM ZINCGREF [1591–1635], Apophthegmata [1626], bk. I

Averroës [Ibn Rushd]

1126–1198

Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.

Tahafut-ul-Tahafut (Destruction of Destruction)

Henry II

1133–1189

Who will free me from this turbulent priest?³

Attributed

Maimonides [Moses ben Maimon]

1135–1204

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellowman, either by a considerable gift, or a sum of money, or by teaching him a trade, or by putting him in the way of business, so that he may earn an honest livelihood, and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and the summit of charity’s golden ladder.

Charity’s Eight Degrees

Astrology is a disease, not a science.

Laws of Repentance [1170–1180]

When I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well-established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools—I prefer to address myself to the one man.⁴

The Guide for the Perplexed [1190]. Introduction

The spiritual perfection of man consists in his becoming an intelligent being—one who knows all that he is capable of learning.

The Guide for the Perplexed, pt. I, ch. 3

In the realm of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary.

The Guide for the Perplexed, I, 15

The foundation of our faith is the belief that God created the Universe from nothing; that time did not exist previously, but was created.

The Guide for the Perplexed, II, 30

Alain de Lille [Alanus de Insulis]

d. 1202

Do not hold as gold all that shines as gold.⁵

Parabolae

Kamo no Chōmei

1153–1216

The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration: so in the world are man and his dwellings.… [People] die in the morning, they are born in the evening, like foam on the water.

Hojoki (An Account of My Hut)¹ [1212]

Walther von der Vogelweide

c. 1170–c. 1230

Now the summer came to pass

And flowers through the grass

Joyously sprang,

While all the tribes of birds sang.²

Dream Song, st. 1

The sun no longer shows

His face; and treason sows

His secret seeds that no man can detect;

Fathers by their children are undone;

The brother would the brother cheat;

And the cowled monk is a deceit…

Might is right, and justice there is none.³

Millennium

Eike von Repgow

fl. c. 1220

Who comes first, grinds first.⁴

Sachsenspiegel (Saxon Mirror) [1219–1233]

Saint Francis of Assisi⁵

c. 1181–1226

Praise to thee, my Lord, for all thy creatures,

Above all Brother Sun

Who brings us the day and lends us his light.

The Song of Brother Sun and of All His Creatures [1225]

Love is he, radiant with great splendor,

And speaks to us of Thee, O Most High.

The Song of Brother Sun and of All His Creatures

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

The Counsels of the Holy Father Saint Francis. Admonition 27

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Attributed

I have sinned against my brother the ass.

Dying words

Arnaud-Amaury

d. 1225

Kill them all. God will recognize his own.⁶

Said during a massacre of those considered heretics in Béziers [1209]

Jalal Al-Din Rumi

1207–1273

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.

I don’t plan it.

When I’m outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Who Says Words with My Mouth⁷

Magna Carta

1215

No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Clause 39

To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice.

Clause 40

Saint Bonaventure

c. 1217–1274

An example from the monkey: The higher it climbs, the more you see of its behind.¹

Conferences on the Gospel of John

Roger Bacon

c. 1220–c. 1292

If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics.

Opus Majus (The Greater Work),² bk. I, ch. 4

Shih Nai-An

Thirteenth century

A man should not marry after thirty years of age; should not enter the government service after the age of forty; should not have any more children after the age of fifty; and should not travel after the age of sixty. That is because the proper time for those things has passed.³

Water Margin, vol. 1, introduction

Alfonso X [Alfonso the Wise]

1221–1284

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.

Attributed

Saint Thomas Aquinas

c. 1225–1274

Sing, my tongue, the Savior’s glory,

Of His Flesh the mystery sing;

Of the Blood, all price exceeding,

Shed by our immortal King.⁴

Pange, Lingua (hymn for Vespers on the Feast of Corpus Christi), st. 1

Down in adoration falling,

Lo! the sacred Host we hail;

Lo! o’er ancient forms departing,

Newer rites of grace prevail;

Faith for all defects supplying,

Where the feeble senses fail.

Pange, Lingua, st. 5 (Tantum Ergo)

Thus Angels’ Bread is made

The Bread of man today:

The Living Bread from Heaven

With figures doth away:

O wondrous gift indeed!

The poor and lowly may

Upon their Lord and Master feed.⁵

Sacris Solemniis Juncta Sint Gaudia (Matins hymn for Corpus Christi), st. 6 (Panis Angelicus)

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.

Two Precepts of Charity [1273]

Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God.⁶

Summa Theologica [1273], pt. 1 of Pt. II, question 3

Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.

Summa Theologica, pt. 1 of Pt. II, question 90

In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.⁷

Summa Theologica, supplement to Pt. III, question 94

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

Opuscule 11, De Regno

Meister Eckhart [Eckhart von Hochheim]

c. 1260–c. 1327

In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.

Directions for the Contemplative Life

One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works.

Work and Being

In the head of the soul, in the intellect, I am as close to a point located a thousand miles beyond the sea as I am to the place where I am presently standing.

Sermon 2¹

If the soul knows God in creatures, night falls. If it sees how they have their being in God, morning breaks. But if it sees the Being that is in God himself alone, it is high noon! See! This is what one ought to desire with mad fervor—that all his life should become Being.²

Sermons. Being Is More than Life

The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one seeing, one knowing, and one loving.³

German Sermons. Sermon 12

Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness, and there God shines.

Sermon 18¹

Dante Alighieri

1265–1321

In that part of the book of my memory before which is little that can be read, there is a rubric, saying, “Incipit Vita Nova [The new life begins].”

La Vita Nuova⁴ [1293]

Love hath so long possessed me for his own

And made his lordship so familiar.

La Vita Nuova

Love with delight discourses in my mind

Upon my lady’s admirable gifts…

Beyond the range of human intellect.

Il Convito (The Banquet),⁵ treatise 3, l. 1

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.⁶

The Divine Comedy [c. 1310–1321]. Inferno,⁷ canto I, l. 1

And as he, who with laboring breath has escaped from the deep to the shore, turns to the perilous waters and gazes.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, I, l. 22

Thou [Virgil] art my master and my author, thou art he from whom alone I took the style whose beauty has done me honor.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, I, l. 85

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!⁸

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, III, l. 9

Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, III, l. 14

There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, III, l. 22

This miserable state is borne by the wretched souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, III, l. 34

Let us not speak of them; but look, and pass on.⁹

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, III, l. 51

These wretches, who never were alive.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, III, l. 64

Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, III, l. 87

Without hope we live in desire.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, IV, l. 42

I came into a place void of all light, which bellows like the sea in tempest, when it is combated by warring winds.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, V, l. 28

As in the cold season their wings bear the starlings along in a broad, dense flock, so does that blast the wicked spirits. Hither, thither, downward, upward, it drives them.¹⁰

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, V, l. 40

Love, which is quickly kindled in the gentle heart, seized this man for the fair form that was taken from me, and the manner still hurts me. Love, which absolves no beloved one from loving, seized me so strongly with his charm that, as thou seest, it does not leave me yet.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, V, l. 100

What sweet thoughts, what longing led them to the woeful pass.¹

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, V, l. 113

There is no greater sorrow

Than to be mindful of the happy time

In misery.²

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, V, l. 121

Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it; that day we read in it no farther.³

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, V, l. 137

I fell as a dead body falls.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, V, last line

Pride, Envy, and Avarice are the three sparks that have set these hearts on fire.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, VI, l. 74

But when thou shalt be in the sweet world, I pray thee bring me to men’s memory.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, VI, l. 88

Ye that are of good understanding, note the doctrine that is hidden under the veil of the strange verses!

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, IX, l. 61

Already I had fixed my look on his; and he rose upright with breast and countenance, as if he entertained great scorn of Hell.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, X, l. 34

Necessity brings him [Dante] here, not pleasure.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XII, l. 87

If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of a glorious haven.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XV, l. 55

So my conscience chide me not, I am ready for Fortune as she wills.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XV, l. 91

He listens well who takes notes.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XV, l. 99

A fair request should be followed by the deed in silence.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XXIV, l. 77

Consider your origin; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XXVI, l. 118

If I thought my answer were to one who would ever return to the world, this flame should stay without another movement; but since none ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer thee without fear of infamy.

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XXVII, l. 60

And thence we came forth, to see again the stars.⁴

The Divine Comedy. Inferno, XXXIV, l. 139

To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio,⁵ I, l. 1

He goes seeking liberty, which is so dear, as he knows who for it renounces life.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, I, l. 71

O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, III, 1. 8

The Infinite Goodness has such wide arms that it takes whatever turns to it.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, III, l. 121

Unless, before then, the prayer assist me which rises from a heart that lives in grace: what avails the other, which is not heard in heaven?

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, IV, l. 133

“Why is thy mind so entangled,” said the Master [Virgil], “that thou slackenest thy pace? What is it to thee what they whisper there? Come after me and let the people talk. Stand like a firm tower that never shakes its top for blast of wind.”

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, V,⁶ l. 10

[Beatrice] who shall be a light between truth and intellect.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, VI, l. 45

It was now the hour that turns back the longing of seafarers and melts their hearts, the day they have bidden dear friends farewell, and pierces the new traveler with love if he hears in the distance the bell that seems to mourn the dying day.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, VIII,⁶ l. 1

Give us this day the daily manna, without which, in this rough desert, he backward goes, who toils most to go on.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XI, l. 13

Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XI, l. 100

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XII, l. 95

To a greater force, and to a better nature, you, free, are subject, and that creates the mind in you, which the heavens have not in their charge. Therefore if the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XVI, l. 79

Everyone confusedly conceives of a good in which the mind may be at rest, and desires it; wherefore everyone strives to attain to it.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XVII, l. 127

Love kindled by virtue always kindles another, provided that its flame appear outwardly.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XXII, l. 10

Less than a drop of blood remains in me that does not tremble; I recognize the signals of the ancient flame.¹

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XXX, l. 46

But so much the more malign and wild does the ground become with bad seed and untilled, as it has the more of good earthly vigor.

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XXX, l. 118

Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.²

The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio, XXXIII, l. 145

The glory of Him who moves everything penetrates through the universe, and is resplendent in one part more and in another less.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso,³ I, l. 1

A great flame follows a little spark.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, I, l. 34

And in His will is our peace.⁴

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, III, 1. 85

The greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation, and the most conformable to His goodness, and that which He prizes the most, was the freedom of the will, with which the creatures with intelligence, they all and they alone, were and are endowed.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, V, l. 19

Thou shalt prove how salt is the taste of another’s bread and how hard is the way up and down another man’s stairs.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XVII, l. 58

Overcoming me with the light of a smile, she [Beatrice] said to me: “Turn and listen, for not only in my eyes is Paradise.”

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XVIII, l. 19

Therefore the sight that is granted to your world penetrates within the Eternal Justice as the eye into the sea; for though from the shore it sees the bottom, in the open sea it does not, and yet the bottom is there but the depth conceals it.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XIX, l. 73

The experience of this sweet life.⁵

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XX, l. 47

Like the lark that soars in the air, first singing, then silent, content with the last sweetness that satiates it, such seemed to me that image, the imprint of the Eternal Pleasure.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XX, l. 73

The night that hides things from us.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XXIII, l. 3

With the color that paints the morning and evening clouds that face the sun I saw then the whole heaven suffused.

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XXVII, l. 28

The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.⁶

The Divine Comedy. Paradiso, XXXIII, l. 145

I have reached, alas, the long shadow and short day of whitening hills when color is lost in the grass. My longing, all the same, keeps green it is so hooked in the hard stone that speaks and hears like a woman.

Sestina: Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra⁷

Yoshida Kenkō

1283?–1350?

The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.⁸

Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) [c. 1330], ch. 13

William of Occam [Ockham]

c. 1285–c. 1349

Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.¹

Quodlibeta Septem (Seven Quodlibetal Questions) [c. 1320]

Philip VI [Philip of Valois]

1293–1350

He who loves me, let him follow me.²

Attributed

Petrarch [Francesco Petrarca]

1304–1374

Who overrefines his argument brings himself to grief.

To Laura in Life [c. 1327], canzone 11

A good death does honor to a whole life.

To Laura in Death, 16

To be able to say how much you love is to love but little.

To Laura in Death, 137

Edward III

1312–1377

Honi soit qui mal y pense [Shame on anyone who thinks evil of it].

Motto of the Order of the Garter [1349]

Let the boy win his spurs.

Said of the Black Prince at the battle of Crécy [1345]

Giovanni Boccaccio

1313–1375

In this extremity of our city’s suffering and tribulation the revered authority of laws, human and divine, was abased and all but totally dissolved, for lack of those who should have administered and enforced them, most of whom, like the rest of the citizens, were either dead or sick, or so hard pressed for servants that they were unable to execute any office; whereby every man was free to do what was right in his own eyes.³

The Decameron [1349–1351], First Day

William of Wykeham

1324–1404

Manners maketh man.

Motto of his two foundations, Winchester College and New College, Oxford

William Langland

c. 1330–c. 1400

In a summer season when soft was the sun.

The Vision of Piers Plowman [1362–1390]

A fair field full of folk found I there.

The Vision of Piers Plowman

John Wycliffe

c. 1330–1384

I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.

To the Duke of Lancaster [1381]. From J. R. GREEN, A Short History of the English People [1874], ch. 5

Ibn Khaldûn

1332–1406

Man is a child of the customs and the things he has become used to. He is not the product of his natural disposition and temperament. The conditions to which he has become accustomed, until they have become for him a quality of character and matters of habit and custom, have replaced his natural disposition.

The Muqaddimah⁴ [1377], bk. I, ch. 2

It should be known that at the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of a dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.

The Muqaddimah, I, 3

Jean Froissart

c. 1337–c. 1405

At least a third of all the people in the world died.¹

Chronicles [1373]. On the Black Plague

Julian of Norwich²

c. 1342–after 1416

Just because I am a woman, must I therefore believe that I must not tell you about the goodness of God, when I saw at the same time both his goodness and his wish that it should be shown?

Revelations of Divine Love, The Short Text [c. 1373], ch. 7

It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.³

Revelations of Divine Love, The Long Text [c. 1373–c. 1393], ch. 27

He said not “Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased”; but he said, “Thou shalt not be overcome.”

Revelations of Divine Love, 68

Geoffrey Chaucer

c. 1343–1400

Soun ys noght but eyr ybroken,

And every speche that ys spoken,

Lowd or pryvee, foul or fair,

In his substaunce ys but air.

The House of Fame⁴ [1374–1385], bk. II, l. 765

Venus clerk, Ovide,

That hath ysowen wonder wide

The grete god of Loves name.

The House of Fame, III, 1. 1487

Hard is the herte that loveth nought

In May.

The Romaunt of the Rose [c. 1380], l. 85

For nakid as a worm was she.

The Romaunt of the Rose, l. 454

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,

Th’ assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge.

The Parliament of Fowls [1380–1386], l. 1

For out of olde feldes, as men seyth,

Cometh al this newe corn fro yer to yere;⁵

And out of olde bokes, in good feyth,

Cometh al this newe science that men lere.

The Parliament of Fowls, l. 22

Nature, the vicaire of the almyghty lorde.

The Parliament of Fowls, l. 379

Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,

That hast this wintres wedres overshake.

The Parliament of Fowls, l. 680

But the Troian gestes, as they felle,

In Omer, or in Dares, or in Dite,

Whoso that kan may rede hem as they write.

Troilus and Criseyde [c. 1385], bk. I, l. 145

If no love is, O God, what fele I so?

And if love is, what thing and which is he?

If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?

Troilus and Criseyde, I, l. 400 (Canticus Troili)

Unknowe, unkist, and lost, that is unsought.

Troilus and Criseyde, I, l. 809

O wynd, o wynd, the weder gynneth clere.

Troilus and Criseyde, II, l. 2

Til crowes feet be growen under youre yë.

Troilus and Criseyde, II, l. 403

Lord, this is an huge rayn!

This were a weder for to slepen inne!

Troilus and Criseyde, III, 1. 656

For I have seyn, of a ful misty morwe

Folowen ful often a myrie someris day.

Troilus and Criseyde, III, l. 1060

Right as an aspes leef she gan to quake.

Troilus and Criseyde, III, l. 1200

For of fortunes sharpe adversitee

The worste kynde of infortune is this,

A man to han ben in prosperitee,

And it remembren, whan it passed is.

Troilus and Criseyde, III, l. 1625

Oon ere it herde, at tothir out it wente.⁶

Troilus and Criseyde, IV, l. 434

But manly sette the world on six and sevene;¹

And if thow deye a martyr, go to hevene!

Troilus and Criseyde, IV, l. 622

For tyme ylost may nought recovered be.

Troilus and Criseyde, IV, l. 1283

They take it wisly, faire, and softe.²

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 347

For he that naught n’ assaieth, naught n’ acheveth.

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 784

That Paradis stood formed in her yën.

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 817

Trewe as stiel.

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 831

        This sodeyn Diomede.

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 1024

Ye, fare wel al the snow of ferne yere!³

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 1176

Ek gret effect men write in place lite;

Th’ entente is al, and nat the lettres space.

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 1629

Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye.⁴

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 1786

O yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she,

In which that love up groweth with youre age,

Repeyreth hom fro worldly vanyte.

Troilus and Criseyde, V, l. 1835

        Whan that the month of May

Is comen, and that I here the foules synge,

And that the floures gynnen for to sprynge,

Farewel my bok, and my devocioun!

The Legend of Good Women [c. 1386], l. 36

That, of al the floures in the mede,

Thanne love I most thise floures white and rede,

Swiche as men callen daysyes in our toun.

The Legend of Good Women, l. 41

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.

The Canterbury Tales [c. 1387]. Prologue, l. 1

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open yë,

(So priketh hem nature in hit corages);

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 9

He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 72

He was as fressh as is the month of May.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 92

He koude songes make and wel endyte.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 95

Curteis he was, lowely, and servysable,

And carf biforn his fader at the table.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 99

Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne,

Entuned in hir nose ful semely;

And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe

For Frenssh of Parys was to hir unknowe.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 122

She wolde wepe, if that she saugh a mous

Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 144

And theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene,

On which ther was first write a crowned A,

And after Amor vincit omnia.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 160

His palfrey was as broun as is a berye.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 207

A Frere ther was, a wantowne and a merye.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 208

He knew the tavernes wel in every toun.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 240

Somwhat he lipsed, for his wantownesse,

To make his Englissh sweete upon his tonge.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 264

A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 285

As leene was his hors as is a rake.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 287

For hym was levere have at his beddes heed

Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,

Of Aristotle and his philosophie,

Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie,

But al be that he was a philosophre,

Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 293

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 308

Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas,

And yet he semed bisier than he was.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 321

For he was Epicurus owene sone.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 336

It snewed in his hous of mete and drynke.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 345

He was a good felawe.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 395

His studie was but litel on the Bible.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 438

For gold in phisik is a cordial,

Therefore he lovede gold in special.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 443

She was a worthy womman al hit lyve,

Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 459

This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf,

That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, 1. 496

If gold ruste, what shal iren do?

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 500

But Cristes loore and his apostles twelve

He taughte, but first he folwed it hymselve.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 527

And yet he hadde a thombe of gold.¹

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 563

That hadde a fyr-reed cherubynnes face.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 624

Wel loved he garleek, oynons, and eek lekes,

And for to drynken strong wyn, reed as blood.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 634

And whan that he wel dronken hadde the wyn,

Than wolde he speke no word but Latyn.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 637

Whoso shal telle a tale after a man,

He moot reherce as ny as evere he kan

Everich a word, if it be in his charge,

Al speke he never so rudeliche and large,

Or ellis he moot telle his tale untrewe,

Or feyne thyng, or fynde wordes new.

The Canterbury Tales. Prologue, l. 731

For May wol have no slogardie anyght.

The sesoun priketh every gentil herte,

And maketh hym out of his slep to sterte.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1042

Ech man for hymself.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1182

The bisy larke, messager of day.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1491

May, with alle thy floures and thy grene,

Welcome be thou, faire, fresshe May.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1510

That “feeld hath eyen, and the wode hath eres.”²

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1522

Now up, now doun, as boket in a welle.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1533

For pitee renneth soone in gentil herte.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1761

      Cupido,

Upon his shuldres wynges hadde he two;

And blynd he was, as it is often seene;

A bowe he bar and arwes brighte and kene.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1963

The smylere with the knyf under the cloke.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 1999

Up roos the sonne, and up roose Emelye.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 2273

Myn be the travaille, and thyn be the glorie!

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 2406

What is this world? what asketh men to have?

Now with his love, now in his colde grave

Allone, withouten any compaignye.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 2777

This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo,

And we been pilgrymes, passing to and fro.

Deeth is an ende of every worldly soore.

The Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale, l. 2847

Jhesu Crist, and seiynte Benedight,

Blesse this hous from every wikked wight.

The Canterbury Tales. The Miller’s Tale, 1. 3483

And broghte of myghty ale a large quart.

The Canterbury Tales. The Miller’s Tale, l. 3497

“Tehee!” quod she, and clapte the wyndow to.

The Canterbury Tales. The Miller’s Tale, l. 3740

Yet in our asshen olde is fyr yreke.

The Canterbury Tales. The Reeve’s Prologue, l. 3882

The gretteste clerkes been noght the wisest men.

The Canterbury Tales. The Reeve’s Tale, l. 4054

Thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne.¹

The Canterbury Tales. The Reeve’s Tale, l. 4066

So was hir joly whistle wel ywet.

The Canterbury Tales. The Reeve’s Tale, l. 4155

She is mirour of alle curteisye.²

The Canterbury Tales. The Man of Law’s Tale, l. 166

For in the sterres, clerer than is glas,

Is writen, God woot, whoso koude it rede,

The deeth of every man.

The Canterbury Tales. The Man of Law’s Tale, l. 194

Sathan, that evere us waiteth to bigile.

The Canterbury Tales. The Man of Law’s Tale, l. 582

But, Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me

Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee,

It tikleth me aboute myn herte roote.

Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote

That I have had my world as in my tyme.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 469

In his owene grece I made hym frye.³

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 487

By God! in erthe I was his purgatorie,

For which I hope his Soule be in glorie.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 489

What thyng we may nat lightly have,

Thereafter wol we crie al day and crave.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 517

Greet prees at market maketh deere ware,

And to greet cheep is holde at litel prys.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 522

But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth.

Gat-toothed I was, and that bicam me weel.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 601

A womman cast hir shame away,

Whan she cast of hir smok.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 782

As thikke as motes in the sonne-beem.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Tale, l. 868

“My lige lady, generally,” quod he,

“Wommen desiren have sovereynetee

As well over hir housbond as hir love.”

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Tale, l. 1037

Looke who that is moost vertuous alway,

Pryvee and apert, and most entendeth ay

To do the gentil dedes that he kan;

Taak hym for the grettest gentil man.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Tale, l. 1113

That he is gentil that dooth gentil dedis.

The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath’s Tale, l. 1170

For thogh we slepe, or wake, or rome, or ryde,

Ay fleeth the tyme, it nyl no man abyde.

The Canterbury Tales. The Clerk’s Tale, l. 118

Love is noght oold as whan that it is newe.

The Canterbury Tales. The Clerk’s Tale, l. 857

This flour of wyfly pacience.

The Canterbury Tales. The Clerk’s Tale, l. 919

O stormy peple! unsad and evere untrewe!

The Canterbury Tales. The Clerk’s Tale, l. 995

No wedded man so hardy be t’assaille

His wyves pacience, in trust to fynde

Grisildis, for in certein he shal faille!

The Canterbury Tales. The Clerk’s Tale, l. 1180

    It is no childes pley

To take a wyf withouten avysement.

The Canterbury Tales. The Merchant’s Tale, l. 1530

For love is blynd.¹

The Canterbury Tales. The Merchant’s Tale, l. 1598

    My wit is thynne.

The Canterbury Tales. The Merchant’s Tale, l. 1682

Ther nys no werkman, whatsoevere he be,

That may bothe werke wel and hastily;

This wol be doon at leyser parfitly.

The Canterbury Tales. The Merchant’s Tale, l. 1832

Therfore bihoveth hire a ful long spoon

That shal ete with a feend.²

The Canterbury Tales. The Squire’s Tale, l. 602

Men loven of propre kynde newefangelnesse.

The Canterbury Tales. The Squire’s Tale, l. 610

        Fy on possessioun

But if a man be vertuous withal.

The Canterbury Tales. The Squire’s Tale, l. 686

Pacience is an heigh vertu, certeyn.

The Canterbury Tales. The Franklin’s Tale, l. 773

Servant in love and lord in marriage.

The Canterbury Tales. The Franklin’s Tale, l. 793

It is agayns the proces of nature.

The Canterbury Tales. The Franklin’s Tale, l. 1345

Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that men may kepe.

The Canterbury Tales. The Franklin’s Tale, l. 1479

For dronkenesse is verray sepulture

Of mannes wit and his discrecioun.

The Canterbury Tales. The Pardoner’s Tale, l. 558

Mordre wol out, certeyn, it wol nat faille.³

The Canterbury Tales. The Prioress’s Tale, l. 1766

This may wel be rym dogerel.

The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas, l. 2115

Ful wys is he that kan hymselven knowe!

The Canterbury Tales. The Monk’s Tale, l. 3329

He was of knyghthod and of fredom flour.

The Canterbury Tales. The Monk’s Tale, l. 3832

For whan a man hath over-greet a wit,

Ful oft hym happeth to mysusen it.

The Canterbury Tales. The Canon Yeoman’s Prologue, l. 648

My sone, keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend.

The Canterbury Tales. The Manciple’s Tale, l. 319

Thing that is seyd is seyd; and forth it gooth.

The Canterbury Tales. The Manciple’s Tale, l. 355

For the proverbe seith that “manye smale maken a greet.”⁴

The Canterbury Tales. The Parson’s Tale, l. 361

Reule wel thyself, that other folk canst rede.

And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede.

Truth [c. 1390], l. 6

The wrastling for this world axeth a fal.

Truth, l. 16

The Cloud of Unknowing

Late fourteenth century

A short prayer pierces heaven.

Christine de Pisan

1363–c. 1434

I could hardly find a book on morals where, even before I had read it in its entirety, I did not find several chapters or certain sections attacking women, no matter who the author was.… I finally decided that God formed a vile creature when He made woman, and I wondered how such a worthy artisan could have deigned to make such an abominable work which, from what they say, is the vessel as well as the refuge and abode of every evil and vice.¹

The Book of the City of Ladies [1405], pt. 1, sec. 1

Zeami Motokiyo

1363–1443

Dancing and singing, movements on the stage, and the different types of miming are all acts performed by the body. Moments of “no action” occur in between.… The actions before and after an interval of “no action” must be linked by entering the state of mindlessness in which the actor conceals even from himself his own intent.²

The One Mind Linking All Powers

John Huss [Jan Hus]

c. 1372–1415

O holy simplicity!³

Last words, at the stake

Margery Kempe

c. 1373–1438

Patience is more worthy than miracle-working.

The Book of Margery Kempe [1438]

Thomas à Kempis

1380–1471

Sic transit gloria mundi [So passes away the glory of this world].⁴

Imitation of Christ [c. 1420], bk. I, ch. 3

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

Imitation of Christ, I, 16

Man proposes, but God disposes.⁵

Imitation of Christ, I, 19

What canst thou see elsewhere which thou canst not see here? Behold the heaven and the earth and all the elements; for of these are all things created.

Imitation of Christ, I, 20

No man ruleth safely but he that is willingly ruled.

Imitation of Christ, I, 20

And when he is out of sight, quickly also is he out of mind.⁶

Imitation of Christ, I, 23

O that we had spent but one day in this world thoroughly well!

Imitation of Christ, I, 23

First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.

Imitation of Christ, II, 3

Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, gentle, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly and never seeking her own; for wheresoever a man seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.

Imitation of Christ, III, 5

Charles d’Orléans

1394–1465

I am dying of thirst by the side of the fountain.⁷

Ballades, no. 2

The season has shed its mantle of wind and chill and rain.⁸

Rondeaux, no. 63

All by myself, wrapped in my thoughts,

And building castles in Spain and in France.⁹

Rondeaux, 109

John Fortescue

c. 1395–c. 1479

Much cry and no wool.¹⁰

De Laudibus Legum Angliae (In Praise of English Law) [1471], ch. 10

Leon Battista Alberti

1404–1472

Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive.¹

On Painting [1435]

Sir Thomas Malory

d. 1471

The noble history of the Sangreal,² and of the most renowned Christian king… King Arthur.

Le Morte d’Arthur [1485]. Preface by WILLIAM CAXTON [c. 1422–1491], the first English printer

Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.

Le Morte d’Arthur, bk. I, ch. 5

In the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand.

Le Morte d’Arthur, I, 25

Always Sir Arthur lost so much blood that it was marvel he stood on his feet, but he was so full of knighthood that knightly he endured the pain.

Le Morte d’Arthur, IV, 9

What, nephew, said the king, is the wind in that door?

Le Morte d’Arthur, VII, 34

The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long.

Le Morte d’Arthur, X, 56

All ye that be lovers call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did Queen Guenever, for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.

Le Morte d’Arthur, XVIII, 25

Such a fellowship of good knights shall never be together in no company.

Le Morte d’Arthur, XX, 9

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.³

Le Morte d’Arthur, XXI, 1

Through this man [Launcelot] and me [Guenever] hath all this war been wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain.

Le Morte d’Arthur, XXI, 9

For as well as I have loved thee, mine heart will not serve me to see thee, for through thee and me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed.

Le Morte d’Arthur, XXI, 9

Thou were the meekest man and the gentlest that ever ate in hall among ladies. And thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.

Le Morte d’Arthur, XXI, 13

Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place. And men say that he shall come again and he shall win the Holy Cross. Yet I will not say that it shall be so, but rather I will say, Here in this world he changed his life. And many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam, rexque futurus [Here lies Arthur, the once and future king].

Le Morte d’Arthur, XXXI, 7

Henry VI

1421–1471

Kingdoms are but cares,

State is devoid of stay;

Riches are ready snares,

And hasten to decay.

From SIR JOHN HARINGTON, Nugae Antiquae (Old Trifles) [1769]

François Villon

1431–c. 1465

Ah God! Had I but studied

In the days of my foolish youth.⁴

Le Grand Testament, 26

But where are the snows of yesteryear?⁵

Le Grand Testament. Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis (Ladies of the Past)

In this faith I will to live and die.

Le Grand Testament. Ballade de l’Homage à Notre Dame

There’s no good speech save in Paris.⁶

Le Grand Testament. Ballade des Femmes de Paris

I know all except myself.¹

Ballade des Menus Propos (Small Talk)

We have been rinsed and laundered by the rain,

And by the sunlight dried and blackened too.

Magpie and crow have plucked our eyeballs twain,

And cropped our eyebrows and the beards we grew.

Villon’s Epitaph (Ballade of the Hanged Men) [2012]²

Jorge Manrique

1440–1479

                    Let the dozing soul remember,

let the mind awake and revive by contemplating

how our life goes by so swiftly

and how our death comes near so silently;

how quickly pleasure fades,

and how when it is recalled it give us pain,

how we seem always to think

that times past must have been better than today.

Verses Written on the Death of His Father³ [1476], st. 1

Aldus Manutius

1449–1515

Talk of nothing but business, and dispatch that business quickly.

Placard on the door of the Aldine Press, Venice, established about 1490

Christopher Columbus

1451–1506

Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage; but the Admiral cheered them as best he could, holding out good hope of the advantages they would have. He added that it was useless to complain, he had come [to go] to the Indies, and so had to continue it until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.

Journal of the First Voyage,⁴ October 10, 1492

At two hours after midnight appeared the land, at a distance of 2 leagues. They handed all sails and set the treo, which is the mainsail without bonnets, and lay-to waiting for daylight Friday, when they arrived at an island of the Bahamas that was called in the Indians’ tongue Guanahaní [San Salvador].

Journal of the First Voyage, October 12, 1492

The two Christians met on the way many people who were going to their towns, women and men, with a firebrand in the hand, [and] herbs to drink the smoke thereof, as they are accustomed.⁵

Journal of the First Voyage, November 6, 1492

And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear.

Letter to the Sovereigns on the First Voyage, February 15–March 4, 1493⁶

I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where by divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen our Lords, an Other World, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries.

Letter to Doña Juana de Torres, October 1500⁷

I came to serve you at the age of 28 and now I have not a hair on me that is not white, and my body is infirm and exhausted. All that was left to me and my brothers has been taken away and sold, even to the cloak that I wore, without hearing or trial, to my great dishonor.

Lettera Rarissima to the Sovereigns, July 7, 1503 (Fourth Voyage)⁸

Leonardo da Vinci

1452–1519

Man and the animals are merely a passage and channel for food, a tomb for other animals, a haven for the dead, giving life by the death of others, a coffer full of corruption.

The Notebooks⁹ [1508–1518], vol. I, ch. 1

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

The Notebooks, I, 1

Life well spent is long.

The Notebooks, I, 1

Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.

The Notebooks, I, 1

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.

The Notebooks, I, 2

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

The Notebooks, I, 2

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

The Notebooks, I, 2

Human subtlety… will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

The Notebooks, I, 3

Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

The Notebooks, I, 20

O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments.

The Notebooks, II, 45

The Medici created and destroyed me.

The Notebooks, II, 46

Amerigo Vespucci

1454–1512

Those new regions [America] which we found and explored with the fleet… we may rightly call a New World… a continent more densely peopled and abounding in animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa; and, in addition, a climate milder than in any other region known to us.¹

Letter called Mundus Novus [1503] to Lorenzo Pier Francesco de’ Medici

Sebastian Brant

c. 1458–1521

The world wants to be deceived.

The Ship of Fools (Das Narrenschiff) [1494]

John Skelton

c. 1460–1529

He ruleth all the roost.²

Why Come Ye Not to Court, l. 198

The wolf from the door.³

Why Come Ye Not to Court, l. 1531

        Old proverb says,

That bird is not honest

That filleth his own nest.⁴

Poems Against Garnesche

Merry Margaret,

As midsummer flower,

Gentle as falcon

Or hawk of the tower.

To Mistress Margaret Hussey

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

1463–1494

We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgment, to be reborn into the highest forms, which are divine.⁵

On the Dignity of Man [1496]

William Dunbar

c. 1465–c. 1530

London, thou art the flower of Cities all.

London, refrain

I that in heill wes and gladnes

Am trublit now with gret seiknes

And feblit with infermite:

Timor Mortis conturbat me.¹

Lament for the Makaris² [c. 1508], refrain

O reverend Chaucere, rose of rethoris all,

As in oure tong ane flour imperiall, That raise in Britane evir, quho redis rycht,

Thou beris of makaris the triumph riall.³

The Goldyn Targe [c. 1508], l. 253

Desiderius Erasmus

c. 1466–1536

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.⁴

Adagia [1500]

It is folly alone that stays the fugue of Youth and beats off louring Old Age.

The Praise of Folly [1509]

They may attack me with an army of six hundred syllogisms; and if I do not recant, they will proclaim me a heretic.

The Praise of Folly

Niccolò Machiavelli⁵

1469–1527

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

The Prince⁶ [1532], ch. 6

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

The Prince, 6

Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

The Prince, 8

The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws.

The Prince, 12

A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study, but war and its organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.

The Prince, 14

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

The Prince, 17

When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.

The Prince, 19

There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.

The Prince, 22

There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.

The Prince, 23

Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.

Discourse upon the First Ten Books of Livy, bk. I, ch. 3

The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.

Discourse upon the First Ten Books of Livy, I, 16

He who establishes a tyranny and does not kill Brutus, and he who establishes a democratic regime and does not kill the sons of Brutus, will not last long.⁷

Discourse upon the First Ten Books of Livy, III, 3

Nanak Dev Ji

1469–1539

There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.

Attributed; first announcement of Sikh doctrine

Albrecht Dürer

1471–1528

The Creator fashioned men once and for all as they must be, and I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.¹

Four Books of Human Proportions [1528]

Nicholas Copernicus

1473–1543

Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts, as they say, “with both eyes open.”

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres)² [1543]

Ludovico Ariosto

1474–1533

Nature made him, and then broke the mold.³

Orlando Furioso [1532], canto X, st. 84

Michelangelo [Buonarroti]

1475–1564

The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.

Sonnet

The power of one fair face makes my love sublime, for it has weaned my heart from low desires.

Sonnet

I live and love in God’s peculiar light.

Sonnet

Sir Thomas More⁴

1478–1535

They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.

Utopia [1516]. Of Jewels and Wealth

They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.

Utopia. Of Law and Magistrates

A little wanton money, which burned out the bottom of his purse.

Works [c. 1530]

For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.

Richard III and His Miserable End [1543]

See me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.

On ascending the scaffold. From WILLIAM ROPER [c. 1496–1578], Life of Sir Thomas More [published 1626]

This hath not offended the king.

As he drew his beard aside upon placing his head on the block. From FRANCIS BACON, Apothegms, no. 22

Robert Whittinton

c. 1480–c. 1530

[Sir Thomas] More is a man of angel’s wit and singular learning; I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes; and sometimes of as sad a gravity; a man for all seasons.

Passage composed for schoolboys to put into Latin

Robert Henryson

fl. 1480

The firmament payntit with sternis cleir

From eist to west rolland in cirkill round,

And everilk planet in his proper spheir,

In moving makand harmonie and sound;

The fyre, the air, the watter, and the ground—

Till understand it is aneuch, I wis,

That God in all His werkis wittie is.

The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian. The Preiching of the Swallow, l. 1658

Martin Luther

1483–1546

If it were an art to overcome heresy with fire, the executioners would be the most learned doctors on earth.

To the Christian Nobility of the German States [1520]

Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me. Amen.¹

Speech at the Diet of Worms [April 18, 1521]

The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.

Whether Soldiers Can Also Be in a State of Grace [1526]

A mighty fortress is our God,

A bulwark never failing.

Our helper He amid the flood

Of mortal ills prevailing.²

Ein’ Feste Burg [1529]

What can only be taught by the rod and with blows will not lead to much good; they will not remain pious any longer than the rod is behind them.

The Great Catechism. Second Command [1529]

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.

On Marriage [1530]

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

On Marriage

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

Table Talk [1569]

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.³… Thus is the Devil ever God’s ape.

Table Talk

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.

Table Talk

A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.

Table Talk

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

Table Talk

If I had heard that as many devils would set on me in Worms as there are tiles on the roofs, I should nonetheless have ridden there.

Works [1745], XVI, 14

It makes a difference whose ox is gored.

Works [1854], LXII

Hernán Cortés [Hernando Cortez]

1485–1547

We Spaniards suffer from a disease that only gold can cure.⁴

To envoys of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II [1519]

[The Aztecs] said that by no means would they give themselves up, for as long as one of them was left he would die fighting, and that we would get nothing of theirs because they would burn everything or throw it into the water.

Third Dispatch [May 15, 1522]. To Charles V

Hugh Latimer

c. 1485–1555

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.

To Nicholas Ridley [1500–1555] as they were being burned alive at Oxford for heresy [October 16, 1555]. From JOHN FOXE [1516–1587], The Book of Martyrs [1563], vol. II

Jacques Cartier

1491–1557

I am rather inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain.¹

La Première Relation

Saint Ignatius of Loyola

1491–1556

Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest:

To give and not to count the cost;

To fight and not to heed the wounds;

To toil and not to seek for rest;

To labor and not ask for any reward

Save that of knowing that we do Thy will.

Prayer for Generosity [1548]

Almost the whole life of religious bodies lies in the maintenance of their first fervor.

Scintillae Ignatianae (Thoughts of Ignatius)² [compiled 1712]

Paracelsus [Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim]

c. 1493–1541

Every experiment is like a weapon which must be used in its particular way—a spear to thrust, a club to strike. Experimenting requires a man who knows when to thrust and when to strike, each according to need and fashion.³

Surgeon’s Book (Chirurgische Bucher) [1605]

Francis [François] I

1494–1547

All is lost save honor.⁴

Letter to his mother after his defeat at Pavia [February 23, 1525]

François Rabelais

c. 1494–1553

Break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow.

Gargantua and Pantagruel,⁵ bk. I [1532], prologue

To laugh is proper to man.⁶

Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, Rabelais to the Reader

Appetite comes with eating⁷… but the thirst goes away with drinking.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, ch. 5

War begun without good provision of money beforehand for going through with it is but as a breathing of strength and blast that will quickly pass away. Coin is the sinews of war.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, 46

How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?⁸

Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, 52

Do what thou wilt.⁹

Gargantua and Pantagruel, I, 57

Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, II [1534], 8

Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, II, 16

This flea which I have in mine ear.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, III [1545], 31

Oh thrice and four times happy those who plant cabbages!

Gargantua and Pantagruel, IV [1548], 18

Which was performed to a T.¹⁰

Gargantua and Pantagruel, IV, 41

We will take the good will for the deed.¹

Gargantua and Pantagruel, IV, 49

Speak the truth and shame the Devil.²

Gargantua and Pantagruel, V [1552], author’s prologue

Plain as a nose in a man’s face.³

Gargantua and Pantagruel, V, author’s prologue

Like hearts of oak.

Gargantua and Pantagruel, V, author’s prologue

Go hang yourselves [critics]… you shall never want rope enough.⁴

Gargantua and Pantagruel, V, author’s prologue

Looking as like… as one pea does like another.⁵

Gargantua and Pantagruel, V, 2

I am going to seek a grand perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played.⁶

Alleged last words. From PETER LE MOTTEUX [1653–1694], Life of Rabelais [1694]

John Heywood

c. 1497–c. 1580

All a green willow, willow, willow,

All a green willow is my garland.

The Green Willow⁷

Haste maketh waste.⁸

Proverbs⁹ [1546], pt. I, ch. 2

Look ere ye leap.¹⁰

Proverbs, I, 2

While between two stools my tail go to the ground.¹¹

Proverbs, I, 2

The fat is in the fire.

Proverbs, I, 3

When the sun shineth, make hay.

Proverbs, I, 3

The tide tarrieth no man.¹²

Proverbs, I, 3

And while I at length debate and beat the bush,

There shall step in other men and catch the birds.¹³

Proverbs, I, 3

        Wedding is destiny,

And hanging likewise.¹⁴

Proverbs, I, 3

Let the world wag, and take mine ease in mine inn.

Proverbs, I, 5

Hold their noses to grindstone.

Proverbs, I, 5

The nearer to the church, the further from God.¹⁵

Proverbs, I, 9

Better is to bow than break.¹⁶

Proverbs, I, 9

Two heads are better than one.

Proverbs, I, 9

To tell tales out of school.

Proverbs, I, 10

To hold with the hare and run with the hound.

Proverbs, I, 10

Neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring.

Proverbs, I, 10

All is well that ends well.¹

Proverbs, I, 10

When the steed is stolen, shut the stable door.²

Proverbs, I, 10

She looketh as butter would not melt in her mouth.

Proverbs, I, 10

Ill weed groweth fast.³

Proverbs, I, 10

Beggars should be no choosers.

Proverbs, I, 10

To rob Peter and pay Paul.⁴

Proverbs, I, 11

A man may well bring a horse to the water,

But he cannot make him drink without he will.⁵

Proverbs, I, 11

Rome was not built in one day.

Proverbs, I, 11

Ye have many strings to your bow.⁶

Proverbs, I, 11

Children learn to creep ere they can learn to go.

Proverbs, I, 11

Better is half a loaf than no bread.

Proverbs, I, 11

Nought venture nought have.

Proverbs, I, 11

Who is worse shod than the shoemaker’s wife?⁷

Proverbs, I, 11

One good turn asketh another.

Proverbs, I, 11

A dog hath a day.

Proverbs, I, 11

A hair of the dog that bit us.⁸

Proverbs, I, 11

        But in deed,

A friend is never known till a man have need.

Proverbs, I, 11

Burnt child fire dreadeth.⁹

Proverbs, II, 2

There is no fool to the old fool.¹⁰

Proverbs, II, 2

A woman hath nine lives like a cat.

Proverbs, II, 4

A penny for your thought.

Proverbs, II, 4

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

Proverbs, II, 4

You stand in your own light.

Proverbs, II, 4

Tit for tat.¹¹

Proverbs, II, 4

Three may keep counsel, if two be away.¹²

Proverbs, II, 5

Small pitchers have wide ears.¹³

Proverbs, II, 5

Many hands make light work.

Proverbs, II, 5

Out of God’s blessing into the warm sun.¹⁴

Proverbs, II, 5

There is no fire without some smoke.¹⁵

Proverbs, II, 5

A cat may look on a king.

Proverbs, II, 5

        Much water goeth by the mill

That the miller knoweth not of.¹⁶

Proverbs, II, 5

He must needs go whom the devil doth drive.

Proverbs, II, 7

Set the cart before the horse.

Proverbs, II, 7

The more the merrier.

Proverbs, II, 7

The moon is made of a green cheese.¹

Proverbs, II, 7

I know on which side my bread is buttered.

Proverbs, II, 7

An ill wind that bloweth no man to good.²

Proverbs, II, 9

For when I gave you an inch, you took an ell.³

Proverbs, II, 9

Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?⁴

Proverbs, II, 9

Every man for himself and God for us all.⁵

Proverbs, II, 9

Though he love not to buy the pig in the poke.⁶

Proverbs, II, 9

This hitteth the nail on the head.

Proverbs, II, 11

Enough is as good as a feast.

Proverbs, II, 11

Charles V

1500–1558

Iron hand in a velvet glove.

Attributed. From THOMAS CARLYLE, Latter-Day Pamphlets, no. 11

You have built here what you, or anyone else, might have built anywhere; to do so you have destroyed what was unique in the world.

On the building of a cathedral inside the great mosque of Cordoba [1526]

I make war on the living, not on the dead.

Said when advised to hang Luther’s corpse on the gallows [1546]

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.⁷

Attributed

Pope Gregory XIII

1502–1585

To the greater glory of God.⁸

From The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent [1542–1560]

Sir Thomas Wyatt

c. 1503–1542

Forget not yet the tried intent

Of such a truth as I have meant;

My great travail so gladly spent,

Forget not yet!

Forget Not Yet

My lute, awake! perform the last

Labor that thou and I shall waste,

And end that I have now begun;

For when this song is sung and past,

My lute, be still, for I have done.

The Lover Complaineth the Unkindness of His Love

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

The Lover Showeth How He Is Forsaken of Such as He Sometime Enjoyed

And graven with diamonds in letters plain

There is written her fair neck round about:

Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,

And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Whoso List to Hunt

John Calvin

1509–1564

There is no medium between the two things: the earth must either be worthless in our estimation, or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

Institutes of the Christian Religion⁹ [1536], bk. III, ch. 9, sec. 2

If we see a funeral, or walk among graves, as the image of death is then present to the eye, I admit we philosophize admirably on the vanity of life. We do not indeed always do so, for those things often have no effect upon us at all. But, at the best, our philosophy is momentary. It vanishes as soon as we turn our back, and leaves not the vestige of remembrance behind; in short, it passes away, just like the applause of a theatre at some pleasant spectacle.

Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 9, 2

John Bradford

c. 1510–1555

The familiar story, that, on seeing evildoers taken to the place of execution, he was wont to exclaim: “But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford,” is a universal tradition, which has overcome the lapse of time.

Biographical notice, Parker Society edition, The Writings of John Bradford [1853]

Sir Thomas Vaux

1510–1556

Companion none is like

Unto the mind alone;

For many have been harmed by speech,

Through thinking, few or none.

Of a Contented Mind [1557]

Giorgio Vasari

1511–1574

The contours of its legs are extremely beautiful, along with the splendid articulations and grace of its flanks; a sweeter and more graceful pose has never been seen that could equal it, nor have feet, hands, and a head ever been produced which so well match all the other parts of the body in skill of workmanship or design. To be sure, anyone who sees this statue need not be concerned with seeing any other piece of sculpture done in our times or in any other period by any other artist.

The Lives of the Artists¹ [1550]. Michelangelo

Richard Grafton

c. 1513–1572

Thirty days hath November,

April, June, and September,

February hath twenty-eight alone,

And all the rest have thirty-one.²

Chronicles of England [1562]

John Knox

c. 1513–1572

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment [Regimen] of Women.

Title of pamphlet [1558]

A man with God is always in the majority.³

Inscription on Reformation Monument, Geneva, Switzerland

Saint Teresa of Ávila

1515–1582

In ecstasy come true revelations, great favors, and visions, all of which help to humble and strengthen the soul, to make it despise the things of this life, and more clearly realize the greatness of the reward that the Lord reserves for those who serve him.

The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila⁴ [c. 1565], ch. 21

Mary Tudor [Mary I]

1516–1558

When I am dead and opened, you shall find “Calais” lying in my heart.

From RAPHAEL HOLINSHED, Chronicles [1577], vol. 4

Joachim du Bellay

1522–1560

Happy he who like Ulysses has made a glorious voyage.⁵

Les Regrets [1559], sonnet 31

Pierre de Ronsard

1524–1585

When you are old, at evening candlelit,

Beside the fire bending to your wool,

Read out my verse and murmur, “Ronsard writ

This praise for me when I was beautiful.”¹

Sonnets pour Hélène, vol. II, no. 42

Sweetheart, come see if the rose

Which at morning began to unclose

Its damask gown to the sun

Has not lost, now the day is done,

The folds of its damasked gown

And its colors so like your own.

Odes [1553]. À Cassandre²

Thomas Tusser

c. 1524–1580

At Christmas play and make good cheer,

For Christmas comes but once a year.

A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry [1557]. The Farmer’s Daily Diet

Such mistress, such Nan,

Such master, such man.³

A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry. April’s Abstract

Sweet April showers

Do spring May flowers.

A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry. April’s Husbandry

Gabriel Meurier

1530–1601

He who excuses himself accuses himself.⁴

Trésor des Sentences

Henri Estienne

c. 1531–1598

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait [If youth but knew, if old age but could].

Les Prémices [1594]

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.⁵

Les Prémices

Elizabeth I

1533–1603

I am unimpaired in body, with a good form, a healthy and substantial wit, prudence even beyond other women, and beyond this, distinguished and superior in the knowledge and use of literature and languages, which is highly esteemed because unusual in my sex.

Thanksgiving for Benefits Conferred [1563]

I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

Speech to the troops at Tilbury on the approach of the Armada [1588]

I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am endued with such qualities that if I were turned out of the Realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom.

From FREDERICK CHAMBERLIN [1870–1943], Sayings of Queen Elizabeth [1923]

I will make you shorter by the head.

From CHAMBERLIN, Sayings of Queen Elizabeth

The daughter of debate, that eke discord doth sow.⁶

From CHAMBERLIN, Sayings of Queen Elizabeth

[To the Countess of Nottingham] God may forgive you, but I never can.

From DAVID HUME, History of England [1754–1762], vol. II, ch. 7

Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves.

The Golden Speech [1601]

Semper eadem [Ever the same].

Motto

’Twas God the word that spake it,

He took the Bread and brake it;

And what the word did make it,

That I believe, and take it.¹

From SAMUEL CLARKE [1599–1682], Marrow of Ecclesiastical History [ed. 1675], pt. II, Life of Queen Elizabeth

Must! Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man!

On her deathbed, to Robert Cecil, her principal secretary [March 24, 1603]

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

1533–1592

The conviction of wisdom is the plague of man.

An Apology for Raymond Sebond [1580]

I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray… I am myself the matter of my book.²

Essays,³ bk. I [1580], To the Reader

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him.⁴

Essays, I, ch. 1

The thing I fear most is fear.⁵

Essays, I, 18

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.⁶

Essays, I, 20

He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.⁷

Essays, I, 20

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

Essays, I, 20

Since I would rather make of him [the child] an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide [tutor] with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.⁸

Essays, I, 26

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than it was because he was he and I was I.⁹

Essays, I, 28

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.

Essays, I, 32

We must reserve a back shop all our own,¹⁰ entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

Essays, I, 39

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.¹¹

Essays, I, 39

It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.¹²

Essays, II [1580], 6

My trade and my art is living.¹³

Essays, II, 6

When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?

Essays, II, 12

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold.… The same reason that makes us bicker with a neighbor creates a war between princes.

Essays, II, 12

This notion [skepticism] is more clearly understood by asking “What do I know?”¹⁴

Essays, II, 12

Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.¹⁵

Essays, II, 12

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?¹

Essays, II, 12

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right.… We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.²

Essays, II, 12

Presumption is our natural and original malady.

Essays, II, 12

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

Essays, II, 16

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.

Essays, II, 16

A man may be humble through vainglory.

Essays, II, 17

I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.

Essays, II, 20

I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.

Essays, III [1595], 1

I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.

Essays, III, 1

Few men have been admired by their own households.

Essays, III, 1

It [marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.³

Essays, III, 5

Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition—and perchance to some excess—I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.⁴

Essays, III, 9

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Essays, III, 9

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

Essays, III, 11

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.⁵

Essays, III, 12

It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.

Essays, III, 13

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep.

Essays, III, 13

No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.⁶

Essays, III, 13

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

Essays, III, 13

William I [William the Silent]

1533–1584

My God, have mercy on my soul and on my poor people.⁷

Last words as he fell under an assassin’s bullets

William Butler

1535–1618

It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not an r in their name to eat an oyster.

Dyet’s Dry Dinner [1599]

Sir Humphrey Gilbert

c. 1539–1583

We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!¹

From RICHARD HAKLUYT [c. 1552–1616], Voyages, vol. III [1600]

Saint John of the Cross [San Juan de la Cruz]

1542–1591

The spring that brims and ripples oh I know in dark of night.²

Song of the Soul Whose Pleasure Is in Knowing God by Faith [c. 1578]

The Dark Night of the Soul.

Title of treatise³ [c. 1583]

                O night that joined

        Beloved and lover

Lover into beloved transformed⁴

The Dark Night

Mary Stuart [Mary, Queen of Scots]

1542–1587

In my end is my beginning.

Motto

O Lord my God, I have trusted in thee;

O Jesu my dearest one, now set me free.

In prison’s oppression, in sorrow’s obsession,

I weary for thee.

With sighing and crying bowed down as dying,

I adore thee, I implore thee, set me free!⁵

Prayer written in her Book of Devotion before her execution

Jan Zamoyski

1542–1605

The king reigns, but does not govern.⁶

Speech in the Polish Parliament [1605], referring to King Sigismund III

Sir Edward Dyer

1543–1607

My mind to me a kingdom is;

Such present joys therein I find

That it excels all other bliss

That earth affords or grows by kind:

Though much I want which most would have,

Yet still my mind forbids to crave.

Rawlinson Poetry MS 85,⁷ p. 17

Guillaume de Salluste, Seigneur Du Bartas

1544–1590

For where’s the state beneath the firmament

That doth excel the bees for government?

Divine Weeks and Works [1578], First Week, Fifth Day, pt. 1

Or almost like a spider, who, confined

In her web’s center, shakt with every wind,

Moves in an instant if the buzzing fly

Stir but a string of her lawn canapie.⁸

Divine Weeks and Works, First Week, Sixth Day

William Gilbert

1544–1603

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.¹

De Magnete (On the Magnet) [1600]

Miguel de Cervantes

1547–1616

You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne.

Don Quixote de la Mancha [1605–1615],² author’s preface, p. xix

By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece.

Don Quixote, pt. I, I, 4, p. 25

Can we ever have too much of a good thing?

Don Quixote, pt. I, I, 6, p. 37

Those two fatal words, Mine and Thine.

Don Quixote, pt. I, II, 3, p. 63

And had a face like a benediction.

Don Quixote, pt. I, II, 4, p. 69

There’s not the least thing can be said or done, but people will talk and find fault.³

Don Quixote, pt. I, II, 4, p. 70

Thank you for nothing.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 1, p. 94

To give the devil his due.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 3, p. 111

Paid him in his own coin.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 4, p. 119

The famous Don Quixote de la Mancha, other wise called the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.⁴

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 5, p. 126

Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things underground, and much more in the skies.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 6, p. 131

A finger in every pie.⁵

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 6, p. 133

No better than she should be.⁶

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 6, p. 133

That’s the nature of women… not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 6, p. 133

Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 6, p. 136

Experience, the universal Mother of Sciences.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 7, p. 140

Sing away sorrow, cast away care.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 8, p. 153

Those who’ll play with cats must expect to be scratched.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 8, p. 159

’Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 9, p. 162

The ease of my burdens, the staff of my life.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 9, p. 163

The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 10, p. 174

Absence, that common cure of love.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 10, p. 177

From pro’s and con’s they fell to a warmer way of disputing.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 10, p. 181

Little said is soon amended.⁷

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 10, p. 184

Thou hast seen nothing yet.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 11, p. 190

Between jest and earnest.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 11, p. 190

My love and hers have always been purely Platonic.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 11, p. 192

’Tis ill talking of halters in the house of a man that was hanged.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 11, p. 195

My memory is so bad that many times I forget my own name!

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 11, p. 195

Ready to split his sides with laughing.

Don Quixote, pt. I, III, 13, p. 208

Let us forget and forgive injuries.

Don Quixote, pt. I, IV, 3, p. 254

I begin to smell a rat.

Don Quixote, pt. I, IV, 10, p. 319

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Don Quixote, pt. I, IV, 10, p. 322

Let none presume to tell me that the pen is preferable to the sword.

Don Quixote, pt. I, IV, 10, p. 325

There’s no striving against the stream; and the weakest still goes to the wall.

Don Quixote, pt. I, IV, 20, p. 404

It is not the hand but the understanding of a man that may be said to write.¹

Don Quixote, pt. II [1615], III, author’s preface, p. 441

When the head aches, all the members partake of the pains.²

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 2, p. 455

Youngsters read it [Don Quixote’s story], grown men understand it, and old people applaud it.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 3, p. 464

History is in a manner a sacred thing, so far as it contains truth; for where truth is, the supreme Father of it may also be said to be, at least, inasmuch as concerns truth.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 3, p. 465

Every man is as Heaven made him, and some times a great deal worse.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 4, p. 468

There’s no sauce in the world like hunger.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 5, p. 473

Neither will I make myself anybody’s laughingstock.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 5, p. 475

Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 6, p. 479

A little in one’s own pocket is better than much in another man’s purse. ’Tis good to keep a nest egg. Every little makes a mickle.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 7, p. 486

Remember the old saying, “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.”

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 10, p. 501

Forewarned forearmed.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 10, p. 502

As well look for a needle in a bottle of hay.³

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 10, p. 502

I’ll turn over a new leaf.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 13, p. 524

There are only two families in the world, the Haves and the Have-Nots.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 20, p. 574

He preaches well that lives well, quoth Sancho; that’s all the divinity I understand.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 20, p. 575

Love and War are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 21, p. 580

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world as a public indecency.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 22, p. 582

There is no love lost, sir.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 22, p. 582

Patience, and shuffle the cards.⁴

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 23, p. 592

Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 23, p. 594

I can see with half an eye.

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 29, p. 632

Honesty’s the best policy.⁵

Don Quixote, pt. II, III, 33, p. 666

An honest man’s word is as good as his bond.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 34, p. 674

Good wits jump;⁶ a word to the wise is enough.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 37, p. 692

The pot calls the kettle black.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 38, p. 727

I shall be as secret as the grave.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 62, p. 862

Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak;⁷ ’Tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. ’Tis the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man even.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 68, p. 898

The ass will carry his load, but not a double load; ride not a free horse to death.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 71, p. 917

He… got the better of himself, and that’s the best kind of victory one can wish for.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 72, p. 924

Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 73, p. 926

Ne’er look for birds of this year in the nests of the last.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 74, p. 933

There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 74, p. 934

For if he like a madman lived,

At least he like a wise one died.

Don Quixote, pt. II, IV, 74, p. 935 (Don Quixote’s epitaph)

Don’t put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.

The Little Gypsy (La Gitanilla)

Giordano Bruno

1548–1600

Time takes all and gives all.

The Candle Bearer¹ [1582], dedication

It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death.

On the Infinite Universe and Worlds² [1584], introductory epistle

Our bodily eye findeth never an end, but is vanquished by the immensity of space.

On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, fifth dialogue

There is in the universe neither center nor circumference.

On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, fifth dialogue

Charles IX

1550–1574

Horses and poets should be fed, not overfed.³

Saying

Sir Edward Coke

1552–1634

Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason… The law, which is perfection of reason.

First Institute [1628]

For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium.⁴

Third Institute [1644]

The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defense against injury and violence as for his repose.

Semayne’s Case. 5 Report 91

They [corporations] cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor excommunicate, for they have no souls.

Case of Sutton’s Hospital. 10 Report 32

Magna Carta is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign.

Debate in the Commons [May 17, 1628]

Six hours in sleep, in law’s grave study six,

Four spend in prayer, the rest on Nature fix.⁵

Translation quoted by COKE. From The Pandects (Digest of Justinian). De in Ius Vocando

Sir Walter Ralegh

c. 1552–1618

As you came from the holy land

Of Walsinghame,

Met you not with my true Love

By the way as you came?

As You Came from the Holy Land [c. 1599], st. 1

But true love is a durable fire,

In the mind ever burning,

Never sick, never old, never dead,

From itself never turning.

As You Came from the Holy Land, st. 11

If all the world and love were young,

And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,

These pretty pleasures might me move

To live with thee, and be thy love.

The Nymph’s Reply to the Passionate Shepherd¹ (printed in England’s Helicon) [1600], st. 1

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

Written on a windowpane²

Our passions are most like to floods and streams,

The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.³

Sir Walter Ralegh to the Queen [c. 1599], st. 1

Go, Soul, the body’s quest,

Upon a thankless arrant:

Fear not to touch the best,

The truth shall be thy warrant:

Go, since I needs must die,

And give the world the lie.

The Lie (printed in FRANCIS DAVISON, Poetical Rhapsody) [1608; manuscript copy traced to 1595], st. 1

Give me my scallop shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation,

My gown of glory, hope’s true gage

And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.

Diaphantus [1604]. The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage

Shall I, like a hermit, dwell

On a rock or in a cell?

Poem

[History] hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.

History of the World [1614], preface

Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth.

History of the World, preface

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the farstretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!

History of the World, bk. V, pt. I, ch. 6, conclusion

Even such is time, that takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days.

And from which earth, and grave, and dust,

The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.

A version of one of his earlier poems, found at his death in his Bible in the Gatehouse at Westminster

Matteo Ricci

1552–1610

The whole point of writing something down is that your voice will then carry for thousands of miles, whereas in direct conversation it fades at a hundred paces.

Letter to Ch’eng Ta-yüeh; quoted in JONATHAN D. SPENCE, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci [1984]

Edmund Spenser

1552–1599

To kirk the nearer, from God more far,

Has been an old-said saw.

And he that strives to touch the stars,

Oft stumbles at a straw.

The Shepherd’s Calendar [1579]. July, l. 97

Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralize my song.⁴

The Faerie Queene [1590], introduction, st. 1

A gentle knight was pricking on the plain.

The Faerie Queene, bk. I, canto 1, st. 1

A bold bad man.

The Faerie Queene, I, 1, st. 37

        Her angel’s face

As the great eye of heaven shined bright,

And made a sunshine in the shady place.

The Faerie Queene, I, 3, st. 4

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,

Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.¹

The Faerie Queene, I, 9, st. 40

All for love, and nothing for reward.

The Faerie Queene, II, 8, st. 2

Gather therefore the Rose, whilst yet is prime,

For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower:

Gather the Rose of love, whilst yet is time.²

The Faerie Queene, II, 12, st. 75

Her birth was of the womb of morning dew.³

The Faerie Queene, III, 6, st. 3

Roses red and violets blue,

And all the sweetest flowers, that in the forest grew.

The Faerie Queene, III, 6, st. 6

All that in this delightful garden grows,

Should happy be, and have immortal bliss.

The Faerie Queene, III, 6, st. 41

And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain.

The Faerie Queene, III, 10, st. 60

How over that same door was likewise writ,

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere Be bold.

The Faerie Queene, III, 11, st. 54

Another iron door, on which was writ,

Be not too bold.⁴

The Faerie Queene, III, 11, st. 54

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled,

On Fame’s eternal beadroll worthy to be filed.

The Faerie Queene, IV [1596], 2, st. 32

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

The Faerie Queene, V, 2, st. 43

Who will not mercy unto others show,

How can he mercy ever hope to have?

The Faerie Queene, VI, 1, st. 42

The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known.

For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed,

As by his manners.

The Faerie Queene, VI, 3, st. 1

        The ever-whirling wheel

Of Change; the which all mortal things doth sway.

The Faerie Queene, VII, 6, st. 1

But times do change and move continually.

The Faerie Queene, VII, 6, st. 47

What more felicity can fall to creature,

Than to enjoy delight with liberty.

Muiopotmos; or, The Fate of the Butterfly [1591], l. 209

I hate the day, because it lendeth light

To see all things, and not my love to see.

Daphnaida [1591], l. 407

Death slew not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.

An Epitaph upon Sir Philip Sidney [1591], l. 20

Though last not least.⁵

Colin Clouts Come Home Again [1595], l. 144

Tell her the joyous time will not be stayed

Unlesse she do him by the forelock take.⁶

Amoretti [1595]. Sonnet 70

The woods shall to me answer, and my Echo ring.

Epithalamion [1595], l. 18

Ah! when will this long weary day have end,

And lend me leave to come unto my love?

Epithalamion, l. 278

For of the soul the body form doth take:

For soul is form, and doth the body make.

Hymn in Honor of Beauty [1596], l. 132

Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my Song.⁷

Prothalamion [1596], refrain

I was promised on a time

To have reason for my rhyme;

From that time unto this season,

I received nor rhyme nor reason.

Lines on his promised pension. From THOMAS FULLER [1608–1661], Worthies of England [1662]

Great Nature, ever young yet full of eld,

Still moving, yet unmovéd from her stead;

Unseen of any, yet of all beheld.

Two Cantos of Mutabilitie [1609]. Canto 7, stanza 13

But time shall come that all shall changéd be,

And from thenceforth, none no more change shall see.

Two Cantos of Mutabilitie, 7, 59

John Florio

c. 1553–1625

England is the paradise of women, the purgatory of men, and the hell of horses.

Second Frutes [1591]

Henri IV [Henry of Navarre]

1553–1610

I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.

Attributed

Paris is well worth a Mass.¹

Attributed²

The wisest fool in Christendom [James I of England].

Attributed²

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke

1554–1628

Oh wearisome condition of humanity!

Born under one law, to another bound.

Mustapha [1609], act V, sc. iv

Fulke Greville, Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King James, and Friend to Sir Philip Sidney.

Epitaph on his monument in Warwick

Richard Hooker

c. 1554–1600

Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage—the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.

Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity [1593], bk. 1

That to live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s misery.

Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1

John Lyly

c. 1554–1606

Be valiant, but not too venturous. Let thy attire be comely, but not costly.

Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit [1579]. Arber’s reprint, p. 39

Delays breed dangers.³

Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit. Arber’s reprint, p. 65

Many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks.⁴

Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit. Arber’s reprint, p. 81

Let me stand to the main chance.

Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit. Arber’s reprint, p. 104

Go to bed with the lamb, and rise with the lark.⁵

Euphues and His England [1580], p. 229

A comely old man as busy as a bee.

Euphues and His England, p. 252

A rose is sweeter in the bud than full-blown.⁶

Euphues and His England, p. 314

Cupid and my Campaspe played

At cards for kisses: Cupid paid.

Alexander and Campaspe [1584], act III, sc. v

How at heaven’s gates she claps her wings,

The morn not waking till she sings.

Alexander and Campaspe, V, i

Night hath a thousand eyes.

Maides Metamorphosis, III, 1

Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on earth.⁷

Mother Bombie [1590], act IV, sc. i

Sir Philip Sidney

1554–1586

My dear, my better half.

Arcadia [written 1580], bk. III

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange one for the other given:

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,

There never was a better bargain driven.

Arcadia, song

Ring out your bells! Let mourning shows be spread!

For Love is dead.

Sonnet

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,

And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;

Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:

Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Sonnet

Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge.

The Defense of Poesy [written c. 1580]

He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.

The Defense of Poesy

I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet.

The Defense of Poesy

“Fool!” said my muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

Astrophel and Stella [1591], I

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies!

How silently, and with how wan a face!

Astrophel and Stella, XXXI

Thy necessity¹ is yet greater than mine.

Said on the battlefield of Zutphen [September 22, 1586] on giving his water bottle to a dying soldier

Miles Smith

1554–1624

Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water.

Original Preface to the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible [1611]

George Peele

1556–1596

His golden locks time hath to silver turned;

O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!

His youth ’gainst time and age hath ever spurned,

But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing.

Polyhymnia [1590]. Farewell to Arms, st. 1

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,

Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair,

Shine sun, burn fire, breathe air, and ease me,

Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me.

The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe [published 1599]

Thomas Kyd

1558–1594

What outcries call me from my naked bed?

The Spanish Tragedy [1594], act II, sc. v, l. 1

O eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears;

O life, no life, but lively form of death;

O world, no world, but mass of public wrongs,

Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds.

The Spanish Tragedy, III, ii, l.1

Why then I’ll fit you, say no more.

When I was young, I gave my mind

And plied myself to fruitless poetry:

Which though it profit the professor naught

Yet it is passing pleasing to the world.

The Spanish Tragedy, IV, ii, l. 70

Thomas Lodge

c. 1558–1625

Love in my bosom like a bee

Doth suck his sweet.

Rosalynde [1590]

Devils are not so black as they are painted.

A Margarite of America [1596]

Chidiock Tichborne

c. 1558–1586

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;

My feast of joy is but a dish of pain;

My crop of corn is but a field of tares;

And all my good is but vain hope of gain:

The day is past, and yet I saw no sun;

And now I live, and now my life is done.²

Tichborne’s Elegy [1586]

George Chapman

c. 1559–1634

Promise is most given when the least is said.

Hero and Leander [1598]

Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Light gains make heavy purses.³

Eastward Ho⁴ [1605], act I, sc. i

Speed his plow.⁵

Bussy d’Ambois [1607], act I, sc. i

So our lives

In acts exemplary, not only win

Ourselves good names, but doth to others give

Matter for virtuous deeds, by which we live.

Bussy d’Ambois, I, i

Who to himself is law no law doth need,

Offends no law, and is a king indeed.

Bussy d’Ambois, II, i

Give me a spirit that on this life’s rough sea

Loves t’ have his sails filled with a lusty wind,

Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,

And his rapt ship run on her side so low

That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.

The Conspiracy of Charles, Duke of Byron [1608], act III, sc. i

Robert Greene

c. 1560–1592

For there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.¹

The Groatsworth of Wit [1592]

Hell’s broken loose.

Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay [acted 1594], act IV

Francis Bacon²

1561–1626

I have taken all knowledge to be my province.

Letter to Lord Burleigh [1592]

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

Essex’s Device [1595]

Knowledge is power [Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est].³

Meditationes Sacrae [1597]. De Haeresibus

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

The Advancement of Learning [1605], bk. I, i, 3

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

The Advancement of Learning, I, v, 8

[Knowledge] is a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.

The Advancement of Learning, I, v, 11

It [Poesy] was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind.

The Advancement of Learning, II, iv, 2

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

The Advancement of Learning, II, vii, 5

But men must know that in this theater of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

The Advancement of Learning, II, xx, 8

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

The Advancement of Learning, II, xxi, 9

There is commonly less money, less wisdom, and less good faith than men do account upon.⁴

The Advancement of Learning, II, xxiii, 20

There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms… this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.

Novum Organum⁵ [1620]

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

Novum Organum, aphorism 41

And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by.

Novum Organum, aphorism 46

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Novum Organum, aphorism 129

I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defense. I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.

On being charged by Parliament with corruption in office [1621]

Lucid intervals and happy pauses.

History of King Henry VII [1622], III

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

Apothegms [1624], no. 36

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

Apothegms, 97

What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.

Essays. Of Truth

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Essays. Of Death

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

Essays. Of Revenge

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

Essays. Of Adversity

Virtue is like precious odors—most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed.¹

Essays. Of Adversity

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

Essays. Of Marriage and Single Life

Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.

Essays. Of Marriage and Single Life

In charity there is no excess.

Essays. Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

Essays. Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.²

Essays. Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature

Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

Essays. Of Seditions and Troubles

I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.

Essays. Of Atheism

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.³

Essays. Of Atheism

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that traveleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.

Essays. Of Travel

Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.

Essays. Of Empire

Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Essays. Of Delays

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Essays. Of Cunning

It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.

Essays. Of Wisdom for a Man’s Self

It is the wisdom of the crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.

Essays. Of Wisdom for a Man’s Self

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

Essays. Of Innovations

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

Essays. Of Friendship

Riches are for spending.

Essays. Of Expense

Nature is often hidden; sometimes overcome; seldom extinguished.

Essays. Of Nature in Men

Force maketh nature more violent in return.

Essays. Of Nature in Men

Chiefly the mold of a man’s fortune is in his own hands.

Essays. Of Fortune

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Essays. Of Beauty

God Almighty first planted a garden.⁴

Essays. Of Gardens

He that commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.¹

Essays. Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Essays. Of Studies

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Essays. Of Studies

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Essays. Of Studies

The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men is the vicissitude of sects and religions.

Essays. Of Vicissitude of Things

I bequeath my soul to God… My body to be buried obscurely. For my name and memory, I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next age.

From his will [1626]

The world’s a bubble, and the life of man

Less than a span.

The World [1629]

What then remains but that we still should cry

For being born, and, being born, to die?

The World

Luis de Góngora y Argote

1561–1627

All that lasts of love is its poison.²

Sonnet LXXXII [1584]

There is no street with mute stones

and no house without echoes.³

Las firmezas de Isabela [1610], ll. 553–554

Sir John Harington

1561–1612

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?

For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Epigrams. Of Treason

Robert Southwell

c. 1561–1595

Times go by turns, and chances change by course,

From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

Times Go by Turns [c. 1595], st. 1

As I in hoary winter night stood shivering in the snow,

Surprised was I with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear.

The Burning Babe [written c. 1595]

With this he vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

The Burning Babe

Samuel Daniel

c. 1562–1619

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,

Brother to Death, in silent darkness born.

Sonnets to Delia [1592], no. XLV

This is the thing that I was born to do.

Musophilus, or Defense of All Learning [1602–1603], st. 100

Lope de Vega

1562–1635

Except for God, the King’s our only lord.

Fuenteovejuna (The Sheep Well)⁴ [c. 1613], act I, l. 1701

Michael Drayton

1563–1631

Fair stood the wind for France.

The Ballad of Agincourt [1606], st. 1

O, when shall Englishmen

With such acts fill a pen,

Or England breed again

Such a King Harry?

The Ballad of Agincourt, st. 15

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part—

Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,

And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Poems [1619]. Idea

The coast was clear.

Nymphidia [1627]

Had in him those brave translunary things

That the first poets had.

Said of CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. To Henry Reynolds, Of Poets and Poesy [1627]

For that fine madness still he did retain

Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.

Said of MARLOWE. To Henry Reynolds, Of Poets and Poesy

Galileo Galilei

1564–1642

Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.

Il Saggiatore (The Assayer)¹ [1623]

But it does move!²

Attributed

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences³ [1638], Day 1

Christopher Marlowe

1564–1593

Our swords shall play the orators for us.

Tamburlaine the Great [c. 1587], pt. I, l. 328

Accurst be he that first invented war.

Tamburlaine the Great, I, l. 664

Is it not passing brave to be a king,

And ride in triumph through Persepolis?

Tamburlaine the Great, I, l. 758

Nature that framed us of four elements,

Warring within our breasts for regiment,

Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:

Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend

The wondrous Architecture of the world:

And measure every wandering planet’s course,

Still climbing after knowledge infinite,

And always moving as the restless Spheres,

Will us to wear ourselves and never rest,

Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,

That perfect bliss and sole felicity,

The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

Tamburlaine the Great, I, l. 869

Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God, must die.

Tamburlaine the Great, I, l. 4641

Over my zenith hang a blazing star,

That may endure till heaven be dissolv’d,

Fed with the fresh supply of earthly dregs,

Threatening a dearth and famine to this land!

Flying dragons, lightning, fearful thunder-claps,

Singe these fair plains, and make them seem as black

As is the island where the Furies mask,

Compass’d with Lethe, Styx, and Phlegethon,

Because my dear Zenocrate is dead.

The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great, III, ii, l. 6

Come, let us march against the powers of heaven,

And set black streamers in the firmament,

To signify the slaughter of the gods.

The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great, V, iii, l. 48

Come live with me, and be my love;

And we will all the pleasures prove

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,⁴

Woods or steepy mountain yields.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love [c. 1589]

By shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.⁵

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

And I will make thee beds of roses

And a thousand fragrant posies.⁵

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

I count religion but a childish toy,

And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

The Jew of Malta [c. 1589], prologue

Infinite riches in a little room.¹

The Jew of Malta, act I, sc. i

Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness.

The Jew of Malta, I, ii

Now will I show myself to have more of the serpent than the dove; that is, more knave than fool.

The Jew of Malta, II, iii

Friar Barnadine: Thou hast committed—

Barabas: Fornication—but that was in another country;

And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta, IV, i

My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,

Shall with their goat feet dance the antic hay.

Edward II [1593], act I, sc. i

You must be proud, bold, pleasant, resolute,

And now and then stab, as occasion serves.

Edward II, II, i

Judge you the rest; being tired she bade me kiss;

Jove send me more such afternoons as this!

Ovid’s Elegies [1596], bk. 1, no. 5

Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?²

Hero and Leander [1598]

Like untuned golden strings all women are,

Which long time lie untouched, will harshly jar.

Vessels of brass oft handled brightly shine.

Hero and Leander

Live and die in Aristotle’s works.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus [1604], act I, sc. i

Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer,

Conspired against our God with Lucifer,

And are forever damned with Lucifer.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, I, iii

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:

Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,

In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, I, iii

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

In one self place; for where we are is hell,

And where hell is there must we ever be.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, II, i

        When all the world dissolves,

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that is not Heaven.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, II, i

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?³

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul;⁴ see, where it flies!

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, V, i

Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, V, i

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

And then thou must be damned perpetually!

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, V, ii

O lente, lente currite noctis equi:⁵

[Slowly, slowly run, O horses of the night:]

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.

O, I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?

See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!

One drop would save my soul—half a drop: ah, my Christ!

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, V, ii

O soul, be changed into little waterdrops,

And fall into the ocean—ne’er to be found.

My God! my God! look not so fierce on me!

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, V, ii

I’ll burn my books!

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, V, ii

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,

That sometime grew within this learned man.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, V, iii

William Shakespeare¹

1564–1616

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

King Henry VI, Part I [1589–1590], act I, sc. i, l. 1

Fight till the last gasp.

I, ii, l. 127

Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days.

I, ii, l. 131

Glory is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,

Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.

I, ii, l. 133

        Unbidden guests

Are often welcomest when they are gone.

II, ii, l. 55

Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch;

Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth;

Between two blades, which bears the better temper;

Between two horses, which doth bear him best;

Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye;

I have perhaps, some shallow spirit of judgment;

But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,

Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.

II, iv, l. 12

I’ll note you in my book of memory.

II, iv, l. 101

Chok’d with ambition of the meaner sort.

II, v, l. 123

Delays have dangerous ends.

III, ii, l. 33

She’s beautiful and therefore to be woo’d,

She is a woman, therefore to be won.

V, iii, l. 78

For what is wedlock forced, but a hell,

An age of discord and continual strife?

Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,

And is a pattern of celestial peace.

V, v, l. 62

’Tis not my speeches that you do mislike,

But ’tis my presence that doth trouble ye.

Rancor will out.

King Henry VI, Part II [1590–1591], act I, sc. i, l. 141

Could I come near your beauty with my nails

I’d set my ten commandments in your face.

I, iii, l. 144

Patience, good lady; wizards know their times.

Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,

The time of night when Troy was set on fire,

The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl,

And spirits walk, and ghosts break up their graves;

That time best fits the work we have in hand.

I, iv, l. 15

Blessed are the peacemakers on earth.

II, i, l. 34

Now, God be prais’d, that to believing souls

Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!

II, i, l. 66

God defend the right!

II, iii, l. 55

Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;

And after summer evermore succeeds

Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold:

So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

II, iv, l. 1

Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;

Suffer them now and they’ll o’ergrow the garden.

III, i, l. 31

        In thy face I see

The map of honor, truth, and loyalty.

III, i, l. 202

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted!

Thrice is he arm’d that hath his quarrel just,

And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel,

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

III, ii, l. 232

He dies, and makes no sign.

III, iii, l. 29

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.

Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close;

And let us all to meditation.

III, iii, l. 31

The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day

Is crept into the bosom of the sea.

IV, i, l. 1

Small things make base men proud.

IV, i, l. 106

I will make it felony to drink small beer.

IV, ii, l. 75

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

IV, ii, l. 86

Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man?

IV, ii, l. 88

Adam was a gardener.

IV, ii, l. 146

Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill.

IV, vii, l. 35

Beggars mounted run their horse to death.¹

King Henry VI, Part III [1590–1591], act I, sc. iv, l. 127

O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide!

I, iv, l. 137

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.

II, i, l. 85

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.

II, ii, l. 17

Thou [Death] setter up and plucker down of kings.²

II, iii, l. 37

My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

Not deck’d with diamonds and Indian stones,

Nor to be seen: my crown is call’d content;

A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

III, i, l. 62

Like one that stands upon a promontory,

And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,

Wishing his foot were equal with his eye.

III, ii, l. 135

    Yield not thy neck

To fortune’s yoke, but let thy dauntless mind

Still ride in triumph over all mischance.

III, iii, l. 16

For how can tyrants safely govern home,

Unless abroad they purchase great alliance?

III, iii, l. 69

Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.

IV, i, l. 18

What fates impose, that men must needs abide;

It boots not to resist both wind and tide.

IV, iii, l. 57

For many men that stumble at the threshold

Are well foretold that danger lurks within.

IV, vii, l. 11

A little fire is quickly trodden out,

Which, being suffer’d, rivers cannot quench.

IV, viii, l. 7

    When the lion fawns upon the lamb,

The lamb will never cease to follow him.

IV, viii, l. 49

    What is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?

And, live we how we can, yet die we must.

V, ii, l. 27

What though the mast be now blown overboard,

The cable broke, the holding anchor lost,

And half our sailors swallow’d in the flood?

Yet lives our pilot still.

V, iv, l. 3

So part we sadly in this troublous world,

To meet with joy in sweet Jerusalem.

V, v, l. 7

Men ne’er spend their fury on a child.

V, v, l. 57

He’s sudden if a thing comes in his head.

V, v, l. 86

This word “love,” which greybeards call divine.

V, vi, l. 81

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.

Venus and Adonis [1592], l. 145

Love is a spirit all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

l. 149

“Fondling,” she saith, “since I have hemm’d thee here

Within the circuit of this ivory pale,

I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;

Feed where thou wilt, on mountain, or in dale:

    Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,

    Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.”

l. 229

O! what a war of looks was then between them.

l. 355

Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d

Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field.

l. 453

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.

l. 799

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,

And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.

l. 1019

The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light.

l. 1028

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York.

King Richard III [1592–1593], act I, sc. i, l. 1

Grim-visag’d war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front.

I, i, l. 9

He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

I, i, l. 12

This weak piping time of peace.

I, i, l. 24

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.

I, ii, l. 71

Look, how my ring encompasseth thy finger,

Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;

Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.

I, ii, l. 204

Was ever woman in this humor woo’d?

Was ever woman in this humor won?

I, ii, l. 229

    The world is grown so bad

That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.

I, iii, l. 70

The day will come that thou shalt wish for me

To help thee curse this pois’nous bunch-back’d toad.

I, iii, l. 245

And thus I clothe my naked villany

With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,

And seem a saint when most I play the devil.

I, iii, l. 336

Talkers are no good doers.

I, iii, l. 351

O, I have pass’d a miserable night,

So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,

That, as I am a Christian faithful man,

I would not spend another such a night,

Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days.

I, iv, l. 2

Lord, Lord! methought what pain it was to drown:

What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!

What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!

Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks;

A thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon.

I, iv, l. 21

The kingdom of perpetual night.

I, iv, l. 47

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,

Makes the night morning, and the noontide night.

I, iv, l. 76

So wise so young, they say, do never live long.¹

III, i, l. 79

Off with his head!

III, iv, l. 75

Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast;

Ready with every nod to tumble down

Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

III, iv, l. 98

I am not in the giving vein today.

IV, ii, l. 115

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham’s bosom.

IV, iii, l. 38

A grievous burden was thy birth to me;

Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy.

IV, iv, l. 168

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.

IV, iv, l. 359

Harp not on that string.

IV, iv, l. 365

Relenting fool, and shallow changing woman!

IV, iv, l. 432

Is the chair empty? is the sword unsway’d?

Is the king dead? the empire unpossess’d?

IV, iv, l. 470

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings;

Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

V, ii, l. 23

Give me another horse! bind up my wounds!

V, iii, l. 178

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!

V, iii, l. 180

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,

And every tongue brings in a several tale,

And every tale condemns me for a villain.

V, iii, l. 194

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

Devis’d at first to keep the strong in awe.

V, iii, l. 310

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

V, iv, l. 7

    I have set my life upon a cast,

And I will stand the hazard of the die.

I think there be six Richmonds in the field.

V, iv, l. 9

The pleasing punishment that women bear.

The Comedy of Errors [1592–1594], act I, sc. i, l. 46

For we may pity, though not pardon thee.

I, i, l. 97

Why, headstrong liberty is lash’d with woe.

There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye

But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky.

II, i, l. 15

Every why hath a wherefore.²

II, ii, l. 45

What he hath scanted men in hair, he hath given them in wit.

II, ii, l. 83

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.

III, i, l. 26

There is something in the wind.

III, i, l. 69

For slander lives upon succession,

Forever housed where it gets possession.

III, i, l. 105

Be not thy tongue thy own shame’s orator.

III, ii, l. 10

Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.

III, ii, l. 20

A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper.

IV, ii, l. 37

The venom clamors of a jealous woman

Poison more deadly than a mad dog’s tooth.

V, i, l. 69

Unquiet meals make ill digestions.

V, i, l. 74

    One Pinch, a hungry lean-fac’d villain,

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,

A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch,

A living-dead man.

V, i, l. 238

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade

The eyes of men without an orator.

The Rape of Lucrece [1593–1594], l. 29

This silent war of lilies and of roses,

Which Tarquin view’d in her fair face’s field.

l. 71

One for all, or all for one we gage.

l. 144

Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week?

Or sells eternity to get a toy?

For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?

l. 213

Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.

l. 230

All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth.

l. 268

Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,

To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light.

l. 939

For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.

l. 1006

To see sad sights moves more than hear them told.

l. 1324

Lucrece swears he did her wrong.¹

l. 1462

Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.

Titus Andronicus [1593–1594], act I, sc. i, l. 119

These words are razors to my wounded heart.

I, i, l. 314

He lives in fame that died in virtue’s cause.

I, i, l. 390

The eagle suffers little birds to sing,

And is not careful what they mean thereby.

IV, iv, l. 82

Tut! I have done a thousand dreadful things

As willingly as one would kill a fly.

V, i, l. 141

I’ll not budge an inch.

The Taming of the Shrew [1593–1594], induction, sc. i, l. 13

And if the boy have not a woman’s gift

To rain a shower of commanded tears,

An onion will do well for such a shift.

i, l. 124

There’s small choice in rotten apples.

I, i, l. 137

To seek their fortunes further than at home,

Where small experience grows.

I, ii, l. 51

I come to wive it wealthily in Padua.

I, ii, l. 75

Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.

I, ii, l. 82

And do as adversaries do in law,

Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

I, ii, l. 281

I must dance barefoot on her wedding day,

And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.

II, i, l. 33

Asses are made to bear, and so are you.

II, i, l. 200

Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o’ Sunday.

II, i, l. 318

Old fashions please me best.

III, i, l. 81

Who woo’d in haste and means to wed at leisure.

III, ii, l. 11

Such an injury would vex a very saint.

III, ii, l. 28

A little pot and soon hot.

IV, i, l. 6

Sits as one new-risen from a dream.

IV, i, l. 189

This is a way to kill a wife with kindness.

IV, i, l. 211

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,

Shall win my love.

IV, ii, l. 41

Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor:

For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich;

And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,

So honor peereth in the meanest habit.

IV, iii, l. 173

Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,

And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.

And if you please to call it a rush-candle,

Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

IV, v, l. 12

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

V, ii, l. 20

A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled,

Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

V, ii, l. 143

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband.

V, ii, l. 156

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona [1594], act I, sc. i, l. 2

Julia: They do not love that do not show their love.

Lucetta: O! they love least that let men know their love.

I, ii, l. 31

O! how this spring of love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day!

I, iii, l. 84

O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,

As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple!

II, i, l. 145

That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,

If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

III, i, l. 104

Except I be by Silvia in the night,

There is no music in the nightingale.

III, i, l. 178

Who is Silvia? what is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

The heaven such grace did lend her,

That she might admired be.

IV, ii, l. 40

Alas, how love can trifle with itself!

IV, iv, l. 190

Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes.

V, ii, l. 12

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

V, iv, l. 1

Spite of cormorant devouring Time.

Love’s Labour’s Lost [1594–1595], act I, sc. i, l. 4

Make us heirs of all eternity.

I, i, l. 7

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain

Which, with pain purchas’d doth inherit pain.

I, i, l. 72

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.

I, i, l. 77

Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks;

Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others’ books.

These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights

That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

I, i, l. 84

At Christmas I no more desire a rose

Than wish a snow in May’s newfangled mirth;

But like of each thing that in season grows.

I, i, l. 105

And men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper.

I, i, l. 237

That unlettered small-knowing soul.

I, i, l. 251

A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.

I, i, l. 263

Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow!

I, i, l. 312

Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.

I, ii, l. 194

Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,

Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongues.

II, i, l. 15

        A merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth,

I never spent an hour’s talk withal.

II, i, l. 66

Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.

II, i, l. 119

Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.

III, i, l. 1

Remuneration! O! that’s the Latin word for three farthings.

III, i, l. 143

A very beadle to a humorous sigh.

III, i, l. 185

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,

This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;

Regent of love-rimes, lord of folded arms,

The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiters and malcontents.

III, i, l. 189

He hath not fed of the dainties that are bred of a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink.

IV, ii, l. 25

Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.

IV, ii, l. 34

You two are book-men.

IV, ii, l. 35

These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.

IV, ii, l. 70

By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught me to rime, and to be melancholy.

IV, iii, l. 13

For where is any author in the world

Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?

Learning is but an adjunct to ourself.

IV, iii, l. 312

But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,

Lives not alone immured in the brain.

IV, iii, l. 327

It adds a precious seeing to the eye.

IV, iii, l. 333

    As sweet and musical

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair;

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

IV, iii, l. 342

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain, and nourish all the world.

IV, iii, l. 350

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

V, i, l. 18

Moth: They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

Costard: O! they have lived long on the almsbasket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

V, i, l. 39

In the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.

V, i, l. 96

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-pil’d hyperboles, spruce affectation,

Figures pedantical.

V, ii, l. 407

Let me take you a button-hole lower.

V, ii, l. 705

The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.

V, ii, l. 715

A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue

Of him that makes it.

V, ii, l. 869

When daisies pied and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight,

The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,

Unpleasing to a married ear!

V, ii, l. 902

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who;

Tu-whit, tu-who—a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

V, ii, l. 920

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.

V, ii, l. 929

The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.

V, ii, l. 938

For new-made honor doth forget men’s names.

King John [1594–1596], act I, sc. i, l. 187

Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth.

I, i, l. 213

Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,

To make a hazard of new fortunes here.

II, i, l. 70

Saint George, that swing’d the dragon, and e’er since

Sits on his horse back at mine hostess’ door.

II, i, l. 288

He is the half part of a blessed man,

Left to be finished by such a she;

And she a fair divided excellence,

Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.

II, i, l. 437

’Zounds! I was never so bethump’d with words

Since I first call’d my brother’s father dad.

II, i, l. 466

Mad world! mad kings, mad composition!

II, i, l. 561

That smooth-fac’d gentleman, tickling Commodity,

Commodity, the bias of the world.

II, i, l. 573

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;

For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.

III, i, l. 68

Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame,

And hang a calf’s-skin on those recreant limbs.

III, i, l. 128

The sun’s o’ercast with blood: fair day, adieu!

Which is the side that I must go withal?

I am with both: each army hath a hand;

And in their rage, I having hold of both,

They whirl asunder and dismember me.

III, i, l. 326

Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back.

III, iii, l. 12

Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul.

III, iv, l. 17

Death, death: O, amiable lovely death!

III, iv, l. 25

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

III, iv, l. 93

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,

Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

III, iv, l. 108

When Fortune means to men most good,

She looks upon them with a threatening eye.

III, iv, l. 119

A scepter snatch’d with an unruly hand

Must be as boisterously maintain’d as gain’d;

And he that stands upon a slippery place

Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.

III, iv, l. 135

As quiet as a lamb.

IV, i, l. 80

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

IV, ii, l. 11

And oftentimes excusing of a fault

Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

IV, ii, l. 30

Make haste; the better foot before.

IV, ii, l. 170

Another lean unwash’d artificer.

IV, ii, l. 201

Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!

IV, iii, l. 10

I am amaz’d, methinks, and lose my way

Among the thorns and dangers of this world.

IV, iii, l. 140

Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,

And welcome home again discarded faith.

V, iv, l. 11

The day shall not be up so soon as I,

To try the fair adventure of tomorrow.

V, v, l. 21

’Tis strange that death should sing.

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,

Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death.

V, vii, l. 20

Now my soul hath elbow-room.

V, vii, l. 28

    I do not ask you much:

I beg cold comfort.

V, vii, l. 41

This England never did, nor never shall,

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.

V, vii, l. 112

Come the three corners of the world in arms,

And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,

If England to itself do rest but true.

V, vii, l. 116

The purest treasure mortal times afford

Is spotless reputation.

King Richard II [1595], act I, sc. i, l. 177

Mine honor is my life; both grow in one;

Take honor from me, and my life is done.

I, i, l. 182

We were not born to sue, but to command.

I, i, l. 196

The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.

I, iii, l. 68

Truth hath a quiet breast.

I, iii, l. 96

How long a time lies in one little word!

I, iii, l. 213

Must I not serve a long apprenticehood

To foreign passages, and in the end,

Having my freedom, boast of nothing else

But that I was a journeyman to grief?

I, iii, l. 271

All places that the eye of heaven visits

Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus;

There is no virtue like necessity.

Think not the king did banish thee,

But thou the king.

I, iii, l. 275

For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite

The man that mocks at it and sets it light.

I, iii, l. 292

O! who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?

O, no! the apprehension of the good

Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

I, iii, l. 294

Where’er I wander, boast of this I can,

Though banish’d, yet a true-born Englishman.

I, iii, l. 308

    The tongues of dying men

Enforce attention like deep harmony.

II, i, l. 5

The setting sun, and music at the close,

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,

Writ in remembrance more than things long past.

II, i, l. 12

Report of fashions in proud Italy,

Whose manners still our tardy apish nation

Limps after in base imitation.

II, i, l. 21

For violent fires soon burn out themselves;

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short.

II, i, l. 34

This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Fear’d by their breed and famous by their birth.

II, i, l. 40

England, bound in with the triumphant sea,

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

Of watery Neptune.

II, i, l. 61

That England, that was wont to conquer others,

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

II, i, l. 65

The ripest fruit first falls.

II, i, l. 154

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows.

II, ii, l. 14

I count myself in nothing else so happy

As in a soul remembering my good friends.

II, iii, l. 46

Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.

II, iii, l. 65

Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.

II, iii, l. 87

The caterpillars of the commonwealth,

Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

II, iii, l. 166

Things past redress are now with me past care.

II, iii, l. 171

I see thy glory like a shooting star

Fall to the base earth from the firmament.

II, iv, l. 19

Eating the bitter bread of banishment.

III, i, l. 21

Not all the water in the rough rude sea

Can wash the balm from an anointed king.

III, ii, l. 54

O! call back yesterday, bid time return.

III, ii, l. 69

The worst is death, and death will have his day.

III, ii, l. 103

    Of comfort no man speak:

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;

Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth;

Let’s choose executors and talk of wills.

III, ii, l. 144

And nothing can we call our own but death,

And that small model of the barren earth

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d,

Some poison’d by their wives, some sleeping kill’d;

All murder’d: for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court.

III, ii, l. 152

Comes at the last, and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

III, ii, l. 169

        He is come to open

The purple testament of bleeding war.

III, iii, l. 93

    O! that I were as great

As is my grief, or lesser than my name,

Or that I could forget what I have been,

Or not remember what I must be now.

III, iii, l. 136

I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads,

My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,

My gay apparel for an almsman’s gown.

III, iii, l. 147

And my large kingdom for a little grave,

A little little grave, an obscure grave.

III, iii, l. 153

    And there at Venice gave

His body to that pleasant country’s earth,

And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,

Under whose colors he had fought so long.

IV, i, l. 97

Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels.

IV, i, l. 139

So Judas did to Christ: but he, in twelve,

Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.

God save the king! Will no man say, amen?

IV, i, l. 170

Now is this golden crown like a deep well

That owes two buckets filling one another;

The emptier ever dancing in the air,

The other down, unseen and full of water:

That bucket down and full of tears am I,

Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

IV, i, l. 184

You may my glories and my state depose,

But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

IV, i, l. 192

    Some of you with Pilate wash your hands,

Showing an outward pity.

IV, i, l. 239

A mockery king of snow.

IV, i, l. 260

As in a theater, the eyes of men,

After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage,

Are idly bent on him that enters next,

Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

V, ii, l. 23

    How sour sweet music is

When time is broke and no proportion kept!

So is it in the music of men’s lives.

V, v, l. 42

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;

For now hath time made me his numbering clock:

My thoughts are minutes.

V, v, l. 49

This music mads me: let it sound no more.

V, v, l. 61

Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high,

Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

V, v, l. 112

To live a barren sister all your life,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

A Midsummer-Night’s Dream [1595–1596], act I, sc. i, l. 72

    For aught that I could ever read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth.

I, i, l. 132

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And ere a man hath power to say, “Behold!”

The jaws of darkness do devour it up:

So quick bright things come to confusion.

I, i, l. 144

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.¹

I, i, l. 234

The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.

I, ii, l. 11

Masters, spread yourselves.

I, ii, l. 16

I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.

I, ii, l. 29

This is Ercles’ vein, a tyrant’s vein.

I, ii, l. 43

I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice.

I, ii, l. 55

I am slow of study.

I, ii, l. 70

That would hang us, every mother’s son.

I, ii, l. 81

I will aggravate my voice so that I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; I will roar you as ’twere any nightingale.

I, ii, l. 85

A proper man, as one shall see in a summer’s day; a most lovely, gentleman-like man.

I, ii, l. 89

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire.

II, i, l. 2

I must go seek some dew drops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

II, i, l. 14

I am that merry wanderer of the night.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile

When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,

Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:

And sometimes lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,

In very likeness of a roasted crab.

II, i, l. 43

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

II, i, l. 60

These are the forgeries of jealousy.

II, i, l. 81

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid’s music.

II, i, l. 149

And the imperial votaress passed on,

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,

And maidens call it, Love-in-idleness.

II, i, l. 163

I’ll put a girdle round about the earth

In forty minutes.

II, i, l. 175

For you in my respect are all the world:

Then how can it be said I am alone,

When all the world is here to look on me?

II, i, l. 224

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania some time of the night,

Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;

And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

II, i, l. 249

Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,

Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,

To make my small elves coats.

II, ii, l. 3

The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders

At our quaint spirits.

II, ii, l. 6

You spotted snakes with double tongue,

Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen;

Newts, and blind-worms, do no wrong;

Come not near our fairy queen.

II, ii, l. 9

Night and silence! who is here?

Weeds of Athens he doth wear.

II, ii, l. 70

As a surfeit of the sweetest things

The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

II, ii, l. 137

To bring in—God shield us!—a lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living.

III, i, l. 32

A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanack; find out moonshine.

III, i, l. 55

Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated.

III, i, l. 124

I am a spirit of no common rate;

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee; therefore go with me.

III, i, l. 154

    How now, mad spirit?

What night-rule now about this haunted grove?

III, ii, l. 4

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

III, ii, l. 115

    So we grew together,

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition;

Two lovely berries molded on one stem.

III, ii, l. 208

Though she be but little, she is fierce.

III, ii, l. 325

But we are spirits of another sort.

I with the Morning’s love have oft made sport.

III, ii, l. 388

    Jack shall have Jill;

    Nought shall go ill;

The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.

III, ii, l. 461

I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones.

IV, i, l. 32

Truly, a peck of provender: I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

IV, i, l. 36

I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

IV, i, l. 44

My Oberon! what visions have I seen!

Methought I was enamor’d of an ass.

IV, i, l. 82

        I never heard

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

IV, i, l. 123

These things seem small and undistinguishable,

Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.

IV, i, l. 187

I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

IV, i, l. 211

The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.

IV, i, l. 218

Eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.

IV, ii, l. 44

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman; the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

V, i, l. 7

But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigur’d so together,

More witnesseth than fancy’s images,

And grows to something of great constancy,

But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

V, i, l. 23

Very tragical mirth.

V, i, l. 57

Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief?

That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

V, i, l. 58

The true beginning of our end.¹

V, i, l. 111

The best in this kind are but shadows.

V, i, l. 215

A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.

V, i, l. 232

All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.

V, i, l. 263

Well roared, Lion.

V, i, l. 272

This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.

V, i, l. 295

With the help of a surgeon, he might yet recover, and prove an ass.

V, i, l. 318

No epilogue, I pray you, for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse.

V, i, l. 363

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;

Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.

V, i, l. 372

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber’d here

While these visions did appear.

V, ii, l. 54

A pair of star-cross’d lovers.

Romeo and Juliet [1595–1596], prologue, l. 6

Saint-seducing gold.

act I, sc. i, l. 220

        One fire burns out another’s burning,

One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish.

I, ii, l. 47

I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

I, ii, l. 92

For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase.

I, iv, l. 37

We burn daylight.

I, iv, l. 43

O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you!…

She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the forefinger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.

I, iv, l. 53

    True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.

I, iv, l. 97

For you and I are past our dancing days.¹

I, v, l. 35

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

I, v, l. 49

My only love sprung from my only hate!

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

I, v, l. 142

Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim

When King Cophetua lov’d the beggarmaid.

II, i, l. 13

He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

II, ii, l. 1

She speaks, yet she says nothing.

II, ii, l. 12

See! how she leans her cheek upon her hand:

O! that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek.

II, ii, l. 23

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?²

Deny thy father, and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

II, ii, l. 33

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

II, ii, l. 43

For stony limits cannot hold love out.

II, ii, l. 67

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond.

II, ii, l. 98

    I’ll prove more true

Than those that have more cunning to be strange.

II, ii, l. 100

Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear

That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—

Juliet: O! swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

II, ii, l. 107

    Do not swear at all;

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,

Which is the god of my idolatry.

II, ii, l. 112

It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say it lightens.

II, ii, l. 118

This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

II, ii, l. 121

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books;

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

II, ii, l. 156

    O! for a falconer’s voice,

To lure this tassel-gentle back again.

II, ii, l. 158

How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night,

Like softest music to attending ears!

II, ii, l. 165

    I would have thee gone;

And yet no further than a wanton’s bird,

Who lets it hop a little from her hand,

Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,

And with a silk thread plucks it back again,

So loving-jealous of his liberty.

II, ii, l. 176

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

II, ii, l. 184

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,

And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.

II, iii, l. 35

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

II, iii, l. 94

A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.

II, iv, l. 156

These violent delights have violent ends.

II, vi, l. 9

Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

II, vi, l. 14

Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.³

III, i, l. 23

A word and a blow.

III, i, l. 44

No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve: ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.

III, i, l. 101

A plague o’ both your houses!

They have made worms’ meat of me.

III, i, l. 112

O! I am Fortune’s fool.

III, i, l. 142

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,

Towards Phoebus’ lodging.

III, ii, l. 1

    When he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night,

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

III, ii, l. 21

    He was not born to shame:

Upon his brow shame is asham’d to sit.

III, ii, l. 91

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy.

III, iii, l. 54

    Hang up philosophy!

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.

III, iii, l. 56

The lark, the herald of the morn.

III, v, l. 6

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops.

III, v, l. 9

Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds.

III, v, l. 153

Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,

That sees into the bottom of my grief?

III, v, l. 198

Past hope, past cure, past help!

IV, i, l. 45

’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.

IV, ii, l. 6

Apothecary: My poverty, but not my will, consents.

Romeo: I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.

V, i, l. 75

    The strength

Of twenty men.

V, i, l. 78

The time and my intents are savage-wild,

More fierce and more inexorable far

Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.

V, iii, l. 39

Tempt not a desperate man.

V, iii, l. 59

One writ with me in sour misfortune’s book.

V, iii, l. 82

How oft when men are at the point of death

Have they been merry!

V, iii, l. 88

    Beauty’s ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.

V, iii, l. 94

    O! here

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace!

V, iii, l. 109

    O true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick.

V, iii, l. 119

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.

V, iii, l. 292

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

V, iii, l. 309

So shaken as we are, so wan with care.

King Henry IV, Part I [1596–1597], act I, sc. i, l. 1

    In those holy fields

Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet

Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross.

I, i, l. 24

Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping-houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in flame-color’d taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.

I, ii, l. 7

Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon.

I, ii, l. 29

A purse of gold most resolutely snatched on Monday night and most dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning.

I, ii, l. 38

Thy quips and thy quiddities.

I, ii, l. 51

So far as my coin would stretch; and where it would not, I have used my credit.

I, ii, l. 61

Old father antick the law.

I, ii, l. 69

I am as melancholy as a gib cat, or a lugged bear.

I, ii, l. 82

I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought.

I, ii, l. 92

O! thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint.

I, ii, l. 101

Now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked.

I, ii, l. 105

’Tis my vocation, Hal; ’tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.

I, ii, l. 116

There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee.

I, ii, l. 154

Well then, once in my days I’ll be a madcap.

I, ii, l. 158

I know you all, and will a while uphold

The unyok’d humor of your idleness:

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That when he please again to be himself,

Being wanted, he may be more wonder’d at,

By breaking through the foul and ugly mists

Of vapors that did seem to strangle him.

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work.

I, ii, l. 217

You tread upon my patience.

I, iii, l. 4

Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress’d,

Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new-reap’d,

Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home:

He was perfumed like a milliner,

And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held

A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He gave his nose and took ’t away again.

I, iii, l. 33

And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,

He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,

To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse

Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

King Henry IV, Part I, I, iii, l. 42

So pester’d with a popinjay.

I, iii, l. 50

God save the mark!

I, iii, l. 56

To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,

And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke.

I, iii, l. 176

Or sink or swim.

I, iii, l. 194

        O! the blood more stirs

To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

I, iii, l. 197

By heaven methinks it were an easy leap

To pluck bright honor from the pale-fac’d moon,

Or dive into the bottom of the deep,

Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,

And pluck up drowned honor by the locks.

I, iii, l. 201

Why, what a candy deal of courtesy

This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!

I, iii, l. 251

I know a trick worth two of that.

II, i, l. 40

If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll be hanged.

II, ii, l. 20

I’ll starve ere I’ll rob a foot further.

II, ii, l. 24

It would be argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest forever.

II, ii, l. 104

    Falstaff sweats to death

And lards the lean earth as he walks along.

II, ii, l. 119

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

II, iii, l. 11

I could brain him with his lady’s fan.

II, iii, l. 26

        Constant you are,

But yet a woman: and for secrecy,

No lady closer; for I well believe

Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know;

And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.

II, iii, l. 113

A Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy.

II, iv, l. 13

I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.”

II, iv, l. 116

A plague of all cowards, I say.

II, iv, l. 129

There live not three good men unhanged in England, and one of them is fat and grows old.

II, iv, l. 146

You care not who sees your back: call you that backing of your friends? A plague upon such backing!

II, iv, l. 168

I have peppered two of them.… I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.

II, iv, l. 216

Give you a reason on compulsion! if reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.

II, iv, l. 267

Mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down.

II, iv, l. 285

What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?

II, iv, l. 328

A plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder.

II, iv, l. 370

I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein.

II, iv, l. 429

That reverend vice, that gray iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years.

II, iv, l. 505

If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved.

II, iv, l. 524

Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

II, iv, l. 534

Play out the play.

II, iv, l. 539

O, monstrous! but one half-penny-worth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!

II, iv, l. 597

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions.

III, i, l. 27

I am not in the roll of common men.

III, i, l. 43

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when you do call for them?

III, i, l. 53

I had rather be a kitten and cry mew,

Than one of these same meter ballad-mongers.

III, i, l. 128

    Mincing poetry:

’Tis like the forc’d gait of a shuffling nag.

III, i, l. 133

But in the way of bargain, mark you me,

I’ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.

III, i, l. 138

A deal of skimble-skamble stuff.

III, i, l. 153

I understand thy kisses and thou mine,

And that’s a feeling disputation.

III, i, l. 204

Lady Percy:… Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh.

Hotspur: I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.

III, i, l. 238

A good mouth-filling oath.

III, i, l. 258

They surfeited with honey and began

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little

More than a little is by much too much.

III, ii, l. 71

He was but as the cuckoo is in June,

Heard, not regarded.

III, ii, l. 75

My near’st and dearest enemy.

III, ii, l. 123

The end of life cancels all bands.

III, ii, l. 157

And I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer’s horse.

III, iii, l. 8

Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me.

III, iii, l. 10

I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty.

III, iii, l. 187

The very life-blood of our enterprise.

IV, i, l. 28

    Were it good

To set the exact wealth of all our states

All at one cast? to set so rich a main

On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?

IV, i, l. 45

Baited like eagles having lately bath’d…

As full of spirit as the month of May,

And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.

IV, i, l. 99

I saw young Harry, with his beaver on.

IV, i, l. 104

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus

And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

IV, i, l. 109

        Worse than the sun in March

This praise doth nourish agues.

IV, i, l. 111

Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.

IV, i, l. 134

The cankers of a calm world and a long peace.

IV, ii, l. 32

Tut, tut, good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better.

IV, ii, l. 72

To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast

Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

IV, ii, l. 86

Greatness knows itself.

IV, iii, l. 74

        I could be well content

To entertain the lag-end of my life

With quiet hours.

V, i, l. 23

Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.

V, i, l. 28

        Never yet did insurrection want

Such water-colors to impaint his cause.

V, i, l. 79

I would it were bed-time, Hal, and all well.

V, i, l. 126

Honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honor set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honor? a word. What is that word, honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. It is insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it: honor is a mere scutcheon; and so ends my catechism.

V, i, l. 131

Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes;

For treason is but trusted like the fox.

V, ii, l. 8

Let me tell the world.¹

V, ii, l. 65

        The time of life is short;

To spend that shortness basely were too long.

V, ii, l. 81

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere.

V, iv, l. 65

But thought’s the slave of life, and life time’s fool;

And time, that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop. O! I could prophesy,

But that the earthy and cold hand of death

Lies on my tongue.

V, iv, l. 81

This earth, that bears thee dead,

Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.

V, iv, l. 92

Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,

But not remember’d in thy epitaph!

V, iv, l. 100

I could have better spar’d a better man.

V, iv, l. 104

The better part of valor is discretion.¹

V, iv, l. 120

        Full bravely hast thou flesh’d

Thy maiden sword.

V, iv, l. 132

Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!

V, iv, l. 148

I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly.

V, iv, l. 168

Your mind is tossing on the ocean.

The Merchant of Venice [1596–1597], act I, sc. i, l. 8

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,

Nor to one place.

I, i, l. 42

Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her time.

I, i, l. 51

You have too much respect upon the world:

They lose it that do buy it with much care.

I, i, l. 74

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;

A stage where every man must play a part,

And mine a sad one.

I, i, l. 77

Why should a man, whose blood is warm within,

Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?

I, i, l. 83

There are a sort of men whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond.

I, i, l. 88

        I am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!

I, i, l. 93

        I do know of these,

That therefore only are reputed wise

For saying nothing.

I, i, l. 95

Fish not, with this melancholy bait,

For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion.

I, i, l. 101

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and, when you have them, they are not worth the search.

I, i, l. 114

In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,

I shot his fellow of the selfsame flight

The selfsame way with more advised watch,

To find the other forth, and by adventuring both,

I oft found both.

I, i, l. 141

They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing.

I, ii, l. 5

Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.

I, ii, l. 9

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.

I, ii, l. 13

The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.

I, ii, l. 19

He doth nothing but talk of his horse.

I, ii, l. 43

I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth.

I, ii, l. 51

God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.

I, ii, l. 59

When he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.

I, ii, l. 93

I dote on his very absence.

I, ii, l. 118

Ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves and water-thieves.

I, iii, l. 22

Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite² conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto?

I, iii, l. 34

How like a fawning publican he looks!

I hate him for he is a Christian.

I, iii, l. 42

If I can catch him once upon the hip,

I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

I, iii, l. 47

        Cursed be my tribe,

If I forgive him!

I, iii, l. 52

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

I, iii, l. 99

A goodly apple rotten at the heart.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

I, iii, l. 102

For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.

You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,

And spet upon my Jewish gaberdine.

I, iii, l. 111

Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key,

With bated breath, and whispering humbleness,

Say this.

I, iii, l. 124

        I’ll seal to such a bond,

And say there is much kindness in the Jew.

I, iii, l. 153

O father Abram! what these Christians are,

Whose own hard dealing teaches them suspect

The thoughts of others.

I, iii, l. 161

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

I, iii, l. 180

Mislike me not for my complexion,

The shadow’d livery of the burnish’d sun.

II, i, l. 1

O heavens! this is my true-begotten father.

II, ii, l. 36

An honest, exceeding poor man.

II, ii, l. 54

The very staff of my age, my very prop.

II, ii, l. 71

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

II, ii, l. 83

And the vile squealing of the wry-neck’d fife.

II, v, l. 30

    Who riseth from a feast

With that keen appetite that he sits down?

II, vi, l. 8

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The pretty follies that themselves commit.

II, vi, l. 36

Must I hold a candle to my shames?

II, vi, l. 41

        Men that hazard all

Do it in hope of fair advantages:

A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.

II, vii, l. 18

Young in limbs, in judgment old.

II, vii, l. 71

My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!

Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!

Justice! the law! my ducats, and my daughter!

A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,

Of double ducats, stol’n from me by my daughter!

II, viii, l. 15

The fool multitude, that choose by show.

II, ix, l. 26

        I will not jump with common spirits

And rank me with the barbarous multitude.

II, ix, l. 32

        Let none presume

To wear an undeserved dignity.

O! that estates, degrees, and offices

Were not deriv’d corruptly, and that clear honor

Were purchas’d by the merit of the wearer.

II, ix, l. 39

Some there be that shadows kiss;

Such have but a shadow’s bliss.

II, ix, l. 66

Let him look to his bond.

III, i, l. 49

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?

III, i, l. 62

If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

III, i, l. 65

The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

III, i, l. 76

I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

III, i, l. 130

There’s something tells me, but it is not love,

I would not lose you; and you know yourself,

Hate counsels not in such a quality.

III, ii, l. 4

        Makes a swanlike end,

Fading in music.

III, ii, l. 44

Tell me where is fancy bred,

Or in the heart or in the head?

How begot, how nourished?

    Reply, reply.

III, ii, l. 63

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt

But, being season’d with a gracious voice,

Obscures the show of evil?

III, ii, l. 75

There is no vice so simple but assumes

Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

III, ii, l. 81

The seeming truth which cunning times put on

To entrap the wisest.

III, ii, l. 100

How all the other passions fleet to air,

As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac’d despair,

And shuddering fear, and green-ey’d jealousy.

III, ii, l. 108

An unlesson’d girl, unschool’d, unpractic’d;

Happy in this, she is not yet so old

But she may learn.

III, ii, l. 160

Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

That ever blotted paper.

III, ii, l. 252

Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause,

But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.

III, iii, l. 6

Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother.¹

III, v, l. 17

Some men there are love not a gaping pig;

Some, that are mad if they behold a cat.

IV, i, l. 47

A harmless necessary cat.

IV, i, l. 55

Bassanio: Do all men kill the things they do not love?

Shylock: Hates any man the thing he would not kill?

IV, i, l. 66

What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?

IV, i, l. 69

        The weakest kind of fruit

Drops earliest to the ground.

IV, i, l. 115

To hold opinion with Pythagoras,

That souls of animals infuse themselves

Into the trunks of men.²

IV, i, l. 131

I never knew so young a body with so old a head.³

IV, i, l. 163

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His scepter shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptered sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself,

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

IV, i, l. 184

To do a great right, do a little wrong.

IV, i, l. 216

A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!

IV, i, l. 223

How much more elder art thou than thy looks!

IV, i, l. 251

Is it so nominated in the bond?

IV, i, l. 260

’Tis not in the bond.

IV, i, l. 263

For herein Fortune shows herself more kind

Than is her custom: it is still her use

To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,

To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow

An age of poverty.

IV, i, l. 268

        I have a daughter;

Would any of the stock of Barabbas

Had been her husband rather than a Christian!

IV, i, l. 296

An upright judge, a learned judge!

IV, i, l. 324

Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip.

IV, i, l. 334

A Daniel, still say I; a second Daniel!

I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.

IV, i, l. 341

You take my house when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house; you take my life

When you do take the means whereby I live.

IV, i, l. 376

He is well paid that is well satisfied.

IV, i, l. 416

Lorenzo: The moon shines bright: in such a night as this…

Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,

And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents,

Where Cressid lay that night.

Jessica:

                  In such a night

Did Thisbe fearfully o’ertrip the dew,

And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself,

And ran dismay’d away.

Lorenzo:

                  In such a night

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand

Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love

To come again to Carthage.

Jessica:

                  In such a night

Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs

That did renew old Aeson.

V, i, l. 1

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

V, i, l. 54

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

V, i, l. 69

The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted.

V, i, l. 83

How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

V, i, l. 90

How many things by season season’d are

To their right praise and true perfection!

V, i, l. 107

This night methinks is but the daylight sick.

V, i, l. 124

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.

V, i, l. 130

These blessed candles of the night.

V, i, l. 220

I will make a Star Chamber matter of it.

The Merry Wives of Windsor [1597; revised 1600–1601], act I, sc. i, l. 2

She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman.

I, i, l. 48

I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here.

I, i, l. 205

“Convey,” the wise it call. “Steal” ’ foh! a fico for the phrase!

I, iii, l. 30

I am almost out at heels.

I, iii, l. 32

Thou art the Mars of malcontents.

I, iii, l. 111

Here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the king’s English.

I, iv, l. 5

Dispense with trifles.

II, i, l. 47

Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.

II, i, l. 158

Why, then the world’s mine oyster,

Which I with sword will open.

II, ii, l. 2

This is the short and the long of it.

II, ii, l. 62

This is the short and the long of it.

II, ii, l. 62

Like a fair house built upon another man’s ground.

II, ii, l. 229

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.

II, ii, l. 332

I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.

III, ii, l. 20

He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May.

III, ii, l. 71

O, what a world of vile ill-favor’d faults

Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

III, iv, l. 32

A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart.

III, iv, l. 106

As good luck would have it.¹

III, v, l. 86

A man of my kidney.

III, v, l. 119

Wives may be merry, and yet honest too.

IV, ii, l. 110

This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.… There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance or death.

V, i, l. 2

Better a little chiding than a great deal of heartbreak.

V, iii, l. 10

        Rumor is a pipe

Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,

And of so easy and so plain a stop

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,

The still-discordant wavering multitude,

Can play upon it.

King Henry IV, Part II [1598], induction, l. 15

Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,

So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,

Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night,

And would have told him half his Troy was burn’d.

act I, sc. i, l. 70

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news

Hath but a losing office, and his tongue

Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,

Remember’d knolling a departing friend.

I, i, l. 100

I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.

I, ii, l. 10

A rascally yea-forsooth knave.

I, ii, l. 40

You lie in your throat.

I, ii, l. 97

Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.

I, ii, l. 112

It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

I, ii, l. 139

I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient.

I, ii, l. 145

We that are in the vaward of our youth.

I, ii, l. 201

Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly?

I, ii, l. 206

Every part about you blasted with antiquity.

I, ii, l. 210

For my voice, I have lost it with hollaing and singing of anthems.

I, ii, l. 215

It was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.

I, ii, l. 244

I were better to be eaten to death with rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

I, ii, l. 249

I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.

I, ii, l. 267

        Who lin’d himself with hope,

Eating the air on promise of supply.

I, iii, l. 27

A habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

I, iii, l. 89

Past and to come seem best; things present worst.

I, iii, l. 108

A poor lone woman.

King Henry IV, Part II, II, i, l. 37

Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe.

II, i, l. 67

He hath eaten me out of house and home.

II, i, l. 82

Let the end try the man.

II, ii, l. 52

Thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.

II, ii, l. 155

        He was indeed the glass

Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.

II, iii, l. 21

And let the welkin roar.

II, iv, l. 181

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

II, iv, l. 283

        O sleep! O gentle sleep!¹

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

III, i, l. 5

With all appliances and means to boot.

III, i, l. 29

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

III, i, l. 31

O God! that one might read the book of fate.

III, i, l. 45

There is a history in all men’s lives.

III, i, l. 80

Death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die.

III, ii, l. 41

We have heard the chimes at midnight.

III, ii, l. 231

A man can die but once; we owe God a death.

III, ii, l. 253

We see which way the stream of time doth run

And are enforc’d from our most quiet sphere

By the rough torrent of occasion.

IV, i, l. 70

        We ready are to try our fortunes

To the last man.

IV, ii, l. 43

I may justly say with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, “I came, saw, and overcame.”

IV, iii, l. 44

O polish’d perturbation! golden care!

That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide

To many a watchful night!

IV, v, l. 22

    See, sons, what things you are!

How quickly nature falls into revolt

When gold becomes her object!

IV, v, l. 63

Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought!

IV, v, l. 91

Before thy hour be ripe.

IV, v, l. 95

        Commit

The oldest sins the newest kind of ways.

IV, v, l. 124

His cares are now all ended.

V, ii, l. 3

This is the English, not the Turkish court;

Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,

But Harry Harry.

V, ii, l. 47

I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!

V, v, l. 52

Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.

V, v, l. 78

O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention!

King Henry V [1598–1599], chorus, l. 1

        Or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?

chorus, l. 12

Consideration like an angel came,

And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him.

act I, sc. i, l. 28

Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,

You would say it hath been all in all his study.

I, i, l. 41

Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,

The air, a charter’d libertine, is still.

I, i, l. 45

        Therefore doth heaven divide

The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavor in continual motion;

To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,

Obedience: for so work the honeybees,

Creatures that by a rule in nature teach

The act of order to a peopled kingdom.

I, ii, l. 183

The singing masons building roofs of gold.

I, ii, l. 198

        Many things, having full reference

To one consent, may work contrariously;

As many arrows, loosed several ways,

Fly to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;

As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;

As many lines close in the dial’s center;

So may a thousand actions, once afoot,

End in one purpose, and be all well borne

Without defeat.

I, ii, l. 205

        ’Tis ever common

That men are merriest when they are from home.

I, ii, l. 271

Now all the youth of England are on fire,

And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.

II, chorus, l. 1

O England! model to thy inward greatness,

Like little body with a mighty heart,

What mightst thou do, that honor would thee do,

Were all thy children kind and natural!

II, chorus, l. 16

That’s the humor of it.

II, i, l. 63

He’s [Falstaff’s] in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom. A’ made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a’ parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o’ the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a’ babbled of green fields.

II, iii, l. 11

As cold as any stone.

II, iii, l. 26

Trust none;

For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes,

And hold-fast is the only dog, my duck.

II, iii, l. 53

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead!

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favor’d rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.

III, i, l. 1

And sheath’d their swords for lack of argument.

III, i, l. 21

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:

Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge

Cry “God for Harry! England and Saint George!”

III, i, l. 31

I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety.

III, ii, l. 14

Men of few words are the best men.

III, ii, l. 40

He will maintain his argument as well as any military man in the world.

III, ii, l. 89

I know the disciplines of wars.

III, ii, l. 156

Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying! This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull Street; and every third word a lie.

III, ii, l. 289

I thought upon one pair of English legs

Did march three Frenchmen.

III, vi, l. 161

We are in God’s hand.

III, vi, l. 181

That island of England breeds very valiant creatures: their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.

III, vii, l. 155

Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.

III, vii, l. 166

The hum of either army stilly sounds,

That the fix’d sentinels almost receive

The secret whispers of each other’s watch:

Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames

Each battle sees the other’s umber’d face:

Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs

Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents

The armorers, accomplishing the knights,

With busy hammers closing rivets up,

Give dreadful note of preparation.

IV, chorus, l. 5

A little touch of Harry in the night.

IV, chorus, l. 47

There is some soul of goodness in things evil,

Would men observingly distill it out.

IV, i, l. 4

Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.

IV, i, l. 189

        What infinite heart’s ease

Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!

And what have kings that privates have not too,

Save ceremony, save general ceremony?

And what art thou, thou idol¹ ceremony?

What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more

Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?

What are thy rents? what are thy comings-in?

O ceremony! show me but thy worth.

IV, i, l. 256

’Tis not the balm, the scepter and the ball,

The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,

The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,

The farced title running ’fore the king,

The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp

That beats upon the high shore of this world,

No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,

Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,

Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind

Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread.

IV, i, l. 280

O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;

Possess them not with fear; take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers

Pluck their hearts from them.

IV, i, l. 309

But if it be a sin to covet honor,

I am the most offending soul alive.

IV, iii, l. 28

This day is call’d the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d.

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

IV, iii, l. 40

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother.

IV, iii, l. 60

The saying is true, “The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”

IV, iv, l. 72

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.

V, i, l. 3

By this leek, I will most horribly revenge. I eat and eat, I swear.

V, i, l. 49

All hell shall stir for this.

V, i, l. 72

        The naked, poor, and mangled Peace,

Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births.

V, ii, l. 34

        Grow like savages—as soldiers will,

That nothing do but meditate on blood.

V, ii, l. 59

For these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rime themselves into ladies’ favors, they do always reason themselves out again.

V, ii, l. 162

My comfort is, that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face.

V, ii, l. 246

O Kate! nice customs curtsy to great kings.

V, ii, l. 291

He hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.

Much Ado About Nothing [1598–1600], act I, sc. i, l. 15

How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!

I, i, l. 28

A very valiant trencher-man.

I, i, l. 52

There’s a skirmish of wit between them.

I, i, l. 64

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.

I, i, l. 76

I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

I, i, l. 79

What! my dear Lady Disdain, are you yet living?

I, i, l. 123

Shall I never see a bachelor of threescore again?

I, i, l. 209

In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.

I, i, l. 271

Benedick the married man.

I, i, l. 278

I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.

II, i, l. 31

As merry as the day is long.

II, i, l. 52

Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl?

II, i, l. 64

I have a good eye, uncle: I can see a church by daylight.

II, i, l. 86

Speak low, if you speak love.

II, i, l. 104

Friendship is constant in all other things

Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself

And trust no agent.

II, i, l. 184

She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star.

II, i, l. 257

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.

II, i, l. 319

It keeps on the windy side of care.¹

II, i, l. 328

There was a star danced, and under that was I born.

II, i, l. 351

I will tell you my drift.²

II, i, l. 406

He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose.

II, iii, l. 19

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.

Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

II, iii, l. 65

Sits the wind in that corner?

II, iii, l. 108

Bait the hook well: this fish will bite.

II, iii, l. 121

Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor? No; the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

II, iii, l. 260

From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth.

III, ii, l. 9

He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks.

III, ii, l. 12

Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.

III, ii, l. 28

Are you good men and true?

III, iii, l. 1

To be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.

III, iii, l. 14

If they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for.

III, iii, l. 49

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

III, iii, l. 147

A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, When the age is in, the wit is out.

III, v, l. 36

Of what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not knowing what they do!

IV, i, l. 19

O! what authority and show of truth

Can cunning sin cover itself withal.

IV, i, l. 35

        For it so falls out

That what we have we prize not to the worth

Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost,

Why, then we rack the value, then we find

The virtue that possession would not show us

Whiles it was ours.

IV, i, l. 219

Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly.

IV, ii, l. 23

Flat burglary as ever was committed.

IV, ii, l. 54

Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this.

IV, ii, l. 60

O that he were here to write me down an ass!

IV, ii, l. 80

Patch griefs with proverbs.

V, i, l. 17

Charm ache with air and agony with words.

V, i, l. 26

For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently.

V, i, l. 35

Some of us will smart for it.

V, i, l. 108

What though care killed a cat,³ thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.

V, i, l. 135

I was not born under a riming planet.

V, ii, l. 40

The trumpet of his own virtues.

V, ii, l. 91

Done to death by slanderous tongues.

V, iii, l. 3

A surgeon to old shoes.

Julius Caesar [1599], act I, sc. i, l. 26

As proper men as ever trod upon neat’s leather.

I, i, l. 27

Have you not made a universal shout,

That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,

To hear the replication of your sounds

Made in her concave shores?

I, i, l. 48

Beware the ides of March.

I, ii, l. 18

Set honor in one eye and death i’ the other,

And I will look on both indifferently.

I, ii, l. 86

Well, honor is the subject of my story.

I cannot tell what you and other men

Think of this life; but, for my single self,

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

I, ii, l. 92

Stemming it with hearts of controversy.

I, ii, l. 109

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

I, ii, l. 134

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,

That he is grown so great?

I, ii, l. 148

Let me have men about me that are fat;

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

I, ii, l. 191

        He reads much;

He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men.

I, ii, l. 200

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort

As if he mock’d himself, and scorn’d his spirit

That could be mov’d to smile at anything.

I, ii, l. 204

But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.¹

I, ii, l. 288

        Yesterday the bird of night did sit,

Even at noonday, upon the marketplace,

Hooting and shrieking.

I, iii, l. 26

So every bondman in his own hand bears

The power to cancel his captivity.

I, iii, l. 101

O! he sits high in all the people’s hearts:

And that which would appear offense in us,

His countenance, like richest alchemy,

Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

I, iii, l. 157

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

Remorse from power.

II, i, l. 18

        ’Tis a common proof,

That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,

Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;

But when he once attains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend.

II, i, l. 21

Therefore think him as a serpent’s egg

Which, hatch’d, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,

And kill him in the shell.

II, i, l. 32

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:

The genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.

II, i, l. 63

        O conspiracy!

Sham’st thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,

When evils are most free?

II, i, l. 77

Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods,

Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds.

II, i, l. 173

But when I tell him he hates flatterers,

He says he does, being then most flattered.

II, i, l. 207

Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

II, i, l. 230

        Dwell I but in the suburbs

Of your good pleasure?

II, i, l. 285

You are my true and honorable wife,

As dear to me as are the ruddy drops

That visit my sad heart.

II, i, l. 288

Think you I am no stronger than my sex,

Being so father’d and so husbanded?

II, i, l. 296

When beggars die there are no comets seen;

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

II, ii, l. 30

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

II, ii, l. 32

Antony, that revels long o’ nights.

II, ii, l. 116

How hard it is for women to keep counsel!

II, iv, l. 9

But I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament.

III, i, l. 60

Speak, hands, for me!

III, i, l. 76

Et tu, Brute?

III, i, l. 77

Some to the common pulpits, and cry out,

“Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”

III, i, l. 79

        How many ages hence

Shall this our lofty scene be acted o’er,

In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

III, i, l. 111

O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?

Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,

Shrunk to this little measure?

III, i, l. 148

The choice and master spirits of this age.

III, i, l. 163

Though last, not least in love.

III, i, l. 189

O! pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers;

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times.

III, i, l. 254

Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.

III, i, l. 273

Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause; and be silent, that you may hear.

III, ii, l. 13

Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.

III, ii, l. 22

As he was valiant, I honor him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him.

III, ii, l. 27

If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.

III, ii, l. 36

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones.

III, ii, l. 79

For Brutus is an honorable man;

So are they all, all honorable men.

III, ii, l. 88

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

III, ii, l. 97

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason.

III, ii, l. 110

But yesterday the word of Caesar might

Have stood against the world; now lies he there,

And none so poor to do him reverence.

III, ii, l. 124

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

III, ii, l. 174

See what a rent the envious Casca made.

III, ii, l. 180

This was the most unkindest cut of all.

III, ii, l. 188

        Great Caesar fell.

O! what a fall was there, my countrymen;

Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,

Whilst bloody treason flourish’d over us.

III, ii, l. 194

What private griefs they have, alas! I know not.

III, ii, l. 217

I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:

I am no orator, as Brutus is;

But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man.

III, ii, l. 220

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,

To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on.

III, ii, l. 225

        Put a tongue

In every wound of Caesar, that should move

The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

III, ii, l. 232

When love begins to sicken and decay,

It useth an enforced ceremony.

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.

IV, ii, l. 20

An itching palm.

IV, iii, l. 10

I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,

Than such a Roman.

IV, iii, l. 27

I’ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter,

When you are waspish.

IV, iii, l. 49

There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;

For I am arm’d so strong in honesty

That they pass by me as the idle wind,

Which I respect not.

IV, iii, l. 66

A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,

But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.

IV, iii, l. 85

        All his faults observ’d,

Set in a notebook, learn’d, and conn’d by rote.

IV, iii, l. 96

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

IV, iii, l. 217

We must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

IV, iii, l. 222

The deep of night is crept upon our talk,

And nature must obey necessity.

IV, iii, l. 225

But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,

And leave them honeyless.

V, i, l. 34

Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius!

If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;

If not, why then, this parting was well made.

V, i, l. 117

        O! that a man might know

The end of this day’s business, ere it come.

V, i, l. 123

O Julius Caesar! thou art mighty yet!

Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords

In our own proper entrails.

V, iii, l. 94

The last of all the Romans, fare thee well!

V, iii, l. 99

This was the noblest Roman of them all.

V, v, l. 68

His life was gentle, and the elements

So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world, “This was a man!”

V, v, l. 73

What’s the new news at the new court?

As You Like It [1599–1600], act I, sc. i, l. 103

Fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.

I, i, l. 126

Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.

I, ii, l. 59

The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.

I, ii, l. 97

Well said: that was laid on with a trowel.

I, ii, l. 113

Your heart’s desires be with you!

I, ii, l. 214

One out of suits with fortune.

I, ii, l. 263

My pride fell with my fortunes.

I, ii, l. 269

Hereafter, in a better world than this,

I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

I, ii, l. 301

Heavenly Rosalind!

I, ii, l. 306

O, how full of briers is this working-day world!

I, iii, l. 12

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

I, iii, l. 113

We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside,

As many other mannish cowards have.

I, iii, l. 123

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

II, i, l. 2

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

II, i, l. 12

        The big round tears

Cours’d one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase.

II, i, l. 38

Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens.

II, i, l. 55

        And He that doth the ravens feed,

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,

Be comfort to my age!

II, iii, l. 43

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.

II, iii, l. 47

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,

Frosty, but kindly.

II, iii, l. 52

Thou art not for the fashion of these times,

Where none will sweat but for promotion.

II, iii, l. 59

Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I: when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travelers must be content.

II, iv, l. 16

If you remember’st not the slightest folly

That ever love did make thee run into,

Thou hast not lov’d.

II, iv, l. 34

We that are true lovers run into strange capers.

II, iv, l. 53

I shall ne’er be ware of mine own wit, till I break my shins against it.

II, iv, l. 59

Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird’s throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

II, v, l. 1

I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.

II, v, l. 12

Who doth ambition shun,

And loves to live i’ the sun,

Seeking the food he eats,

And pleas’d with what he gets.

II, v, l. 38

        I met a fool i’ the forest,

A motley fool.

II, vii, l. 12

And then he drew a dial from his poke,

And, looking on it with lack-luster eye,

Says very wisely, “It is ten o’clock;

Thus may we see,” quoth he, “how the world wags.”¹

II, vii, l. 20

And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,

And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,

And thereby hangs a tale.

II, vii, l. 26

My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,

That fools should be so deep-contemplative,

And I did laugh sans intermission

An hour by his dial.

II, vii, l. 30

Motley’s the only wear.

II, vii, l. 34

        If ladies be but young and fair,

They have the gift to know it.

II, vii, l. 37

        I must have liberty

Withal, as large a charter as the wind,

To blow on whom I please.

II, vii, l. 47

The “why” is plain as way to parish church.

II, vii, l. 52

        But whate’er you are

That in this desert inaccessible,

Under the shade of melancholy boughs,

Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;

If ever you have look’d on better days,

If ever been where bells have knoll’d to church,

If ever sat at any good man’s feast,

If ever from your eyelids wip’d a tear,

And know what ’tis to pity, and be pitied,

Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.

II, vii, l. 109

True is it that we have seen better days.

II, vii, l. 120

Oppress’d with two weak evils, age and hunger.

II, vii, l. 132

        All the world’s a stage,²

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

II, vii, l. 139

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude.

II, vii, l. 174

These trees shall be my books.

III, ii, l. 5

The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.

III, ii, l. 10

It goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?

III, ii, l. 21

He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.

III, ii, l. 25

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.

III, ii, l. 78

From the east to western Ind,

No jewel is like Rosalind.

III, ii, l. 94

This is the very false gallop of verses.

III, ii, l. 120

Let us make an honorable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.

III, ii, l. 170

O, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, wonderful! and yet again wonderful! and after that, out of all whooping.

III, ii, l. 202

Answer me in one word.

III, ii, l. 238

Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.

III, ii, l. 265

I do desire we may be better strangers.

III, ii, l. 276

Jaques: What stature is she of?

Orlando: Just as high as my heart.

III, ii, l. 286

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

III, ii, l. 328

Every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow fault came to match it.

III, ii, l. 377

Everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation.

III, ii, l. 405

Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

III, iii, l. 16

        The wounds invisible

That love’s keen arrows make.

III, v, l. 30

        Down on your knees,

And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love.

III, v, l. 57

Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.

III, v, l. 60

I am falser than vows made in wine.

III, v, l. 73

It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

IV, i, l. 16

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.

IV, i, l. 28

Farewell, Monsieur Traveler: look you lisp, and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola.

IV, i, l. 35

I’ll warrant him heart-whole.

IV, i, l. 51

Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

IV, i, l. 110

Forever and a day.

IV, i, l. 151

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

IV, i, l. 153

My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal.

IV, i, l. 219

The horn, the horn, the lusty horn

Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.

IV, ii, l. 17

Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.

IV, iii, l. 103

“So so,” is good, very good, very excellent good: and yet it is not; it is but so so.

V, i, l. 30

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

V, i, l. 35

No sooner met, but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.

V, ii, l. 37

But, O! how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!

V, ii, l. 48

It was a lover and his lass,

With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

That o’er the green corn-field did pass,

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;

Sweet lovers love the spring.

V, iii, l. 18

Here comes a pair of very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools.

V, iv, l. 36

An ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own.¹

V, iv, l. 60

Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house, as your pearl in your foul oyster.

V, iv, l. 62

“The retort courteous”…“the quip modest.”…“the reply churlish.”…“the reproof valiant…“the countercheck quarrelsome.”…“the lie circumstantial,” and “the lie direct.”

V, iv, l. 75

Your “if” is the only peacemaker; much virtue in “if.”

V, iv, l. 108

He uses his folly like a stalking horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

V, iv, l. 112

For this relief much thanks; ’tis bitter cold,

And I am sick at heart.

Hamlet [1600–1601], act I, sc. i, l. 8

Not a mouse stirring.

I, i, l. 10

Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.

I, i, l. 42

But in the gross and scope of my opinion,

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

I, i, l. 68

        Whose sore task

Does not divide the Sunday from the week.

I, i, l. 75

        This sweaty haste

Doth make the night joint-laborer with the day.

I, i, l. 77

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

I, i, l. 113

And then it started like a guilty thing

Upon a fearful summons.

I, i, l. 148

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn.

I, i, l. 150

Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,

The extravagant and erring spirit hies

To his confine.

I, i, l. 153

It faded on the crowing of the cock.

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comes

Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;

The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

I, i, l. 157

But, look, the morn in russet mantle clad,

Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.

I, i, l. 166

The memory be green.

I, ii, l. 2

With one auspicious and one dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole.

I, ii, l. 11

So much for him.

I, ii, l. 25

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

I, ii, l. 65

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that live must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

I, ii, l. 72

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems.”

’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black.

I, ii, l. 76

But I have that within which passeth show;

These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

I, ii, l. 85

        To persever

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief:

It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,

A heart unfortified, a mind impatient.

I, ii, l. 92

O! that this too too solid¹ flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world.

I, ii, l. 129

        Things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

I, ii, l. 136

So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly.

I, ii, l. 139

        Why, she would hang on him,

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on.

I, ii, l. 143

Frailty, thy name is woman!

I, ii, l. 146

Like Niobe, all tears.

I, ii, l. 149

A beast, that wants discourse of reason.

I, ii, l. 150

It is not nor it cannot come to good.

I, ii, l. 158

A truant disposition.

I, ii, l. 169

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak’d meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

Ere I had ever seen that day.

I, ii, l. 180

In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

I, ii, l. 185

He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

I, ii, l. 187

Season your admiration for a while.

I, ii, l. 192

In the dead vast and middle of the night.

I, ii, l. 198

Armed at points exactly, cap-a-pe.

I, ii, l. 200

Distill’d

Almost to jelly with the act of fear.

I, ii, l. 204

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

I, ii, l. 231

Hamlet:        His beard was grizzled, no?

Horatio: It was, as I have seen it in his life,

A sable silver’d.

I, ii, l. 239

Give it an understanding, but no tongue.

I, ii, l. 249

        All is not well;

I doubt some foul play.

I, ii, l. 254

        Foul deeds will rise,

Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

I, ii, l. 256

The chariest maid is prodigal enough

If she unmask her beauty to the moon;

Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes;

The canker galls the infants of the spring

Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d,

And in the morn and liquid dew of youth

Contagious blastments are most imminent.

I, iii, l. 36

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

And recks not his own rede.¹

I, iii, l. 47

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

I, iii, l. 59

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

I, iii, l. 61

        Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,

Bear ’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

I, iii, l. 65

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

I, iii, l. 75

    ’Tis in my memory lock’d,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

I, iii, l. 85

        You speak like a green girl,

Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

I, iii, l. 101

Springes to catch woodcocks.

I, iii, l. 115

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul

Lends the tongue vows.

I, iii, l. 116

Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence.

I, iii, l. 121

The air bites shrewdly.

I, iv, l. 1

But to my mind,—though I am native here

And to the manner born—it is a custom

More honor’d in the breach than the observance.

I, iv, l. 14

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

I, iv, l. 39

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com’st in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee.

I, iv, l. 42

        What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel

Revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,

Making night hideous;² and we fools of nature

So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?

I, iv, l. 51

I do not set my life at a pin’s fee.

I, iv, l. 65

        The dreadful summit of the cliff

That beetles o’er his base into the sea.

I, iv, l. 70

        My fate cries out,

And makes each petty artery in this body

As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.

I, iv, l. 81

        Unhand me, gentlemen,

By heaven! I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.

I, iv, l. 84

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

I, iv, l. 90

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand an end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

I, v, l. 15

Murder most foul, as in the best it is.

I, v, l. 27

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed

That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf.

I, v, l. 32

        O my prophetic soul!

My uncle!

I, v, l. 40

O Hamlet! what a falling-off was there.

I, v, l. 47

But virtue, as it never will be mov’d,

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,

So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

And prey on garbage.

I, v, l. 53

In the porches of mine ears.

I, v, l. 63

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d,

No reckoning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

I, v, l. 76

        Leave her to heaven,

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,

To prick and sting her.

I, v, l. 86

The glowworm shows the matin to be near,

And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

I, v, l. 89

        While memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee!

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records.

I, v, l. 96

Within the book and volume of my brain.

I, v, l. 103

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

My tables—meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;

At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark.

I, v, l. 106

There’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark,

But he’s an arrant knave.

I, v, l. 123

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I, v, l. 166

To put an antic disposition on.

I, v, l. 172

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!

I, v, l. 182

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!

I, v, l. 188

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,

With windlasses and with assays of bias,

By indirections find directions out.

II, i, l. 63

Ungarter’d, and down-gyved to his ankle.

II, i, l. 80

This is the very ecstasy of love.

II, i, l. 102

Brevity is the soul of wit.

II, ii, l. 90

More matter, with less art.

II, ii, l. 95

That he is mad, ’tis true; ’tis true ’tis pity;

And pity ’tis ’tis true.

II, ii, l. 97

        Find out the cause of this effect,

Or rather say, the cause of this defect,

For this effect defective comes by cause.

II, ii, l. 101

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth move;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt I love.

II, ii, l. 115

Polonius: Do you know me, my lord?

Hamlet: Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

II, ii, l. 173

To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

II, ii, l. 179

Hamlet: For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god¹ kissing carrion,—Have you a daughter?

Polonius: I have, my lord.

Hamlet: Let her not walk i’ the sun.

II, ii, l. 183

Still harping on my daughter.

II, ii, l. 190

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

II, ii, l. 195

They have a plentiful lack of wit.

II, ii, l. 204

Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.

II, ii, l. 211

These tedious old fools!

II, ii, l. 227

The indifferent children of the earth.

II, ii, l. 235

Happy in that we are not over happy.

II, ii, l. 236

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

II, ii, l. 259

O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

II, ii, l. 263

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks.

II, ii, l. 286

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!

II, ii, l. 317

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither.

II, ii, l. 328

There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.

II, ii, l. 392

I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.²

II, ii, l. 405

They say an old man is twice a child.

II, ii, l. 413

One fair daughter and no more,

The which he loved passing well.

II, ii, l. 435

Come, give us a taste of your quality.

II, ii, l. 460

The play, I remember, pleased not the million; ’twas caviare to the general.

II, ii, l. 465

They are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

II, ii, l. 555

Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?

II, ii, l. 561

O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I.

II, ii, l. 584

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her?

II, ii, l. 593

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

II, ii, l. 607

But I am pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall

To make oppression bitter.

II, ii, l. 613

        The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

II, ii, l. 641

        With devotion’s visage

And pious action we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

III, i, l. 47

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and, by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

III, i, l. 56

        Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember’d.

III, i, l. 89

        To the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

III, i, l. 100

Get thee to a nunnery.

III, i, l. 124

What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all.

III, i, l. 128

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

III, i, l. 142

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

III, i, l. 150

O! what a noble mind is here o’erthrown:

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword.

III, i, l. 159

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

The observ’d of all observers!

III, i, l. 162

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.

III, i, l. 166

        O! woe is me,

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

III, i, l. 169

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the towncrier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and—as I may say—whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwigpated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod.

III, ii, l. 1

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature.

III, ii, l. 20

To hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

III, ii, l. 25

I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

III, ii, l. 38

No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,

And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee

Where thrift may follow fawning.

III, ii, l. 65

A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards

Hast ta’en with equal thanks.

III, ii, l. 72

They are not a pipe for fortune’s finger

To sound what stop she please. Give me that man

That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him

In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,

As I do thee. Something too much of this.

III, ii, l. 75

        My imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan’s stithy.

III, ii, l. 88

The chameleon’s dish: I eat the air, promisecrammed; you cannot feed capons so.

III, ii, l. 98

Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I’ll have a suit of sables.

III, ii, l. 138

There’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.

III, ii, l. 141

Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

III, ii, l. 148

Ophelia: ’Tis brief, my lord.

Hamlet: As woman’s love.

III, ii, l. 165

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;

When little fears grow great, great love grows there.

III, ii, l. 183

Wormwood, wormwood.

III, ii, l. 193

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

III, ii, l. 242

Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

III, ii, l. 256

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,

The hart ungalled play;

For some must watch, while some must sleep:

So runs the world away.

III, ii, l. 287

You would pluck out the heart of my mystery.

III, ii, l. 389

Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?

III, ii, l. 393

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

Polonius: By the mass, and ’tis like a camel, indeed.

Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.

Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.

Hamlet: Or like a whale?

Polonius: Very like a whale.

III, ii, l. 400

They fool me to the top of my bent.

III, ii, l. 408

By and by is easily said.

III, ii, l. 411

’Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world.

III, ii, l. 413

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

III, ii, l. 421

O! my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t;

A brother’s murder!

III, iii, l. 36

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;

And now I’ll do ’t: and so he goes to heaven;

And so I am reveng’d.

III, iii, l. 73

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May.

III, iii, l. 81

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

III, iii, l. 97

How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!

III, iv, l. 23

False as dicers’ oaths.

III, iv, l. 45

A rhapsody of words.

III, iv, l. 48

See, what a grace was seated on this brow;

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,

A station like the herald Mercury

New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,

A combination and a form indeed,

Where every god did seem to set his seal,

To give the world assurance of a man.

III, iv, l. 55

        At your age

The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble.

III, iv, l. 68

O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,

If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,

To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,

And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame

When the compulsive ardor gives the charge,

Since frost itself as actively doth burn,

And reason panders will.

III, iv, l. 82

A king of shreds and patches.

III, iv, l. 102

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.

III, iv, l. 145

        Confess yourself to heaven;

Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come.

III, iv, l. 149

For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.

III, iv, l. 153

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

III, iv, l. 160

        Refrain tonight;

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence: the next more easy;

For use almost can change the stamp of nature.

III, iv, l. 165

I must be cruel only to be kind.

III, iv, l. 178

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petar.

III, iv, l. 206

        Diseases desperate grown

By desperate appliance are relieved,

Or not at all.

IV, iii, l. 9

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

IV, iii, l. 29

We go to gain a little patch of ground

That hath in it no profit but the name.

IV, iv, l. 18

How all occasions do inform against me,

And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

Sure he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and godlike reason

To fust in us unus’d.

IV, iv, l. 32

        Some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event.

IV, iv, l. 40

        Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument,

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honor’s at the stake.

IV, iv, l. 53

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,

It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

IV, v, l. 19

How should I your true love know

From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff,

And his sandal shoon.¹

IV, v, l. 23

He is dead and gone, lady,

He is dead and gone;

At his head a grass-green turf

At his heels a stone.

IV, v, l. 29

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

IV, v, l. 43

Come, my coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.

IV, v, l. 72

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions.²

IV, v, l. 78

        We have done but greenly,

In hugger-mugger to inter him.

IV, v, l. 84

There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,

That treason can but peep to what it would.

IV, v, l. 123

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance… and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

IV, v, l. 174

O! you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.

IV, v, l. 181

A very riband in the cap of youth.

IV, vii, l. 77

        Nature her custom holds,

Let shame say what it will.

IV, vii, l. 188

There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam’s profession.

V, i, l. 32

Cudgel thy brains no more about it.

V, i, l. 61

Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making?

V, i, l. 71

Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

V, i, l. 73

A politician… one that would circumvent God.

V, i, l. 84

Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?

V, i, l. 104

One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.

V, i, l. 145

How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

V, i, l. 147

The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.

V, i, l. 150

Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at that.

V, i, l. 201

To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a bung-hole?

V, i, l. 222

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

V, i, l. 235

        Lay her i’ the earth;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring!

V, i, l. 260

A ministering angel shall my sister be.

V, i, l. 263

Sweets to the sweet: farewell!

V, i, l. 265

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid,

And not have strew’d thy grave.

V, i, l. 267

Though I am not splenetive and rash

Yet have I in me something dangerous.

V, i, l. 283

I lov’d Ophelia: forty thousand brothers

Could not, with all their quantity of love,

Make up my sum.

V, i, l. 291

        Nay, an thou’lt mouth,

I’ll rant as well as thou.

V, i, l. 305

Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

V, i, l. 313

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

V, ii, l. 10

I once did hold it, as our statists do,

A baseness to write fair.

V, ii, l. 33

It did me yeoman’s service.

V, ii, l. 36

Not a whit, we defy augury; there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

V, ii, l. 232

A hit, a very palpable hit.

V, ii, l. 295

        This fell sergeant, death,

Is strict in his arrest.

V, ii, l. 350

Report me and my cause aright.

V, ii, l. 353

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.

V, ii, l. 355

O God! Horatio, what a wounded name,

Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me.

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

V, ii, l. 358

The rest is silence.

V, ii, l. 372

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

V, ii, l. 373

        O proud death!

What feast is toward in thine eternal cell?

V, ii, l. 378

Property was thus appall’d,

That the self was not the same;

Single nature’s double name

Neither two nor one was call’d.

The Phoenix and the Turtle [1601], l. 37

Reason, in itself confounded,

Saw division grow together.

l. 41

The chance of war.

Troilus and Cressida [1601–1602], prologue, l. 31

I have had my labor for my travail.

act I, sc. i, l. 73

        Women are angels, wooing:

Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.

I, ii, l. 310

Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is.

I, ii, l. 313

        The sea being smooth,

How many shallow bauble boats dare sail

Upon her patient breast.

I, iii, l. 34

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order.

I, iii, l. 85

        O! when degree is shaked,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

The enterprise is sick.

I, iii, l. 101

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And, hark! what discord follows; each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,

And make a sop of all this solid globe.

I, iii, l. 109

Then everything includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, a universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce a universal prey,

And last eat up himself.

I, iii, l. 119

Like a strutting player, whose conceit

Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich

To hear the wooden dialogue and sound

’Twixt his stretch’d footing and the scaffoldage.

I, iii, l. 153

And in such indexes, although small pricks

To their subsequent volumes, there is seen

The baby figure of the giant mass

Of things to come.

I, iii, l. 343

Who wears his wit in his belly, and his guts in his head.

II, i, l. 78

        Modest doubt is call’d

The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches

To the bottom of the worst.

II, ii, l. 15

    ’Tis mad idolatry

To make the service greater than the god.

II, ii, l. 56

He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.

II, iii, l. 165

I am giddy, expectation whirls me round.

The imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense.

III, ii, l. 17

Words pay no debts.

III, ii, l. 56

To fear the worst oft cures the worse.

III, ii, l. 77

All lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one.

III, ii, l. 89

        For to be wise, and love,

Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.

III, ii, l. 163

If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,

When time is old and hath forgot itself,

When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,

And blind oblivion swallow’d cities up.

And mighty states characterless are grated

To dusty nothing, yet let memory,

From false to false, among false maids in love

Upbraid my falsehood! when they have said “as false

As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,

As fox to lamb, as wolf to heifer’s calf,

Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son”;

Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,

“As false as Cressid.”

III, ii, l. 191

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.

III, iii, l. 145

        Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery.

III, iii, l. 150

For honor travels in a strait so narrow

Where one but goes abreast.

III, iii, l. 154

        Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,

And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing.

III, iii, l. 168

        Beauty, wit,

High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

III, iii, l. 171

And give to dust that is a little gilt

More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.

III, iii, l. 178

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d;

And I myself see not the bottom of it.

III, iii, l. 314

        You do as chapmen do,

Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy.

IV, i, l. 75

As many farewells as be stars in heaven.

IV, iv, l. 44

And sometimes we are devils to ourselves

When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,

Presuming on their changeful potency.

IV, iv, l. 95

The kiss you take is better than you give.

IV, v, l. 38

        Fie, fie upon her!

There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,

Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out

At every joint and motive of her body.

IV, v, l. 54

What’s past and what’s to come is strew’d with husks

And formless ruin of oblivion.

IV, v, l. 165

        The end crowns all,

And that old common arbitrator, Time,

Will one day end it.

IV, v, l. 223

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

V, iii, l. 109

Hector is dead; there is no more to say.

V, x, l. 22

O world! world! world! thus is the poor agent despised.

V, x, l. 36

If music be the food of love,¹ play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odor!

Twelfth-Night [1601–1602], act I, sc. i, l. 1

O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,

That, notwithstanding thy capacity

Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,

Of what validity and pitch soe’er,

But falls into abatement and low price,

Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy,

That it alone is high fantastical.

I, i, l. 9

When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.

I, ii, l. 61

I am sure care’s an enemy to life.

I, iii, l. 2

Let them hang themselves in their own straps.

I, iii, l. 13

I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.

I, iii, l. 92

Wherefore are these things hid?

I, iii, l. 135

Is it a world to hide virtues in?

I, iii, l. 142

God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.

I, v, l. 14

One draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him.

I, v, l. 139

’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white

Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on:

Lady, you are the cruel’st she alive,

If you will lead these graces to the grave

And leave the world no copy.

I, v, l. 259

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,

And call upon my soul within the house.

I, v, l. 289

Holla your name to the reverberate hills,

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out, “Olivia!”

I, v, l. 293

Farewell, fair cruelty.

I, v, l. 309

O mistress mine! where are you roaming?

II, iii, l. 42

Journeys end in lovers meeting,

Every wise man’s son doth know.

II, iii, l. 46

What is love? ’tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter.

What’s to come is still unsure:

In delay there lies no plenty;

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

II, iii, l. 50

He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.

II, iii, l. 91

Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time, in you?

II, iii, l. 100

Sir Toby: Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Clown: Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.

II, iii, l. 124

The devil a puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser; an affectioned ass.

II, iii, l. 161

My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that color.¹

II, iii, l. 184

These most brisk and giddy-paced times.

II, iv, l. 6

        If ever thou shalt love,

In the sweet pangs of it remember me;

For such as I am all true lovers are:

Unstaid and skittish in all motions else

Save in the constant image of the creature

That is belov’d.

II, iv, l. 15

        Let still the woman take

An elder than herself, so wears she to him,

So sways she level in her husband’s heart:

For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,

Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,

More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,

Than women’s are.

II, iv, l. 29

Then, let thy love be younger than thyself,

Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;

For women are as roses, whose fair flower

Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

II, iv, l. 36

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,

And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,

Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth,

And dallies with the innocence of love,

Like the old age.

II, iv, l. 44

Come away, come away, death,

And in sad cypress let me be laid;

Fly away, fly away, breath;

I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

II, iv, l. 51

Duke:          And what’s her history?

Viola: A blank, my lord. She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

II, iv, l. 112

I am all the daughters of my father’s house,

And all the brothers too.

II, iv, l. 122

Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.

II, v, l. 25

I may command where I adore.

II, v, l. 116

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

II, v, l. 159

Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered.

II, v, l. 168

Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.

III, i, l. 44

This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool,

And to do that well craves a kind of wit.

III, i, l. 68

Music from the spheres.¹

III, i, l. 122

How apt the poor are to be proud.

III, i, l. 141

Then westward-ho!

III, i, l. 148

O! what a deal of scorn looks beautiful

In the contempt and anger of his lip.

III, i, l. 159

Love sought is good, but giv’n unsought is better.

III, i, l. 170

You will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard.

III, ii, l. 30

Let there be gall enough in thy ink.

III, ii, l. 54

Laugh yourselves into stitches.

III, ii, l. 75

I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.

III, iv, l. 31

This is very midsummer madness.

III, iv, l. 62

More matter for a May morning.

III, iv, l. 158

He’s a very devil.

III, iv, l. 304

Out of my lean and low ability

I’ll lend you something.

III, iv, l. 380

I hate ingratitude more in a man

Than lying, vainness, babbling drunkenness,

Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption

Inhabits our frail blood.

III, iv, l. 390

As the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, “That, that is, is.”

IV, ii, l. 14

I say there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.

IV, ii, l. 47

Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

V, i, l. 388

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.²

V, i, l. 404

          Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy

Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend

Under thy own life’s key: be check’d for silence,

But never tax’d for speech.

All’s Well That Ends Well [1602–1604], act I, sc. i, l. 74

        It were all one

That I should love a bright particular star

And think to wed it, he is so above me.

I, i, l. 97

The hind that would be mated by the lion

Must die for love.

I, i, l. 103

My friends were poor, but honest.³

I, iii, l. 203

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises.

II, i, l. 145

They say miracles are past.

II, iii, l. 1

A young man married is a man that’s marr’d.

II, iii, l. 315

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

IV, iii, l. 83

All’s well that ends well: still the fine’s the crown;

Whate’er the course, the end is the renown.

IV, iv, l. 35

I am a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratched.

V, ii, l. 28

        Praising what is lost

Makes the remembrance dear.

V, iii, l. 19

The inaudible and noiseless foot of time.

V, iii, l. 41

        Love that comes too late,

Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried.

V, iii, l. 57

        All impediments in fancy’s course

Are motives of more fancy.

V, iii, l. 216

Good counselors lack no clients.

Measure for Measure [1604], act I, sc. ii, l. 115

And liberty plucks justice by the nose.

I, iii, l. 29

I hold you as a thing ensky’d and sainted.

I, iv, l. 34

        A man whose blood

Is very snow-broth; one who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense.

I, iv, l. 57

        Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win,

By fearing to attempt.

I, iv, l. 78

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,

Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape, till custom make it

Their perch and not their terror.

II, i, l. 1

The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,

May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two

Guiltier than him they try.

II, i, l. 19

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

II, i, l. 38

Great with child, and longing… for stewed prunes.

II, i, l. 94

This will last out a night in Russia,

When nights are longest there.

II, i, l. 144

His face is the worst thing about him.

II, i, l. 167

Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?

II, ii, l. 37

No ceremony that to great ones ’longs,

Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,

The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,

Become them with one half so good a grace

As mercy does.

II, ii, l. 59

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

II, ii, l. 90

        O! it is excellent

To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

II, ii, l. 107

        But man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.

II, ii, l. 117

That in the captain’s but a choleric word,

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

II, ii, l. 130

        It oft falls out,

To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.

II, iv, l. 118

The miserable have no other medicine

But only hope.

III, i, l. 2

Be absolute for death.

III, i, l. 5

        A breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences.

III, i, l. 8

        Thou hast nor youth nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,

Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth

Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant.

III, i, l. 32

The sense of death is most in apprehension,

And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

As when a giant dies.

III, i, l. 76

        If I must die,

I will encounter darkness as a bride,

And hug it in my arms.

III, i, l. 81

The cunning livery of hell.

III, i, l. 93

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendant world.

III, i, l. 116

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

III, i, l. 127

The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.

III, i, l. 182

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

III, i, l. 214

There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana.¹

III, i, l. 279

This news is old enough, yet it is every day’s news.

III, ii, l. 249

He, who the sword of heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe.

III, ii, l. 283

O, what may man within him hide,

Though angel on the outward side!

III, ii, l. 293

Take, O take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn;

And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn:

But my kisses bring again, bring again,

Seals of love, but seal’d in vain, seal’d in vain.²

IV, i, l. 1

        Music oft hath such a charm

To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.

IV, i, l. 16

Every true man’s apparel fits your thief.

IV, ii, l. 46

A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but

as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless

of what’s past, present, or to come; insensible of

mortality, and desperately mortal.

IV, ii, l. 140

The old fantastical duke of dark corners.

IV, iii, l. 167

I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.

IV, iii, l. 193

We would, and we would not.

IV, iv, l. 37

A forted residence ’gainst the tooth of time

And razure of oblivion.

V, i, l. 12

        Truth is truth

To the end of reckoning.

V, i, l. 45

Neither maid, widow, nor wife.

V, i, l. 173

Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure,

Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.

V, i, l. 411

They say best men are molded out of faults,

And, for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad.

V, i, l. 440

What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.

V, i, l. 539

Horribly stuff’d with epithets of war.

Othello [1604–1605], act I, sc. i, l. 14

A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife.

I, i, l. 21

The bookish theoric.

I, i, l. 24

We cannot all be masters.

I, i, l. 43

And when he’s old, cashier’d.

I, i, l. 48

In following him, I follow but myself.

I, i, l. 58

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at.

I, i, l. 64

        An old black ram

Is tupping your white ewe.

I, i, l. 88

You are one of those that will not serve God if the devil bid you.

I, i, l. 108

Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

I, i, l. 117

Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.

I, ii, l. 59

The wealthy curled darlings of our nation.

I, ii, l. 68

        The bloody book of law

You shall yourself read in the bitter letter

After your own sense.

I, iii, l. 67

        Rude am I in my speech,

And little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace.

I, iii, l. 81

        Little shall I grace my cause

In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,

I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver

Of my whole course of love.

I, iii, l. 88

        A maiden never bold;

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Blush’d at herself.

I, iii, l. 94

Still question’d me the story of my life

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes

That I have pass’d.

I, iii, l. 129

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach.

I, iii, l. 134

Hills whose heads touch heaven.

I, iii, l. 141

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.

I, iii, l. 143

        My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:

She swore, in faith, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange;

’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful:

She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d

That heaven had made her such a man; she thank’d me,

And bade me, if I had a friend that lov’d her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story,

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:

She lov’d me for the dangers I had pass’d,

And I lov’d her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have us’d.

I, iii, l. 158

I do perceive here a divided duty.

I, iii, l. 181

To mourn a mischief that is past and gone

Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

I, iii, l. 204

The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief.

I, iii, l. 208

Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners.

I, iii, l. 324

Put money in thy purse.

I, iii, l. 345

The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida.

I, iii, l. 354

Framed to make women false.

I, iii, l. 404

The enchafed flood.

II, i, l. 17

One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.

II, i, l. 63

        You are pictures out of doors,

Bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens,

Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,

Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.

II, i, l. 109

For I am nothing if not critical.

II, i, l. 119

I am not merry, but I do beguile

The thing I am by seeming otherwise.

II, i, l. 122

She that was ever fair and never proud,

Had tongue at will and yet was never loud.

II, i, l. 148

Iago: To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.

Desdemona: O most lame and impotent conclusion!

II, i, l. 160

You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.

II, i, l. 165

        If it were now to die,

’Twere now to be most happy.

II, i, l. 192

Base men being in love have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them.

II, i, l. 218

Egregiously an ass.

II, i, l. 321

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.

II, iii, l. 34

Potations pottle deep.

II, iii, l. 57

Well, God’s above all; and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved.

II, iii, l. 106

Silence that dreadful bell! it frights the isle

From her propriety.

II, iii, l. 177

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

II, iii, l. 243

Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter.

II, iii, l. 249

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

II, iii, l. 264

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

II, iii, l. 270

O thou invisible spirit of wine! if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

II, iii, l. 285

O God! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains; that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.

II, iii, l. 293

Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.

II, iii, l. 315

Play the villain.

II, iii, l. 345

How poor are they that have not patience!

What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

II, iii, l. 379

Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul

But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,

Chaos is come again.

III, iii, l. 90

Men should be what they seem.

III, iii, l. 126

        Speak to me as to thy thinkings,

As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts

The worst of words.

III, iii, l. 131

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;

’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

III, iii, l. 155

        O! beware, my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock

The meat it feeds on; that cuckold lives in bliss

Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;

But, O! what damned minutes tells he o’er

Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet soundly loves!

III, iii, l. 165

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.

III, iii, l. 172

Think’st thou I’d make a life of jealousy,

To follow still the changes of the moon

With fresh suspicions? No; to be once in doubt

Is once to be resolved.

III, iii, l. 177

I humbly do beseech you of your pardon

For too much loving you.

III, iii, l. 212

        If I do prove her haggard,

Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings,

I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind,

To prey at fortune.

III, iii, l. 260

        I am declin’d

Into the vale of years.

III, iii, l. 265

        O curse of marriage!

That we can call these delicate creatures ours,

And not their appetites. I had rather be a toad,

And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others’ uses.

III, iii, l. 268

        Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ.

III, iii, l. 323

        Not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

Which thou ow’dst yesterday.

III, iii, l. 331

He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stol’n,

Let him not know ’t and he’s not robb’d at all.

III, iii, l. 343

        O! now, forever

Farewell the tranquil mind; farewell content!

Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars

That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!

Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,

The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,

The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats

The immortal Jove’s dread clamors counterfeit,

Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!

III, iii, l. 348

Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof.

III, iii, l. 361

        No hinge nor loop

To hang a doubt on.

III, iii, l. 366

On horror’s head horrors accumulate.

III, iii, l. 371

        Take note, take note, O world!

To be direct and honest is not safe.

III, iii, l. 378

But this denoted a foregone conclusion.

III, iii, l. 429

        Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,

For ’tis of aspics’ tongues!

III, iii, l. 450

        Like to the Pontick sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont,

Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,

Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up.

III, iii, l. 454

Our new heraldry is hands not hearts.

III, iv, l. 48

But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;

They are not ever jealous for the cause,

But jealous for they are jealous; ’tis a monster

Begot upon itself, born on itself.

III, iv, l. 158

    ’Tis the strumpet’s plague

To beguile many and be beguil’d by one.

IV, i, l. 97

They laugh that win.

IV, i, l. 123

My heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand. O! the world hath not a sweeter creature; she might lie by an emperor’s side and command him tasks.

IV, i, l. 190

O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear.

IV, i, l. 198

But yet the pity of it, Iago! O! Iago, the pity of it, Iago!

IV, i, l. 205

        Is this the noble nature

Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue

The shot of accident nor dart of chance

Could neither graze nor pierce?

IV, i, l. 276

I understand a fury in your words,

But not the words.

IV, ii, l. 31

Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips.

IV, ii, l. 49

        But, alas! to make me

A fixed figure for the time of scorn

To point his slow and moving finger at.

IV, ii, l. 52

Patience, thou young and rose-lipp’d cherubin.

IV, ii, l. 62

        O thou weed!

Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet

That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne’er been born.

IV, ii, l. 66

O heaven! that such companions thou’dst unfold,

And put in every honest hand a whip

To lash the rascals naked through the world.

IV, ii, l. 141

    Unkindness may do much;

And his unkindness may defeat my life,

But never taint my love.

IV, ii, l. 159

The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,

Sing all a green willow;

Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,

Sing willow, willow, willow.¹

IV, iii, l. 41

It makes us, or it mars us.

V, i, l. 4

Every way makes my gain.

V, i, l. 14

He hath a daily beauty in his life.

V, i, l. 19

        This is the night

That either makes me or fordoes me quite.

V, i, l. 128

And smooth as monumental alabaster.

V, ii, l. 5

Put out the light, and then put out the light:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

I can again thy former light restore,

Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume.

V, ii, l. 7

It is the very error of the moon;

She comes more near the earth than she was wont,

And makes men mad.

V, ii, l. 107

She was as false as water.

V, ii, l. 132

Curse his better angel from his side,

And fall to reprobation.

V, ii, l. 206

Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,

And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

V, ii, l. 266

An honorable murderer, if you will;

For nought I did in hate, but all in honor.

V, ii, l. 293

I have done the state some service, and they know ’t;

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak

Of one that lov’d not wisely but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,

Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdu’d eyes

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their med’cinable gum.

V, ii, l. 338

        In Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state,

I took by the throat the circumcised dog,

And smote him thus.

V, ii, l. 354

        My love’s

More richer than my tongue.

King Lear [1605], act I, sc. i, l. 79

        Now, our joy,

Although our last, not least.

I, i, l. 84

Nothing will come of nothing.

I, i, l. 92

        Mend your speech a little,

Lest you may mar your fortunes.

I, i, l. 96

Lear: So young, and so untender?

Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true.

I, i, l. 108

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

I, i, l. 124

Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow

Upon the foul disease.

I, i, l. 166

        I want that glib and oily art

To speak and purpose not.

I, i, l. 227

A still-soliciting eye.

I, i, l. 234

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides;

Who covers faults, at last shame them derides.

I, i, l. 282

The infirmity of his age.

I, i, l. 296

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,

Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops.

I, ii, l. 11

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

I, ii, l. 22

We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.

I, ii, l. 125

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,—often the surfeit of our own behavior,—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence.

I, ii, l. 129

Edgar—

[Enter Edgar]

and pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam.

I, ii, l. 149

Lear: Dost thou know me, fellow?

Kent: No, sir, but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master.

Lear: What’s that?

Kent: Authority.

I, iv, l. 28

That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in, and the best of me is diligence.

I, iv, l. 36

Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.

I, iv, l. 125

Have more than thou showest,

Speak less than thou knowest,

Lend less than thou owest.

I, iv, l. 132

Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?

I, iv, l. 144

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child,

Than the sea-monster.

I, iv, l. 283

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child!

I, iv, l. 312

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.

I, iv, l. 371

The son and heir of a mongrel bitch.

II, ii, l. 23

I have seen better faces in my time

Than stands on any shoulder that I see

Before me at this instant.

II, ii, l. 99

A good man’s fortune may grow out at heels.

II, ii, l. 164

Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!

II, ii, l. 180

Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow!

Thy element’s below.

II, iv, l. 57

That sir which serves and seeks for gain,

And follows but for form,

Will pack when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in the storm.

II, iv, l. 79

Nature in you stands on the very verge

Of her confine.

II, iv, l. 149

Necessity’s sharp pinch!

II, iv, l. 214

        Our basest beggars

Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.

II, iv, l. 267

Let not women’s weapons, waterdrops,

Stain my man’s cheeks!

II, iv, l. 280

I have full cause of weeping, but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws

Or ere I’ll weep. O fool! I shall go mad.

II, iv, l. 287

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!

Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once

That make ingrateful man!

III, ii, l. 1

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.

III, ii, l. 16

A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.

III, ii, l. 20

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

III, ii, l. 35

I will be the pattern of all patience.

III, ii, l. 37

        I am a man

More sinn’d against than sinning.

III, ii, l. 59

The art of our necessities is strange,

That can make vile things precious.

III, ii, l. 70

He that has and a little tiny wit,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

Though the rain it raineth every day.¹

III, ii, l. 76

O! that way madness lies; let me shun that.

III, iv, l. 21

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O! I have ta’en

Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just.

III, iv, l. 28

Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill:

Halloo, halloo, loo, loo!

III, iv, l. 75

Out-paramoured the Turk.

III, iv, l. 91

Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on ’s are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come; unbutton here.

III, iv, l. 105

’Tis a naughty night to swim in.

III, iv, l. 113

The green mantle of the standing pool.

III, iv, l. 137

But mice and rats and such small deer

Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.

III, iv, l. 142

The prince of darkness is a gentleman.²

III, iv, l. 147

Poor Tom’s a-cold.

III, iv, l. 151

Child Rowland to the dark tower came,³

His word was still, Fie, foh, and fum,

I smell the blood of a British man.

III, iv, l. 185

He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.

III, vi, l. 20

          The little dogs and all,

Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.

III, vi, l. 65

Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?

III, vi, l. 81

I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.

III, vii, l. 54

Out, vile jelly!

III, vii, l. 83

The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune.

IV, i, l. 3

I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;

I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen

Our means secure us and our mere defects

Prove our commodities.

IV, i, 1. 18

        The worst is not,

So long as we can say, “This is the worst.”

IV, i, l. 27

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;

They kill us for their sport.

IV, i, l. 36

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind

Blows in your face.

IV, ii, l. 30

She that herself will sliver and disbranch

From her material sap, perforce must wither

And come to deadly use.

IV, ii, l. 34

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;

Filths savor but themselves.

IV, ii, l. 38

Tigers, not daughters.

IV, ii, l. 39

        It is the stars,

The stars above us, govern our conditions.

IV, iii, l. 34

Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.

IV, iv, l. 12

        How fearful

And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

Show scarce so gross as beetles; halfway down

Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

The fishermen that walk upon the beach

Appear like mice, and yond tall anchoring bark

Diminish’d to her cock, her cock a buoy

Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge,

That on the unnumber’d idle pebbles chafes,

Cannot be heard so high.

IV, vi, l. 12

Nature’s above art in that respect.

IV, vi, l. 87

Ay, every inch a king.

IV, vi, l. 110

The wren goes to ’t, and the small gilded fly

Does lecher in my sight.

Let copulation thrive.

IV, vi, l. 115

Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.

IV, vi, l. 133

A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?

IV, vi, l. 154

Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear;

Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;

Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.

IV, vi, l. 169

        Get thee glass eyes;

And, like a scurvy politician, seem

To see the things thou dost not.

IV, vi, l. 175

When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools.

IV, vi, l. 187

Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

IV, vi, l. 192

        Mine enemy’s dog,

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night

Against my fire.

IV, vii, l. 36

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears

Do scald like molten lead.

IV, vii, l. 46

I am a very foolish fond old man,

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less;

And, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

IV, vii, l. 60

Pray you now, forget and forgive.

IV, vii, l. 84

        Men must endure

Their going hence, even as their coming hither:

Ripeness is all.

V, ii, l. 9

        Come, let’s away to prison;

We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,

And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,

Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;

And take upon’s the mystery of things,

As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out,

In a wall’d prison, packs and sets of great ones

That ebb and flow by the moon.

V, iii, l. 8

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

The gods themselves throw incense.

V, iii, l. 20

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to plague us.

V, iii, l. 172

The wheel is come full circle.

V, iii, l. 176

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so

That heaven’s vaults should crack. She’s gone forever.

V, iii, l. 259

        Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

V, iii, l. 274

And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life!

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button.

V, iii, l. 307

Vex not his ghost: O! let him pass; he hates him

That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer.

V, iii, l. 315

The weight of this sad time we must obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young,

Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

V, iii, l. 325

’Tis not enough to help the feeble up,

But to support him after.

Timon of Athens [1605–1608], act I, sc. i, l. 108

I call the gods to witness.

I, i, l. 138

I wonder men dare trust themselves with men.

I, ii, l. 45

Here’s that which is too weak to be a sinner,

Honest water, which ne’er left man i’ the mire.¹

I, ii, l. 60

Immortal gods, I crave no pelf;

I pray for no man but myself:

Grant I may never prove so fond,

To trust man on his oath or bond.

I, ii, l. 64

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

I, ii, l. 152

Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.

III, i, l. 30

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

III, v, l. 3

You fools of fortune, trencher-friends, time’s flies.

III, vi, l. 107

We have seen better days.

IV, ii, l. 27

O! the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us.

IV, ii, l. 30

I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind.

IV, iii, l. 53

Life’s uncertain voyage.

V, i, l. 207

First Witch: When shall we three meet again

In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch: When the hurlyburly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.

Macbeth [1606], act 1, sc. i, l. 1

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:

Hover through the fog and filthy air.

I, i, l. 12

Banners flout the sky.

I, ii, l. 50

A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap,

And munch’d, and munch’d, and munch’d: “Give me,” quoth I:

“Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries.

I, iii, l. 4

Sleep shall neither night nor day

Hang upon his pent-house lid.

I, iii, l. 19

Dwindle, peak, and pine.

I, iii, l. 23

The weird sisters, hand in hand,

Posters of the sea and land,

Thus do go about, about:

Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,

And thrice again, to make up nine.

Peace! The charm’s wound up.

I, iii, l. 32

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

I, iii, l. 38

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak.

I, iii, l. 58

        And to be king

Stands not within the prospect of belief.

I, iii, l. 73

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,

And these are of them.

I, iii, l. 79

Or have we eaten on the insane root

That takes the reason prisoner?

I, iii, l. 84

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s

In deepest consequence.

I, iii, l. 123

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme.

I, iii, l. 128

        I am Thane of Cawdor:

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature? Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings.

I, iii, l. 134

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,

Without my stir.

I, iii, l. 143

        Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

I, iii, l. 146

        Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it; he died

As one that had been studied in his death

To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d,

As ’twere a careless trifle.

I, iv, l. 7

        There’s no art

To find the mind’s construction in the face:

He was a gentleman on whom I built

An absolute trust.

I, iv, l. 11

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness¹

To catch the nearest way.

I, v, l. 16

        The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top full

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.

I, v, l. 38

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, “Hold, hold!”

I, v, l. 54

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men

May read strange matters.

I, v, l. 63

        Look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under ’t.

I, v, l. 66

Duncan: This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air

Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself

Unto our gentle senses.

Banquo:                  This guest of summer,

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve

By his lov’d mansionry that the heaven’s breath

Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,

Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird

Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:

Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d

The air is delicate.

I, vi, l. 1

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly; if the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease success; that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We’d jump the life to come.

I, vii, l. 1

This even-handed justice.

I, vii, l. 10

        Besides, this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels trumpet-tongu’d against

The deep damnation of his taking-off;

And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself

And falls on the other.

I, vii, l. 16

        I have bought

Golden opinions from all sorts of people.

I, vii, l. 32

Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,”

Like the poor cat i’ the adage.

I, vii, l. 44

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

I, vii, l. 46

        Nor time nor place

Did then adhere.

I, vii, l. 51

        I have given suck, and know

How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

I, vii, l. 54

Macbeth: If we should fail—

Lady Macbeth:         We fail!

But screw your courage to the sticking-place,

And we’ll not fail.

I, vii, l. 59

Memory, the warder of the brain.

I, vii, l. 65

Away, and mock the time with fairest show:

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

I, vii, l. 81

The moon is down.

III i, l. 2

        There’s husbandry in heaven;

Their candles are all out.

II, i, l. 4

        Merciful powers!

Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature

Gives way to in repose.

II, i, l. 7

        Shut up

In measureless content.

II, i, l. 16

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

II, i, l. 33

        Now o’er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate’s offerings.

II, i, l. 49

        Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

The very stones prate of my whereabout.

II, i, l. 56

        The bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

II, i, l. 62

It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman,

Which gives the stern’st good-night.

II, ii, l. 4

        The attempt and not the deed

Confounds us.

II, ii, l. 12

        Had he not resembled

My father as he slept I had done ’t.

II, ii, l. 14

I had most need of blessing, and “Amen”

Stuck in my throat.

II, ii, l. 33

Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

II, ii, l. 36

Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!

II, ii, l. 43

        Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil.

II, ii, l. 53

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

II, ii, l. 61

The primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

II, iii, l. 22

It [drink] provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.

II, iii, l. 34

The labor we delight in physics pain.

II, iii, l. 56

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope

The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence

The life o’ the building!

II, iii, l. 72

Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit.

II, iii, l. 83

Had I but died an hour before this chance

I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,

There’s nothing serious in mortality,

All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

II, iii, l. 98

Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.

II, iii, l. 115

To show an unfelt sorrow is an office

Which the false man does easy.

II, iii, l. 143

A falcon, towering in her pride of place,

Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.

II, iv, l. 12

I must become a borrower of the night

For a dark hour or twain.

III, i, l. 27

        To be thus is nothing;

But to be safely thus.

III, i, l. 48

Murderer:            We are men, my liege.

Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.

III, i, l. 91

        I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Have so incens’d that I am reckless what

I do to spite the world.

III, i, l. 108

So weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune,

That I would set my life on any chance,

To mend it or be rid on ’t.

III, i, l. 112

        Things without all remedy

Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

III, ii, l. 11

We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it.

III, ii, l. 13

        Duncan is in his grave;

After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further.

III, ii, l. 22

Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown

His cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summons

The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums

Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done

A deed of dreadful note.

III, ii, l. 40

        Come, seeling night,

Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,

And with thy bloody and invisible hand

Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond

Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood.

III, ii, l. 46

Now spurs the lated traveler apace

To gain the timely inn.

III, iii, l. 6

But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears.

III, iv, l. 24

Now good digestion wait on appetite,

And health on both!

III, iv, l. 38

Thou canst not say I did it: never shake

Thy gory locks at me.

III, iv, l. 50

The air-drawn dagger.

III, iv, l. 62

I drink to the general joy of the whole table.

III, iv, l. 89

        What man dare, I dare:

Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,

The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;

Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves

Shall never tremble.

III, iv, l. 99

        Hence, horrible shadow!

Unreal mockery, hence!

III, iv, l. 106

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once.

III, iv, l. 119

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood:

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.

III, iv, l. 122

Macbeth: What is the night?

Lady Macbeth: Almost at odds with morning, which is which.

III, iv, l. 126

        I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

III, iv, l. 136

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

IV, i, l. 10

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog.

IV, i, l. 14

Finger of birth-strangled babe,

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab.

IV, i, l. 30

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

Open, locks,

Whoever knocks!

IV, i, l. 44

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!

IV, i, l. 48

A deed without a name.

IV, i, l. 49

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn

The power of man, for none of woman born

Shall harm Macbeth.

IV, i, l. 79

But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,

And take a bond of fate.

IV, i, l. 83

Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him.¹

IV, i, l. 92

Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;

Come like shadows, so depart.

IV, i, l. 110

What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?

IV, i, l. 117

        When our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors.

IV, ii, l. 3

He wants the natural touch.

IV, ii, l. 9

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

IV, iii, l. 22

Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,

Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.

IV, iii, l. 98

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

IV, iii, l. 209

        All my pretty ones?

Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?

What! all my pretty chickens and their dam

At one fell swoop?

IV, iii, l. 216

Malcolm: Dispute it like a man.

Macduff:          I shall do so;

But I must also feel it as a man:

I cannot but remember such things were,

That were most precious to me.

IV, iii, l. 219

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

V, i, l. 38

Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard?

V, i, l. 40

Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

V, i, l. 42

The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?

V, i, l. 46

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

V, i, l. 56

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love; now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe

Upon a dwarfish thief.

V, ii, l. 19

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!

Where gott’st thou that goose look?

V, iii, l. 11

Thou lily-liver’d boy.

V, iii, l. 15

I have liv’d long enough: my way of life

Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;

And that which should accompany old age,

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but, in their stead,

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

V, iii, l. 22

Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

Doctor:          Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.

V, iii, l. 40

I would applaud thee to the very echo,

That should applaud again.

V, iii, l. 53

Hang out our banners on the outward walls;

The cry is still, “They come”; our castle’s strength

Will laugh a siege to scorn.

V, v, l. 1

        My fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in ’t. I have supp’d full with horrors.

V, v, l. 11

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

V, v, l. 17

I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,

And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.

V, v, l. 49

        Blow, wind! come, wrack!

At least we’ll die with harness on our back.

V, v, l. 51

Why should I play the Roman fool; and die

On mine own sword?

V, vii, l. 30

I bear a charmed life.

V, vii, l. 41

        Macduff was from his mother’s womb

Untimely ripp’d.

V, vii, l. 44

And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,

That palter with us in a double sense;

That keep the word of promise to our ear

And break it to our hope.

V, vii, l. 48

Live to be the show and gaze o’ the time.

V, vii, l. 53

        Lay on, Macduff,

And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

V, vii, l. 62

        You shall see in him

The triple pillar of the world transform’d

Into a strumpet’s fool.

Antony and Cleopatra [1606–1607], act 1, sc. i, l. 12

There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d.

I, i, l. 15

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch

Of the rang’d empire fall! Here is my space.

Kingdoms are clay.

I, i, l. 33

In nature’s infinite book of secrecy

A little I can read.

I, ii, l. 11

I love long life better than figs.

I, ii, l. 34

        On the sudden

A Roman thought hath struck him.

I, ii, l. 90

Eternity was in our lips and eyes,

Bliss in our brows bent.

I, iii, l. 35

        Good now, play one scene

Of excellent dissembling, and let it look

Like perfect honor.

I, iii, l. 78

O! my oblivion is a very Antony,

And I am all forgotten.

I, iii, l. 90

Give me to drink mandragora.…

That I might sleep out this great gap of time

My Antony is away.

I, v, l. 4

O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!

I, v, l. 21

The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm

And burgonet of men.

I, v, l. 23

Where’s my serpent of old Nile?

I, v, l. 25

A morsel for a monarch.

I, v, l. 31

My man of men.

I, v, l. 71

        My salad days,

When I was green in judgment.

I, v, l. 73

        We, ignorant of ourselves,

Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers

Deny us for our good; so find we profit

By losing of our prayers.

II, i, l. 5

        Epicurean cooks

Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite.

II, i, l. 24

No worse a husband than the best of men.

II, ii, l. 135

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,

Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten gold,

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

It beggar’d all description.

II, ii, l. 199

        I saw her once

Hop forty paces through the public street;

And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,

That she did make defect perfection,

And breathless, pow’r breathe forth.

II, ii, l. 228

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety; other women cloy

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry

Where most she satisfies; for vilest things

Become themselves in her, that the holy priests

Bless her when she is riggish.

II, ii, l. 243

I have not kept my square, but that to come

Shall all be done by the rule.

II, iii, l. 6

        I will to Egypt

And though I make this marriage for my peace,

I’ the East my pleasure lies.

II, iii, l. 38

        Music, moody food

Of us that trade in love.

II, v, l. 1

Though it be honest, it is never good

To bring bad news.

II, v, l. 85

He will to his Egyptian dish again.

II, vi, l. 133

Come, thou monarch of the vine,

Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne!

II, vii, l. 120

        Ambition,

The soldier’s virtue.

III, i, l. 22

Celerity is never more admir’d

Than by the negligent.

III, vii, l. 24

        We have kiss’d away

Kingdoms and provinces.

III, viii, l. 17

Hark, the land bids me tread no more upon’t,

It is asham’d to bear me. Friends, come hither:

I am so lated in the world, that I

Have lost my way for ever.

III, xi, l. 1

        He wears the rose

Of youth upon him.

III, xi, l. 20

        Men’s judgments are

A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward

Do draw the inward quality after them,

To suffer all alike.

III, xi, l. 31

        Egypt, thou knew’st too well

My heart was to thy rudder tied by th’ strings,

And thou shouldst tow me after.

III, xi, l. 56

I found you as a morsel, cold upon

Dead Caesar’s trencher.

III, xi, l. 116

Let’s have one other gaudy night.

III, xi, l. 182

Now he’ll outstare the lightning. To be furious

Is to be frighted out of fear.

III, xi, l. 194

                Come,

Let’s have one other gaudy night. Call to me

All my sad captains, fill our bowls once more;

Let’s mock the midnight bell.

III, xiii, l. 181

To business that we love we rise betime,

And go to ’t with delight.

IV, iv, l. 20

O infinite virtue! com’st thou smiling from

The world’s great snare uncaught?

IV, viii, l. 17

The shirt of Nessus is upon me.

IV, x, l. 56

Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish;

A vapor sometime like a bear or lion,

A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon ’t.

IV, xii, l. 2

            The hearts

That spanieled me at heels, to whom I gave

Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets

On blossoming Caesar, and this pine is bark’d

That overtopp’d them all.

IV, xii, l. 20

O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,

Whose eye beckd forth my wars and call’d them home,

Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,

Like a right gipsy hath at fast and loose

Beguil’d me to the very heart of loss.

IV, xii, l. 25

Unarm, Eros; the long day’s task is done,

And we must sleep.

IV, xii, l. 35

        But I will be

A bridegroom in my death, and run into ’t

As to a lover’s bed.

IV, xii, l. 99

        O sun!

Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in; darkling stand

The varying shore o’ the world.

IV, xiii, l. 10

I am dying, Egypt, dying; only

I here importune death awhile, until

Of many thousand kisses the poor last

I lay upon thy lips.

IV, xiii, l. 18

O! wither’d is the garland of the war,

The soldier’s pole is fall’n; young boys and girls

Are level now with men; the odds is gone,

And there is nothing left remarkable

Beneath the visiting moon.

IV, xiii, l. 64

Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,

And make death proud to take us.

IV, xiii, l. 87

        And it is great

To do that thing that ends all other deeds,

Which shackles accidents, and bolts up change.

V, ii, l. 4

His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear’d arm

Crested the world; his voice was propertied

As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;

But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,

He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,

There was no winter in ’t, an autumn ’twas

That grew the more by reaping; his delights

Were dolphin-like, they show’d his back above

The element they liv’d in; in his livery

Walk’d crowns and crownets, realms and islands were

As plates dropp’d from his pocket.

V, ii, l. 82

        The bright day is done,

And we are for the dark.

V, ii, l. 192

        The quick comedians

Extemporally will stage us, and present

Our Alexandrian revels. Antony

Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see

Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness

I’ the posture of a whore.

V, ii, l. 215

A woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not.

V, ii, l. 274

  I wish you joy of the worm.

V, ii, l. 280

        I have

Immortal longings in me.

V, ii, l. 282

Husband, I come.

V, ii, l. 289

If thou and nature can so gently part,

The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,

Which hurts, and is desir’d.

V, ii, l. 296

Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,

That sucks the nurse asleep?

V, ii, l. 311

Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies

A lass unparallel’d.

V, ii, l. 317

First Guard:… Charmian, is this well done?

Charmian: It is well done, and fitting for a princess

Descended of so many royal kings.¹

V, ii, l. 327

As she would catch another Antony

In her strong toil of grace.

V, ii, l. 348

        The gods sent not

Corn for the rich men only.

Coriolanus [1607–1608], act 1, sc. i, l. 213

        They threw their caps

As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon,

Shouting their emulation.

I, i, l. 218

All the yarn she spun in Ulysses’ absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.

I, iii, l. 93

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

II, i, l. 6

A cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in ’t.

II, i, l. 52

My gracious silence, hail!

II, i, l. 194

He himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude.

II, iii, l. 18

        Bid them wash their faces,

And keep their teeth clean.

II, iii, l. 65

I thank you for your voices, thank you,

Your most sweet voices.

II, iii, l. 179

The mutable, rank-scented many.

III, i, l. 65

Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you

His absolute “shall”?

III, i, l. 88

What is the city but the people?

III, i, l. 198

His nature is too noble for the world:

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for ’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth:

What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent.²

III, i, l. 254

  Action is eloquence.

III, ii, l. 76

        The beast

With many heads butts me away.

IV, i, l. 1

        O! a kiss

Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!

V, iii, l. 44

        Chaste as the icicle

That’s curdied by the frost from purest snow,

And hangs on Dian’s temple.

V, iii, l. 65

He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in.

V, iv, l. 25

They’ll give him death by inches.

V, iv, l. 43

If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there,

That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I

Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli:

Alone I did it.

V, v, l. 114

Thou hast done a deed whereat valor will weep.

V, v, l. 135

He shall have a noble memory.

V, v, l. 155

See, where she comes apparell’d like the spring.

Pericles [1608–1609], act I, sc. i, l. 12

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.

I, i, l. 92

The sad companion, dull-ey’d melancholy.

I, ii, l. 2

’Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.

I, ii, l. 77

Third Fisherman:… Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

First Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.¹

II, i, l. 29

Lest the bargain should catch cold and starve.

Cymbeline [1609–1610], act I, sc. iv, l. 186

Hath his bellyful of fighting.

II, i, l. 24

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,

And Phoebus ’gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs

On chalic’d flowers that lies;

And winking Mary-buds begin

To ope their golden eyes:

With everything that pretty is,

My lady sweet, arise.

II, iii, l. 22

As chaste as unsunn’d snow.

II, v, l. 13

Some griefs are med’cinable.

III, ii, l. 33

O! for a horse with wings!

III, ii, l. 49

The game is up.

III, iii, l. 107

        Slander,

Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue

Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath

Rides on the posting winds and doth belie

All corners of the world.

III, iv, l. 35

I have not slept one wink.

III, iv, l. 103

        Weariness

Can snore upon the flint when resty sloth

Finds the down pillow hard.

III, vi, l. 33

        An angel! or, if not,

An earthly paragon!

III, vi, l. 42

        Society is no comfort

To one not sociable.

IV, ii, l. 12

        I wear not

My dagger in my mouth.

IV, ii, l. 78

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

IV, ii, l. 258

Quiet consummation have;

And renowned be thy grave!

IV, ii, l. 280

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer’d.

IV, iii, l. 46

Hang there like fruit, my soul,

Till the tree die!

V, v, l. 264

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die.

Sonnets² [1609], 1, l. 1

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field.

Sonnet 2, l. 1

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

Sonnet 3, l. 9

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweet war not, joy delights in joy.

Sonnet 8, l. 1

        Everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment.

Sonnet 15, l. 1

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sonnet 18, l. 1

But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

Sonnet 18, l. 9

The painful warrior famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories, once foil’d,

Is from the books of honor razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.

Sonnet 25, l. 9

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.

Sonnet 29, l. 1

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee.

Sonnet 29, l. 7

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 29, l. 13

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.

Sonnet 30, l. 1

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

Sonnet 30, l. 13

Full many a glorious morning have I seen.

Sonnet 33, l. 1

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

All men make faults.

Sonnet 35, l. 2

Be thou the tenth Muse.

Sonnet 38, l. 9

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land.

Sonnet 44, l. 7

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,

And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,

When love, converted from the thing it was,

Shall reasons find of settled gravity.

Sonnet 49, l. 5

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime.

Sonnet 55, l. i.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Sonnet 60, l. 1

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.

Sonnet 60, l. 9

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,

When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,

Increasing store with loss and loss with store.

Sonnet 64, l. 1

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,

That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Sonnet 64, l. 11

Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry.

Sonnet 66, l. 1

And art made tongue-tied by authority.

Sonnet 66, l. 9

And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Sonnet 66, l. 11

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.

Sonnet 71, l. 1

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Sonnet 73, l. 1

Clean starved for a look.

Sonnet 75, l. 10

Who is it that says most? which can say more

Than this rich praise,—that you alone are you?

Sonnet 84, l. 1

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou know’st thy estimate.

Sonnet 87, l. 1

In sleep a king, but, waking, no such matter.

Sonnet 87, l. 14

Ah! do not, when my heart hath ’scap’d this sorrow,

Come in the rearward of a conquer’d woe;

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,

To linger out a purpos’d overthrow.

Sonnet 90, l. 5

They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow.

Sonnet 94, l. 1

They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die.

Sonnet 94, l. 7

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.¹

Sonnet 94, l. 14

The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

Sonnet 95, l. 14

How like a winter hath my absence been.

Sonnet 97, l. 1

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything.

Sonnet 98, l. 1

Sweets grown common lose their dear delight.

Sonnet 102, l. 12

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,

For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,

Such seems your beauty still.

Sonnet 104, l. 1

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rime,

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,

Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have express’d

Even such a beauty as you master now.

Sonnet 106, l. 1

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul

Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,

Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom.

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d,

And the sad augurs mock their own presage;

Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,

And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

Sonnet 107, l. 1

O! never say that I was false of heart,

Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify.

Sonnet 109, l. 1

That is my home of love: if I have rang’d,

Like him that travels, I return again.

Sonnet 109, l. 5

Alas! ’tis true I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gor’d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offenses of affections new.

Sonnet 110, l. 1

        My nature is subdu’d

To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.

Sonnet 111, l. 6

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me prov’d,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

Sonnet 116

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears,

Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within.

Sonnet 119, l. 1

O benefit of ill!

Sonnet 119, l. 9

And ruin’d love, when it is built anew,

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

Sonnet 119, l. 11

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d,

When not to be receives reproach of being.

Sonnet 121, l. 1

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad:

Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof,—and prov’d, a very woe;

Before, a joy propos’d; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Sonnet 129

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

Sonnet 130, l. 1

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies.

Sonnet 138, l. 1

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,

Which like two spirits do suggest me still.

Sonnet 144, l. 1

Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth.

Sonnet 146, l. 1

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

Sonnet 146, l. 13

Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,

And frantic-mad with evermore unrest.

Sonnet 147, l. 9

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Sonnet 147, l. 13

You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely.

The Winter’s Tale [1610–1611], act I, sc. i, l. 18

Two lads that thought there was no more behind

But such a day tomorrow as today,

And to be boy eternal.

I, ii, l. 63

We were as twinn’d lambs that did frisk i’ the sun,

And bleat the one at the other: what we chang’d

Was innocence for innocence.

I, ii, l. 67

Paddling palms and pinching fingers.

I, ii, l. 116

Affection! thy intention stabs the center:

Thou dost make possible things not so held,

Communicat’st with dreams.

I, ii, l. 139

He makes a July’s day short as December.

I, ii, l. 169

        A sad tale’s best for winter.

I have one of sprites and goblins.

II, i, l. 24

  I have drunk, and seen the spider.

II, i, l. 45

The silence often of pure innocence

Persuades when speaking fails.

II, ii, l. 41

It is a heretic that makes the fire,

Not she which burns in ’t.

II, iii, l. 115

I am a feather for each wind that blows.

II, iii, l. 153

        What’s gone and what’s past help

Should be past grief.

III, ii, l. 223

Exit, pursued by a bear.¹

III, iii, l. 57

This is fairy gold, boy, and ’twill prove so.

III, iii, l. 127

A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.

IV, ii, l. 26

For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.

IV, ii, l. 30

Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,

And merrily hent the stile-a:

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.

IV, ii, l. 133

        When daffodils begin to peer,

With heigh! the doxy over the dale,

Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year,

For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

IV, iii, l. 1

For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep

Seeming and savor all the winter long.

IV, iii, l. 74

        Here’s flowers for you:

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,

The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun,

And with him rises weeping: these are flowers

Of middle summer, and I think they are given

To men of middle age.

IV, iii, l. 103

        Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty.

IV, iii, l. 118

        What you do

Still betters what is done.

IV, iii, l. 135

        When you do dance, I wish you

A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do

Nothing but that.

IV, iii, l. 140

Lawn as white as driven snow.

IV, iii, l. 220

I love a ballad in print, a-life, for then we are sure they are true.

IV, iii, l. 262

The self-same sun that shines upon his court

Hides not his visage from our cottage, but

Looks on alike.

IV, iii, l. 457

I’ll queen it no inch further,

But milk my ewes and weep.

IV, iii, l. 462

Prosperity’s the very bond of love,

Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together

Affliction alters.

IV, iii, l. 586

To purge melancholy.

IV, iii, l. 792

        This is an art

Which does mend nature—change it rather—but

The art itself is nature.

IV, iv, l. 95

He hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows.

The Tempest [1611–1612], act I, sc. i, l. 33

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.

I, i, l. 70

I would fain die a dry death.

I, i, l. 73

        What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

I, ii, l. 49

        By telling of it,

Made such a sinner of his memory,

To credit his own lie.

I, ii, l. 100

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

I, ii, l. 106

        My library

Was dukedom large enough.

I, ii, l. 109

        The very rats

Instinctively have quit it.

I, ii, l. 147

Knowing I lov’d my books, he furnish’d me,

From mine own library with volumes that

I prize above my dukedom.

I, ii, l. 166

I [Ariel] will be correspondent to command,

And do my spiriting gently.

I, ii, l. 297

You taught me language; and my profit on ’t

Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you,

For learning me your language!

I, ii, l. 363

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d—

The wild waves whist,—

Foot it featly here and there.

I, ii, l. 375

This music crept by me upon the waters,

Allaying both their fury, and my passion,

With its sweet air.

I, ii, l. 389

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made:

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.¹

I, ii, l. 394

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance.

I, ii, l. 405

        Lest too light winning

Make the prize light.

I, ii, l. 448

There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:

If the ill spirit have so fair a house,

Good things will strive to dwell with ’t.

I, ii, l. 454

He receives comfort like cold porridge.

II, i, l. 10

I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation; all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure.²

II, i, l. 154

What’s past is prologue.

II, i, l. 261

Open-ey’d Conspiracy

His time doth take.

II, i, l. 309

A very ancient and fish-like smell.

II, ii, l. 27

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

II, ii, l. 42

How cam’st thou to be the siege of this mooncalf?

II, ii, l. 115

I shall laugh myself to death.

II, ii, l. 167

’Ban, ’Ban, Ca—Caliban,

Has a new master—Get a new man.

II, ii, l. 197

        For several virtues

Have I lik’d several women.

III, i, l. 42

Ferdinand:… Here’s my hand.

Miranda: And mine, with my heart in’t.

III, i, l. 89

Keep a good tongue in your head.

III, ii, l. 41

Flout ’em, and scout ’em; and scout ’em, and flout ’em;

Thought is free.³

III, ii, l. 133

He that dies pays all debts.

III, ii, l. 143

        The isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,

That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again.

III, ii, l. 146

        A kind

Of excellent dumb discourse.

III, iii, l. 38

        Do not give dalliance

Too much the rein.

IV, i, l. 51

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

IV, i, l. 148

        But this rough magic

I here abjure.

V, i, l. 50

        I’ll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,

I’ll drown my book.

V, i, l. 54

Where the bee sucks, there suck I

In a cowslip’s bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat’s back I do fly

After summer merrily:

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

V, i, l. 88

        O brave new world,

That has such people in’t!

V, i, l. 183

Let us not burden our remembrances

With a heaviness that’s gone.

V, i, l. 199

        This thing of darkness I

Acknowledge mine.

V, i, l. 274

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be reliev’d by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

Epilogue, l. 15

        No man’s pie is freed

From his ambitious finger.

King Henry the Eighth¹ [1613], act I, sc. i, l. 52

The force of his own merit makes his way.

I, i, l. 64

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

That it do singe yourself.

I, i, l. 140

If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me;

I had it from my father.

I, iv, l. 26

The mirror of all courtesy.

II, i, l. 53

Go with me, like good angels, to my end;

And, as the long divorce of steel falls on me,

Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,

And lift my soul to heaven.

II, i, l. 75

This bold bad man.

II, ii, l. 44

        I would not be a queen

For all the world.

II, iii, l. 45

Orpheus with his lute made trees,

And the mountain-tops that freeze,

Bow themselves, when he did sing.

III, i, l. 3

    ’Tis well said again;

And ’tis a kind of good deed to say well:

And yet words are no deeds.

III, ii, l. 153

        And then to breakfast with

What appetite you have.

III, ii, l. 203

I have touch’d the highest point of all my greatness;

And from that full meridian of my glory,

I haste now to my setting: I shall fall

Like a bright exhalation in the evening,

And no man see me more.

III, ii, l. 224

Press not a falling man too far.²

III, ii, l. 334

Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!

This is the state of man: today he puts forth

The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;

And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur’d,

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,

This many summers in a sea of glory,

But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride

At length broke under me, and now has left me,

Weary and old with service, to the mercy

Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.

Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:

I feel my heart new open’d. O! how wretched

Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors!

There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,

That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,

More pangs and fears than wars or women have;

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,

Never to hope again.

III, ii, l. 352

A peace above all earthly dignities,

A still and quiet conscience.

III, ii, l. 380

A load would sink a navy.

III, ii, l. 384

Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:

By that sin fell the angels.

III, ii, l. 441

Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee;

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues: be just, and fear not.

Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s,

Thy God’s, and truth’s; then if thou fall’st, O Cromwell!

Thou fall’st a blessed martyr!

III, ii, l. 444

Had I but serv’d my God with half the zeal¹

I serv’d my king, he would not in mine age

Have left me naked to mine enemies.

III, ii, l. 456

An old man, broken with the storms of state,

Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;

Give him a little earth for charity.

IV, ii, l. 21

He gave his honors to the world again,

His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.

IV, ii, l. 29

So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him!

IV, ii, l. 31

Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues

We write in water.

IV, ii, l. 45

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;

Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading;

Lofty and sour to them that lov’d him not;

But, to those men that sought him sweet as summer.

IV, ii, l. 51

To dance attendance on their lordships’ pleasures.

V, ii, l. 30

Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when

The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,

Her ashes new-create another heir

As great in admiration as herself.

V, v, l. 40

Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,

His honor and the greatness of his name

Shall be, and make new nations.

V, v, l. 51

        Some come to take their ease

And sleep an act or two.

Epilogue, l. 2

Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here;

Blest be the man that spares these stones,

And curst be he that moves my bones.

Shakespeare’s epitaph

John Davies of Hereford

c. 1565–1618

Beauty’s but skin deep.

A Select Second Husband for Sir Thomas Overburie’s Wife [1616], st. 13

James I

1566–1625

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

A Counterblast to Tobacco [1604]

Thomas Campion

1567–1620

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,

And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,

Let us not weigh them. Heaven’s great lamps do dive

Into their west, and straight again revive,

But soon as once set is our little light,

Then must we sleep one ever-during night.

A Book of Airs [1601], pt. I, poem 1

Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow,

Though thou be black as night,

And she made all of light,

Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow.

A Book of Airs, pt. I, poem 4

Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights,

Of masks and revels which sweet youth did make.

A Book of Airs, pt. I, poem 20

Rose-cheeked Laura, come;

Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty’s

Silent music, either other

Sweetly gracing.

Observations on the Art of English Poesie [1602], ch. 8

Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore,

Never tired pilgrim’s limbs affected slumber more,

Than my weary sprite now longs to fly out of my troubled breast!

O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest.

Two Books of Airs, First Book [c. 1612], poem 11

The summer hath his joys,

And winter his delights;

Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,

They shorten tedious nights.

Third Book of Airs [1617], poem 5

Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air,

Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair;

Then thrice three times tie up this true love’s knot,

And murmur soft: “She will, or she will not.”

Third Book of Airs, poem 9

There is a garden in her face

Where roses and white lilies grow;

A heavenly paradise is that place

Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow.

There cherries grow which none may buy,

Till “cherry-ripe”¹ themselves do cry.

Fourth Book of Airs [1617], poem 4

Thomas Nashe

1567–1601

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king;

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing.

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Summer’s Last Will and Testament [1600]. Spring, st. 1

From winter, plague and pestilence, good Lord, deliver us!

Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Autumn, refrain

Brightness falls from the air;

Queens have died young and fair;

Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.

I am sick, I must die.

        Lord, have mercy on us!

Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Adieu! Farewell Earth’s Bliss!

Tommaso Campanella

1568–1639

Now that they are called masters, [they] are ashamed again to become disciples.

The Defense of Galileo²

The new philosophy proceeds from the world, the book of God.

The Defense of Galileo

Sir Henry Wotton

1568–1639

How happy is he born and taught,

That serveth not another’s will;

Whose armor is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill!

The Character of a Happy Life [1614], st. 1

Lord of himself, though not of lands;

And having nothing, yet hath all.

The Character of a Happy Life, st. 6

He first deceased; she for a little tried

To live without him, liked it not, and died.

Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton’s Wife [1651]

An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth.³

Reliquiae Wottonianae [1651]

Sir John Davies

1569–1626

I know my soul hath power to know all things,

Yet is she blind and ignorant in all:

I know I’m one of Nature’s little kings,

Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

Nosce Teipsum [1599]. Of Humane Knowledge, st. 44

I know my life’s a pain, and but a span;

I know my sense is mocked in ev’ry thing:

And to conclude, I know myself a man,

Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing.

Nosce Teipsum. Of Humane Knowledge, st. 45

Johannes Kepler

1571–1630

I am much occupied with the investigation of physical causes. My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is not similar to a divine animated being, but similar to a clock.

To Hewart von Hohenburg [February 10, 1605]

So long as the mother, Ignorance, lives, it is not safe for Science, the offspring, to divulge the hidden causes of things.

Somnium (Dream)⁴ [1634]

Thomas Dekker

1572–1632

This age thinks better of a gilded fool

Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school.

Old Fortunatus [1600], act I, sc. i

Honest labor bears a lovely face.

Patient Grissell [1603], act II, sc. i

John Donne¹

1572–1631

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I

Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then

But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the seven sleepers’ den?

The Good Morrow, st. 1

And now good morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room, an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

The Good Morrow, st. 2

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,

Where can we find two better hemispheres

Without sharp North, without declining West?

The Good Morrow, st. 3

Go, and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me, where all past years are,

Or who cleft the Devil’s foot.

Teach me to hear mermaids singing.

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), st. 1

And swear

No where

Lives a woman true, and fair.

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), st. 2

Though she were true, when you met her,

And last, till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

Song (Go and Catch a Falling Star), st. 3

I have done one braver thing

Than all the Worthies did;

And yet a braver thence doth spring,

Which is, to keep that hid.

The Undertaking, st. 1

But he who loveliness within

Hath found, all outward loathes,

For he who color loves, and skin,

Loves but their oldest clothes.

The Undertaking, st. 4

And dare love that, and say so too,

And forget the He and She.

The Undertaking, st. 5

        Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

        Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?

The Sun Rising, st. 1

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

The Sun Rising, st. 1

She is all states, and all princes, I,

Nothing else is.

The Sun Rising, st. 3

For God sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

The Canonization, st. 1

The Phoenix riddle hath more wit

By us, we two being one, are it.

So to one neutral thing both sexes fit,

We die and rise the same, and prove

Mysterious by this love.

The Canonization, st. 3

As well a well-wrought urn becomes

The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.

The Canonization, st. 4

I am two fools, I know,

For loving, and for saying so

In whining poetry.

The Triple Fool, st. 1

Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

The Triple Fool, st. 2

Sweetest love, I do not go,

For weariness of thee,

Nor in hope the world can show

A fitter love for me;

        But since that I

Must die at last, ’tis best,

To use my self in jest

    Thus by feign’d deaths to die.

Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), st. 1

Yesternight the sun went hence,

And yet is here today.

Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), st. 2

But think that we

Are but turn’d aside to sleep.

Song (Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go), st. 5

When I died last, and dear, I die

As often as from thee I go.

The Legacy, st. 1

Oh do not die, for I shall hate

All women so, when thou art gone.

A Fever, st. 1

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,

Before I knew thy face or name.

Air and Angels, st. 1

’Tis true, ’tis day; what though it be?

O wilt thou therefore rise from me?

Why should we rise, because ’tis light?

Did we lie down, because ’twas night?

Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither

Should in despite of light keep us together.

Break of Day, st. 1

All Kings, and all their favorites,

All glory of honors, beauties, wits,

The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,

Is elder by a year, now, than it was

When thou and I first one another saw:

All other things, to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay;

This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,

Running, it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

The Anniversary, st. 1

Send home my long strayed eyes to me,

Which (Oh) too long have dwelt on thee.

The Message, st. 1

’Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s.

A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day, being the shortest day, st. 1

For I am every dead thing,

In whom love wrought new alchemy.

For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness

He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day, st. 2

Come live with me, and be my love,

And we will some new pleasures prove

Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,

With silken lines, and silver hooks.

The Bait,¹ st. 1

Dull sublunary lovers’ love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, st. 4

Our two souls therefore which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, st. 6

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two,

Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the other do.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, st. 7

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes, upon one double string;

So to entergraft our hands, as yet

Was all the means to make us one,

And pictures in our eyes to get

Was all our propagation.

The Extasy, l. 7

That subtle knot which makes us man:

So must pure lovers’ souls descend

T’ affections, and to faculties,

Which sense may reach and apprehend,

Else a great Prince in prison lies.

The Extasy, l. 64

Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,

But yet the body is his book.

The Extasy, l. 71

I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost,

Who died before the god of love was born.

Love’s Deity, st. 1

Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm

        Nor question much

That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm;

The mystery, the sign you must not touch,

        For ’tis my outward soul,

Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone,

        Will leave this to control,

And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

The Funeral, st. 1

A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.

The Relic, st. 1

Take heed of loving me.

The Prohibition, st. 1

So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,

Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.

The Expiration, st. 1

        Ah cannot we

As well as cocks and lions jocund be,

After such pleasures?

Farewell to Love, st. 3

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

Elegies, no. 2, The Anagram, l. 27

Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love.

Elegies, 7, Nature’s Lay Idiot, l. 1

        The Alphabet

Of flowers.

Elegies, 7, Nature’s Lay Idiot, l. 9

No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,

As I have seen in one autumnal face.

Elegies, 9, The Autumnal, l. 1

Who ever loves, if he do not propose

The right true end of love, he’s one that goes

To sea for nothing but to make him sick.

Elegies, 18, Love’s Progress, l. 1

Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.

Elegies, 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, l. 24

O my America! my new-found land.

Elegies, 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, l. 27

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,

As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,

To taste whole joys.

Elegies, 19, To His Mistress Going to Bed, l. 33

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,

The element of fire is quite put out;

The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man’s wit

Can well direct him where to look for it.

And freely men confess that this world’s spent,

When in the planets, and the firmament

They seek so many new; then see that this

Is crumbled out again to his atomies.

’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;

All just supply, and all relation:

Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.

An Anatomy of the World. The First Anniversary [first published 1611],¹ l. 205

Her pure, and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,

That one might almost say, her body thought.

Of the Progress of the Soul. The Second Anniversary [first published 1612], l. 244

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements, and an angelic sprite.

Holy Sonnets, no. 5, l. 1

At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls.

Holy Sonnets, 7, l. 1

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance, hath slain.

Holy Sonnets, 7, l. 6

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,

Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,

If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

Cannot be damn’d; alas; why should I be?

Holy Sonnets, 9, l. 1

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Holy Sonnets, 10, l. 1

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.

Holy Sonnets, 10, l. 9

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Holy Sonnets, 10, l. 13

What if this present were the world’s last night?

Holy Sonnets, 13, l. 1

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.

Holy Sonnets, 14, l. 1

Show me, dear Christ, Thy spouse, so bright and clear.

Holy Sonnets, 18,² l. 1

Since I am coming to that holy room,

Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore,

I shall be made thy music; as I come

I tune the instrument here at the door,

And what I must do then, think here before.

Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness [written c. 1623 or 1631], st. 1

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown

Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie

Flat on this bed.

Hymn to God My God, st. 2

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive that sin; through which I run,

And do run still: though still I do deplore?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For, I have more.

A Hymn to God the Father [first published 1633]

I observe the physician with the same diligence as he the disease.

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions [1624], no. 6

I do nothing upon myself, and yet am mine own executioner.

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 12

The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 12

All mankind is of one Author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 17

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 17

What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?

LXXX Sermons [1640], no. 76, preached to the Earl of Carlisle [c. autumn 1622]

Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

LXXX Sermons, 3, preached on Christmas Day [1625]

I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.

LXXX Sermons, 80, preached at the funeral of Sir William Cokayne [December 12, 1626]

And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?

LXXX Sermons, 54, preached to the King at Whitehall [April 5, 1628]

Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!

LXXX Sermons, 48, preached upon the Day of St. Paul’s Conversion [January 25, 1629]

When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.

XXVI Sermons [1661], no. 26, Death’s Duel, last sermon [February 15, 1631]¹

Ben Jonson²

c. 1573–1637

As sure as death.

Every Man in His Humour [1598], act II, sc. i

As he brews, so shall he drink.

Every Man in His Humour, II, i

Art hath an enemy called Ignorance.

Every Man out of His Humour [1599], act I, sc. i

Oh, I could still

(Like melting snow upon some craggy hill)

Drop, drop, drop, drop,

Since nature’s pride is, now, a wither’d daffodil.

Cynthia’s Revels [1600], act I, sc. ii. Echo’s Song

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,

Now the sun is laid to sleep,

Seated in thy silver chair,

State in wonted manner keep:

        Hesperus entreats thy light,

        Goddess, excellently bright.

Cynthia’s Revels, V, iii

Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame, a flatterer.

Sejanus [1603], act I

Come my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love;

Time will not be ours forever,

He at length our good will sever.

Spend not then his gifts in vain;

Suns that set may rise again,

But if once we lose this light,

’Tis with us perpetual night.

Song, To Celia [1607]

Still to be neat, still to be drest,

As you were going to a feast.

Epicene; or, The Silent Woman [1609], act I, sc. i

Give me a look, give me a face,

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free,

Such sweet neglect more taketh me

Than all the adulteries of art:

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

Epicene; or, The Silent Woman, I, i

Truth is the trial of itself

And needs no other touch,

And purer than the purest gold,

Refine it ne’er so much.

On Truth [1616], st. 1

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy!

My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.

Epigrams [1616]. On My First Son [written c. 1603]

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry:

For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,

As what he loves may never like too much.

Epigrams. On My First Son

Nor shall our cups make any guilty men:

But, at our parting, we will be, as when

We innocently met.

Epigrams. Inviting a Friend to Supper

Underneath this stone doth lie

As much beauty as could die;

Which in life did harbor give

To more virtue than doth live.

Epigrams. Epitaph on Elizabeth, Lady H——

Follow a shadow, it still flies you;

Seem to fly it, it will pursue:

So court a mistress, she denies you;

Let her alone, she will court you.

The Forest [1616]. Follow a Shadow, st. 1

Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,

And almost every vice—almighty gold.

The Forest. Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup

And I’ll not look for wine.¹

The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

The Forest. To Celia, st. 1

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,

Not so much honoring thee

As giving it a hope that there

It could not wither’d be.

But thou thereon didst only breathe,

And sent’st it back to me;

Since when it grows and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee.

The Forest. To Celia, st. 2

        Reader, look,

Not at his picture, but his book.

On the portrait of Shakespeare prefixed to the First Folio [1623]

    Soul of the age!

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!

My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by

Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie

A little further, to make thee a room;

Thou art a monument, without a tomb,

And art alive still, while thy book doth live,

And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare [1623]

Marlowe’s mighty line.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare

And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare

Call forth thundering Aeschylus.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare

He was not of an age but for all time.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare

For a good poet’s made, as well as born.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare

Sweet Swan of Avon!

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare

Those that merely talk and never think,

That live in the wild anarchy of drink.²

Underwoods [1640]. An Epistle, Answering to One That Asked to Be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben

In small proportions we just beauties see,

And in short measures life may perfect be.

Underwoods. To the Immortal Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison

What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better of life in!—in scattering compliments, tendering visits, gathering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter love in a dark corner.

Timber; or, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter [1640], topic 11

Greatness of name in the father… oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first.

Timber; or, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter, topic 50

The players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand.”… I loved the man [Shakespeare] and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.

Timber; or, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter, topic 64

Though the most be players, some must be spectators.

Timber; or, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter, topic 86

Thomas Heywood

c. 1574–c. 1641

I will walk on eggs.

A Woman Killed with Kindness [1607], sc. xiii

O God! O God! that it were possible

To undo things done; to call back yesterday!

That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass,

To untell the days, and to redeem these hours.

A Woman Killed with Kindness, xiii

Seven cities warr’d for Homer being dead,

Who living had no roof to shroud his head.¹

Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels [1635]

John Marston

c. 1575–c. 1634

This earth is only the grave and Golgotha wherein all things that live must rot.

The Malcontent [1603], act IV, sc. v

Oblivioni sacrum [Sacred to oblivion].

Epitaph

Cyril Tourneur

1575–1626

O, think upon the pleasure of the palace,

Securèd ease and state, the stirring meats

Ready to move out of the dishes,

That e’en now quicken when they’re eaten!

Banquets abroad by torch light, music, sports,

Bare-headed vassals that had ne’er the fortune

To keep on their own hats, but let horns wear ’em!

Nine coaches waiting, hurry, hurry, hurry!

The Revenger’s Tragedy² [1607], act II, sc. i

Robert Burton

1577–1640

All my joys to this are folly,

Naught so sweet as melancholy.

The Anatomy of Melancholy [1621–1651]. The Author’s Abstract

We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer.… Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.

The Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader

A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.

The Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader

Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small offenses.

The Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader

Penny wise, pound foolish.

The Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader

Women wear the breeches… in a word, the world turned upside downward.

The Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader

All poets are mad.

The Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader

Every man hath a good and a bad angel attending on him in particular, all his life long.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 1, subsec. 2

Cookery is become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 2, subsec. 2

No rule is so general, which admits not some exception.³

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 2, subsec. 3

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 2, subsec. 6

Why doth one man’s yawning make another yawn?

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 2

They do not live but linger.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 10

A mere madness, to live like a wretch and die rich.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 12

I may not here omit those two main plagues and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 13

All our geese are swans.¹

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 14

They are proud in humility; proud in that they are not proud.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 14

We can make mayors and officers every year, but not scholars.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 15

See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.²

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 4, subsec. 7

One was never married, and that’s his hell; another is, and that’s his plague.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 4, subsec. 7

Who cannot give good counsel? ’Tis cheap, it costs them nothing.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. II, sec. 2, member 3

Many things happen between the cup and the lip.³

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. II, sec. 2, member 3

The commonwealth of Venice in their armory have this inscription: “Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war.”

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. II, sec. 2, member 6

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases… but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. II, sec. 4, member 2, subsec. 2

Birds of a feather will gather together.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 1, member 1, subsec. 2

To enlarge or illustrate this power and effect of love is to set a candle in the sun.⁴

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 2, member 1, subsec. 2

One religion is as true as another.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 4, member 2, subsec. 1

What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 4, member 2, subsec. 5

Be not solitary, be not idle.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 4, member 2, subsec. 6

William Harvey

1578–1657

The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm.

De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (On the Motion of the Heart and Blood)⁵ [1628], dedication to King Charles

All we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown.

De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis, dedication to Dr. Argent and Other Learned Physicians

I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.

De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis, dedication to Dr. Argent and Other Learned Physicians

I appeal to your own eyes as my witness and judge.

De Generatione Animalium (On the Generation of Animals) [1651], introduction

John Fletcher

1579–1625

Three merry boys, and three merry boys,

And three merry boys are we.¹

As ever did sing in a hempen string

Under the gallows tree.

Rollo, Duke of Normandy, III, ii

Let’s meet, and either do or die.²

The Island Princess [1647], act II, sc. ii

Thomas Middleton

1580–1627

Since the worst comes to the worst.³

Michaelmas Term, III, iv

Have you summoned your wits from woolgathering?⁴

The Family of Love [1608], act V, sc. iii

By my faith the fool has feathered his nest well.⁵

The Roaring Girl [1611], act I, sc. i

Look but into your conscience, read me there;

’Tis a true book; you’ll find me there your equal:

Pish! fly not to your birth, but settle you

In what the act has made you; you’re no more now.

You must forget your parentage to me;

You are the deed’s creature; by that name

You lost your first condition, and I challenge you,

As peace and innocency has turned you out,

And made you one with me.

The Changeling⁶ [1622], act III, sc. 4

I that am of your blood was taken from you

For your better health; look no more upon’t,

But cast it to the ground regardlessly,

Let the common sewer take it from distinction.

The Changeling, V, iii

How many honest words have suffered corruption since Chaucer’s days!

No Wit, No Help, Like a Woman’s [1657], act II, sc. i

Anything for a Quiet Life.

Title of play [1662] (in collaboration with JOHN WEBSTER)

John Webster

c. 1580–c. 1625

I saw him now going the way of all flesh.

Westward Hoe [1607] (in collaboration with DEKKER), act II, sc. ii

Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,

Since o’er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

The White Devil [1612], act V, sc. iv

But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men,

For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.

The White Devil, V, iv

Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear;

But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.

The White Devil, V, vi

I am Duchess of Malfi still.

The Duchess of Malfi [1623], act IV, sc. ii

I know death hath ten thousand several doors

For men to take their exits.⁷

The Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii

Heaven-gates are not so highly arch’d

As princes’ palaces; they that enter there

Must go upon their knees.

The Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii

Ferdinand: Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.

Bosola: I think not so; her infelicity

    Seemed to have years too many.

The Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.

The Duchess of Malfi, IV, ii

Vain the ambition of kings

Who seek by trophies and dead things

To leave a living name behind,

And weave but nets to catch the wind.¹

The Devil’s Law Case [1623], song

James Ussher

1581–1656

According to our chronology, [the creation of the world] fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian Calendar, 710 [4004 B.C.E.].

The Annals of the World [1658]

Richard Corbet

1582–1635

Farewell, rewards and fairies,

Good housewives now may say.

The Fairies Farewell, st. 1

Philip Massinger

1583–1640

        Be wise;

Soar not too high to fall; but stoop to rise.

Duke of Milan [1623], act I, sc. ii

        To be nobly born

Is now a crime.

The Roman Actor [1629], act I, sc. i

A New Way to Pay Old Debts

Title of play [1632]

Francis Beaumont

c. 1584–1616

        What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that everyone from whence they came,

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And resolv’d to live a fool, the rest

Of his dull life.

Letter to Ben Jonson [1640]

Beaumont and Fletcher²

[Francis Beaumont c. 1584–1616]

[John Fletcher 1579–1625]

        It is always good

When a man has two irons in the fire.

The Faithful Friends [c. 1608], act I, sc. ii

As cold as cucumbers.

Cupid’s Revenge [1615], act I, sc. i

Kiss till the cow comes home.³

The Scornful Lady [1616], act III, sc. i

The devil take the hindmost!

Philaster [1620], act V, sc. iii

Miyamoto Musashi

c. 1584–1645

Surpass today what you were yesterday, go beyond those of poor skill tomorrow, and exceed those who are skillful later.⁴

A Book of Five Rings [c. 1643]. Direct Transmission

John Selden

1584–1654

Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.

Table Talk. Friends

Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because ’tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.

Table Talk. Law

Take a straw and throw it up into the air—you shall see by that which way the wind is.

Table Talk. Libels

Marriage is a desperate thing.

Table Talk. Marriage

Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the whole world.⁵

Table Talk. Pope

They that govern most make the least noise.

Table Talk. Power

Wise men say nothing in dangerous times.

Table Talk. Wisdom

Preachers say, Do as I say, not as I do.

Table Talk. Preaching

William Drummond

1585–1649

He [Ben Jonson] is a great lover and praiser of himself, a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth); a dissembler of ill parts which reign in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth; thinketh nothing well but what either he himself or some of his friends and countrymen hath said or done.

Informations and Manners of Ben Jonson to W. D. when he came to Scotland upon foot, 1619

John Ford

c. 1586–1639

Diamond cut diamond.

The Lover’s Melancholy [1629], act I, sc. i

        Remember

When we last gathered roses in the garden,

I found my wits; but truly you lost yours.

The Broken Heart [1629], act IV, sc. ii

’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

Title of play [1633]

Thomas Rainsborough

d. 1648

The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he.

In the army debates at Putney [October 29, 1647]

Thomas Hobbes

1588–1679

Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools.

Leviathan [1651], pt. I, ch. 4

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject but man only.

Leviathan, I, 5

Sudden glory is the passion which maketh those grimaces called laughter.

Leviathan, I, 6

The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.

Leviathan, I, 8

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man.

Leviathan, I, 13

[In a state of nature] No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Leviathan, I, 13

The passion to be reckoned upon, is fear.

Leviathan, I, 14

Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.

Leviathan, II, 17

The Papacy is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.

Leviathan, IV, 47

Such truth as opposeth no man’s profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.

Leviathan, A Review and Conclusion

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

Last words

Fear and I were born twins together.¹

Autobiography [1680], l. 26

John Winthrop

1588–1649

We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.

A Model of Christian Charity [1630], a sermon delivered on board the Arabella

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.

A Model of Christian Charity

George Wither

1588–1667

Shall I wasting in despair

Die because a woman’s fair?

Or make pale my cheeks with care

’Cause another’s rosy are?

Be she fairer than the day,

Or the flow’ry meads in May,

If she be not so to me,

What care I how fair she be?

Fair Virtue [1622]. Sonnet 4, st. 1

William Bradford

1590–1657

They knew they were pilgrims.¹

Of Plymouth Plantation [1620–1647], ch. 7

Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element.

Of Plymouth Plantation, 9

And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast.… For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue.

Of Plymouth Plantation, 9

But it pleased God to visit us then with death daily, and with so general a disease that the living were scarce able to bury the dead.

Of Plymouth Plantation, 12

Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.

Of Plymouth Plantation, 21

William Browne

1591–c. 1645

There is no season such delight can bring,

As summer, autumn, winter, and the spring.

Variety

Robert Herrick

1591–1674

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:

Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.

I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,

Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.

Hesperides [1648]. Argument of His Book

Bid me to live, and I will live

Thy Protestant to be,

Or bid me love, and I will give

A loving heart to thee.

Hesperides. To Anthea, Who May Command Him Any Thing

Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,

Full and fair ones; come and buy!

If so be you ask me where

They do grow, I answer, there,

Where my Julia’s lips do smile;

There’s the land, or cherry-isle.

Hesperides. Cherry Ripe

A sweet disorder in the dress

Kindles in clothes a wantonness.

Hesperides. Delight in Disorder

A winning wave, deserving note,

In the tempestuous petticoat,

A careless shoestring, in whose tie

I see a wild civility,

Do more bewitch me than when art

Is too precise in every part.

Hesperides. Delight in Disorder

When a daffodil I see,

Hanging down his head t’wards me,

Guess I may what I must be:

First, I shall decline my head;

Secondly, I shall be dead;

Lastly, safely buryed.

Hesperides. Divination by a Daffodil

Night makes no difference ’twixt the Priest and Clerk;

Joan as my Lady is as good i’ the dark.

Hesperides. No Difference i’ th’ Dark

Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score;

Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:

A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,

To make that thousand up a million.

Treble that million, and when that is done,

Let’s kiss afresh, as when we first begun.

Hesperides. To Anthea: Ah, My Anthea!

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying,

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.¹

Hesperides. To the Virgins to Make Much of Time

Fair daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon.

Hesperides. To Daffodils

Her eyes the glowworm lend thee,

The shooting stars attend thee;

    And the elves also,

    Whose little eyes glow

Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.

Hesperides. The Night Piece—To Julia

Made us nobly wild, not mad.

Hesperides. Ode for Ben Jonson

Get up, sweet Slug-a-bed, and see

The dew bespangling herb and tree.

Hesperides. Corinna’s Going A-Maying

        ’Tis sin,

Nay, profanation to keep in.

Hesperides. Corinna’s Going A-Maying

So when or you or I are made

A fable, song, or fleeting shade,

All love, all liking, all delight

Lies drowned with us in endless night.

Hesperides. Corinna’s Going A-Maying

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

That brave vibration each way free;

Oh how that glittering taketh me!

Hesperides. Upon Julia’s Clothes

Henry King

1592–1669

Sleep on, my Love, in thy cold bed,

Never to be disquieted!

My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake,

Till I thy fate shall overtake;

Till age, or grief, or sickness, must

Marry my body to that dust

It so much loves, and fill the room

My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.

Stay for me there; I will not fail

To meet thee in that hollow vale.

The Exequy [1657]

But hark! my pulse like a soft drum

Beats my approach, tells thee I come.

The Exequy

We that did nothing study but the way

To love each other, with which thoughts the day

Rose with delight to us, and with them set,

Must learn the hateful art, how to forget.

The Surrender

Francis Quarles

1592–1644

Be wisely worldly, be not worldly wise.

Emblems [1635], bk. II, no. 2

The road to resolution lies by doubt:

The next way home’s the farthest way about.²

Emblems, IV, 2, Epigram

George Herbert

1593–1633

A verse may find him who a sermon flies.³

The Temple [1633]. The Church Porch, st. 1

Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame

When once it is within thee.

The Temple. The Church Porch, st. 5

Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie:

A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.⁴

The Temple. The Church Porch, st. 13

By all means use sometimes to be alone.

The Temple. The Church Porch, st. 25

By no means run in debt: take thine own measure.

Who cannot live on twenty pound a year,

Cannot on forty.

The Temple. The Church Porch, st. 30

Wit’s an unruly engine, wildly striking

Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.

The Temple. The Church Porch, st. 41

Be useful where thou livest.

The Temple. The Church Porch, st. 55

Man is God’s image; but a poor man is

Christ’s stamp to boot: both images regard.

The Temple. The Church Porch, st. 64

Was ever grief like mine?

The Temple. The Church. The Sacrifice, refrain

For thirty pence he did my death devise,

Who at three hundred did the ointment prize.

The Temple. The Church. The Sacrifice, st. 3

Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree.

The Temple. The Church. The Sacrifice, st. 49

I got me flowers to strew Thy way,

I got me boughs off many a tree:

But Thou wast up by break of day,

And brought’st Thy sweets along with Thee.

The Temple. The Church. Easter, st. 4

Who says that fictions only and false hair

Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?¹

The Temple. The Church. Jordan, st. 1

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky.

The Temple. The Church. Virtue, st. 1

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie.

The Temple. The Church. Virtue, st. 3

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season’d timber, never gives.

The Temple. The Church. Virtue, st. 4

Who goes to bed and does not pray,

Maketh two nights to every day.

The Temple. The Church. Charms and Knots, st. 4

Nothing wears clothes, but Man; nothing doth need

But he to wear them.

The Temple. The Church. Providence, st. 28

God’s works are wide, and let in future times;

His ancient justice overflows our crimes.

The Temple. The Church. The Bunch of Grapes, st. 2

I struck the board, and cried, No more:

        I will abroad.

What? shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as the road,

Loose as the wind, as large as store.

        Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn

To let me blood, and not restore

What I have lost with cordial fruit?

        Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn

Before my tears did drown it;

Is the year only lost to me?

Have I no bays to crown it?

The Temple. The Church. The Collar

Call in thy death’s head there: tie up thy fears.

The Temple. The Church. The Collar

But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wild

        At every word,

Methought I heard one calling, Child!

        And I replied, My Lord.

The Temple. The Church. The Collar

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:

So both should losers be.

The Temple. The Church. The Pulley, st. 3

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast.

The Temple. The Church. The Pulley, st. 4

        Grief melts away

        Like snow in May,

As if there were no such cold thing.

The Temple. The Church. The Flower, st. 1

Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart

Could have recovered greenness?

The Temple. The Church. The Flower, st. 2

And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

I once more smell the dew and rain,

And relish versing: O my only light,

        It cannot be

        That I am he

On whom thy tempests fell all night.

The Temple. The Church. The Flower, st. 6

The harbingers are come. See, see their mark;

White is their color, and behold my head.

The Temple. The Church. The Forerunners, st. 1

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see

And what I do in any thing,

To do it as for thee.

The Temple. The Church. The Elixir, st. 1

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lack’d anything.

The Temple. The Church. Love, st. 1

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

So I did sit and eat.

The Temple. The Church. Love, st. 3

Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,

Ready to pass to the American strand.

The Church Militant [1633], l. 235

Love, and a cough, cannot be hid.

Jacula Prudentum (Outlandish Proverbs) [1651], no. 49

Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.

Jacula Prudentum, 105

Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.

Jacula Prudentum, 141

The mill cannot grind with the water that’s past.

Jacula Prudentum, 153

Hell is full of good meanings and wishings.¹

Jacula Prudentum, 170

Where the drink goes in, there the wit goes out.

Jacula Prudentum, 187

Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another.²

Jacula Prudentum, 196

Go not for every grief to the physician, nor for every quarrel to the lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot.

Jacula Prudentum, 290

The best mirror is an old friend.

Jacula Prudentum, 296

When you are an anvil, hold you still; when you are a hammer, strike your fill.³

Jacula Prudentum, 338

He that lies with the dogs, riseth with fleas.

Jacula Prudentum, 343

He that is not handsome at twenty, nor strong at thirty, nor rich at forty, nor wise at fifty, will never be handsome, strong, rich, or wise.

Jacula Prudentum, 349

The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller not one.

Jacula Prudentum, 390

For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost.

Jacula Prudentum, 499

Pension never enriched young man.

Jacula Prudentum, 515

One enemy is too much.

Jacula Prudentum, 523

Living well is the best revenge.

Jacula Prudentum, 524

Thursday come, and the week is gone.

Jacula Prudentum, 587

Time is the rider that breaks youth.

Jacula Prudentum, 615

Show me a liar, and I’ll show thee a thief.

Jacula Prudentum, 652

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

Jacula Prudentum, 686

God’s mill grinds slow, but sure.

Jacula Prudentum, 747

He that lends, gives.

Jacula Prudentum, 787

Poverty is no sin.

Jacula Prudentum, 844

He hath no leisure who useth it not.

Jacula Prudentum, 897

Half the world knows not how the other half lives.

Jacula Prudentum, 907

Life is half spent before we know what it is.

Jacula Prudentum, 917

The eye is bigger than the belly.

Jacula Prudentum, 1018

His bark is worse than his bite.

Jacula Prudentum, 1090

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

Jacula Prudentum, 1146

Izaak Walton

1593–1683

But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him, as the Angel did with Jacob, and marked him; marked him for his own.

Life of Donne [1640]

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.

The Compleat Angler [1653–1655]. Epistle to the Reader

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.

The Compleat Angler. Epistle to the Reader

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.

The Compleat Angler. Epistle to the Reader

I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following discourse; and that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.

The Compleat Angler. Epistle to the Reader

You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it.⁴

The Compleat Angler, I, 1

I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, “That which is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.”

The Compleat Angler, I, 2

An honest ale-house where we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall.

The Compleat Angler, I, 2

I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning.

The Compleat Angler, I, 5

No man can lose what he never had.

The Compleat Angler, I, 5

Thus use your frog.… Put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills;… and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog’s leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and in so doing use him as though you loved him.

The Compleat Angler, I, 8

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy.

The Compleat Angler, I, 21

James Howell

c. 1594–1666

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Proverbs [1659]

Thomas Carew

c. 1595–c. 1639

Here lies a King that rul’d, as he thought fit

The universal monarchy of wit;

Here lies two flamens, and both those the best:

Apollo’s first, at last the true God’s priest.

An Elegy upon the Death of Dr. Donne [1633]

Ask me no more whither doth haste

The nightingale when May is past;

For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters and keeps warm her note.

Poems. To Celia, st. 3

Ask me no more if east or west

The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;

For unto you at last she flies,

And in your fragrant bosom dies.

Poems. To Celia, st. 5

Give me more love or more disdain;

The torrid or the frozen zone:

Bring equal ease unto my pain;

The temperate affords me none.

Poems. Mediocrity in Love Rejected, st. 1

The magic of a face.

Poems. Epitaph on the Lady S——

René Descartes

1596–1650

I suppose the body to be just a statue or a machine made of earth.¹

Treatise on Man [1633], paragraph 2

Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess.

Discourse on the Method [1637], pt. I

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

Discourse on the Method, I

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

Discourse on the Method, I

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

Discourse on the Method, I

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

Discourse on the Method, II

I think, therefore I am.²

Discourse on the Method, IV

I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.³

Meditations on First Philosophy [1641]. First Meditation

James Shirley

1596–1666

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.

The Lady of Pleasure [1635]

The reason why animals do not speak as we do is that they have no thoughts, not that they lack the organs.¹

Letter to the Marquess of Newcastle [November 23, 1646]

The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armor against fate;

Death lays his icy hand on kings.

Contention of Ajax and Ulysses [1659], sc. iii

Oliver Cromwell

1599–1658

A few honest men are better than numbers.

Letter to Sir W. Spring [September 1643]

The State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions. If they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies.

Before the battle of Marston Moor [July 2, 1644]

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.

Letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland [August 3, 1650]

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately.… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

To the Rump Parliament [April 20, 1653]

Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imaginary necessities… are the greatest cozenage that men can put upon the Providence of God, and make pretenses to break known rules by.

To Parliament [September 12, 1654]

I would have been glad to have lived under my woodside, and to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than to have undertaken this government.

To Parliament [1658]

Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.²

From HORACE WALPOLE, Anecdotes of Painting in England [1762–1771]

It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

Dying words

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

1600–1681

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.³

Life Is a Dream, act II, l. 1195

What surprises you, if a dream taught me this wisdom, and if I still fear I may wake up and find myself once more confined in prison? And even if this should not happen, merely to dream it is enough. For this I have come to know, that all human happiness finally ceases, like a dream.

Life Is a Dream, III, l. 1114

Pierre de Fermat

1601–1665

I have discovered a truly marvellous demonstration [of this general theorem⁴] which this margin is too narrow to contain.

Note [c. 1637] in his copy of CLAUDE BACHET [1581–1638], Arithmetic of Diophantus [1621]

Baltasar Gracián y Morales

1601–1658

Life is a warfare against the malice of others.⁵

The Art of Worldly Wisdom [1647]

Roger Williams

c. 1603–1683

There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges—that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.

Letter to the Town of Providence [January 1655]

Tokugawa Iemitsu

1604–1651

1. Japanese ships are strictly forbidden to leave for foreign countries.

2. No Japanese is permitted to go abroad. If there is anyone who attempts to do so secretly, he must be executed. The ship so involved must be impounded and its owner arrested, and the matter must be reported to the higher authority.

3. If any Japanese returns from overseas after residing there, he must be put to death.

Edict ordering the closing of Japan [1635]

Friedrich von Logau

1604–1655

Armed peace.

Poetic Aphorisms (Sinngedichten) [1654]

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.¹

Poetic Aphorisms. Retribution

Sir Thomas Browne

1605–1682

I dare, without usurpation, assume the honorable style of a Christian.

Religio Medici (The Religion of a Doctor) [1643], pt. I, sec. 1

For, indeed, heresies perish not with their authors; but, like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another.… For, as though there were a metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them.

Religio Medici, I, 1

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.

Religio Medici, I, 6

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Religio Medici, I, 6

As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine.

Religio Medici, I, 9

I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my Reason to an O altitudo!

Religio Medici, I, 9

Rich with the spoils of Nature.

Religio Medici, I, 13

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us: There is all Africa and her prodigies in us.

Religio Medici, I, 15

All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.²

Religio Medici, I, 16

Now this course of Nature God seldom alters or perverts, but like an excellent Artist hath so contrived his work, that with the self-same instrument, without a new creation he may effect his obscurest designs.

Religio Medici, I, 16

Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.

Religio Medici, I, 25

Not picked from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of mine own brain.

Religio Medici, I, 36

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof. ’Tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us, that our nearest friends, wife, and children, stand afraid and start at us.

Religio Medici, I, 40

How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities, is not faith, but mere philosophy.

Religio Medici, I, 48

The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in: I feel sometimes a hell within myself.

Religio Medici, I, 51

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

Religio Medici, I, 55

All places, all airs make unto me one country; I am in England, everywhere, and under any meridian.

Religio Medici, II, 1

But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

Religio Medici, II, 4

There is another man within me that’s angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me.

Religio Medici, II, 7

I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the World without this trivial and vulgar way of coition.

Religio Medici, II, 9

For the world, I count it not an inn, but a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in.

Religio Medici, II, 11

When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.¹

Vulgar Errors [1645]

Times before you, when even living men were antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world could not be properly said to go unto the greater number.

Urn-Burial; or, Hydriotaphia [1658]. Dedication

With rich flames, and hired tears, they solemnized their obsequies.

Urn-Burial, ch. 3

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.

Urn-Burial, 4

These dead bones have… quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests.

Urn-Burial, 5

Time which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.

Urn-Burial, 5

What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

Urn-Burial, 5

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

Urn-Burial, 5

The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.

Urn-Burial, 5

Oblivion is not to be hired: the greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man.

Urn-Burial, 5

The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox?

Urn-Burial, 5

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

Urn-Burial, 5

That unextinguishable laugh in heaven.

The Garden of Cyrus [1658], ch. 2

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and light but the shadow of God.

The Garden of Cyrus, 4

To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must end, and, as some conjecture, all shall awake again?

The Garden of Cyrus, 5

New discoveries of the earth discover new diseases.

A Letter to a Friend, Upon Occasion of the Death of his Intimate Friend [c. 1672]

Anne Bigot Cornuel

1605–1694

No man is a hero to his valet.²

Attributed

Pierre Corneille

1606–1684

To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.

Le Cid [1636], act II, sc. ii

And the combat ceased for want of combatants.

Le Cid, IV, iii

Do your duty, and leave the rest to heaven.

Horace [1639], act II, sc. viii

Who is all-powerful should fear everything.

Cinna [1640], act IV, sc. ii

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.

Le Menteur (The Liar) [1642], act I, sc. i

A service beyond all recompense

Weighs so heavy that it almost gives offense.

Suréna [1674], act III, sc. i

Edmund Waller

1606–1687

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse,

And every conqueror creates a muse.

Panegyric to My Lord Protector

That which her slender waist confin’d

Shall now my joyful temples bind;

No monarch but would give his crown

His arms might do what this has done.

On a Girdle [1664]

My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,

Did all within this circle move!

On a Girdle

        Go, lovely rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me

        That now she knows,

When I resemble her to thee,

How sweet and fair she seems to be.

Go, Lovely Rose [1664]

Poets lose half the praise they should have got,

Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

Upon Roscommon’s Translation of Horace, De Arte Poetica

The soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,

Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made;

Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become

As they draw near to their eternal home.

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,

That stand upon the threshold of the new.

On the Divine Poems [1686]

Thomas Fuller

1608–1661

He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.

The Holy State and the Profane State [1642]. The Good Husband

Light, God’s eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.

The Holy State and the Profane State. Of Building

Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

The Holy State and the Profane State. Of Books

Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate.… Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.

The Holy State and the Profane State. Of Marriage

Fame sometimes hath created something of nothing.

The Holy State and the Profane State. Of Fame

It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.

Pisgah Sight [1650], bk. II, ch. 2

John Milton

1608–1674

This is the month, and this the happy morn,

Wherein the Son of Heav’n’s eternal King,

Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring;

For so the holy sages once did sing,

That He our deadly forfeit should release,

And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity [1629], st. 1, l. 1

It was the winter wild

While the Heav’n-born child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. The Hymn, st. 1, l. 29

No war, or battle’s sound

Was heard the world around.

The idle spear and shield were high up hung.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. The Hymn, st. 4, l. 53

Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. The Hymn, st. 14, l. 135

The Oracles are dumb.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. The Hymn, st. 19, l. 173

What needs my Shakespeare for his honor’d bones,

The labor of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallow’d relics should be hid

Under a star-y-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?

On Shakespeare [1630]

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stol’n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year.

On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three [1631]

As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.

On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.

Arcades [1630–1634], l. 68

Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.

L’Allegro [1631], l. 1

So buxom, blithe, and debonair.

L’Allegro, l. 24

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee

Jest, and youthful jollity,

Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,

Nods and becks and wreathed smiles.

L’Allegro, l. 25

Sport, that wrinkled Care derides,

And Laughter, holding both his sides.

Come, and trip it, as you go,

On the light fantastic toe.

L’Allegro, l. 31

The mountain nymph, sweet liberty.

L’Allegro, l. 36

Mirth, admit me of thy crew,

To live with her, and live with thee,

In unreproved pleasures free.

L’Allegro, l. 38

While the cock with lively din

Scatters the rear of darkness thin,

And to the stack, or the barn door,

Stoutly struts his dames before,

Oft list’ning how the hounds and horn

Cheerly rouse the slumb’ring morn.

L’Allegro, l. 49

And every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the dale.

L’Allegro, l. 67

And the jocund rebecks sound

To many a youth, and many a maid,

Dancing in the checkered shade.

And young and old come forth to play

On a sunshine holiday.

L’Allegro, l. 94

Then to the spicy nut-brown ale.

L’Allegro, l. 100

Tower’d cities please us then,

And the busy hum of men.

L’Allegro, l. 117

        Ladies, whose bright eyes

Rain influence, and judge the prize.

L’Allegro, l. 121

And pomp, and feast, and revelry,

With mask, and antique pageantry,

Such sights as youthful poets dream

On summer eves by haunted stream.

Then to the well-trod stage anon,

If Jonson’s learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy’s child,

Warble his native wood-notes wild,

And ever, against eating cares,

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,

Married to immortal verse

Such as the meeting soul may pierce,

In notes with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out.

L’Allegro, l. 127

Such strains as would have won the ear

Of Pluto, to have quite set free

His half-regain’d Eurydice.

These delights, if thou canst give,

Mirth, with thee, I mean to live.

L’Allegro, l. 148

Hence vain deluding Joys,

The brood of Folly without father bred!

Il Penseroso [1631], l. 1

Hail divinest Melancholy.

Il Penseroso, l. 12

Sober, steadfast, and demure.

Il Penseroso, l. 32

And looks commercing with the skies,

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.

Il Penseroso, l. 39

Sweet bird, that shunn’st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

Il Penseroso, l. 61

        I walk unseen

On the dry smooth-shaven green,

To behold the wandering moon,

Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray

Through the heav’n’s wide pathless way,

And oft, as if her head she bow’d,

Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

Il Penseroso, l. 65

Oft, on a plat of rising ground,

I hear the far-off curfew sound

Over some wide-watered shore,

Swinging low with sullen roar.

Il Penseroso, l. 73

Where glowing embers through the room

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,

Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth.

Il Penseroso, l. 79

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy

In sceptered pall come sweeping by,

Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line,

Or the tale of Troy divine.

Il Penseroso, l. 97

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing

Such notes as, warbled to the string,

Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek.

Il Penseroso, l. 105

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

Il Penseroso, l. 120

And storied windows richly dight,

Casting a dim religious light.

There let the pealing organ blow,

To the full-voiced choir below,

In service high, and anthems clear

As may, with sweetness, through mine ear

Dissolve me into ecstasies,

And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.

Il Penseroso, l. 159

Before the starry threshold of Jove’s Court

My mansion is.

Comus [1634], l. 1

Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot

Which men call earth.

Comus, l. 5

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire

To lay their just hands on that golden key

That opes the palace of Eternity.

Comus, l. 12

What never yet was heard in tale or song,

From old or modern bard, in hall or bower.

Comus, l. 44

Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape

Crush’d the sweet poison of misused wine.

Comus, l. 46

These my sky-robes, spun out of Iris’ woof.

Comus, l. 83

Midnight shout and revelry,

Tipsy dance and jollity.

Comus, l. 103

What hath night to do with sleep?

Comus, l. 122

Come, knit hands, and beat the ground,

In a light fantastic round.

Comus, l. 143

        A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory,

Of calling shapes, and beck’ning shadows dire,

And airy tongues that syllable men’s names

On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.

Comus, l. 205

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv’st unseen

Within thy airy shell

By slow Meander’s margent green,

And in the violet-embroider’d vale.

Comus, l. 230

Such sober certainty of waking bliss.

Comus, l. 263

Virtue could see to do what Virtue would

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon

Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom’s self

Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,

Where, with her best nurse Contemplation,

She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings.

Comus, l. 373

Tis Chastity, my brother, Chastity:

She that has that, is clad in complete steel.

Comus, l. 420

How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo’s lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets

Where no crude surfeit reigns.

Comus, l. 476

Fill’d the air with barbarous dissonance.

Comus, l. 550

        I was all ear,

And took in strains that might create a soul

Under the ribs of Death.

Comus, l. 560

Beauty is Nature’s coin, must not be hoarded,

But must be current, and the good thereof

Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.

Comus, l. 739

Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair;

Listen for dear honor’s sake,

Goddess of the silver lake,

        Listen and save.

Comus, l. 859

But now my task is smoothly done:

I can fly, or I can run.

Comus, l. 1012

Love Virtue, she alone is free,

She can teach ye how to climb

Higher than the sphery chime;

Or, if Virtue feeble were,

Heav’n itself would stoop to her.

Comus, l. 1019

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more

Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,

And with forc’d fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

Lycidas [1637], l. 1

        He knew

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.

Lycidas, l. 10

Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse.

Lycidas, l. 18

Under the opening eyelids of the morn,

We drove afield; and both together heard

What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,

Batt’ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

Lycidas, l. 26

But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,

Now thou art gone and never must return!

Lycidas, l. 37

As killing as the canker to the rose.

Lycidas, l. 45

Alas! what boots it with incessant care

To tend the homely slighted shepherd’s trade,

And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?

Were it not better done as others use,

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble mind)¹

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorred shears,

And slits the thin-spun life.

Lycidas, l. 64

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

Lycidas, l. 78

Last came, and last did go,

The Pilot of the Galilean lake;

Two massy keys he bore of metals twain,

(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain).

Lycidas, l. 108

Blind mouths! That scarce themselves know how to hold

A sheep-hook.

Lycidas, l. 119

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,

But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:

Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw

Daily devours apace, and nothing said;

But that two-handed engine at the door

Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

Lycidas, l. 123

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide

Visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world.

Lycidas, l. 156

Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.

Lycidas, l. 163

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed;

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves.

Lycidas, l. 166

At last he rose, and twitch’d his mantle blue:

Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

Lycidas, l. 192

O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray

Warbl’st at eve, when all the woods are still.

Sonnet. To the Nightingale [c. 1637], l. 1

Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day.

Sonnet. To the Nightingale, l. 5

Where the bright seraphim in burning row

Their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow.

At a Solemn Music [c. 1637], l. 10

A poet soaring in the high region of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him.

The Reason of Church Government [1641], bk. II, introduction

By labor and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.

The Reason of Church Government, II, introduction

Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.

The Reason of Church Government, II, introduction

He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem.

Apology for Smectymnuus [1642]

Truth… never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth.¹

The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce [1643], introduction

Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.

The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, introduction

Litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees.

Tractate of Education [1644]

Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

Tractate of Education

In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out, and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.

Tractate of Education

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.

Areopagitica [1644]

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

Areopagitica

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

Areopagitica

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

Areopagitica

God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in His Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself: what does He then but reveal Himself to His servants, and as His manner is, first to His Englishmen?

Areopagitica

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.

Areopagitica

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Areopagitica

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

Areopagitica

Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.

Tetrachordon [1644–1645]

None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.

Tenure of Kings and Magistrates [1649]

No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free.

Tenure of Kings and Magistrates

        Peace hath her victories

No less renown’d than war.

To the Lord General Cromwell [1652]

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg’d with me useless.

On His Blindness [1652]

Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?

On His Blindness

        Who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o’er land and ocean without rest;

They also serve who only stand and wait.

On His Blindness

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones

Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold;

Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old

When all our fathers worshipp’d stocks and stones

Forget not.

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont [1655]

        Yet I argue not

Against Heav’n’s hand or will, nor bate one jot

Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer

Right onward.

To Cyriack Skinner, upon His Blindness [c. 1655]

Methought I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.

On His Deceased Wife [c. 1658]

But oh! as to embrace me she inclin’d,

I wak’d, she fled, and day brought back my night.

On His Deceased Wife

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden.

Paradise Lost [1667], bk. I, l. 1

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

Paradise Lost, l. 16

        What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support;

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 22

The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile,

Stirr’d up with envy and revenge, deceiv’d

The mother of mankind.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 34

        Him the Almighty Power

Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky

With hideous ruin and combustion down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

In adamantine chains and penal fire,

Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to arms.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 44

No light, but rather darkness visible.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 63

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 65

        What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 105

        To be weak is miserable,

Doing or suffering.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 157

And out of good still to find means of evil.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 165

The seat of desolation, void of light.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 181

A mind not to be chang’d by place or time.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 253

To reign is worth ambition though in hell:

Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 262

His spear, to equal which the tallest pine

Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast

Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,

He walk’d with, to support uneasy steps

Over the burning marle.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 292

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks

In Vallombrosa.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 302

Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!

Paradise Lost, I, l. 330

        Spirits, when they please,

Can either sex assume, or both.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 423

        When night

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 500

Th’ imperial ensign, which, full high advanc’d,

Shone like a meteor, streaming to the wind.¹

Paradise Lost, I, l. 536

Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:

At which the universal host up sent

A shout that tore hell’s concave, and beyond

Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 540

        Anon they move

In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood

Of flutes and soft recorders.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 549

        His form had yet not lost

All her original brightness, nor appear’d

Less than archangel ruin’d, and th’ excess

Of glory obscur’d.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 591

        The sun…

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and with fear of change

Perplexes monarchs.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 594

        Care

Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows

Of dauntless courage.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 601

Thrice he assay’d, and thrice, in spite of scorn,

Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 619

        Who overcomes

By force hath overcome but half his foe.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 648

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell

From heaven; for ev’n in heaven his looks and thoughts

Were always downward bent, admiring more

The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold,

Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed

In vision beatific.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 679

        Let none admire

That riches grow in hell; that soil may best

Deserve the precious bane.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 690

        From morn

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,

A summer’s day; and with the setting sun

Dropp’d from the zenith like a falling star.

Paradise Lost, I, l. 742

High on a throne of royal state, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,

Satan exalted sat, by merit rais’d

To that bad eminence; and from despair

Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires

Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue

Vain war with heav’n.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 1

        Moloch, scepter’d king,

Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit

That fought in heav’n; now fiercer by despair.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 44

        Rather than be less

Car’d not to be at all.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 47

My sentence is for open war.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 51

Which if not victory is yet revenge.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 105

But all was false and hollow; through his tongue

Dropp’d manna, and could make the worse appear

The better reason.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 112

        For who would lose,

Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

Those thoughts that wander through eternity,

To perish rather, swallow’d up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night,

Devoid of sense and motion?

Paradise Lost, II, l. 146

Unrespited, unpitied, unrepriev’d.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 185

        The never-ending flight

Of future days.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 221

Thus Belial with words cloth’d in reason’s garb

Counsel’d ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth,

Not peace.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 226

        With grave

Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem’d

A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven

Deliberation sat and public care;

And princely counsel in his face yet shone,

Majestic though in ruin.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 300

        To sit in darkness here

Hatching vain empires.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 377

The palpable obscure.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 406

        Long is the way

And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 432

Their rising all at once was as the sound

Of thunder heard remote.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 476

Others apart sat on a hill retir’d,

In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high

Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,

Fix’d fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

And found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 557

Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 565

        Arm th’ obdur’d breast

With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 568

Far off from these a slow and silent stream,

Lethe the river of oblivion rolls.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 582

At certain revolutions all the damn’d

Are brought: and feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 597

Whence and what art thou, execrable shape?

Paradise Lost, II, l. 681

Before mine eyes in opposition sits

Grim Death my son and foe.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 803

Hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,¹

Strive here for mast’ry.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 898

      Into this wild abyss,

The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,

Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,

But all these in their pregnant causes mixed

Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight,

Unless th’Almighty Maker them ordain

His dark materials to create more Worlds,

Into this wild abyss the wary fiend

Stood on the brink of Hell and look’d awhile,

Pondering his voyage.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 910

        To compare

Great things with small.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 921

With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

Confusion worse confounded.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 995

And fast by hanging in a golden chain,

This pendent world, in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

Paradise Lost, II, l. 1051

Hail, holy light! offspring of heav’n firstborn.²

Paradise Lost, III, l. 1

        Thus with the year

Seasons return; but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn,

Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

But cloud instead, and ever-during dark

Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men

Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair

Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature’s works to me expung’d and raz’d,

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

Paradise Lost, III, l. 40

See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,

With Joy and Love triumphing.

Paradise Lost, III, l. 337

Dark with excessive bright.

Paradise Lost, III, l. 380

Into a limbo large and broad, since called

The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.

Paradise Lost, III, l. 495

The hell within him.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 20

        At whose sight all the stars

Hide their diminish’d heads.¹

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 34

Me miserable! which way shall I fly

Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?

Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;

And in the lowest deep a lower deep,

Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide,

To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 73

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,

Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;

Evil, be thou my good.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 108

        And on the Tree of Life,

The middle tree and highest there that grew,

Sat like a cormorant.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 194

A heaven on earth.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 208

Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 256

        Not that fair field

Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers

Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis

Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain

To seek her through the world.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 268

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

Godlike erect, with native honor clad

In naked majesty seem’d lords of all.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 288

For contemplation he and valor form’d,

For softness she and sweet attractive grace;

He for God only, she for God in him.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 297

        Implied

Subjection, but requir’d with gentle sway,

And by her yielded, by him best receiv’d,

Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,

And sweet reluctant amorous delay.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 307

Adam the goodliest man of men since born

His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 323

Imparadis’d in one another’s arms.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 506

        Live while ye may,

Yet happy pair.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 533

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 598

        The wakeful nightingale,

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleas’d: now glow’d the firmament

With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,

Rising in clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen unveil’d her peerless light,

And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 602

With thee conversing I forget all time,

All seasons, and their change; all please alike.

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,

With charm of earliest birds.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 639

        Sweet the coming on

Of grateful ev’ning mild, then silent night

With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,

And these the gems of heaven, her starry train.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 646

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 677

        In naked beauty more adorn’d,

More lovely, than Pandora.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 713

        Eas’d the putting off

These troublesome disguises which we wear.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 739

Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source

Of human offspring.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 750

Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 800

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 830

        Abash’d the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

Virtue in her shape how lovely.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 846

All hell broke loose.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 918

Like Teneriff or Atlas unremoved.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 987

        The starry cope

Of heaven.

Paradise Lost, IV, l. 992

        His sleep

Was airy light from pure digestion bred.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 3

        My latest found,

Heaven’s last, best gift, my ever new delight!

Paradise Lost, V, l. 18

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 153

Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 165

A wilderness of sweets.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 294

So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste

She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 331

        Freely we serve,

Because we freely love, as in our will

To love or not; in this we stand or fall.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 538

        What if earth

Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein

Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?

Paradise Lost, V, l. 574

Hear all ye Angels, progeny of light,

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 600

Among the faithless, faithful only he.

Paradise Lost, V, l. 897

        Morn,

Wak’d by the circling hours, with rosy hand

Unbarr’d the gates of light.

Paradise Lost, VI, l. 2

Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought

The better fight, who single hast maintained

Against revolted multitudes the cause

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms.

Paradise Lost, VI, l. 29

He onward came; far off his coming shone.

Paradise Lost, VI, l. 768

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang’d

To hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days,

On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues;

In darkness, and with dangers compass’d round,

And solitude.

Paradise Lost, VII, l. 24

        Out of one man a race

Of men innumerable.

Paradise Lost, VII, l. 155

        There Leviathan

Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

Stretch’d like a promontory sleeps or swims,

And seems a moving land, and at his gills

Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.

Paradise Lost, VII, l. 412

The planets in their stations list’ning stood,

While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.

Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung,

Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in

The great Creator from his work return’d

Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world.

Paradise Lost, VII, l. 563

The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear

So charming left his voice that he awhile

Thought him still speaking, still stood fix’d to hear.

Paradise Lost, VIII, l. 1

Liquid lapse of murmuring streams.

Paradise Lost, VIII, l. 263

And feel that I am happier than I know.

Paradise Lost, VIII, l. 282

Her virtue and the conscience of her worth,

That would be woo’d, and not unsought be won.

Paradise Lost, VIII, l. 502

The sum of earthly bliss.

Paradise Lost, VIII, l. 522

        So absolute she seems

And in herself complete, so well to know

Her own, that what she wills to do or say,

Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.

Paradise Lost, VIII, l. 547

Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part;

Do thou but thine.

Paradise Lost, VIII, l. 561

My unpremeditated verse.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 24

        Unless an age too late, or cold

Climate, or years damp my intended wing.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 44

The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 86

For solitude sometimes is best society,

And short retirement urges sweet return.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 249

As one who long in populous city pent.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 445

God so commanded, and left that command

Sole daughter of his voice; the rest, we live

Law to ourselves, our reason is our law.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 652

        Her rash hand in evil hour

Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck’d, she eat:

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe

That all was lost.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 780

So dear I love him, that with him all deaths

I could endure, without him live no life.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 832

O fairest of creation! last and best

Of all God’s works! creature in whom excell’d

Whatever can to sight or thought be form’d,

Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!

How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,

Defac’d, deflower’d, and now to Death devote?

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 896

        I feel

The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,

Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state

Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 913

Our state cannot be sever’d; we are one,

One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

Paradise Lost, IX, l. 958

        I shall temper so

Justice with mercy.

Paradise Lost, X, l. 77

Pandemonium, city and proud seat

Of Lucifer.

Paradise Lost, X, l. 424

A dismal universal hiss, the sound

Of public scorn.

Paradise Lost, X, l. 508

Death… on his pale horse.

Paradise Lost, X, l. 588

Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,

And moon-struck madness.

Paradise Lost, XI, l. 485

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st

Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven.

Paradise Lost, XI, l. 553

A bevy of fair women.

Paradise Lost, XI, l. 582

        The evening star,

Love’s harbinger.

Paradise Lost, XI, l. 588

        For now I see

Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste.

Paradise Lost, XI, l. 783

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow

Through Eden took their solitary way.

Paradise Lost, XII, l. 646

        Most men admire

Virtue who follow not her lore.

Paradise Regained [1671], bk. I, l. 482

Skill’d to retire, and in retiring draw

Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets.

Paradise Regained, II, l. 161

        Beauty stands

In the admiration only of weak minds

Led captive.

Paradise Regained, II, l. 220

Of whom to be disprais’d were no small praise.

Paradise Regained, III, l. 56

Elephants endorsed with towers.

Paradise Regained, III, l. 329

Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreath’d.

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 76

        The childhood shows the man,

As morning shows the day.

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 220

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And eloquence.

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 240

        The olive grove of Academe,

Plato’s retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 244

        Socrates…

Whom well inspir’d the oracle pronounc’d

Wisest of men.

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 274

The first and wisest of them all professed

To know this only, that he nothing knew.¹

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 293

Deep vers’d in books and shallow in himself.

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 327

        Till morning fair

Came forth with pilgrim steps, in amice gray.

Paradise Regained, IV, l. 426

Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves.

Samson Agonistes [1671], l. 41

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

Samson Agonistes, l. 80

The sun to me is dark

And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.

Samson Agonistes, l. 86

To live a life half dead, a living death.

Samson Agonistes, l. 100

        Apt words have power to suage

The tumors of a troubled mind.

Samson Agonistes, l. 184

Just are the ways of God,

And justifiable to men;

Unless there be who think not God at all.

Samson Agonistes, l. 293

What boots it at one gate to make defense,

And at another to let in the foe?

Samson Agonistes, l. 560

My race of glory run, and race of shame,

And I shall shortly be with them at rest.

Samson Agonistes, l. 597

But who is this, what thing of sea or land?

Female of sex it seems,

That so bedeck’d, ornate, and gay,

Comes this way sailing

Like a stately ship

Of Tarsus, bound for th’ isles

Of Javan or Gadire,

With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,

Sails fill’d, and streamers waving,

Courted by all the winds that hold them play;

An amber scent of odorous perfume

Her harbinger?

Samson Agonistes, l. 710

Dalila: In argument with men a woman ever

Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause.

Samson: For want of words, no doubt, or lack of breath!

Samson Agonistes, l. 903

Fame, if not double-faced, is double-mouthed,

And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;

On both his wings, one black, the other white,

Bears greatest names in his wild airy flight.

Samson Agonistes, l. 971

Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,

After offense returning, to regain

Love once possess’d.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1003

Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end;

Not wedlock-treachery.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1008

Boast not of what thou would’st have done, but do

What then thou would’st.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1104

He’s gone; and who knows how he may report

Thy words by adding fuel to the flame?

Samson Agonistes, l. 1350

For evil news rides post, while good news baits.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1538

Suspense in news is torture.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1569

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,

Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,

And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1721

All is best, though we oft doubt,

What the unsearchable dispose

Of highest Wisdom brings about.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1745

Calm of mind, all passion spent.

Samson Agonistes, l. 1758

Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?

The History of England [1670], bk. IV

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon

1609–1674

He [Hampden] had a head to contrive, a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief.

History of the Rebellion [1702–1704], vol. III, bk. VII, sec. 84

Sir John Suckling

1609–1642

Why so pale and wan, fond lover?

Prithee, why so pale?

Will, when looking well can’t move her,

Looking ill prevail?

Aglaura [1638]. Song, st. 1

Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move,

This cannot take her.

If of herself she will not love,

Nothing can make her.

The devil take her!

Aglaura. Song, st. 3

I prithee send me back my heart,

Since I cannot have thine;

For if from yours you will not part,

Why then shouldst thou have mine?

Fragmenta Aurea [1646]. Song, st. 1

’Tis not the meat, but ’tis the appetite

Makes eating a delight.

Fragmenta Aurea. Of Thee, Kind Boy, st. 3

Out upon it, I have loved

Three whole days together;

And am like to love three more,

If it prove fair weather.

Fragmenta Aurea. A Poem with the Answer, st. 1

Asai Ryoi

c. 1612–1691

Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maples, singing songs, drinking wine and diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; caring not a whit for the poverty staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call ukiyo.¹

Tales of the Floating World [1661]

Anne Bradstreet

c. 1612–1672

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue

Who says my hand a needle better fits,

A poet’s pen all scorn I should thus wrong,

For such despite they cast on female wits:

If what I do prove well, it won’t advance,

They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance.

The Prologue [1650], l. 25

Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are.

The Prologue, l. 37

Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending.

Meditations Divine and Moral [1664], 3

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.

Meditations Divine and Moral, 12

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can.

To My Dear and Loving Husband [1678]

After a short time I changed my condition and was married, and came into this country, where I found a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it and joined the church at Boston.

To My Dear Children [1867]

Samuel Butler

1612–1680

When civil fury first grew high,

And men fell out they knew not why.

Hudibras, pt. I [1663], canto I, l. 1

He could distinguish and divide

A hair ’twixt south and southwest side,

On either which he would dispute,

Confute, change hands, and still confute.

Hudibras, pt. I, canto I, l. 67

For all a rhetorician’s rules

Teach nothing but to name his tools.

Hudibras, pt. I, canto I, l. 89

Such as do build their faith upon

The holy text of pike and gun.

Hudibras, pt. I, canto I, l. 195

And prove their doctrine orthodox,

By apostolic blows and knocks.

Hudibras, pt. I, canto I, l. 199

        I’ll make the fur

Fly ’bout the ears of the old cur.

Hudibras, pt. I, canto III, l. 277

I am not now in fortune’s power:

He that is down can fall no lower.

Hudibras, pt. I, canto III, l. 877

Oaths are but words, and words but wind.

Hudibras, pt. II, canto II, l. 107

He that imposes an oath makes it,

Not he that for convenience takes it;

Then how can any man be said

To break an oath he never made?

Hudibras, pt. II, canto II, l. 377

        As the ancients

Say wisely, have a care o’ th’ main chance,

And look before you ere you leap;

For as you sow, ye are like to reap.

Hudibras, pt. II, canto II, l. 501

He that complies against his will

Is of his own opinion still.

Hudibras, pt. III, canto III, l. 547

Neither have the hearts to stay,

Nor wit enough to run away.

Hudibras, pt. III, canto III, l. 569

Richard Crashaw

c. 1613–1649

The conscious water saw its God, and blushed.¹

Epigrammata Sacra [1634]. Aquae in Vinum Versae (Water Turned into Wine)

Two went to pray? Oh, rather say

One went to brag, the other to pray.

Steps to the Temple [1648]. Two Went Up into the Temple to Pray

Whoe’er she be,

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me.

Steps to the Temple. Wishes to His Supposed Mistress, l. 1

Life that dares send

A challenge to his end,

And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!

Steps to the Temple. Wishes to His Supposed Mistress, l. 85

I would be married, but I’d have no wife,

I would be married to a single life.

Steps to the Temple. On Marriage

All those fair and flagrant things.

The Flaming Heart upon the Book of Saint Teresa [1652], l. 34

Love’s passives are his activ’st part.

The wounded is the wounding heart.

The Flaming Heart upon the Book of Saint Teresa, l. 73

O thou undaunted daughter of desires!

The Flaming Heart upon the Book of Saint Teresa, l. 93

Poor world (said I) what wilt thou do

To entertain this starry stranger?

Is this the best thou canst bestow?

A cold, and not too cleanly, manger?

Contend, ye powers of heav’n and earth,

To fit a bed for this huge birth.

Hymn of the Nativity [1652], st. 6

Proud world, said I, cease your contest,

And let the mighty babe alone.

The phoenix builds the phoenix’ nest.

Love’s architecture is his own.

The babe whose birth embraves this morn,

Made his own bed ere he was born.

Hymn of the Nativity, st. 7

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span.

Hymn of the Nativity, Full Chorus

François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

1613–1680

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.

Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims [1678], maxim 2

We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.

Reflections, maxim 19

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

Reflections, maxim 22

We need greater virtues to sustain good fortune than bad.

Reflections, maxim 25

If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.

Reflections, maxim 31

Self-interest speaks all sorts of tongues, and plays all sorts of roles, even that of disinterestedness.

Reflections, maxim 39

To succeed in the world, we do everything we can to appear successful.

Reflections, maxim 56

There is no disguise which can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.

Reflections, maxim 70

There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.

Reflections, maxim 71

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

Reflections, maxim 76

The love of justice in most men is simply the fear of suffering injustice.

Reflections, maxim 78

Silence is the best tactic for him who distrusts himself.

Reflections, maxim 79

It is more ignominious to mistrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

Reflections, maxim 84

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

Reflections, maxim 89

Old people like to give good advice, as solace for no longer being able to provide bad examples.

Reflections, maxim 93

The mind is always the dupe of the heart.¹

Reflections, maxim 102

Nothing is given so profusely as advice.

Reflections, maxim 110

The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more clever than others.

Reflections, maxim 127

We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from other people.

Reflections, maxim 135

There are other people who would never have been in love if they had never heard love mentioned.

Reflections, maxim 136

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

Reflections, maxim 138

Usually we praise only to be praised.

Reflections, maxim 146

Our repentance is not so much regret for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us in consequence.

Reflections, maxim 180

Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks.

Reflections, maxim 209

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.

Reflections, maxim 218

We often annoy other people when we think we could not possibly annoy them.

Reflections, maxim 242

There is great skill in knowing how to conceal one’s skill.

Reflections, maxim 245

The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in that we arouse.

Reflections, maxim 259

We always like those who admire us; we do not always like those whom we admire.

Reflections, maxim 294

We frequently forgive those who bore us, but cannot forgive those whom we bore.

Reflections, maxim 304

Lovers never get tired of each other, because they are always talking about themselves.

Reflections, maxim 312

In jealousy there is more self-love than love.

Reflections, maxim 324

We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones.

Reflections, maxim 327

We pardon to the extent that we love.

Reflections, maxim 330

We rarely find that people have good sense unless they agree with us.¹

Reflections, maxim 347

Jealousy is always born together with love, but it does not always die when love dies.

Reflections, maxim 361

The veracity which increases with old age is not far from folly.

Reflections, maxim 416

Few people know how to be old.

Reflections, maxim 423

Nothing prevents our being natural so much as the desire to appear so.

Reflections, maxim 431

In their first passion women love their lovers, in the others they love love.

Reflections, maxim 471

In the misfortune of our best friends we often find something that is not displeasing.²

Reflections, maxim 583

Jeremy Taylor

1613–1667

Too quick a sense of constant infelicity.

Holy Dying [1651]

Every schoolboy knows it.

On the Real Presence [1654], sec. V, subsec. 1

The union of hands and hearts.

Sermons [1653], The Marriage Ring, pt. I

No man ever repented that he arose from the table sober, healthful, and with his wits about him.

Sermons, The Marriage Ring, I

Thomas Ady

fl. 1655

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

The bed be blest that I lie on.

Four angels to my bed,

Four angels round my head,³

One to watch, and one to pray,

And two to bear my soul away.

A Candle in the Dark [1655]

Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

1618–1693

God is usually on the side of the big squadrons and against the small ones.⁴

Letter to the Comte de Limoges [October 18, 1677]

Abraham Cowley

1618–1667

This only grant me, that my means may lie

Too low for envy, for contempt too high.

A Vote [1636]

Well then; I now do plainly see

This busy world and I shall ne’er agree;

The very honey of all earthly joy

Does of all meats the soonest cloy,

And they (methinks) deserve my pity,

Who for it can endure the stings,

The crowd, and buzz and murmurings,

Of this great hive, the city.

The Wish [1647]

Ah yet, ere I descend to the grave

May I a small house and large garden have;

And a few friends, and many books, both true,

Both wise, and both delightful too!

The Wish

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain,

And drinks, and gapes for drink again.

The plants suck in the earth, and are

With constant drinking fresh and fair.

Anacreon [1656], no. II, Drinking

A mighty pain to love it is,

And ’tis a pain that pain to miss;

But of all pains, the greatest pain

It is to love, but love in vain.

Anacreon, VII, Gold

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past,

But an eternal now does always last.

Davideis [1656], bk. I, l. 361

Life is an incurable disease.

To Dr. Scarborough [1656]

God the first garden made, and the first city.

The Garden [1664], essay 5

Richard Lovelace

1618–1658

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,

To war and arms I fly.

Lucasta [1649]. To Lucasta: Going to the Wars, st. 1

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Lov’d I not honor more.

Lucasta. To Lucasta: Going to the Wars, st. 3

When I lie tangled in her hair,

And fettered to her eye,

The gods that wanton in the air

Know no such liberty.

Lucasta. To Althea: From Prison, st. 1

Stone walls do not a prison make,¹

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty.

Lucasta. To Althea: From Prison, st. 4

If to be absent were to be

Away from thee;

Or that when I am gone,

You and I were alone;

Then, my Lucasta, might I crave

Pity from blust’ring wind, or swallowing wave.

Lucasta. To Lucasta: Going Beyond the Seas, st. 1

Ninon de L’Enclos

1620–1705

Old age is woman’s hell.²

Attributed

Jean de La Fontaine

1621–1695

We believe no evil till the evil’s done.

Fables, bk. I [1668], fable 8

We heed no instincts but our own.

Fables, I, 8

The opinion of the strongest is always the best.

Fables, I, 10

Better to suffer than to die: that is mankind’s motto.

Fables, I, 16

By the work one knows the workman.

Fables, I, 21

I bend but do not break.

Fables, I, 22

It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Fables, II [1668], 15

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.

Fables, III [1668], 1

People who make no noise are dangerous.

Fables, VIII [1678–1679], 23

He knows the universe, and himself he does not know.

Fables, VIII, 26

A hungry stomach cannot hear.³

Fables, IX [1678–1679], 17

Andrew Marvell

1621–1678

The inglorious arts of peace.

Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland [1650]

He¹ nothing common did or mean

Upon that memorable scene,

But with his keener eye

The axe’s edge did try.

Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland

So much one man can do,

That does both act and know.

Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

To His Coy Mistress [1650–1652]

        I would

Love you ten years before the Flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow.

To His Coy Mistress

But at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

To His Coy Mistress

        Then worms shall try

That long preserved virginity,

And your quaint honor turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

To His Coy Mistress

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

To His Coy Mistress

Annihilating all that’s made

To a green thought in a green shade.

The Garden [1650–1652]

Casting the body’s vest aside,

My soul into the boughs does glide.

The Garden

My love is of a birth as rare

As ’tis for object strange and high;

It was begotten by despair

Upon impossibility.

The Definition of Love [1650–1652], st. 1

As lines, so loves oblique, may well

Themselves in every angle greet;

But ours, so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind

But fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

The Definition of Love, st. 7, 8

As one put drunk into the packet-boat,

Tom May was hurried hence and did not know’t.

Tom May’s Death [c. 1650, published 1681]

Where the remote Bermudas ride,

In th’ ocean’s bosom unespied.

Bermudas [1657], l. 1

He hangs in shades the orange bright,

Like golden lamps in a green night.

Bermudas, l. 17

Molière [Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]

1622–1673

We die only once, and for such a long time!

Le Dépit Amoureux (The Amorous Quarrel) [1656], act V, sc. iii

There is no rampart that will hold out against malice.

Tartuffe [1664], act I, sc. i

Those whose conduct gives room for talk are always the first to attack their neighbors.

Tartuffe, I, i

She is laughing up her sleeve at you.

Tartuffe, I, vi

Cover that bosom that I must not see: souls are wounded by such things.²

Tartuffe, III, ii

Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man.

Tartuffe, III, iii

To create a public scandal is what’s wicked; to sin in private is not a sin.

Tartuffe, IV, v

On some preference esteem is based; to esteem everything is to esteem nothing.

Le Misanthrope [1666], act I, sc. i

He’s a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue.

Le Misanthrope, II, v

He makes his cook his merit, and the world visits his dinners and not him.

Le Misanthrope, II, v

The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.

Le Misanthrope, II, v

Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths.

Le Misanthrope, III, vii

Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.

Le Misanthrope, IV, i

I prefer an accommodating vice to an obstinate virtue.

Amphitryon [1666], act I, sc. iv

It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right.

George Dandin [1668], act I, sc. vi

You’ve asked for it, George Dandin, you’ve asked for it.¹

George Dandin, I, ix

Good Heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme [1670], act II, sc. iv

All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, II, iv

What the devil was he doing in that galley?²

Les Fourberies de Scapin (Scapin’s Deceits) [1671], act II, sc. xi

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.³

Les Femmes Savantes (The Learned Ladies) [1672], act II, sc. vi

A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.

Les Femmes Savantes, IV, iii

Ah, there are no longer any children!

Le Malade Imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid) [1673], act II, sc. xi

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses.

Le Malade Imaginaire, III, iii

Algernon Sidney

1622–1683

This hand, unfriendly to tyrants,

Seeks with the sword placid repose under liberty.⁴

Life and Memoirs of Algernon Sidney

Henry Vaughan

1622–1695

Happy those early days, when I

Shin’d in my angel-infancy!

Before I understood this place

Appointed for my second race.

Silex Scintillans (The Fiery Flint), pt. I [1650]. The Retreat, l. 1

But felt through all this fleshly dress

Bright shoots of everlastingness.

Silex Scintillans, I. The Retreat, l. 19

Some men a forward motion love,

But I by backward steps would move.

Silex Scintillans, I. The Retreat, l. 29

O joys! Infinite sweetness! with what flowers

And shoots of glory, my soul breaks, and buds!

Silex Scintillans, I. The Morning-Watch, l. 1

        Prayer is

    The world in tune,

    A spirit-voice,

    And vocal joys,

Whose echo is heaven’s bliss.

    O let me climb

When I lie down!

Silex Scintillans, I. The Morning-Watch, l. 18

I saw Eternity the other night

Like a great ring of pure and endless light.

    All calm, as it was bright;

And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,

    Driv’n by the spheres

Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world

    And all her train were hurl’d.

Silex Scintillans, I. The World

My soul, there is a country

Far beyond the stars

Where stands a winged sentry

All skillful in the wars:

There, above noise and danger,

Sweet Peace is crown’d with smiles,

And One born in a manger

Commands the beauteous files.

Silex Scintillans, I. Peace, st. 1

They are all gone into the world of light!

And I alone sit lingering here;

Their very memory is fair and bright,

And my sad thoughts doth clear.

Silex Scintillans, pt. II [1655]. They Are All Gone, st. 1

I see them walking in an air of glory

Whose light doth trample on my days,

My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,

Mere glimmering and decays.

Silex Scintillans, II. They Are All Gone, st. 3

Dear, beauteous death, the jewel of the just!

Shining nowhere but in the dark;

What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,

Could man outlook that mark!

Silex Scintillans, II. They Are All Gone, st. 5

There is in God, some say,

A deep but dazzling darkness.

Silex Scintillans, II. The Night, l. 49

Blaise Pascal

1623–1662

Things are always at their best in their beginning.

Lettres Provinciales [1656–1657], no. 4

I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.¹

Lettres Provinciales, 16

True eloquence takes no heed of eloquence, true morality takes no heed of morality.

Pensées (Thoughts) [1670], no. 4

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

Pensées, 44

What is man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, everything in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.²

Pensées, 72

If the greatest philosopher in the world find himself upon a plank wider than actually necessary, but hanging over a precipice, his imagination will prevail, though his reason convince him of his safety. Many cannot bear the thought without a cold sweat.

Pensées, 82

I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Pensées, 101

The state of man: inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.³

Pensées, 127

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

Pensées, 139

Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.

Pensées, 162

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.⁴

Pensées, 206

The last act is bloody, no matter how happy the rest of the play.

Pensées, 210

We shall die alone.⁵

Pensées, 211

“God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?… If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

Pensées, 233

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.⁶

Pensées, 277

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.

Pensées, 282

Justice without strength is helpless, strength without justice is tyrannical.… Unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just.

Pensées, 298

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.⁷

Pensées, 347

Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.⁸

Pensées, 358

Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.

Pensées, 408

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

Pensées, 414

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.¹

Pensées, 430

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.

Pensées, 434

Self is hateful.²

Pensées, 455

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

Pensées, 556

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Pensées, 894

“The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” not of philosophers and scholars.

Writing found in Pascal’s effects after his death

George Fox³

1624–1691

Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.

To Friends in the Ministry [1656]. Statement from Jail

The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people’s hearts… his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.

Journal [1694]

When the Lord sent me forth into the world, He forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low.

Journal

[It was] Justice Bennet of Derby, who was the first that called us Quakers, because we bid them tremble at the word of the Lord. This was in the year 1650.

Journal

He [Oliver Cromwell] said: “I see there is a people risen and come up that I cannot win either with gifts, honors, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.”

Journal

Thomas Sydenham

1624–1689

Fever itself is Nature’s instrument.

Medical Observations⁴ [1676], ch. 5

John Aubrey

1626–1697

I have heard him [William Harvey] say, that after his book of the circulation of the blood came out, that he fell mightily in his practice, and that ’twas believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained; and all the physicians were against his opinion.

Brief Lives [1690]. William Harvey

He [Thomas Hobbes] had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have known no more than other men.

Brief Lives. Thomas Hobbes

He [John Milton] was so fair that they called him the Lady of Christ’s College.

Brief Lives. John Milton

Mr. William Shakespeare was born at Stratford upon Avon in the County of Warwick. His father was a butcher, and I have been told heretofore by some of the neighbors, that when he was a boy he exercised his father’s trade, but when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style and make a speech.

Brief Lives. William Shakespeare

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné

1626–1696

True friendship is never serene.

Letter to Madame de Grignan [September 10, 1671]

Robert Boyle

1627–1691

I am not ambitious to appear a man of letters: I could be content the world should think I had scarce looked upon any other book than that of nature.

The Philosophical Works of Robert Boyle [1738], vol. I, preliminary discourse

John Ray

1627–1705

In a calm sea every man is a pilot.

English Proverbs [1670]

If wishes were horses, beggars might ride.

English Proverbs

Blood is thicker than water.

English Proverbs

Misery loves company.

English Proverbs

John Bunyan

1628–1688

Some said, “John, print it”; others said, “Not so.”

Some said, “It might do good”; others said, “No.”

The Pilgrim’s Progress [1678]. Apology for His Book

As I walked through the wilderness of this world.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, pt. I

I saw a man clothed with rags… a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

The name of the slough was Despond.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

Every fat [vat] must stand upon his bottom.¹

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

The gentleman’s name was Mr. Worldly-Wise-Man.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

I will talk of things heavenly, or things earthly; things moral, or things evangelical; things sacred, or things profane; things past, or things to come; things foreign, or things at home; things more essential, or things circumstantial.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

It beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where ’tis kept is lighter than vanity.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

Hanging is too good for him, said Mr. Cruelty.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

My great-grandfather was but a water-man, looking one way, and rowing another.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

A castle called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

They came to the Delectable Mountains.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

So I awoke, and behold it was a dream.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, I

A man that could look no way but downwards with a muckrake in his hand.²

The Pilgrim’s Progress, pt. II

He that is down, needs fear no fall,

He that is low, no pride.

The Pilgrim’s Progress. Shepherd Boy’s Song

Who would true valor see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather.

There’s no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avow’d intent

    To be a pilgrim.

The Pilgrim’s Progress. Shepherd Boy’s Song

My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me, that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.

The Pilgrim’s Progress. Shepherd Boy’s Song

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham

1628–1687

Ay, now the plot thickens very much upon us.

The Rehearsal [written 1663, performed 1671], act III, sc. ii

Charles II

1630–1685

Let not poor Nelly starve.

On his deathbed. From GILBERT BURNET [1643–1715], The History of My Own Times [1724–1734], vol. I, bk. 2, ch. 17

He had been, he said, an unconscionable time dying; he hoped that they would excuse it.

From THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, History of England [1849], vol. I, ch. 4

Richard Cumberland

1631–1718

It is better to wear out than to rust out.

From BISHOP GEORGE HORNE [1730–1792], Sermon on the Duty of Contending for the Truth [1786]

John Dryden

1631–1700

He [Shakespeare] was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.

Essay of Dramatic Poesy [1668]

He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.

Essay of Dramatic Poesy

Pains of love be sweeter far

Than all other pleasures are.

Tyrannic Love [1669], act IV, sc. i

I am as free as Nature first made man,

Ere the base laws of servitude began,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

The Conquest of Granada [1669–1670], pt. I, act I, sc. i

When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat;

Yet, fool’d with hope, men favor the deceit;

Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay.

Tomorrow’s falser than the former day.

Aureng-Zebe, IV, i

Your Cleopatra; Dolabella’s Cleopatra; every man’s Cleopatra.

All for Love [1678], act IV, i

In pious times, ere priestcraft did begin,

Before polygamy was made a sin.

Absalom and Achitophel, pt. I [1680], l. 1

Whate’er he did was done with so much ease,

In him alone, ’twas natural to please.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 27

Of these the false Achitophel was first,

A name to all succeeding ages curs’d.

For close designs and crooked counsels fit,

Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,

Restless, unfix’d in principles and place,

In power unpleas’d, impatient of disgrace;

A fiery soul, which working out its way,

Fretted the pygmy-body to decay:

And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay.

A daring pilot in extremity;

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high

He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit,

Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.¹

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 150

Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 168

In friendship false, implacable in hate,

Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 173

All empire is no more than power in trust.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 411

Better one suffer, than a nation grieve.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 416

Who think too little, and who talk too much.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 534

A man so various that he seem’d to be

Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;

Was everything by starts, and nothing long:

But, in the course of one revolving moon,

Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 545

Nor is the people’s judgment always true:

The most may err as grossly as the few.

Absalom and Achitophel, I, l. 781

Made still a blund’ring kind of melody;

Spurr’d boldly on, and dash’d through thick and thin,

Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.

Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,

And in one word, heroically mad.

Absalom and Achitophel,² pt. II [1682], l. 413

For every inch that is not fool is rogue.

Absalom and Achitophel, pt. II, l. 463

        There is a pleasure sure

In being mad which none but madmen know.³

The Spanish Friar [1681], act II, sc. i

    Dead men tell no tales.⁴

The Spanish Friar, IV, ii

All human things are subject to decay,

And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

Mac Flecknoe [1682], l. 1

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,

But Shadwell⁵ never deviates into sense.

Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,

Strike through and make a lucid interval;

But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray,

His rising fogs prevail upon the day.

Mac Flecknoe, l. 19

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

Mac Flecknoe, l. 208

        Wit will shine

Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

To the Memory of Mr. Oldham [1684], l. 15

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own;

He who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv’d today.

Imitation of Horace, bk. III, ode 29 [1685], l. 65

Not heaven itself upon the past has power;

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Imitation of Horace, III, 29, l. 71

O gracious God! how far have we

Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!

To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew, l. 56

Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.

To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killegrew, l. 70

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,

In order to their stations leap,

    And Music’s power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

    This universal frame began:

    From harmony to harmony

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,

The diapason closing full in Man.

A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, 1687, st. 1

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, st. 2

The trumpet’s loud clangor

    Excites us to arms.

A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, st. 3

The soft complaining flute,

    In dying notes, discovers

    The woes of hopeless lovers.

A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, st. 4

The trumpet shall be heard on high

The dead shall live, the living die,

And Music shall untune the sky!

A Song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, Grand Chorus

Of all the tyrannies on human kind

The worst is that which persecutes the mind.

The Hind and the Panther [1687], pt. I, l. 239

Much malice mingled with a little wit.

The Hind and the Panther, III, l. 1

For present joys are more to flesh and blood

Than a dull prospect of a distant good.

The Hind and the Panther, III, l. 364

T’ abhor the makers, and their laws approve,

Is to hate traitors and the treason love.

The Hind and the Panther, III, l. 706

Three poets, in three distant ages born,

Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.

The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d;

The next, in majesty; in both the last.

The force of Nature could no further go.

To make a third, she joined the former two.

Under Mr. Milton’s Picture [1688]

This is the porcelain clay of humankind.¹

Don Sebastian [1690], act I, sc. i

A knockdown argument: ’tis but a word and a blow.

Amphitryon [1690], act I, sc. i

Whistling to keep myself from being afraid.²

Amphitryon, III, i

Genius must be born, and never can be taught.

Epistle to Congreve, l. 60

Arms, and the man I sing,³ who, forced by fate,

And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate.

Virgil, Aeneid [1697], bk. I, l. 1

None but the brave deserves the fair.

Alexander’s Feast [1697], l. 15

Sound the trumpets; beat the drums…

Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes.

Alexander’s Feast, l. 50

    Rich the treasure,

    Sweet the pleasure—

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Alexander’s Feast, l. 58

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,

Fallen from his high estate,

And welt’ring in his blood;

Deserted, at his utmost need,

By those his former bounty fed,

On the bare earth expos’d he lies,

With not a friend to close his eyes.

Alexander’s Feast, l. 77

All, all of a piece throughout:

Thy chase had a beast in view;

Thy wars brought nothing about;

Thy lovers were all untrue.

’Tis well an old age is out,

And time to begin a new.

The Secular Masque [1700], l. 96

[Of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:] Here is God’s plenty.

Fables Ancient and Modern [1700], preface

For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.

Fables Ancient and Modern. The Cock and the Fox, l. 452

She hugg’d the offender, and forgave the offense:

Sex to the last.¹

Fables Ancient and Modern. Cymon and Iphigenia, l. 367

Here lies my wife: here let her lie!

Now she’s at rest, and so am I.

Epitaph intended for his wife

William Stoughton

1631–1701

God hath sifted a nation that he might send choice grain into this wilderness.²

Election sermon at Boston [April 29, 1669]

Anton van Leeuwenhoek

1632–1723

We cannot in any better manner glorify the Lord and Creator of the universe than that in all things, how small soever they appear to our naked eyes, but which have yet received the gift of life and power of increase, we contemplate the display of his omnificence and perfections with the utmost admiration.

The Select Works of Anthony van Leeuwenhoek³ [1798]

John Locke

1632–1704

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

Essay Concerning Human Understanding [1690], dedicatory epistle

No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, bk. II, ch. 1, sec. 19

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of truth.

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 7, 11

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, 20, 17

This law of reason makes the deer the Indian’s who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before it was the common right of everyone.

Second Treatise of Civil Government [1690], sec. 30

In the beginning, all the world was America.

Second Treatise of Civil Government, sec. 49

Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

Second Treatise of Civil Government, 202

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693], sec. 1

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.⁴

Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 54

He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 65

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 88

Benedict [or Baruch] Spinoza⁵

1632–1677

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Theological-Political Treatise [1670]

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Ethics¹ [1677], pt. I, proposition 15: note

God and all the attributes of God are eternal.

Ethics, I, proposition 19

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Ethics, I, proposition 36

All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that God himself directs all things to some certain end; for they say that God has made all things for man, and man that he might worship God.

Ethics, I, appendix

He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.

Ethics, II, proposition 42: proof

Will and Intellect are one and the same thing.

Ethics, II, proposition 49: corollary

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

Ethics, III, proposition 2: note

Pride is therefore pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

Ethics, III, proposition 26: note

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

Ethics, III, proposition 30: note

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

Ethics, III, proposition 51: note

It therefore comes to pass that everyone is fond of relating his own exploits and displaying the strength both of his body and his mind, and that men are on this account a nuisance one to the other.

Ethics, III, proposition 54: note

I refer those actions which work out the good of the agent to courage, and those which work out the good of others to nobility. Therefore temperance, sobriety, and presence of mind in danger, etc., are species of courage; but modesty, clemency, etc., are species of nobility.

Ethics, III, proposition 59: note

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

Ethics, III, definition 13: explanation

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

Ethics, III, definition 29: explanation

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Ethics, IV: preface

Man is a social animal.

Ethics, IV, proposition 35: note

Men will find that they can prepare with mutual aid far more easily what they need, and avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides, by united forces.

Ethics, IV, proposition 35: note

Avarice, ambition, lust, etc., are nothing but species of madness.²

Ethics, IV, proposition 44: note

He whose honor depends on the opinion of the mob must day by day strive with the greatest anxiety, act and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the mob is varied and inconstant, and therefore if a reputation is not carefully preserved it dies quickly.

Ethics, IV, proposition 58: note

A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.

Ethics, IV, proposition 67

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man.… Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Ethics, IV, appendix, 17

We feel and know that we are eternal.

Ethics, V, proposition 23: note

All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.

Ethics, V, proposition 42: note

The things which… are esteemed as the greatest good of all… can be reduced to these three headings: to wit, Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other good.

Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (On the Improvement of Understanding) [1677], ch. I, sec. 3

Sir Christopher Wren³

1632–1723

Si monumentum requiris circumspice [If you would see the man’s monument, look around].

Inscription in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Written by Wren’s son

Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon

c. 1633–1685

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

Essay on Translated Verse [1684], l. 96

Samuel Pepys

1633–1703

And so to bed.

Diary, July 22, 1660, passim

I am unwilling to mix my fortune with him that is going down the wind.

Diary, September 6, 1660

I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition.

Diary, October 13, 1660

A good honest and painful sermon.

Diary, March 17, 1661

Though he be a fool, yet he keeps much company, and will tell all he sees or hears, and so a man may understand what the common talk of the town is.

Diary, September 2, 1661

My wife, poor wretch.

Diary, September 18, 1661, passim

Thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.

Diary, January 26, 1662

As happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me.

Diary, October 31, 1662

But Lord! how everybody’s looks, and discourse in the street, is of death, and nothing else; and few people going up and down, that the town is like a place distressed and forsaken.¹

Diary, August 30, 1665

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.

Diary, November 9, 1665

Saw a wedding in the church… and strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.

Diary, December 25, 1665

Musick and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.

Diary, March 9, 1666

Home, and, being washing-day, dined upon cold meat.

Diary, April 4, 1666

Musick is the thing of the world that I love most.

Diary, July 30, 1666

This day I am, by the blessing of God, 34 years old, in very good health and mind’s content, and in condition of estate much beyond whatever my friends could expect of a child of theirs, this day 34 years. The Lord’s name be praised! and may I be ever thankful for it.

Diary, February 23, 1667

But it is pretty to see what money will do.

Diary, March 21, 1667

But to think of the clatter they make with his coach, and his own fine clothes, and yet how meanly they live within doors, and nastily, and borrowing everything of neighbors.

Diary, April 1, 1667

I find my wife hath something in her gizzard, that only waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up; but I will not, for my content-sake, give it.

Diary, June 17, 1668

In appearance, at least, he being on all occasions glad to be at friendship with me, though we hate one another, and know it on both sides.

Diary, September 22, 1668

I do hate to be unquiet at home.

Diary, January 21, 1669

And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!

Diary, May 31, 1669 (final entry)

George Savile, first Marquess of Halifax

1633–1695

Anger is never without an Argument, but seldom with a good one.

Moral Thoughts and Reflections [1750]. Of Anger

Robert Hooke

1635–1703

The truth is, the science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the brain and the fancy: It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of observations on material and obvious things.

Micrographia [1665]

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

1636–1711

Happy who in his verse can gently steer

From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.

The Art of Poetry¹ [1674], canto I, l. 75

Whate’er is well conceived is clearly said,

And the words to say it flow with ease.

The Art of Poetry, I, l. 153

In spite of every sage whom Greece can show,

Unerring wisdom never dwelt below;

Folly in all of every age we see,

The only difference lies in the degree.

Satire 4, l. 37

Thomas Ken

1637–1711

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!

Praise Him, all creatures here below!

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host!

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!

Doxology [1709]

Mary Rowlandson

c. 1637–c. 1710/1711

The portion of some is to have their Affliction by drops, now one drop and then another; but the dregs of the Cup, the wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare to be my portion.

A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson [1682]

Thomas Traherne

c. 1637–1674

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world.

Centuries of Meditations [1908], century I, sec. 29

The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.

Centuries of Meditations, III, 3

How like an angel came I down!

Wonder [1910], st. 1

        I within did flow

With seas of life like wine.

Wonder, st. 3

Louis XIV

1638–1715

I am the state.²

Attributed remark before the parliament in 1651

Has God forgotten all I have done for him?³

Attributed remark upon hearing the news of the French defeat at Malplaquet [1709]

I almost had to wait.⁴

Attributed remark when a coach he had ordered arrived just in time

Jean Racine

1639–1699

I loved him too much not to hate him at all!

Andromaque [1667], act II

You are Emperor, my lord, and yet you weep?

Bérénice [1670], act IV, sc. v

My only hope lies in my despair.

Bajazet [1672], act I, sc. iv

It is no longer a passion hidden in my heart: it is Venus herself fastened to her prey.⁵

Phèdre [1677], act I, sc. iii

Innocence has nothing to dread.

Phèdre, III, vi

Crime like virtue has its degrees; and timid innocence was never known to blossom suddenly into extreme license.

Phèdre, IV, ii

To repair the irreparable ravages of time.

Athalie [1691], act II, sc. v

Aphra Behn

1640–1689

A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.

The Roundheads [1677]

Variety is the soul of pleasure.

The Rover, pt. II [1680], act I

Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.

The Lover’s Watch [1686]. Four O’Clock, General Conversation

Faith, sir, we are here today, and gone tomorrow.

The Lucky Chance [1686–1687], act IV

William Wycherley

1641–1715

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

The Country Wife [1675], act I, sc. i

Sir Isaac Newton

1642–1727

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.¹

Letter to Robert Hooke [February 5, 1675 / 1676]

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

Letter to Robert Hooke

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)² [1687], preface

Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

Principia Mathematica. Laws of Motion, I

The change of motion is proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.³

Principia Mathematica. Laws of Motion, II

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

Principia Mathematica. Laws of Motion, III

God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.

Optics [1704]

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

From DAVID BREWSTER [1781–1868], Memoirs of Newton [1855], vol. II, ch. 27

O Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done!

Said to a pet dog who knocked over a candle and set fire to his papers

Bashō [Matsuo Bashō]

1644–1694

The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers.… I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming.

The Narrow Road of Oku (Oku no Hosomichi)⁴

Such stillness—

The cries of the cicadas

Sink into the rocks.

The Narrow Road of Oku

Clear cascades!

Into the waves scatter

Blue pine needles.⁵

Conversations with Bashō

An old pond—

A frog leaping in—

The sound of water.⁶

Haiku

A rough sea!

Stretched out over Sado

The Milky Way.

Haiku

On a journey, ill,

And over fields all withered, dreams

Go wandering still.⁷

Haiku

William Penn

1644–1718

No Cross, No Crown.

Title of pamphlet [1669]

Any government is free to the people under it where the laws rule and the people are a party to the laws.

Frame of Government [1682]

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

Some Fruits of Solitude [1693]. Temper

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

Some Fruits of Solitude. Union of Friends

Men are generally more careful of the breed of their horses and dogs than of their children.

Some Fruits of Solitude. Right Marriage

It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.

Some Fruits of Solitude. Bearing

The public must and will be served.

Some Fruits of Solitude. A Public Life

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

Some Fruits of Solitude. Government

Edward Taylor

c. 1644–1729

Who spread its canopy? Or curtains spun?

Who in this bowling alley bowled the sun?

Poetical Works [published 1939]. God’s Determinations Touching His Elect, preface

Make me, O Lord, thy spinning-wheel complete.

Poetical Works. Housewifery

It’s food too fine for angels; yet come, take

And eat thy fill! It’s Heaven’s sugar cake.

Poetical Works. Sacramental Meditations, no. 8

My case is bad. Lord, be my advocate.

My sin is red: I’m under God’s arrest.

Poetical Works. Sacramental Meditations, 38

Jean de La Bruyère

1645–1696

We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.

Les Caractères [1688]. Des Ouvrages de l’Esprit (On Works of the Spirit)

Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well timed.

Les Caractères. Du Coeur (On the Heart)

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

Les Caractères. Du Coeur

To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.

Les Caractères. De la Société (On Society)

There are but three events in a man’s life: birth, life and death. He is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

Les Caractères. De l’Homme (On Man)

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

1647–1680

Here lies our sovereign lord the King,

Whose promise none relies on;

He never said a foolish thing,

Nor ever did a wise one.

Epitaph on Charles II¹

His scepter and his prick are of a length;

And she may sway the one who plays with th’ other

A Satyr on Charles II [c. 1673]

A merry monarch, scandalous and poor.

A Satyr on Charles II

Reason, which fifty times for one does err,

Reason, an ignis fatuus of the mind.

A Satire Against Mankind [1675], l. 11

Books bear him up a while, and make him try

To swim with bladders of philosophy.

A Satire Against Mankind, l. 20

Then talk not of inconstancy,

    False hearts, and broken vows;

If I, by miracle, can be

This livelong minute true to thee,

    Tis all that heaven allows.

Love and Life [1677]

There’s not a thing on earth that I can name,

So foolish, and so false, as common fame.

Did E’er This Saucy World [c. 1680]

William III, Prince of Orange

1650–1702

There is one certain means by which I can be sure never to see my country’s ruin: I will die in the last ditch.

From DAVID HUME, History of England [1754–1757], ch. 65

Juana Inés de la Cruz

1651–1695

Foolish men who accuse

a woman mindlessly—

you cannot even see

you cause what you abuse.

Las Redondillas (Quatrains),² st. 1

This thing you see, a bright-colored deceit,

displaying all the many charms of art,

with false syllogisms of tint and hue

is a cunning deception of the eye…

a fruitless enterprise, a great mistake,

a decrepit frenzy, and rightly viewed,

a corpse, some dust, a shadow, mere nothingness.

Sonnet 145 (on a portrait)¹

Since I first gained the use of reason my inclination towards learning has been so violent and strong that neither the scoldings of other people… nor my own reflections… have been able to stop me from following this natural impulse that God gave me. He alone must know why; and He knows too that I have begged Him to take away the light of my understanding, leaving only enough for me to keep His law, for anything else is excessive in a woman, according to some people, and others say it is even harmful.

Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz² [1691]

François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon

1651–1715

To be always ready for war, said Mentor, is the surest way to avoid it.

Télémaque [1699], bk. X

Nahum Tate

1652–1715

While shepherds watch’d their flocks by night,

All seated on the ground,

The angel of the Lord came down,

And glory shone around.

Christmas Hymn [1700], st. 1

Glad tidings of great joy I bring

To you and all mankind.

Christmas Hymn, st. 1

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

1653–1725

Art is something which lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.³

Quoted by HOZUMI IKAN [1692–1769] in Naniwa Miyage (The Puppet Stage) [1738]

Thomas Fuller

1654–1734

Craft must have clothes; but Truth loves to go naked.

Gnomologia [1732]

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun

1655–1716

If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.

Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind [1704]

John Dennis

1657–1734

They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!⁴

Remark

Daniel Defoe

1660–1731

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,

The Devil always builds a chapel there;

And ’twill be found, upon examination,

The latter has the largest congregation.

The True-Born Englishman [1701], pt. I, l. 1

From this amphibious ill-born mob began

That vain, ill-natur’d thing, an Englishman.

The True-Born Englishman, I, l. 132

And of all plagues with which mankind are curs’d,

Ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst.

The True-Born Englishman, II, l. 299

All men would be tyrants if they could.

The Kentish Petition [1712–1713]

He bid me [Robinson Crusoe] observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters.

Robinson Crusoe⁵ [1719]

One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand.

Robinson Crusoe

My man Friday.

Robinson Crusoe

Matthew Henry

1662–1714

Our creature comforts.

Commentaries [1708–1710], Psalm 37

To fish in troubled waters.

Commentaries, Psalm 60

Here is bread, which strengthens man’s heart, and therefore called the staff of life.¹

Commentaries, Psalm 104

None so blind as those that will not see.

Commentaries, Jeremiah 20

After a storm comes a calm.

Commentaries, Acts 9

All this and heaven too.

Life of Philip Henry [published 1809]

Thomas [Tom] Brown

1663–1704

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.

The reason why I cannot tell;

But this alone I know full well,

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.²

Written while a student at Christ Church, Oxford

Mary de la Rivière Manley

1663–1724

No time like the present.

The Lost Lover [1696], act IV, sc. i

Cotton Mather

1663–1728

I write the wonders of the Christian religion, flying from the depravations of Europe, to the American strand: and, assisted by the Holy Author of that religion, I do, with all conscience of truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth itself, report the wonderful displays of His infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness, wherewith his Divine Providence hath irradiated an Indian wilderness.

Magnalia Christi Americana (The Glorious Works of Christ in America) [1702], introduction

The New England Primer³

In Adam’s fall

We sinned all.

My book and heart

Must never part.

Xerxes did die,

And so must I.

Now I lay me down to sleep,⁴

I pray the Lord my soul to keep;

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Matthew Prior

1664–1721

The end must justify the means.

Hans Carvel [1700]

Be to her virtues very kind;

Be to her faults a little blind;

Let all her ways be unconfin’d;

And clap your padlock—on her mind!

An English Padlock [1707]

Cured yesterday of my disease,

I died last night of my physician.

The Remedy Worse than the Disease [1714]

Sir John Vanbrugh⁵

1664–1726

No man worth having is true to his wife, or can be true to his wife, or ever was, or ever will be so.

The Relapse [1697], act III, sc. ii

He laughs best who laughs last.¹

The Country House [1706], act II, sc. v

Much of a muchness.

The Provok’d Husband [1728] (completed by COLLEY CIBBER), act I, sc. i

John Pomfret

1667–1702

We live and learn, but not the wiser grow.²

Reason [1700], l. 112

Jonathan Swift

1667–1745

Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into the world, but there are ten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.

A Tale of a Tub [1704], dedication

Books, the children of the brain.

A Tale of a Tub, sec. 1

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

The Battle of the Books [1704]

Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.

The Battle of the Books

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind [1707]

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind

’Tis very warm weather when one’s in bed.

Journal to Stella [November 8, 1710]

The greatest liar hath his believers; and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and Truth comes limping after it.

The Examiner [November 9, 1710]

We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.

Journal to Stella [February 1, 1711]

I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.

Journal to Stella [May 17, 1711]

May my enemies live here [London] in summer!

Journal to Stella [August 27, 1711]

We were to do more business after dinner; but after dinner is after dinner—an old saying and a true, “much drinking, little thinking.”

Journal to Stella [February 26, 1712]

We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Thoughts on Various Subjects; from Miscellanies [1711]

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Thoughts on Various Subjects; from Miscellanies

It is pleasant to observe, how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this; this shall be famous to all posterity. Whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

Thoughts on Various Subjects; from Miscellanies

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

Thoughts on Various Subjects; from Miscellanies

Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.

Thoughts on Various Subjects; from Miscellanies

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.

Thoughts on Various Subjects; from Miscellanies

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

Thoughts on Various Subjects; from Miscellanies [1726]

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

Letter to a Young Clergyman [January 9, 1720]

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh [August 12, 1720]

He [the Emperor] is taller by almost the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.

Gulliver’s Travels [1726]. Voyage to Lilliput, ch. 2

All true believers shall break their eggs at the convenient end: and which is the convenient end, seems, in my humble opinion, to be left to every man’s conscience.

Gulliver’s Travels. Voyage to Lilliput, 4

I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

Gulliver’s Travels. Voyage to Brobdingnag, ch. 6

And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.¹

Gulliver’s Travels. Voyage to Brobdingnag, 7

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers.

Gulliver’s Travels. Voyage to Laputa, ch. 5

I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)

Gulliver’s Travels. Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, ch. 3

I told him… that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst.

Gulliver’s Travels. Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, 6

Behold his funeral appears,

Nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears,

Wont at such times each heart to pierce,

Attend the progress of his hearse.

And what of that? his friends may say,

He had those honors in his day.

True to his profit and his pride,

He made them weep before he died.

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General [1722], l. 17

A set of phrases learnt by rote;

A passion for a scarlet coat;

When at a play to laugh, or cry,

Yet cannot tell the reason why:

Never to hold her tongue a minute;

While all she prates has nothing in it.

The Furniture of a Woman’s Mind [1727]

Yet malice never was his aim;

He lash’d the vice but spar’d the name.

No individual could resent,

Where thousands equally were meant.

His satire points at no defect

But what all mortals may correct;

For he abhorr’d that senseless tribe

Who call it humor when they gibe.

Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift [1731], l. 459

So, naturalists observe, a flea

Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;

And these have smaller still to bite ’em;

And so proceed ad infinitum.

Thus every poet, in his kind,

Is bit by him that comes behind.

On Poetry. A Rhapsody [1733]

Conversation is but carving!

Give no more to every guest

Than he’s able to digest.

Give him always of the prime,

And but little at a time.

Carve to all but just enough,

Let them neither starve nor stuff,

And that you may have your due,

Let your neighbor carve for you.

Conversation

Under an oak, in stormy weather,

I joined this rogue and whore together;

And none but he who rules the thunder

Can put this rogue and whore asunder.

Marriage certificate.²

The sight of you is good for sore eyes.³

Polite Conversation [1738], dialogue 1

’Tis as cheap sitting as standing.

Polite Conversation, 1

I hate nobody: I am in charity with all the world.

Polite Conversation, 1

You were half seas over.

Polite Conversation, 1

She’s no chicken; she’s on the wrong side of thirty, if she be a day.

Polite Conversation, 1

She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.

Polite Conversation, 1

He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.

Polite Conversation, 2

That’s as well said, as if I had said it myself.

Polite Conversation, 2

Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

Polite Conversation, 2

She has more goodness in her little finger, than he has in his whole body.

Polite Conversation, 2

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

Polite Conversation, 2

May you live all the days of your life.

Polite Conversation, 2

I thought you and he had been hand-and-glove.

Polite Conversation, 2

She watches him, as a cat would watch a mouse.

Polite Conversation, 3

She pays him in his own coin.

Polite Conversation, 3

Hail, fellow, well met,

All dirty and wet:

Find out if you can,

Who’s master, who’s man.

My Lady’s Lamentation [1765], l. 171

I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.

From SIR WALTER SCOTT, Life of Swift [1814]

Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book [A Tale of a Tub].

From SIR WALTER SCOTT, Life of Swift

Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit [Where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no more].¹

Epitaph. Inscribed on Swift’s grave, Saint Patrick’s, Dublin

Alain René Lesage

1668–1747

It may be said that his wit shines at the expense of his memory.

Gil Blas [1715–1735], bk. III, ch. 11

Facts are stubborn things.

Gil Blas, X, 1

Giovanni Battista [Giambattista] Vico

1668–1744

The nature of things is nothing other than that they come into being at certain times and in certain ways. Wherever the same circumstances are present, the same phenomena arise and no others.

Scienza Nuova (New Science)² [1725]

In that dark night which shrouds from our eyes the most remote antiquity, a light appears which cannot lead us astray; I speak of this incontestable truth: the social world is certainly the work of man.

Scienza Nuova

Governments must be conformable to the nature of the governed; governments are even a result of that nature.

Scienza Nuova

William Congreve

1670–1729

Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.

The Old Bachelor [1693], act V, sc. viii

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

The Double Dealer [1694], epistle dedicatory

Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.

The Double Dealer, act I, sc. i

No mask like open truth to cover lies,

As to go naked is the best disguise.

The Double Dealer, V, iv

I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper.³

Love for Love [1695], act II, sc. v

O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell.

Love for Love, II, x

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,

To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

The Mourning Bride [1697], act I, sc. i

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

The Mourning Bride, III, viii

But say what you will, ’tis better to be left, than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old.

The Way of the World [1700], act II, sc. i

I nauseate walking; ’tis a country diversion, I loathe the country.

The Way of the World, IV, iv

Let us be very strange and well-bred: Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well-bred as if we were not married at all.

The Way of the World, IV, iv

If I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.

The Way of the World, IV, iv

Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants.

The Way of the World, IV, ix

O, she is the antidote to desire.

The Way of the World, IV, xiv

John Toland

1670–1722

All things are from the whole, and the whole is from all things.

Pantheisticon [1720]

Bernard Mandeville

1670–1733

Private Vices, Public Benefits.

The Fable of the Bees [1714]. Subtitle

Colley Cibber

1671–1757

Possession is eleven points in the law.

Woman’s Wit [1697], act I

Off with his head—so much for Buckingham.

Richard III (altered) [1700], act IV, sc. iii

Perish the thought!

Richard III (altered), V, v

This business will never hold water.

She Wou’d and She Wou’d Not [1703], act IV

Stolen sweets are best.¹

The Rival Fools [1709], act I

Joseph Addison

1672–1719

Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;

And, pleased th’ Almighty’s orders to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

The Campaign [1704]

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Tatler [1709–1711], no. 147

A clock that stands still is sure to point right once in twelve hours.

[The Spectator, no. 129, July 28, 1711]

The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue ethereal sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

Their great Original proclaim.

Ode [in The Spectator, no. 465, August 23, 1712]

Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The moon takes up the wondrous tale,

And nightly to the listening earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

While all the stars that round her burn,

And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,

And spread the truth from pole to pole.

Ode

’Tis not in mortals to command success,

But we’ll do more, Sempronius; we’ll deserve it.

Cato [1713], act I, sc. ii

The woman that deliberates is lost.²

Cato, IV, i

    What pity is it

That we can die but once to serve our country!

Cato, IV, iv

When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,

The post of honor is a private station.³

Cato, IV, iv

From hence, let fierce contending nations know

What dire effects from civil discord flow.

Cato, V, iv

Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.

The Spectator, no. 1 [March 1, 1711]

I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.

The Spectator, 10 [March 12, 1711]

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one’s self; and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

The Spectator, 15 [March 17, 1711]

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

The Spectator, 73 [May 24, 1711]

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts.

The Spectator, 93 [June 16, 1711]

Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer.

The Spectator, 124 [July 23, 1711]

A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

The Spectator, 291 [February 2, 1712]

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

The Spectator, 381 [May 17, 1712]

Our disputants put me in mind of the skuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till be becomes invisible.

The Spectator, 476 [September 5, 1712]

The fraternity of the henpecked.

The Spectator, 482 [September 12, 1712]

We are always doing, says he, something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us.

The Spectator, 583 [August 20, 1714]

See in what peace a Christian can die.

Dying words [1719]. From EDWARD YOUNG, Conjectures on Original Composition [1759]

Edmond Hoyle

1672–1769

When in doubt, win the trick.

Hoyle’s Games Improved¹ [1790], edited by CHARLES JONES

Sir Richard Steele

1672–1729

I am come to a tavern alone to eat a steak, after which I shall return to the office.

Letters to His Wife [October 28, 1707]

A little in drink, but at all times yr faithful husband.

Letters to His Wife [September 27, 1708]

When you fall into a man’s conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.

The Spectator, no. 49 [April 26, 1711]

François Goyot de Pitavals

1673–1743

Causes Célèbres.

Title of book recounting famous trials and judgments

Nicholas Rowe

1674–1718

Is this that haughty gallant, gay Lothario?

The Fair Penitent [1703], act V, sc. i

Isaac Watts

1674–1748

Were I so tall to reach the pole,

Or grasp the ocean with my span,

I must be measured by my soul;

The mind’s the standard of the man.

Horae Lyricae (Lyrical Hours) [1706], bk. II, False Greatness

Let dogs delight to bark and bite,

For God hath made them so.

Divine Songs [1715], no. 16, Against Quarreling and Fighting

How doth the little busy bee

Improve each shining hour,²

And gather honey all the day

From every opening flower!

Divine Songs, 20, Against Idleness and Mischief

For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do.

Divine Songs, 20, Against Idleness and Mischief

Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber,

Holy angels guard thy bed!

Heavenly blessings without number

Gently falling on thy head.

Divine Songs, 35, A Cradle Hymn

’Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,

“You have wak’d me too soon, I must slumber again.”

Divine Songs, 39, The Sluggard

O God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home.

Psalm 90 [1719], st. 1

A thousand ages in Thy sight

Are like an evening gone;

Short as the watch that ends the night

Before the rising sun.

Psalm 90, st. 4

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the opening day.

Psalm 90, st. 5

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;

Let earth receive her King.

Let ev’ry heart prepare Him room,

And heav’n and nature sing.

Psalm 98 [1719], st. 1

There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign;

Infinite day excludes the night,

And pleasures banish pain.

Hymns and Spiritual Songs, II, 66

Sir Robert Walpole

1676–1745

The balance of power.

Speech in the House of Commons [February 13, 1741]

All those men have their price.

From WILLIAM COXE [1747–1828], Memoirs of Walpole [1798], vol. IV

George Farquhar

1678–1707

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.

The Beaux’ Stratagem [1707], act I, sc. i

My Lady Bountiful.

The Beaux’ Stratagem, I, i

Thomas Parnell

1679–1718

My days have been so wondrous free,

The little birds that fly

With careless ease from tree to tree,

Were but as bless’d as I.

Song¹ [1714], st. 1

Let those love now who never loved before;

Let those who always loved, now love the more.

Translation of the Pervigilium Veneris

Edward Young

1683–1765

The love of praise, howe’er conceal’d by art,

Reigns more or less, and glows in ev’ry heart.

Love of Fame [1725–1728], satire I, l. 51

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote,

And think they grow immortal as they quote.

Love of Fame, I, l. 89

        Be wise with speed;

A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Love of Fame, II, l. 282

One to destroy, is murder by the law;

And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;

To murder thousands takes a specious name,

War’s glorious art, and gives immortal fame.

Love of Fame, VII, l. 55

In records that defy the tooth of time.

The Statesman’s Creed

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,

In rayless majesty, now stretches forth

Her leaden scepter o’er a slumbering world.

Night Thoughts. Night I, l. 18

Be wise today; ’tis madness to defer.

Night Thoughts. Night I, l. 390

Procrastination is the thief of time.

Night Thoughts. Night I, l. 393

At thirty, a man suspects himself a fool;

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;

At fifty chides his infamous delay,

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;

In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

Night Thoughts. Night I, l. 417

All men think all men mortal but themselves.

Night Thoughts. Night I, l. 424

Man wants but little, nor that little long.

Night Thoughts. Night IV, l. 118

George Berkeley

1685–1753

And what are these fluxions? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them ghosts of departed quantities?

The Analyst [1734], sec. 35

He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

Maxims Concerning Patriotism [1750], no. 20

Westward the course of empire takes its way;²

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day:

Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America [1752], st. 6

John Gay³

1685–1732

Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil

O’er books consumed the midnight oil?

Fables, pt. I [1727]. The Shepherd and the Philosopher

When we risk no contradiction,

It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction.

Fables, I. The Elephant and the Bookseller

Those who in quarrels interpose

Must often wipe a bloody nose.

Fables, I. The Mastiffs

I hate the man who builds his name

On ruins of another’s fame.

Fables, I. The Poet and the Rose

And when a lady’s in the case,

You know all other things give place.

Fables, I. The Hare and Many Friends

From wine what sudden friendship springs!

Fables, II [1738]. The Squire and His Cur

If with me you’d fondly stray.

Over the hills and far away.¹

The Beggar’s Opera [1728], act I, sc. xiii, air 16

Youth’s the season made for joys,

Love is then our duty.

The Beggar’s Opera, II, iv, air 22

Life is a jest; and all things show it.

I thought so once; but now I know it.

My Own Epitaph

Aaron Hill

1685–1750

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,

And it stings you for your pains;

Grasp it like a man of mettle,

And it soft as silk remains.

Verses Written on Windows. In a Journey to Scotland

Henry Carey

c. 1687–1743

Namby Pamby’s little rhymes,

Little jingle, little chimes.

Namby Pamby²

Of all the girls that are so smart,

There’s none like pretty Sally.

She is the darling of my heart,

And she lives in our alley.

Sally in Our Alley [1729], st. 1

God save our gracious king!

Long live our noble king!

God save the king!

God Save the King [c. 1740]

Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

1688–1763

In this world, you must be a bit too kind in order to be kind enough.

Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard (The Game of Love and Chance) [1730], act I, sc. ii

Alexander Pope

1688–1744

Happy the man whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air

In his own ground.

Ode on Solitude [c. 1700], st. 1

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,

Thus unlamented let me die,

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie.

Ode on Solitude, st. 5

Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call;

She comes unlook’d for, if she comes at all.

The Temple of Fame [1711], l. 513

’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

An Essay on Criticism [1711], pt. I, l. 9

Let such teach others who themselves excel,

And censure freely who have written well.

An Essay on Criticism, I, l. 15

Some are bewilder’d in the maze of schools,

And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.

An Essay on Criticism, I, l. 26

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,

Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

An Essay on Criticism, I, l. 179

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 15

True wit is nature to advantage dress’d,

What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 97

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 109

Such labored nothings, in so strange a style,

Amaze th’ unlearn’d, and make the learned smile.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 126

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 135

        As some to church repair,

Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

These equal syllables alone require,

Though oft the ear the open vowels tire;

While expletives their feeble aid do join,

And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 142

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

’Tis not enough no harshness gives offense;

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 162

At ev’ry trifle scorn to take offense.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 186

Some judge of authors’ names, not works, and then

Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 212

Some praise at morning what they blame at night,

But always think the last opinion right.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 230

To err is human, to forgive divine.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 325

All seems infected that th’ infected spy,

As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye.

An Essay on Criticism, II, l. 358

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

An Essay on Criticism, III, l. 65

But where’s the man who counsel can bestow,

Still pleas’d to teach, and yet not proud to know?

An Essay on Criticism, III, l. 71

What dire offense from amorous causes springs,

What mighty contests rise from trivial things!

The Rape of the Lock [1712], canto I, l. 1

If to her share some female errors fall,

Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all.

The Rape of the Lock, II, l. 17

Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,

And beauty draws us with a single hair.

The Rape of the Lock, II, l. 27

At every word a reputation dies.

The Rape of the Lock, III, l. 16

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,

And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

The Rape of the Lock, III, l. 21

Let spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were.

The Rape of the Lock, III, l. 46

But when to mischief mortals bend their will,

How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

The Rape of the Lock, III, l. 125

Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,

Here earth and water seem to strive again,

Not chaos-like together crush’d and bruis’d,

But, as the world, harmoniously confus’d:

Where order in variety we see,

And where, though all things differ, all agree.

Windsor Forest [1713], l. 11

Party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Letter to E. Blount [August 27, 1714]

The wrath of Peleus’ son, the direful spring

Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess sing!

Translation of the Iliad [1715], bk. I, l. 1

She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.

Translation of the Iliad, III, l. 208

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many wiles.

Translation of the Odyssey [1725–1756], bk. I, l. 1

True friendship’s laws are by this rule express’d,

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

Translation of the Odyssey, XV, l. 83

Dear, damn’d, distracting town, farewell!

Thy fools no more I’ll tease:

This year in peace, ye critics, dwell,

Ye harlots, sleep at ease!

A Farewell to London [1715], st. 1

Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell,

For sober, studious days!

A Farewell to London, st. 12

Oh name forever sad! forever dear!

Still breath’d in sighs, still usher’d with a tear.

Eloisa to Abelard [1717], l. 31

Now warm in love, now with’ring in my bloom,

Lost in a convent’s solitary gloom!

Eloisa to Abelard, l. 37

Every single character in Shakespeare is as much an individual as those in life itself; it is impossible to find any two alike; and such, as from their relation or affinity in any respect appear most to be twins, will, upon comparison, be found remarkably distinct.

Preface to The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare [1725], vol. 1

’Tis education forms the common mind:

Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclin’d.

Moral Essays [1731–1735]. Epistle I, To Lord Cobham [1734], l. 149

Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside,

A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.

Moral Essays. Epistle II, To Mrs. M. Blount, l. 71

Wise wretch! with pleasures too refin’d to please;

With too much spirit to be e’er at ease;

With too much quickness ever to be taught;

With too much thinking to have common thought.

You purchase pain with all that joy can give,

And die of nothing but a rage to live.

Moral Essays. Epistle II, To Mrs. M. Blount, l. 95

In men, we various ruling passions find;

In women, two almost divide the kind;

Those, only fix’d, they first or last obey,

The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.

Moral Essays. Epistle II, To Mrs. M. Blount, l. 207

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take;

But ev’ry woman is at heart a rake.

Moral Essays. Epistle II, To Mrs. M. Blount, l. 215

And mistress of herself, though china fall.

Moral Essays. Epistle II, To Mrs. M. Blount, l. 268

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

Moral Essays. Epistle II, To Mrs. M. Blount, l. 270

Who shall decide when doctors disagree?¹

Moral Essays. Epistle III, To Lord Bathurst [1732], l. 1

But thousands die, without or this or that,

Die, and endow a college, or a cat.

Moral Essays. Epistle III, To Lord Bathurst, l. 95

The ruling passion, be it what it will,

The ruling passion conquers reason still.

Moral Essays. Epistle III, To Lord Bathurst, l. 153

“Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed” was the ninth beatitude.

Letter to Fortescue [September 23, 1725]

You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come:

Knock as you please, there’s nobody at home.

Epigram: An Empty House [1727]

Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,

And make two lovers happy.

Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry [1728], ch. 11

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

Epitaph on Gay² [1732]

Awake, my St. John!³ leave all meaner things

To low ambition, and the pride of kings.

Let us, since life can little more supply

Than just to look about us, and to die,

Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;

A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

An Essay on Man [1733–1734], epistle I, l. 1

Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies,

And catch the manners living as they rise:

Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;

But vindicate the ways of God to man.

An Essay on Man, I, l. 13

Say first, of God above or man below,

What can we reason but from what we know?

An Essay on Man, I, l. 17

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,

And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.

An Essay on Man, I, l. 83

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

An Essay on Man, I, l. 87

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:

Man never is, but always to be blest.

An Essay on Man, I, l. 95

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

His soul proud Science never taught to stray

Far as the solar walk or milky way;

Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,

Behind the cloud-topp’d hill, an humbler heav’n.

An Essay on Man, I, l. 99

Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

An Essay on Man, I, l. 200

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

An Essay on Man, I, l. 267

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

An Essay on Man, I, l. 289

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.¹

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the skeptic side,

With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little or too much;

Chaos of thought and passion, all confus’d;

Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d;

The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

An Essay on Man, II, l. 1

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

An Essay on Man, II, l. 217

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law,

Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw:

Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite:

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,

And beads and prayer books are the toys of age!

Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before;

Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

An Essay on Man, II, l. 275

A wit’s a feather, and a chief a rod;

An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

An Essay on Man, IV, l. 247

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,

But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.

An Essay on Man, IV, l. 331

That true self-love and social are the same.

An Essay on Man, IV, l. 396

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu’d, I said;

Tie up the knocker! say I’m sick, I’m dead.

The Dog-star rages!

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot [1734]. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 1

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 127

This long disease, my life.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 132

Means not, but blunders round about a meaning;

And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad,

It is not poetry, but prose run mad.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 186

        Were there one whose fires

True Genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires,

Bless’d with each talent, and each art to please,

And born to write, converse, and live with ease;

Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,

Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne;

View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,

And hate for arts that caus’d himself to rise;

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;

Alike reserv’d to blame or to commend,

A tim’rous foe, and a suspicious friend;

Dreading e’en fools, by flatterers besieged,

And so obliging that he ne’er oblig’d;

Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,

And sit attentive to his own applause.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 193

Let Sporus tremble—“What? that thing of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 305

Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 309

And he himself one vile antithesis.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 325

Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 333

Unlearn’d, he knew no schoolman’s subtle art,

No language, but the language of the heart.

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to Imitations of Horace, l. 398

I cannot sleep a wink.

Imitations of Horace [1733–1738], satire I, bk. II, l. 12

Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet

To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet.

Imitations of Horace, I, II, l. 69

The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

Imitations of Horace, I, VI, l. 27

I’ve often wish’d that I had clear,

For life, six hundred pounds a year;

A handsome house to lodge a friend,

A river at my garden’s end,

A terrace walk, and half a rood

Of land set out to plant a wood.

Imitations of Horace, VI, II, l. 1

A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age.

Imitations of Horace, Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I, l. 41

Not to go back is somewhat to advance,

And men must walk, at least, before they dance.

Imitations of Horace, epistle I, bk. I, l. 53

In quibbles angel and archangel join,

And God the Father turns a school-divine.

Imitations of Horace, I, II, l. 101 (on Paradise Lost)

The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.

Imitations of Horace, I, II, l. 108

One simile that solitary shines

In the dry desert of a thousand lines.

Imitations of Horace, I, II, l. 111

We poets are (upon a poet’s word)

Of all mankind the creatures most absurd:

The season when to come, and when to go,

To sing, or cease to sing, we never know.

Imitations of Horace, I, II, l. 358

Vain was the chief’s, the sage’s pride!

They had no poet, and they died.¹

Imitations of Horace, odes, bk. IV, ode 9, st. 4

Father of all! in every age,

In every clime ador’d,

By saint, by savage, and by sage,

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

The Universal Prayer [1738], st. 1

And binding Nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.

The Universal Prayer, st. 3

I am his Highness’² dog at Kew;

Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

On the collar of a dog

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:

God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.

Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton

Whether thou choose Cervantes’ serious air,

Or laugh and shake in Rabelais’ easy chair.

The Dunciad [1728–1743], bk. I, l. 21

Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale,

Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,

And solid pudding against empty praise.

The Dunciad, I, l. 52

Next o’er his books his eyes began to roll,

In pleasing memory of all he stole.

The Dunciad, I, l. 127

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

The Dunciad, II, l. 44

Peel’d, patch’d, and piebald, linsey-woolsey brothers,

Grave mummers! sleeveless some, and shirtless others.

That once was Britain.

The Dunciad, III, l. 115

And proud his mistress’ orders to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

The Dunciad, III, l. 263

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

The Dunciad, IV, l. 90

The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong.

The Dunciad, IV, l. 188

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,

And unawares Morality expires.

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! thy dread empire Chaos! is restor’d:

Light dies before thy uncreating word;

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,

And universal darkness buries all.

The Dunciad, IV, l. 649

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

1689–1762

And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.

The Lover [1748]

Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;

In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet.

A Summary of Lord Lyttelton’s Advice to a Lady [1731–1733]

Satire should, like a polished razor keen,

Wound with a touch that’s scarcely felt or seen.

Verses to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace¹

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

Letter to her daughter [January 28, 1753]

I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent; but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising.

Letter to her daughter [February 19, 1753]

People wish their enemies dead—I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone!

Quoted by Horace Walpole, letter to William Mason [September 17, 1778]

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu²

1689–1755

A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.

Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters) [1721], no. 40

If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.

Lettres Persanes, 59

Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.

De l’Esprit des Lois (On the Spirit of Laws) [1748], bk. XI, ch. 3

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

De l’Esprit des Lois, XXIX, 16

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu [1899], vol. I

You have to study a great deal to know a little.

Pensées et Fragments, I

The ancient books are for authors; the new ones, for readers.

Pensées et Fragments, I

John Byrom

1692–1763

God bless the King, I mean the Faith’s Defender;

God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender;

But who Pretender is, or who is King,

God bless us all—that’s quite another thing.

Miscellaneous Poems [1773]. To an Officer in the Army, Extempore; Intended to Allay the Violence of Party Spirit

Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield

1694–1773

Measures not men.

Letters to His Son [published 1774] [March 6, 1742]

Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.

Letters to His Son [March 10, 1746]

The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.

Letters to His Son [October 4, 1746]

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

Letters to His Son [October 9, 1746]

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method that I know of pleasing.³

Letters to His Son [October 16, 1747]

Take the tone of the company that you are in.

Letters to His Son

I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow,⁴ who used frequently to say, “Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves.”

Letters to His Son [November 6, 1747]

Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.

Letters to His Son [January 29, 1748]

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one.

Letters to His Son [February 22, 1748]

Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value.

Letters to His Son [July 1, 1748]

Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.

Letters to His Son [May 22, 1749]

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.

Letters to His Son [July 20, 1749]

Style is the dress of thoughts.

Letters to His Son [November 24, 1749]

Dispatch is the soul of business.

Letters to His Son [February 5, 1750]

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Letters to His Son [November 1, 1750]

The chapter of knowledge is a very short, but the chapter of accidents is a very long one.

To Solomon Dayrolles [February 16, 1753]

I assisted at the birth of that most significant word “flirtation,” which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.

The World [December 5, 1754], no. 101

Unlike my subject will I frame my song,

It shall be witty, and it shan’t be long.

Epigram on (“Long”) Sir Thomas Robinson

Francis Hutcheson

1694–1746

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.¹

Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil [1720], sec. 3

François Quesnay

1694–1774

Laissez faire, laissez passer.²

Attributed

Voltaire [François Marie Arouet]

1694–1778

We know many truths; we have discovered many useful inventions. Let us console ourselves for not knowing possible connections between a spider and the ring of Saturn, and continue examining what is within our reach.

Letters Concerning the English Nation³ [1734]. Letter 25: On the Pensées of Pascal

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

Le Mondain

The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds.

Letter to Mlle. Quinault [August 16, 1738]

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

Sept Discours en Vers sur l’Homme (Seven Discourses on Man, in Verse) [1738]

Love truth, but pardon error.

Sept Discours en Vers sur l’Homme

He who is merely just is severe.

Letter to Frederick the Great [1740]

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

Zadig [1747], ch. 6

This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

Essai sur les Moeurs (Essay on Manners) [1756]

In this best of all possible worlds… everything is for the best.⁴

Candide⁵ [1759], ch. 1

If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like?

Candide, 6

[Optimism] is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.

Candide, 19

In this country [England] it is useful from time to time to kill one admiral in order to encourage the others.⁶

Candide, 23

This is the happiest of all men, for he is superior to everything he possesses.

Candide, 25

Work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.¹

Candide, 30

We must cultivate our garden.²

Candide, 30

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Letter to Cardinal de Bernis [April 23, 1761]

One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work.

Letter to Rousseau [August 31, 1761]

Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing [superstition], and love those who love you.³

Letter to d’Alembert [November 28, 1762]

Common sense is not so common.

Dictionnaire Philosophique [1764]. Common Sense

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.

Dictionnaire Philosophique. Money

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

Dictionnaire Philosophique. Liberty of the Press

The man who has ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities, and his imaginings for prophecies, is an enthusiast. The man who backs his madness with murder is a fanatic.⁴

Dictionnaire Philosophique. Fanaticism

The best is the enemy of the good.⁵

Dictionnaire Philosophique. Dramatic Art

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or never inventors.

Dictionnaire Philosophique. Women

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit injustices.⁶

Questions sur les miracles [1765], letter 11

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Dialogue 14. Le Chapon et la Poularde (The Capon and the Hen) [1766]

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

Letter to M. Damilaville [May 16, 1767]

History is no more than the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.⁷

L’Ingénu [1767], ch. 10

Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.

Letter to d’Alembert [August 20, 1770]

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.⁸

Épître à l’Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (To the Author of “The Three Imposters”) [November 10, 1770]

Change everything, except your loves.

Sur l’Usage de la Vie (On the Use of Life) [1770]

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Letter to d’Alembert [February 1776]

The embarrassment of riches.⁹

Le Droit du Seigneur, act II, sc. vi

Who has not the spirit of his age,

Of his age has all the unhappiness.¹⁰

Letter to Madame du Châtelet

I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.

Letter to Madame du Deffand

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

Essay on Epic Poetry (written in English)

Whoever you are, behold your master,

He is, or was, or has to be.¹¹

On a statuette of Cupid in the Cirey Gardens

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Attributed¹²

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

Written February 28, 1778

William Oldys

1696–1761

Busy, curious, thirsty fly,

Drink with me, and drink as I.

On a Fly Drinking out of a Cup of Ale, st. 1

Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand

1697–1780

[Of Voltaire:] He has invented history.

From ÉDOUARD FOURNIER [1819–1880], L’Esprit dans l’Histoire [1857]

Charles Macklin

c. 1697–1797

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.¹

Love à la Mode [1759], act II, sc. i

John Dyer

1699–1757

A little rule, a little sway,

A sunbeam in a winter’s day,

Is all the proud and mighty have

Between the cradle and the grave.

Grongar Hill [1726], l. 89

James Thomson

1700–1748

See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,

Sullen and sad.

The Seasons. Winter [1726], l. 1

        Welcome, kindred glooms!

Congenial horrors, hail!

The Seasons. Winter, l. 5

Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave.

The Seasons. Winter, l. 393

There studious let me sit,

And hold high converse with the mighty dead.

The Seasons. Winter, l. 431

Come, gentle Spring! ethereal mildness, come.

The Seasons. Spring [1728], l. 1

An elegant sufficiency, content,

Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books.

The Seasons. Spring, l. 1161

Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise.

A Hymn [1730], l. 118

When Britain first, at Heaven’s command,

Arose from out the azure main,

This was the charter of the land,

And guardian angels sung this strain:

Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;

Britons never will be slaves.

Alfred [1740], act II, sc. v

Jonathan Edwards

1703–1758

Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

Seventy Resolutions [1722–1723]

Intend to live in continual mortification, and never to expect or desire any worldly ease or pleasure.

Diary [1723]

There are beauties that are more palpable and explicable, and there are hidden and secret beauties… These hidden beauties are commonly by far the greatest, because the more complex a beauty is, the more hidden it is.

Beauty of the World [1725]

A little, wretched, despicable creature; a worm, a mere nothing, and less than nothing; a vile insect that has risen up in contempt against the majesty of Heaven and earth.

The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners [1734]

The heart is like a viper, hissing and spitting poison at God.

Men Naturally God’s Enemies [1736], sec. 1, pt. 4

My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and infinitely swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge or infinite mountains over my head.

Personal Narrative [1740]

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider,² or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God [1741]

This dictate of common sense.

Freedom of Will [1754], sec. 3

Thomas Morell

1703–1784

See, the conquering hero comes!

Sound the trumpet, beat the drums!¹

Joshua [1748], pt. III

John Wesley

1703–1791

I went to America to convert the Indians; but oh! who shall convert me?

Journal [January 24, 1738]

I look upon the world as my parish.

Journal [June 11, 1739]

Beware you be not swallowed up in books: an ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Letter to Joseph Benson [November 7, 1768]

That execrable sum of all villainies, commonly called the Slave Trade.

Journal [February 12, 1772]

Though I am always in haste, I am never in a hurry.

Letters [December 10, 1777]

Let it be observed, that slovenliness is no part of religion; that neither this nor any text of Scripture, condemns neatness of apparel. Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. “Cleanliness is, indeed, next to godliness.”

Sermon 93, On Dress

Do all the good you can,

By all the means you can,

In all the ways you can,

In all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

To all the people you can,

As long as ever you can.

John Wesley’s Rule

Benjamin Franklin²

1706–1790

The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms; but the work shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.

Epitaph on Himself [composed in 1728]

Eat to live, and not live to eat.³

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1733]. May

After three days men grow weary, of a wench, a guest, and weather rainy.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. June

There is no little enemy.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. September

Without justice, courage is weak.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1734]. January

Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. May

A little house well filled, a little field well tilled, and a little wife well willed, are great riches.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1735]. February

Necessity never made a good bargain.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. April

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. July

Opportunity is the great bawd.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. September

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. October

Here comes the orator! with his flood of words, and his drop of reason.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. October

Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. December

God helps them that help themselves.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1736]. June

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors’, if your own windows are glass.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. August

There are three faithful friends—an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1738]. January

If you would not be forgotten,

As soon as you are dead and rotten,

Either write things worthy reading,

Or do things worth the writing.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. May

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. June

An empty bag cannot stand upright.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1740]. January

It is a principle among printers that when truth has fair play, it will always prevail over falsehood.

Statement of Editorial Policy, The Pennsylvania Gazette [July 24, 1740]

He that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1742]. August

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1743]. December

When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.¹

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1746]. January

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. June

Lost time is never found again.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1748]. January

He that’s secure is not safe.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. August

Little strokes,

Fell great oaks.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1750]. August

Work as if you were to live a hundred years,

Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1757]. May

A word to the wise is enough, and many words won’t fill a bushel.

Poor Richard’s Almanac [1758]. Preface: Courteous Reader

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. Preface: Courteous Reader

A little neglect may breed great mischief… for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost.

Poor Richard’s Almanac. Preface: Courteous Reader

Eighth and lastly. They are so grateful!!

Reasons for Preferring an Elderly Mistress [1745]

Remember that time is money.²

Advice to a Young Tradesman [1748]

When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language, and habituated to our customs, yet, if he goes to see his relatives, and makes one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.

Letter to Peter Collinson [May 9, 1753]

Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Address in the Pennsylvania Assembly [November 1755]

Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter.

Letter on the Stamp Act [July 11, 1765]

The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.

To the editor of a London newspaper [1765], intended to chaff the English for their ignorance of America

Here Skugg lies snug

As a bug in a rug.

Letter to Miss Georgiana Shipley [September 1772]

You and I were long friends: you are now my enemy, and I am

Yours,

B. Franklin

Letter to William Strahan [July 5, 1775]

Behold the water that falls from heaven upon our vineyards; there, it enters the roots of the vines to be changed into wine; constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.

Letter to Abbé Morellet (written in French) [c. July 1775]

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

At the signing of the Declaration of Independence [July 4, 1776]

Here you would know and enjoy what posterity will say of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.

Letter to George Washington [March 5, 1780]

George Washington, Commander of the American armies, who, like Joshua of old, commanded the sun and the moon to stand still, and they obeyed him.

A toast at a dinner in Versailles¹

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

Thoughts on Commercial Subjects

There never was a good war or a bad peace.²

Letter to Josiah Quincy [September 11, 1783]

I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character… like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy…

The turkey… is a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.

Letter to Sarah Bache [January 26, 1784]

He [the sun] gives light as soon as he rises.

An Economical Project³ [1784]

A republic, if you can keep it.⁴

Response [September 18, 1787]

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy [November 13, 1789]

The next thing most like living one’s life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.

Autobiography⁵ [1731–1759], ch. 1

I shall never ask, never refuse, nor ever resign an office.

Autobiography, 8

Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

Autobiography, 9

When men are employed, they are best contented; for on the days they worked they were good-natured and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day’s work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome.

Autobiography, 10

Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon

1707–1788

[Of the horse:] The noblest conquest man has ever made.

L’Histoire Naturelle [1749–1788]

The style is the man himself.⁶

Discourse (on his admission to the French Academy) [1753]

Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.

Attributed⁷

Henry Fielding

1707–1754

Oh, the roast beef of England,

And old England’s roast beef!⁸

The Grub Street Opera [1731], act III, sc. iii

I am as sober as a judge.

Don Quixote in England [1734], act III, sc. xiv

The dusky night rides down the sky,

And ushers in the morn;

The hounds all join in glorious cry,

The huntsman winds his horn,

And a-hunting we will go.¹

A-Hunting We Will Go [1734], st. 1

To whom nothing is given, of him can nothing be required.

Joseph Andrews [1742], bk. II, ch. 8

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

Joseph Andrews, III, 1

Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.

Joseph Andrews, III, 5

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Love in Several Masques [1743]

Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.

Tom Jones [1749], bk. III, ch. 10

Distinction without a difference.

Tom Jones, VI, 13

O! more than Gothic ignorance.

Tom Jones, VII, 3

An amiable weakness.²

Tom Jones, X, 8

His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage.

Tom Jones, XI, 4

Hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune.

Tom Jones, XIII, 2

The republic of letters.

Tom Jones, XIV, 1

There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Tom Jones, XV, 1

It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying which is terrible.

Amelia [1751], bk. III, ch. 4

Linnaeus [Carl von Linné]

1707–1778

Nature does not proceed by leaps.³

Philosophia Botanica [1750], sec. 77

A professor can never better distinguish himself in his work than by encouraging a clever pupil, for the true discoverers are among them, as comets amongst the stars.

From biography⁴ by THEODOR MAGNUS FRIES [1832–1913], ch. 9

Live innocently; God is here.

From biography by THEODOR MAGNUS FRIES, 15 (inscribed over the door of Linnaeus’s bedchamber)

If a tree dies, plant another in its place.

From biography by THEODOR MAGNUS FRIES, 15

Charles Wesley

1707–1788

“Christ, the Lord, is risen today,”

Sons of men and angels say,

Raise your joys and triumphs high,

Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply.

Hymns and Sacred Poems [1739]. Christ, the Lord, Is Risen Today

Jesus, lover of my soul,

Let me to Thy bosom fly,

While the waters nearer roll,

While the tempest still is high;

Hide me, O my Savior, hide,

Till the storm of life is past;

Safe into the haven glide,

O receive my soul at last.

Hymns and Sacred Poems [1740]. Jesus, Lover of My Soul

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child;

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to thee.

Hymns and Sacred Poems [1742]. Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild

Hark! the herald angels sing

Glory to the newborn King;

Peace on earth, and mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled!

Joyful all ye nations rise,

Join the triumph of the skies;

With th’ angelic host proclaim

Christ is born in Bethlehem.⁵

Hymns and Sacred Poems [1753]. Christmas Hymn: Hark! the Herald Angels Sing

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham

1708–1778

The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman [Walpole] has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

Speech in the House of Commons¹ [March 6, 1741]

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail—its roof may shake—the wind may blow through it—the storm may enter—the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter—all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

Speech in the House of Commons [1763]

I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.

Speech in the House of Commons [January 14, 1766]

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins.

Case of Wilkes. Speech [January 9, 1770]

There is something behind the throne greater than the King himself.

Speech in the House of Lords [March 2, 1770]

I love the Americans because they love liberty, and I love them for the noble efforts they made in the last war.

Speech in the House of Lords

Reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations.²

Letter to the Earl of Shelburne [September 29, 1770]

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never! You cannot conquer America.

Speech [November 18, 1777]

I invoke the genius of the Constitution.

Speech

John Cleland

1709–1789

Truth! stark, naked truth, is the word; and I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paint situations as they actually rose to me in nature.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) [1748]

Any port in a storm.

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill)

Samuel Johnson

1709–1784

Of all the griefs that harass the distrest,

Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

London [1738] (an imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal), l. 166

This mournful truth is ev’rywhere confessed—

Slow rises worth, by poverty depress’d.³

London, l. 176

When learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes

First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose;

Each change of many-color’d life he drew,

Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new:

Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,

And panting Time toil’d after him in vain.

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre [1747]

The wild vicissitudes of taste.

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre

For we that live to please must please to live.

Prologue at the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

Prologue to the Tragedy of Irene [1749]

Let observation with extensive view

Survey mankind, from China to Peru.⁴

Vanity of Human Wishes [1749], l. 1

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,

And pause a while from learning to be wise.

There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail—

Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 157

He left the name at which the world grew pale,

To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 221

“Enlarge my life with multitude of days!”

In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays:

Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know

That life protracted is protracted woe.

Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 255

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 345

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

The Rambler¹ [March 12, 1751]

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

The Rambler [March 23, 1751]

I am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

Dictionary [1755], preface

ESSAY—A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.

Dictionary

EXCISE—A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

Dictionary

GRUBSTREET—The name of a street near Moorsfield, London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems.

Dictionary

LEXICOGRAPHER—A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

Dictionary

OATS—A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.²

Dictionary

Among the calamities of war, may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.³

The Idler [1758–1760], no. 30

The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.

The Idler, 39

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

The Idler, 57

Much of the pain and pleasure of mankind arises from the conjectures which every one makes of the thoughts of others; we all enjoy praise which we do not hear, and resent contempt which we do not see.

The Idler, 103

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Rasselas [1759], ch. 1

To a poet nothing can be useless.

Rasselas, 10

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.

Rasselas, 11

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Rasselas, 26

Example is always more efficacious than precept.

Rasselas, 30

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

Rasselas, 46

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

Lives of the Poets [1779–1781]. Milton

The father of English criticism.

Lives of the Poets. Dryden

He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning.

Lives of the Poets. Dryden

New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.

Lives of the Poets. Pope

To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made.

Preface to the Works of Pope [1781]

Tomorrow I purpose to regulate my room.

Prayers and Meditations [1785]. 1764

Preserve me from unseasonable and immoderate sleep.

Prayers and Meditations. 1767

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

Prayers and Meditations. 1770

This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.

Prayers and Meditations. 1770. Against Inquisitive and Perplexing Thoughts

[Sunday] should be different from another day. People may walk, but not throw stones at birds. There may be relaxation, but there should be no levity.

From JAMES BOSWELL, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides [1785]. August 20, 1773

I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.

From BOSWELL, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. September 14, 1773

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.

From BOSWELL, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. September 20, 1773

Here closed in death th’ attentive eyes

That saw the manners in the face.

Epitaph on Hogarth [1786]

He was a very good hater.

From MRS. PIOZZI,¹ Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson [1786]

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

From MRS. PIOZZI, Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

From MRS. PIOZZI, Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson

Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer, and are not ashamed to show even visible displeasure, if ever the bitter taste is taken from their mouths.

From MRS. PIOZZI, Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson

Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.

From SIR JOHN HAWKINS [1719–1789], Life of Johnson [1787]. Apothegms

As with my hat² upon my head

I walk’d along the Strand,

I there did meet another man

With his hat in his hand.³

Anecdotes of Johnson by GEORGE STEEVENS [1736–1800]

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

Anecdotes of Johnson by HANNAH MORE

[Of Pembroke College:] Sir, we are a nest of singing birds.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson [1791], 1730

I’ll come no more behind your scenes, David [Garrick]; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1749

A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 1750

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, February 7, 1754 (Letter to Lord Chesterfield)

[Of Lord Chesterfield:] This man, I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords!

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1754

Ignorance, madame, pure ignorance.⁴

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1755

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.⁵

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Towering in the confidence of twenty-one.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, January 9, 1758

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 1759

Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.¹

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1763

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England!

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, July 6, 1763

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, July 14, 1763

If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Sir, your levelers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear leveling up to themselves.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, July 21, 1763

Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, July 31, 1763

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

A very unclubable man.²

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1764

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, October 26, 1769

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1770

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

All denominations of Christians have really little difference in point of doctrine, though they may differ widely in external forms.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1772

Nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 31, 1772

I am a great friend to public amusements; for they keep people from vice.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

There is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson’s than in all Tom Jones.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 6, 1772

A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 15, 1772

It is a foolish thing well done.³

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 3, 1773

No, sir, do you read books through?⁴

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 19, 1773

An old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 30, 1773

You are the most unscottified of your countrymen.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, May 1, 1773

The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on ’t.⁵

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, May 7, 1773

Attack is the reaction; I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 2, 1775

Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend’s wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 6, 1775

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 7, 1775

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 18, 1775

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1775

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.¹

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 21, 1776

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 5, 1776

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, May 1776

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, September 1, 1777

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, September 19, 1777

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, September 20, 1777

It is a man’s own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 9, 1778

Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: “Ch. LXXII. Concerning snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.”²

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 13, 1778

Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 14, 1778

A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 15, 1778

As the Spanish proverb says, “He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.” So it is in traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 17, 1778

It is better to live rich, than to die rich.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Were it not for imagination, sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, May 9, 1778

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 26, 1779

I remember a passage in Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: “I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.”

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, April 7, 1779

Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, October 12, 1779

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, October 27, 1779

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, 1780

[Of Oliver Goldsmith:] No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 1781

A jest breaks no bones.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, June 4, 1781

Officious, innocent, sincere,

Of every friendless name the friend.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, January 20, 1782 (on the death of Robert Levett)

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 20, 1782

Whatever you have, spend less.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, December 7, 1782

I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, March 23, 1783

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, May 1, 1783

Clear your mind of cant.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, May 15, 1783

I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, June 1784

Blown about by every wind of criticism.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

Don’t attitudenize.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, November 1784

God bless you, my dear!

From BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, December 13, 1784 (last words)

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

1709–1751

Man is a machine and… in the whole universe there is but a single substance variously modified.

L’Homme Machine¹ [1748], conclusion

Theodore Tronchin

1709–1781

In medicine, sins of commission are mortal, sins of omission venial.

Quoted in Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, V [1929], 151

David Hume

1711–1776

The supposition, that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

A Treatise of Human Nature [1739], bk. I, pt. iii, sec. xii

For how few of our past actions are there, of which we have any memory? Who can tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and actions on the first of January 1715, the eleventh of March 1719, and the third of August 1733?

A Treatise of Human Nature, I, iv, vi

The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.

A Treatise of Human Nature, I, iv, vi

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

A Treatise of Human Nature I, iv, vii

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

A Treatise of Human Nature, II, iii, iii

Avarice, the spur of industry.

Essays [1741–1742]. Of Civil Liberty

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Essays. Of Tragedy

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding [1748]. Of the Different Species of Philosophy

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Of Miracles

The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Of Miracles

Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a-quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

The Natural History of Religion [1757]

I am a Citizen of the World.

Letter to Gilbert Elliot [September 1764]

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell deadborn from the press.

My Own Life [1777], ch. 1

Frederick the Great

1712–1786

For every state, from the smallest to the largest, the principle of enlargement is the fundamental law of life.

History of My Own Time [1743]

Politics consists more in profiting from favorable circumstances than preparing them in advance.

Political Testament [1752]

By push of bayonets, no firing till you see the whites of their eyes.¹

At Prague [May 6, 1757]

Rascals, would you live forever?²

When the Guards hesitated at Kolin [June 18, 1757]

God is always with the strongest battalions.

Letter to the Duchess Luise Dorothea von Gotha [May 8, 1760]

I am tired of ruling over slaves.

Last words [April 1, 1786]

Edward Moore

1712–1757

This is adding insult to injury.

The Foundling [1748], act V, sc. ii

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712–1778

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.

Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind [1754]

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.³

The Social Contract [1762], I, ch. 1

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty.

The Social Contract, I, 3

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

The Social Contract, I, 4

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

The Social Contract, III, 4

The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the causes of its destruction.

The Social Contract, III, 11

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.

The Social Contract, III, 15

Everything is good when it leaves the hands of the Creator; everything degenerates in the hands of man.

Émile; or, On Education [1762], I

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Émile; or, On Education, I

Reading is the curse of childhood.

Émile; or, On Education, II

Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.

Émile; or, On Education, III

There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No—it is Robinson Crusoe.⁴

Émile; or, On Education, III

Self-love makes more libertines than love.

Émile; or, On Education, IV

Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity.

Émile; or, On Education, IV

A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.

Émile; or, On Education, V

I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.

Confessions [1781–1788], bk. I

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.

Confessions, II

It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks to get a living.

Confessions, II

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

Confessions, V

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, “Let them eat cake.”¹

Confessions, VI

He² thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

Confessions, XII

Josiah Tucker

1712–1799

What is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.³

Tract Against Going to War for the Sake of Trade [1763]

Denis Diderot

1713–1784

My thoughts are my trollops.

Rameau’s Nephew⁴

If your little savage were left to himself and to his native blindness, he would in time join the infant’s reasoning to the grown man’s passion—he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.

Rameau’s Nephew

I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.

Pensées Philosophiques [1746], no. 29

What property can a man own if a work of the mind—the unique fruit of his upbringing, his studies, his evenings, his age, his researches, his observations; if his finest hours, the most beautiful moments of his life; if his own thoughts, the feelings of his heart, the most precious part of himself, that which does not perish, which makes him immortal—does not belong to him?

Letter on the Book Trade [1763]⁵

If a revolution of which the germ is perhaps being formed in some unknown part of the world, or is being hatched secretly in the very center of civilized countries, erupts at some time, topples cities, disperses people once again, and brings back ignorance and dark times, if a single complete copy of this work is conserved, all will not be lost.

Advertisement to the eighth volume of the Encyclopédie [1765]

L’esprit de l’escalier [staircase wit].⁶

Paradoxe sur le Comédien

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

Essai sur le Mérite de la Vertu

Laurence Sterne

1713–1768

Only the brave know how to forgive.… A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.

Sermons, vol. I [1760], no. 12

This sad vicissitude of things.

Sermons, I, 15

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

Tristram Shandy, bk. I [1760], ch. 1

“Pray, my dear,” quoth my mother, “have you not forgot to wind up the clock?”—“Good G—!” cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time—“Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?”

Tristram Shandy, I, 1

So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse peaceably and quietly along the king’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him—pray, sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

Tristram Shandy, I, 7

The very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit… it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it,—viz., A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind.

Tristram Shandy, I, 11

For every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies.

Tristram Shandy, I, 12

He was within a few hours of giving his enemies the slip forever.

Tristram Shandy, I, 12

Whistled up to London, upon a Tom Fool’s errand.

Tristram Shandy, I, 16

’Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause—and of obstinacy in a bad one.

Tristram Shandy, I, 17

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine—they are the life, the soul of reading; take them out of this book for instance—you might as well take the book along with them.

Tristram Shandy, I, 22

The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.

Tristram Shandy, I, 25

Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is), is but a different name for conversation.

Tristram Shandy, II [1760], ch. 11

Go, poor devil, get thee gone! Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

Tristram Shandy, II, 12 (Uncle Toby to the fly)

That’s another story,¹ replied my father.

Tristram Shandy, II, 17

Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.

Tristram Shandy, II, 17

It is in the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.

Tristram Shandy, II, 19

Good—bad—indifferent.

Tristram Shandy, III [1761–1762], ch. 2

“Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,” cried my uncle Toby—“but nothing to this.”

Tristram Shandy, III, 11

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Tristram Shandy, III, 12

’Twould be as much as my life was worth.

Tristram Shandy, III, 20

One of the two horns of my dilemma.

Tristram Shandy, IV [1761–1762], ch. 26

Now or never was the time.

Tristram Shandy, IV, 31

There is a Northwest Passage to the intellectual world.

Tristram Shandy, V [1761–1762], ch. 42

A man should know something of his own country, too, before he goes abroad.

Tristram Shandy, VII [1765], ch. 2

Ho! ’tis the time of salads.

Tristram Shandy, VII, 17

L—d! said my mother, what is all this story about?—A Cock and a Bull, said Yorick.

Tristram Shandy, IX [1767], ch. 33

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

A Sentimental Journey [1768], l. 1

I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, ’Tis all barren!

A Sentimental Journey. In the Street, Calais

Hail, ye small, sweet courtesies of life! for smooth do ye make the road of it.

A Sentimental Journey. The Pulse, Paris

I think there is a fatality in it—I seldom go to the place I set out for.

A Sentimental Journey. The Address, Versailles

God tempers the wind, said Maria, to the shorn lamb.

A Sentimental Journey. Maria

Claude Adrien Helvétius

1715–1771

Truth is a torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.

De l’Esprit² [1758], preface

What makes men happy is liking what they have to do. This is a principle on which society is not founded.

De l’Esprit, preface

We don’t call a man mad who believes that he eats God, but we do the one who says he is Jesus Christ.

De l’Esprit, preface

Thomas Gray

1716–1771

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,

That crown the wat’ry glade.

On a Distant Prospect of Eton College [1742], st. 1

Alas, regardless of their doom,

The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come,

Nor care beyond today.

On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, st. 6

Grim-visag’d comfortless Despair.

On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, st. 7

To each his suff’rings: all are men,

Condemn’d alike to groan,

The tender for another’s pain,

Th’ unfeeling for his own.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate,

Since sorrow never comes too late,

And happiness too swiftly flies?

Thought would destroy their paradise.

No more; where ignorance is bliss,

’Tis folly to be wise.

On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, st. 10

What female heart can gold despise?

What cat’s averse to fish?

On the Death of a Favorite Cat [1747], st. 4

A fav’rite has no friend!

On the Death of a Favorite Cat, st. 6

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard [1750], st. 1

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 2

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 4

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 5

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 6

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,

The short and simple annals of the poor.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 8

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike the inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 9

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,

Or wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 12

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page

Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;

Chill penury repress’d their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 13

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 14

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 15

To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 16

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;

Along the cool sequester’d vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 19

Mindful of th’ unhonor’d dead.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, st. 24

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.

Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. The Epitaph, st. 1

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heav’n did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to mis’ry all he had, a tear,

He gain’d from Heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. The Epitaph, st. 2

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)

The bosom of his Father and his God.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. The Epitaph, st. 3

The meanest floweret of the vale,

The simplest note that swells the gale,

The common sun, the air, the skies,

To him are opening paradise.

Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude [1754], l. 49

Far from the sun and summer-gale,

In thy green lap was Nature’s Darling¹ laid.

The Progress of Poesy, III. 1, l. 1

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.

The Progress of Poesy, III. 1, l. 12

He¹ pass’d the flaming bounds of place and time:

The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,

Where angels tremble, while they gaze,

He saw; but blasted with excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.

The Progress of Poesy, III. 2, l. 4

Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!

Confusion on thy banners wait,

Though fann’d by Conquest’s crimson wing

They mock the air with idle state.

The Bard [1757], sec. I st. 1, l. 1

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,

He had not the method of making a fortune.

On His Own Character [1761]

Yosa Buson

1716–1784

This piercing cold I feel:

my dead wife’s comb, in our bedroom

under my heel…²

Haiku

David Garrick

1717–1779

Heart of oak are our ships,

Heart of oak are our men:

    We always are ready;

    Steady, boys, steady;

We’ll fight, and we’ll conquer again and again.

Heart of Oak [c. 1770]

Horace Walpole

1717–1797

Our supreme governors, the mob.

Letters. To Sir Horace Mann [September 7, 1743]

Serendipity… you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.… Now do you understand serendipity?

Letters. To Sir Horace Mann [January 28, 1754]

It is charming to totter into vogue.

Letters. To G. A. Selwyn [December 2, 1765]

The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveler from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.³

Letters. To Sir Horace Mann [November 24, 1774]

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

Letters. To the Countess of Upper Ossory [August 16, 1776]

Our empire is falling to pieces! we are relapsing to a little island.

Letters. To the Reverend William Cole [September 1, 1778]

Samuel Foote

1720–1777

He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dullness in others.

From JAMES BOSWELL, Life of Johnson [1791], 1783

Dennis O’Kelly

1720–1787

It will be Eclipse first, the rest nowhere.

Prediction at Epsom [May 3, 1769], when the great racehorse Eclipse was to run his first race.

John Woolman

1720–1772

Though I felt uneasy at the thought of writing an instrument of slavery… through weakness I gave way and wrote it; but… said before my master and the Friend that I believed slavekeeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion. This, in some degree, abated my uneasiness; yet… I should have been clearer if I had desired to be excused from it, as a thing against my conscience.

Journal [1774]

William Collins

1721–1759

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,

By all their country’s wishes bless’d!

Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746, st. 1

By fairy hands their knell is rung,

By forms unseen their dirge is sung;

There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,

To bless the turf that wraps their clay,

And Freedom shall awhile repair,

To dwell a weeping hermit there!

Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746, st. 2

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song

May hope, O pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear.

Ode to Evening [1747], l. 1

Now air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d bat,

With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,

Or where the beetle winds

His small but sullen horn.

Ode to Evening, l. 9

’Twas sad by fits, by starts ’twas wild.

The Passions [1747], l. 28

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour

1721–1764

Après nous le déluge [After us the deluge].¹

Reputed reply to Louis XV [November 5, 1757] after the defeat of the French and Austrian armies by Frederick the Great in the battle of Rossbach

Tobias Smollett

1721–1771

He was formed for the ruin of our sex.

The Adventures of Roderick Random [1748], ch. 22

That great Cham of literature, Samuel Johnson.

Letter to John Wilkes [March 16, 1759]

8 June. At London. I am pent up in frowsy lodgings, where there is not room enough to swing a cat.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker [1771], vol. II

Samuel Adams

1722–1803

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.” It is a very serious consideration… that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

Speech [1771]

What a glorious morning for America!²

Upon hearing the gunfire at Lexington, Massachusetts [April 19, 1775]

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.

Speech, Philadelphia [August 1, 1776]

Mary Leapor

1722–1746

In spite of all romantic poets sing,

This gold, my dearest, is an useful thing.

Mira to Octavia [1746]

Christopher Smart

1722–1771

Tell them I Am, Jehovah said

To Moses; while earth heard in dread,

And smitten to the heart,

At once above, beneath, around,

All nature, without voice or sound,

Replied, O Lord, Thou art.

A Song to David [1763], st. 40

For adoration all the ranks

Of angels yield eternal thanks,

And David in the midst.

A Song to David, st. 51

Where ask is have, where seek is find,

Where knock is open wide.

A Song to David, st. 77

And now the matchless deed’s achiev’d,

Determin’d, dar’d, and done.

A Song to David, st. 86

For I bless God in the libraries of the learned and for all the booksellers in the world.

Jubilate Agno (Rejoice in the Lamb) [1758–1763], fragment B1, l. 79

Let James rejoice with the Skuttle-Fish who foils his foe by the effusion of his ink.

Jubilate Agno, fragment B2, l. 125

For a man speaks HIMSELF from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet.

For a LION roars HIMSELF compleat from head to tail.

Jubilate Agno, fragment B1, l. 228

For the right names of the flowers are yet in heaven.

Jubilate Agno, fragment B2, l. 509

For every word has its marrow in the English tongue for order and for delight.

Jubilate Agno, fragment B2, l. 595

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffrey,

For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.

Jubilate Agno, fragment B2, l. 695

For he counteracts the Devil, who is Death, by brisking about the life.

Jubilate Agno, fragment B2, l. 720

For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in compleat cat.

Jubilate Agno fragment B2, l. 743

Crispus Attucks

c. 1723–1770

Be not afraid, they dare not fire; why do you hesitate, why do you not kill them, why not crush them at once?

Words spoken at the Boston Massacre [March 5, 1770]¹

Sir William Blackstone

1723–1780

Man was formed for society.

Commentaries on the Laws of England [1765–1769], introduction

The king, moreover, is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.

Commentaries, bk. I, ch. 7

The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of our island.

Commentaries, I, 13

Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.²

Commentaries, I, 18

That the king can do no wrong is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution.

Commentaries, III, 17

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.

Commentaries, IV, 27

Adam Smith

1723–1790

The man of system… is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759], pt. 6

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776], vol. I, bk. I, ch. 2

A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I, I, 7

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I, I, 10, pt. 2

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I, I, 11, pt. 2

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense.… They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I, II, 3

Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally indeed neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it.… He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.… By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I, IV, 2

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, II, IV, 2

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.¹

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, II, IV, 7, pt. 3

The discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, II, IV, 7, pt. 3

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, II, IV, 8

All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, II, IV, 9

Adam Ferguson

1723–1816

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society [1767], pt. III, sec. 2

Immanuel Kant

1724–1804

The same ignorance makes me so bold as to absolutely deny the truth of the various ghost stories, and yet with the common, although queer, reservation that while I doubt any one of them, still I have a certain faith in the whole of them taken together.

Dreams of a Spirit-Seer² [1766]

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Lectures on Ethics [1775–1780]

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Critique of Pure Reason [1781]

It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay—others will readily undertake this irksome work for me.

What Is Enlightenment? [1784]³

Out of wood so crooked and perverse as that which man is made of, nothing absolutely straight can ever be wrought.

The Idea of a Universal History [1784]. Proposition 6¹

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Critique of Practical Reason [1788]

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Critique of Practical Reason

There is… only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

The Metaphysic of Morals² [1797], ch. 11

If justice perishes, there is no further point in men living on earth.

The Metaphysics of Morals

Logan³

1725–1780

I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan’s cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not?

Message to Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia [November 11, 1774]. From THOMAS JEFFERSON, Notes on Virginia [1784–1785]

George Mason

1725–1792

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Virginia Bill of Rights⁴ [June 12, 1776], article 1

Government is, or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration.

Virginia Bill of Rights, 3

The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

Virginia Bill of Rights, 12

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt

1725–1798

You will laugh when you learn that I thought nothing of deceiving idiots, scoundrels and fools when I needed to do so. As for my deceptions of women, these are not of the sort to be tallied, since when love has a hand in things, each party usually dupes the other.⁵

Histoire de Ma Vie (The Story of My Life) [1791–1798]

Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I have never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite to mine, I have always loved it and done all I could to make myself loved by it.⁶

Histoire de Ma Vie

Whatever St. Augustine may say, human creatures would not perform the work of generation if they did not find pleasure in it, and if there was not in that great work an irresistible attraction for them.⁷

Histoire de Ma Vie

John Newton⁸

1725–1807

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

Olney Hymns [1779]. Amazing Grace

Glorious things of thee are spoken,

Zion, city of our God.

Olney Hymns. Glorious Things

The real or supposed necessity of treating the Negroes with rigor gradually brings a numbness upon the heart and renders those who are engaged in it too indifferent to the sufferings of their fellow creatures.¹

Letters and Sermons [1780]. Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade

James Otis²

1725–1783

An act against the Constitution is void; an act against natural equity is void.

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance [1761]

Taxation without representation is tyranny.³

Attributed [1763]

James Hutton

1726–1797

If an organized body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organized bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.

An Investigation into the Principles of Knowledge [1794]

Time, which measures every thing in our idea, and is often deficient to our schemes, is to nature endless and as nothing.

The Theory of the Earth [1795]

William Prescott

1726–1795

Don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.⁴

At Bunker Hill [June 17, 1775]

Jane Elliot

1727–1805

I’ve heard them lilting, at the ewe milking,

Lasses a’ lilting, before dawn of day;

But now they are moaning, on ilka green loaning;

The flowers of the forest are a’ wede away.

The Flowers of the Forest⁵

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l’Aulne

1727–1781

They [the Americans] are the hope of this world. They may become its model.

Letter to Dr. Richard Price [March 22, 1778]

Oliver Goldsmith⁶

c. 1728–1774

One writer excels at a plan or a title page, another works away the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.

The Bee [1759], no. 1

Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

The Citizen of the World [1760–1761], letter 7

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,

Or by the lazy Scheldt, or wandering Po.

The Traveller [1764], l. 1

Such is the patriot’s boast, where’er we roam,

His first, best country ever is, at home.

The Traveller, l. 73

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of humankind¹ pass by.

The Traveller, l. 327

The land of scholars, and the nurse of arms.²

The Traveller, l. 356

For just experience tells; in every soil,

That those that think must govern those that toil.

The Traveller, l. 371

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.

The Traveller, l. 386

A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.

The Vicar of Wakefield [1766], preface

I… chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.

The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 1

Handsome is that handsome does.

The Vicar of Wakefield, 1

Man wants but little here below,

Nor wants that little long.

The Vicar of Wakefield, 8 [The Hermit (Edwin and Angelina), st. 8]

She was all of a muck of sweat.

The Vicar of Wakefield, 9

When lovely woman stoops to folly,³

And finds too late that men betray,

What charm can soothe her melancholy?

What art can wash her guilt away?

The Vicar of Wakefield, 24. Song, st. 1

The only art her guilt to cover,

To hide her shame from every eye,

To give repentance to her lover,

And wring his bosom, is—to die.

The Vicar of Wakefield, 24. Song, st. 2

He calls his extravagance, generosity; and his trusting everybody, universal benevolence.

The Good-Natur’d Man [1768], act I

Silence gives consent.

The Good-Natur’d Man, II

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain.

The Deserted Village [1770], l. 1

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made;

But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,

When once destroy’d, can never be supplied.

The Deserted Village, l. 51

His best companions, innocence and health;

And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

The Deserted Village, l. 61

How happy he who crowns in shades like these,

A youth of labor with an age of ease.

The Deserted Village, l. 99

The watchdog’s voice that bay’d the whispering wind,

And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.⁴

The Deserted Village, l. 121

Truth from his lips prevail’d with double sway,

And fools, who came to scoff, remain’d to pray.

The Deserted Village, l. 179

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.

The Deserted Village, l. 329

In my time, the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach.

She Stoops to Conquer [1773], act I

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

She Stoops to Conquer, I

The first blow is half the battle.

She Stoops to Conquer, II

They liked the book the better the more it made them cry.

She Stoops to Conquer, II

Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no fibs.⁵

She Stoops to Conquer, III

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;

’Twas only that when he was off he was acting.

Retaliation [1774], l. 101

There is no arguing with Johnson: for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.

From JAMES BOSWELL, Life of Johnson [1791]. October 26, 1769

John Stark

1728–1822

My men, yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and ten pence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight, the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow!

Before the battle of Bennington [August 16, 1777]

Edmund Burke¹

1729–1797

We have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful [1756], pt. I, sec. 14

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Of the Sublime and Beautiful, sec. 18

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation [1769]

The wisdom of our ancestors.²

Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents [April 23, 1770]

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to—my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther—all is confusion beyond it.

First Speech on the Conciliation with America. American Taxation [April 19, 1774]

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions [March 22, 1775]

Young man, there is America—which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth; invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

Nothing less will content me, than whole America.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

In no country perhaps in the world is law so general a study [as in America].… This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense, full of resources.… They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

The march of the human mind is slow.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act—is founded on compromise and barter.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

It is the love of the [British] people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Second Speech on Conciliation with America. The Thirteen Resolutions

He was not merely a chip of the old block, but the old block itself.

On Pitt’s first speech [February 26, 1781]

The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right.

Speech on Reform of the Commons in Parliament [May 7, 1782]

A rapacious and licentious soldiery.

Speech on Fox’s East India Bill [1783]

An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.

Impeachment of Warren Hastings [May 5, 1789]

Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.

Impeachment of Warren Hastings [May 7, 1789]

There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity—the law of nature, and of nations.

Impeachment of Warren Hastings [May 28, 1794]

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.

On the Army Estimates [1790]

People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.

Reflections on the Revolution in France [1790]

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

The age of chivalry has gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shriveled, meager, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

The revenue of the state is the state.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

You can never plan the future by the past.

Letter to a member of the National Assembly [1791]

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians [1792]

The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.

Preface to Brissot’s Address [1794]

Mere parsimony is not economy.… Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy.

Letter to a Noble Lord [1796]

Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.

First Letter on a Regicide Peace [1796]

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity [1800]

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Attributed¹

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

1729–1781

No person must have to.

Nathan der Weise [1779], act I, sc. iii

The true beggar is the true king.

Nathan der Weise, II, end

John Parker

1729–1775

Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here!

To his Minute Men at Lexington, Massachusetts [April 19, 1775]

Speckled Snake²

c. 1729–1829

When the white man had warmed himself before the Indians’ fire and filled himself with their hominy, he became very large. With a step he bestrode the mountains, and his feet covered the plains and the valleys. His hand grasped the eastern and the western sea, and his head rested on the moon.

Statement when President Andrew Jackson recommended that the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles move west beyond the Mississippi [1829]

Brothers, I have listened to a great many talks from our great father.³ But they always began and ended in this: “Get a little further; you are too near me.”

Statement when President Andrew Jackson recommended that the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles move west beyond the Mississippi

Thomas Osbert Mordaunt

1730–1809

One crowded hour of glorious life

Is worth an age without a name.

Verses Written During the War [1756–1763]. From the Bee [October 12, 1791]

Josiah Wedgwood

1730–1795

Am I not a man and a brother?

On a medallion⁴ [1787]

Benjamin Banneker

1731–1806

Sir how pitiable is it to reflect, that altho you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the Same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the Same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.

Letter to Thomas Jefferson [August 19, 1791]

Charles Churchill

1731–1764

Genius is of no country.

The Rosciad [1761], l. 207

Apt alliteration’s artful aid.

The Prophecy of Famine [1763], l. 86

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led,

They damn those authors whom they never read.

The Candidate [1764], l. 57

        Be England what she will,

With all her faults she is my country still.¹

The Farewell, l. 27

William Cowper

1731–1800

Oh! for a closer walk with God.

Olney Hymns [1779], no. 1, Walking with God

What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d!

How sweet their memory still!

But they have left an aching void

The world can never fill.

Olney Hymns, 1, Walking with God

God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea

And rides upon the storm.

Olney Hymns, 35, Light Shining out of Darkness

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

Olney Hymns, 35, Light Shining out of Darkness

A fool must now and then be right, by chance.

Conversation [1782], l. 96

His wit invites you by his looks to come,

But when you knock it never is at home.

Conversation, l. 303

Absence of occupation is not rest,

A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d.

Retirement [1782], l. 623

I am monarch of all I survey,

My right there is none to dispute.

Verses Supposed to Be Written by Alexander Selkirk [1782], st. 1

O Solitude! where are the charms

That sages have seen in thy face?

Verses Supposed to Be Written by Alexander Selkirk

A hat not much the worse for wear.

History of John Gilpin [1785], st. 46

God made the country, and man made the town.

The Task [1785], bk. I, The Sofa, l. 749

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,

Some boundless contiguity of shade,

Where rumor of oppression and deceit,

Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more.

The Task, II, The Timepiece, l. 1

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs

Receive our air, that moment they are free!

They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

The Task, II, The Timepiece, l. 40

Variety’s the very spice of life.

The Task, II, The Timepiece, l. 606

From reveries so airy, from the toil

Of dropping buckets into empty wells,

And growing old in drawing nothing up.

The Task, III, The Garden, l. 188

Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.

The Task, III, The Garden, l. 566

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,

And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn

Throws up a steamy column, and the cups,

That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,

So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

The Task, IV, The Winter Evening, l. 36

’Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,

To peep at such a world; to see the stir

Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd.

The Task, IV, The Winter Evening, l. 88

But war’s a game, which, were their subjects wise,

Kings would not play at.

The Task, V, The Winter Morning Walk, l. 187

There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;

And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is pleas’d

With melting airs or martial, brisk, or grave:

Some chord in unison with what we hear

Is touch’d within us, and the heart replies.

The Task, VI, Winter Walk at Noon, l. 1

        Here the heart

May give a useful lesson to the head,

And Learning wiser grow without his books.

The Task, VI, Winter Walk at Noon, l. 85

Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much;

Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

The Task, VI, Winter Walk at Noon, l. 96

Shine by the side of every path we tread

With such a luster, he that runs may read.

Tirocinium [1785], l. 79

Toll for the brave—

The brave! that are no more;

All sunk beneath the wave,

Fast by their native shore!

On the Loss of the Royal George¹ [1791], st. 1

No voice divine the storm allayed, No light propitious shone;

When, snatched from all effectual aid, We perished, each alone:

But I beneath a rougher sea,

And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.

The Castaway [1799], l. 61

Erasmus Darwin

1731–1802

Soon shall thy arm, unconquer’d steam! afar

Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;

Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear

The flying-chariot through the fields of air.

The Botanic Garden, pt. I [1789], l. 289

Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament which the Great First Cause endued with animality… and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!²

Zoonomia [1794]

Charles Lee

1731–1782

Beware that your Northern laurels do not change to Southern willows.³

To General Horatio Gates after the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga [October 17, 1777]

Pierre de Beaumarchais

1732–1799

Judging by the virtues expected of a servant, does your Excellency know many masters who would be worthy valets?

The Barber of Seville [1775], act I, sc. ii

I quickly laugh at everything, for fear of having to cry.⁴

The Barber of Seville, I, ii

If censorship reigns there cannot be sincere flattery, and only small men are afraid of small writings.

The Marriage of Figaro, V, iii

John Dickinson

1732–1808

Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.⁵

The Liberty Song [1768]

Richard Henry Lee

1732–1794

That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Resolution moved at the Continental Congress⁶ [June 7, 1776; adopted July 2]

George Washington⁷

1732–1799

I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.

Letter to his brother John [May 31, 1754]

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

Letter of Instructions to the Captains of the Virginia Regiments [July 29, 1759]

Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

General Orders, Headquarters, New York [July 2, 1776]

Agreeable to the request of Congress I caused the Declaration to be proclaimed before all the Army under my immediate Command, and have the pleasure to inform them, that the measure seemed to have their most hearty assent.

Message to Continental Congress [July 10, 1776]

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

Address to the Continental Army before the battle of Long Island [August 27, 1776]

To place any dependence upon militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff.

Letter to the president of Congress, Heights of Harlem

Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive. And with it, everything honorable and glorious.

To Lafayette [November 15, 1781]

If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Address to officers of the Army [March 15, 1783]

I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.

Letter to Reverend Francis Adrian Vanderkemp [May 28, 1788]

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

First Inaugural Address [April 30, 1789]

Happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island [1790]

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

First Annual Address [to both houses of Congress, January 8, 1790]

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

Farewell Address [September 17, 1796]

Let me now… warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.

Farewell Address

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Farewell Address

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.… The Nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

Farewell Address

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.

Farewell Address

’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.

Farewell Address

There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.

Farewell Address

It is well, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go.

Last words [December 14, 1799]

Daniel Boone

1734–1820

I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

To the painter Chester Harding [1819], quoted in Harding’s My Egotistigraphy [1866]

John Adams¹

1735–1826

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

Notes for “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law” [1765]

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right… and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law [1765]

Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.

A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law

Facts are stubborn things;² and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Argument in Defense of the [British] Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials [December 1770]

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

Notes for an Oration at Braintree, Massachusetts [Spring 1772]

This is the most magnificent movement of all! There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire. The people should never rise without doing something to be remembered—something notable and striking. This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I can’t but consider it as an epocha in history!

Diary [on the Boston Tea Party, December 17, 1773]

A government of laws, and not of men.³

“Novanglus” papers, Boston Gazette [1774], no. 7. Incorporated [1780] in the Massachusetts Constitution

Metaphysicians and politicians may dispute forever, but they will never find any other moral principle or foundation of rule or obedience, than the consent of governors and governed.

“Novanglus” papers, Boston Gazette, no. 7

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever.

Letter to Abigail Adams [July 7, 1775]

I agree with you that in politics the middle way is none at all.

Letter to Horatio Gates [March 23, 1776]

You bid me burn your letters. But I must forget you first.

Letter to Abigail Adams [April 28, 1776]

Yesterday, the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps never was nor will be decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”⁴

Letter to Abigail Adams [July 3, 1776]

The second day of July, 1776,⁵ will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

Second Letter to Abigail Adams [July 3, 1776]

The happiness of society is the end of government.

Thoughts on Government [1776]

Fear is the foundation of most governments.

Thoughts on Government

The judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that.

Thoughts on Government

Virtue is not always amiable.

Diary [February 9, 1779]

By my physical constitution I am but an ordinary man.… Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean hypocrisies, have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep, and littleness into rage like a lion.

Diary [April 26, 1779]

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Letter to Abigail Adams [May 12, 1780]

You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

Letter to John Quincy Adams [May 14, 1781]

The institutions now made in America will not wholly wear out for thousands of years. It is of the last importance, then, that they should begin right. If they set out wrong, they will never be able to return, unless it be by accident, to the right path.

A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America [1787]

Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power.

Letter to Roger Sherman [July 17, 1789]

My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office [the vice-presidency] that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet the common fate.

Letter to Abigail Adams [December 19, 1793]

Great is the guilt of unnecessary war.

Letter to Abigail Adams [May 19, 1794]

If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces… the Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations.

Inaugural speech [March 4, 1797]

I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.¹

Letter to Abigail Adams [November 2, 1800]

The desire of the esteem of others is as real a want of nature as hunger—and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain, as the gout or stone.

Discourses on Davila [written 1790, published 1805]

You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.

Letter to Thomas Jefferson [July 15, 1813]

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

Letter to John Taylor [April 15, 1814]

The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor.

Letter to Thomas Jefferson [November 13, 1815]

Power always thinks it has a great Soul, and vast Views, beyond the Comprehension of the Weak; and that it is doing God Service, when it is violating all his Laws.

Letter to Thomas Jefferson [February 2, 1816]

Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and despotism cannot confine it.

Letter to John Quincy Adams [November 13, 1816]

But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations.

Letter to Hezekiah Niles [February 13, 1818]

Thomas—Jefferson—still surv—²

Last words [July 4, 1826]

Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur [J. Hector St. John]

1735–1813

What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country.… Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

Letters from an American Farmer [1782], no. III

In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in consequences of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are?

Letters from an American Farmer, III

Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow.

Letters from an American Farmer, III

There is room for every body in America; has he any particular talent or industry? He exerts it in order to procure a livelihood, and it succeeds.

Letters from an American Farmer, III

Charles Joseph, Prince de Ligne

1735–1814

The Congress doesn’t run—it waltzes.¹

Comment to Comte Auguste de La Garde–Chambonas [1814]

Paul Revere

1735–1818

To the memory of the glorious Ninety-two: members of the Honorable House of Representatives of the Massachusetts Bay who, undaunted by the insolent menaces of villains in power, from a strict regard to conscience and the liberties of their constituents on the 30th of June 1768 voted NOT TO RESCIND.

Inscription on Revere’s silver “Liberty” bowl [1768]

If the British went out by water, to show two lanterns in the North Church steeple; and if by land, one as a signal, for we were apprehensive it would be difficult to cross the Charles River or get over Boston Neck.²

Signal code arranged with Colonel Conant of the Charlestown Committee of Safety [April 16, 1775]. Letter to Dr. Jeremy Belknap

Patrick Henry

1736–1799

Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third [“Treason!” cried the Speaker]—may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

Speech on the Stamp Act, House of Burgesses, Williamsburg, Virginia [May 29, 1765]

I am not a Virginian, but an American.

Speech in the First Continental Congress, Philadelphia [October 14, 1774]

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

Speech in Virginia Convention, Richmond [March 23, 1775]

We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power.… The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

Speech in Virginia Convention, Richmond

It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. The gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace! but there is no peace. The war has actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Speech in Virginia Convention, Richmond

That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.

Virginia Bill of Rights¹ [June 12, 1776], article 16

Mother Ann Lee

1736–1784

Every force evolves a form.

Attributed

Edward Gibbon

1737–1794

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776–1788], ch. 2

The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3

Their united reigns [the Antonines’] are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.²

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3

History… is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 3

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 21

War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 33

The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principles of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 38

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 49

[On the possibility of an Arab victory at Poitiers:] Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 52

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 68

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 71

All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 71

Decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder.

Memoirs

It was here [at the age of seventeen] that I suspended my religious inquiries.

Memoirs

I saw and loved.

Memoirs

I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.

Memoirs

[Of London:] Crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.

Memoirs

It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

Memoirs

Thomas Paine

1737–1809

From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms!

Through the land let the sound of it flee;

Let the far and the near all unite, with a cheer,

In defense of our Liberty Tree.

The Liberty Tree [July 1775], st. 4

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Common Sense [January 9–10, 1776]

O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Common Sense

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

Common Sense

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

The Forester’s Letters [1776], no. 3 [April 22]

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.

The American Crisis, no. 1 [December 23, 1776]

Panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered.

The American Crisis, 1

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.

The American Crisis, 1

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

The American Crisis, 4 [September 12, 1777]

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.

The American Crisis, 4

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

The American Crisis, 5 [March 21, 1778]

It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.

The American Crisis, 5

War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances… that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Prospects on the Rubicon [1787]

[Burke] is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.

The Rights of Man, pt. I [1791]

My country is the world and my religion is to do good.

The Rights of Man, II [1792], ch. 5

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.¹

The Rights of Man, II, 5

I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.

The Age of Reason [1793], pt. I

My own mind is my own church.

The Age of Reason, I

It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.

The Age of Reason, I

When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.

The Age of Reason, II, note

Ethan Allen

1738–1789

[Captain Delaplace²] gazed at Allen in bewildered astonishment. “By whose authority do you act?” exclaimed he. “In the name of the great Jehovah, and the Continental Congress!” replied Allen.

From WASHINGTON IRVING, Life of Washington [1855–1859], vol. I, ch. 38

William Bartram

1739–1823

[On the alligator:] Behold him rushing forth from the flags and reeds. His enormous body swells. His plaited tail brandished high, floats upon the lake. The waters like a cataract descend from his opening jaws. Clouds of smoke issue from his dilated nostrils. The earth trembles with his thunder.

Travels Through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, Etc. [1791]

James Boswell

1740–1795

That favorite subject, Myself.

Letter to Temple [July 26, 1763]

I am, I flatter myself, completely a citizen of the world. In my travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica, France, I never felt myself from home.

Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides [1773]

My definition of man is “a cooking animal.” The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook.… Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

I happened to start a question of propriety, whether when a man knows that some of his intimate friends are invited to the house of another friend, with whom they are all equally intimate, he may join them without an invitation. JOHNSON. “No, Sir; he is not to go when he is not invited. They may be invited on purpose to abuse him” (smiling).

Life of Johnson [1791]. April 18, 1775

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

Life of Johnson, September 1777

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

Life of Johnson,¹ March 30, 1778

I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed; and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

Life of Johnson, June 1784

Louis Sébastien Mercier

1740–1814

Extremes Meet.

Tableaux de Paris [1782], vol. IV, ch. 348, title

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

1740–1814

Yes, I am a libertine, I admit it freely. I have dreamed of doing everything that it is possible to dream of in that line. But I have certainly not done all the things I have dreamt of and never shall. Libertine I may be, but I am not a criminal, I am not a murderer.

Letter to his wife [1781]

Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue, not a vice.

Philosophy in the Bedroom² [1795]

Augustus Montague Toplady

1740–1778

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in thee.

Rock of Ages³ [1775], st.1

Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort

1741–1794

The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.

Maxims and Thoughts, 1

Love as it exists in society is merely the mingling of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.⁴

Maxims and Thoughts, 359

Be my brother, or I will kill you.⁵

From THOMAS CARLYLE, The French Revolution, vol. II, pt. 1, ch. 12

Johann Kaspar Lavater

1741–1801

Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.

Aphorisms on Man [c. 1788], no. 157

The public seldom forgive twice.

Aphorisms on Man, 606

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher

1742–1819

Ever forward, but slowly.

While leading the Russians at Leipzig [October 19, 1813]

May the pens of the diplomats not ruin again what the people have attained with such exertions.

After the battle of Waterloo [1815]

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

1742–1799

I cannot say I have been his enemy, but neither have I been his friend: I have never so much as dreamed of him.

Notebook F¹ [1776–1779]

Much reading is harmful to thinking. The greatest thinkers I have known have been precisely those who of all the scholars I have known had read least.

Notebook F

Nothing contributes more to peace of soul than having no opinion at all.²

Aphorisms

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.

Aphorisms

Soothsayers make a better living in the world than truthsayers.

Aphorisms

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.

Aphorisms

I would often rather read what a famous author has cut from one of his works than what he has let stand.

Aphorisms

I am convinced that a person doesn’t only love himself in others; he also hates himself in others.

Aphorisms

Every man also has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.³

Aphorisms

How did you enjoy yourself with these people? Answer: very much, almost as much as I do when alone.

Aphorisms

Nowadays we already have books about books and descriptions of descriptions.

Aphorisms

It requires no especially great talent to write in such a way that another will be very hard put to it to understand what you have written.

Aphorisms

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is unlikely to look out.

Aphorisms

William Henry, Duke of Gloucester

1743–1805

Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?

Upon receiving from EDWARD GIBBON volume II of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1781]. From Best’s Literary Memorials [1829]

Thomas Jefferson

1743–1826

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

Summary View of the Rights of British America [1774]

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable⁴ rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Declaration of Independence [July 4, 1776]

We must therefore… hold them [the British] as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

Declaration of Independence

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Declaration of Independence

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.

Notes on the State of Virginia [1781–1785], query 6

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Notes on the State of Virginia, 17

The Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them.

Notes on the State of Virginia, 17

Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons.

Notes on the State of Virginia, 17

Is uniformity [of opinion] attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.

Notes on the State of Virginia, 17

Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

Notes on the State of Virginia, 18

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

Notes on the State of Virginia, 19

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

Letter to Peter Carr [August 19, 1785]

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington [January 16, 1787]

Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

Letter to James Madison [January 30, 1787]

What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?… The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Letter to William Stevens Smith [November 13, 1787]

No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation.

Letter to James Madison [September 6, 1789]

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

Letter to William Hunter [March 11, 1790]

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Letter to Lafayette [April 2, 1790]

Delay is preferable to error.

Letter to George Washington [May 16, 1792]

The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.

Letter to Elbridge Gerry [May 13, 1797]

Offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Letter to Tench Coxe [May 21, 1799]

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering.

Letter to Thomas Lomax [March 12, 1799]

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush [September 23, 1800]

We are all Republicans—we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

First Inaugural Address [March 4, 1801]

But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world’s best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself?

First Inaugural Address

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

First Inaugural Address

Still one thing more, fellow citizens—a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

First Inaugural Address

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.… Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

First Inaugural Address

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Letter to the Danbury Baptists [January 1, 1802]

Whensoever hostile aggressions… require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.

Letter to Andrew Jackson [December 3, 1806]

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

To the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland [March 31, 1809]

While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis XVI was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and despatched two courtiers a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature. And so was the King of Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government. The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England you know was in a straight waistcoat.

Letter to Governor John Langdon [March 4, 1810]

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

Letter to James Ogilvie [August 4, 1811]

But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

Letter to Charles Willson Peale [August 20, 1811]

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Letter to John W. Eppes [June 24, 1813]

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Letter to John Adams [October 28, 1813]

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford [March 17, 1814]

I cannot live without books.

Letter to John Adams [June 10, 1815]

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey [January 6, 1816]

I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war or of the law.

Letter to papal nuncio Count Dugnani [February 14, 1818]

But this momentous question [the Missouri Compromise], like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union.

Letter to John Holmes [April 22, 1820]

[On slavery:] We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

Letter to John Holmes

That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

Autobiography [January 6, 1821], on the United States Congress

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

Letter to John Adams [September 12, 1821]

We are to guard against ourselves; not against ourselves as we are, but as we may be, for who can now imagine what we may become under circumstances not now imaginable?

Letter to Jedidiah Morse [March 6, 1822]

I have no hesitation in saying that I have ever considered the constitutional mode of election ultimately by the legislature voting by States as the most dangerous blot in our Constitution, and one which some unlucky chance will someday hit.

Letter to George Hay [August 17, 1823]

The generation which commences a revolution can rarely complete it.

Letter to John Adams [September 4, 1823]

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: (1) Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. (2) Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist; and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.

Letter to Henry Lee [August 10, 1824]

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life [February 21, 1825]

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life

The good old Dominion, the blessed mother of us all.

Thoughts on Lotteries [1826]

This is the Fourth?

Last words [July 4, 1826]¹

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

1743–1794

It is impossible to dissociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based; the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind; and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.²

Traité Elémentaire de Chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry) [1789]

If, by the term elements, we mean to express the simple and indivisible molecules that compose bodies, it is probable that we know nothing about them; but if, on the contrary, we express by the term elements or principles of bodies the idea of the last point reached by analysis, all substances that we have not yet been able to decompose by any means are elements to us.³

Traité Elémentaire de Chimie

The Letters of Junius⁴

1769–1771

One precedent creates another. They soon accumulate and constitute law. What yesterday was fact, today is doctrine.

Dedication to the English Nation

The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.

Dedication to the English Nation

I believe there is yet a spirit of resistance in this country, which will not submit to be oppressed; but I am sure there is a fund of good sense in this country, which cannot be deceived.

No. 16, to the Printer of the Public Advertiser (H. S. Woodfall) [July 19, 1769]

We owe it to our ancestors to preserve entire those rights, which they have delivered to our care: we owe it to our posterity, not to suffer their dearest inheritance to be destroyed.

No. 20, to the Printer of the Public Advertiser [August 8, 1769]

When the constitution is openly invaded, when the first original right of the people, from which all laws derive their authority, is directly attacked, inferior grievances naturally lose their force, and are suffered to pass by without punishment or observation.

No. 30, to the Printer of the Public Advertiser [October 17, 1769]

They [the Americans] equally detest the pageantry of a king, and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.

No. 35, to the Printer of the Public Advertiser [December 19, 1769]

Alexander von Humboldt

1769–1859

I shall try to find out how the forces of nature interact upon one another and how the geographic environment influences plant and animal life. In other words, I must find out about the unity of nature.

Letter [June 5, 1799], on his expedition to South America

Whilst we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more ennobled by mental cultivation than others—but none in themselves nobler than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom.

Cosmos [1845]

Constitution of the United States

1787

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Preamble

The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article II, sec. 4

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Article III, sec. 3

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States, which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Article VI, sec. 2

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

First Amendment [1791]¹

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Second Amendment [1791]

The right of the people to be secure… against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.

Fourth Amendment [1791]

Nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Fifth Amendment [1791]

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.

Sixth Amendment [1791]

The right of trial by jury shall be preserved.

Seventh Amendment [1791]

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.

Eighth Amendment [1791]

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall… abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Fourteenth Amendment [1868], sec. 1

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged… on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Fifteenth Amendment [1870], sec. 1

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged… on account of sex.

Nineteenth Amendment [1920], sec. 1

Abigail Adams¹

1744–1818

In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

Letter to John Adams [March 31, 1776]

Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken—and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet.

Letter to John Adams [May 7, 1776]

Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.

Letter to John Adams [August 5, 1776]

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.… If much depends as is allowed upon the early education of youth and the first principles which are instilled take the deepest root, great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women.

Letter to John Adams [August 14, 1776]

It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to.… Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne.

Letter to John Thaxter [February 15, 1778]

I regret the trifling narrow contracted education of the females of my own country.

Letter to John Adams [June 30, 1778]

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.… Great necessities call out great virtues.

Letter to John Quincy Adams [January 19, 1780]

A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world.

Letter to John Adams [May 1, 1780]

Patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. Even in the freest countries our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.

Letter to John Adams [June 17, 1782]

You know what is before you. The whips and scorpions, the thorns without roses, the dangers, anxieties, and weight of Empire.

Letter to John Adams [February 20, 1796]

Rowland Hill

1744–1833

He did not see any reason why the devil should have all the good tunes.

Sermons. From E. W. BROOME, The Reverend Rowland Hill, p. 93

Jean Baptiste Lamarck

1744–1829

FIRST LAW. In every animal… a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ… while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.

SECOND LAW. All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature in individuals… are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise.

Philosophie Zoologique¹ [1809], pt. II, ch. 7

Habits form a second nature.²

Philosophie Zoologique, II, 7

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes

1746–1828

The world is a masquerade. Face, dress, and voice are all false. All wish to appear as what they are not, all deceive and do not even know themselves.

Text accompanying plate 6 of Los Caprichos (The Fantasies)³ [1799]

The sleep of reason produces monsters.

Los Caprichos. Title of Plate 43⁴

John Paul Jones

1747–1792

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way.

Letter [November 16, 1778]

I have not yet begun to fight.

Attributed. Aboard the Bonhomme Richard [September 23, 1779]

François Alexandre Frédéric, Duc de La Rochefoucauld–Liancourt

1747–1827

Louis XVI: Is it a revolt?

La Rochefoucauld–Liancourt: No, Sire, it is a revolution.

Upon learning at Versailles of the fall of the Bastille [1789]

John O’Keeffe

1747–1833

You should always except the present company.

The London Hermit; or, Rambles in Dorsetshire [1793]

Jeremy Bentham

1748–1832

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.⁵

A Fragment on Government [1776]

Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.

Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]

A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès

1748–1836

I survived.⁶

Upon being asked what he had done during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution

Charles James Fox

1749–1806

[On the fall of the Bastille:] How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world! and how much the best!

Letter to Richard Fitzpatrick [July 30, 1789]. From LORD JOHN RUSSELL, Life and Times of C. J. Fox [1859–1866], vol. II, p. 361

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1749–1832

There is strong shadow where there is much light.

Götz von Berlichingen [1773], act I

If you inquire what the people are like here,

I must answer, “The same as everywhere!”

The Sorrows of Young Werther¹ [1774–1787]. May 17

Nothing that makes us happy is an illusion.

The Sorrows of Young Werther [1774]. Book I, July 18 letter

Noble be man,

Helpful and good!

For that alone

Sets him apart

From every other creature

On earth.

The Divine [1783]

I sing as the bird sings

That lives in the boughs.²

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship [1786–1830], bk. II, ch. 11

Knowst thou the land where the lemon trees bloom,³

Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket’s gloom,

Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows,

And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose?

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, III, 1

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, V, 1

To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us, even in silence—this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden.

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, VII, 5

Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient.

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, VII, 9

The greatest evil of our time—which lets nothing come to fruition—is, I think, that one moment consumes the next, wastes the day within that same day and so is always living from hand to mouth without achieving anything of substance. Don’t we already have news-sheets for every point of the day!… In this way everything that anyone does, is working at or writing, indeed plans to write, is dragged out into the open.

Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years⁴ [1821]

A useless life is an early death.

Iphigenia in Tauris, I, ii

Life teaches us to be less harsh with ourselves and with others.

Iphigenia in Tauris, IV, iv

In art the best is good enough.⁵

Italian Journey. March 3, 1787

A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world’s torrent.

Torquato Tasso, I, ii

The spirits that I summoned up

I now can’t rid myself of.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice [1797]

Three things are to be looked to in a building: that it stand on the right spot; that it be securely founded; that it be successfully executed.

Elective Affinities⁶ [1808], bk. I, ch. 9

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

Elective Affinities, I, 9

The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

Elective Affinities, II, 3

No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.

Elective Affinities, II, 4

No one is more a slave than the man who thinks himself free while he is not.

Elective Affinities, II, 5

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Elective Affinities, II, 7

One never goes so far as when one doesn’t know where one is going.

Letter to Karl Friedrich Zelter [December 3, 1812]

Who wants to understand the poem

Must go to the land of poetry;

Who wishes to understand the poet

Must go to the poet’s land.

Divan of East and West [1819], motto

For I have been a man, and that means to have been a fighter.

Divan of East and West. Book of Paradise

Literature is the fragment of fragments; only the least amount of what has happened and has been spoken was written down, the least of what has been recorded in writing has survived.

Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years [1821], bk. II, Reflections in the Spirit of the Wanderers

We really only learn from books we cannot judge. The author of a book we could really judge ought surely to be learning from us.¹

Art and Antiquity [1826], vol. 5, no. 3

You really only know when you know little. Doubt grows with knowledge.

Art and Antiquity, 5, 3

One must be something to be able to do something.

Conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann [October 20, 1828]

If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.

Letter to Eckermann [February 4, 1829]

I call architecture frozen music.²

Letter to Eckermann [March 23, 1829]

Classicism is health, romanticism is disease.³

Conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann [April 2, 1829]

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it… but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

Essay on Experimentation

Age does not make us childish, as they say.

It only finds us true children still.

Faust [1808–1832]. The First Part. Prelude on the Stage

Man errs as long as he strives.⁴

Faust. The First Part. Prologue in Heaven

And here, poor fool! with all my lore

I stand! no wiser than before.⁵

Faust. The First Part. Night, Faust in His Study

Two souls alas! dwell in my breast.

Faust. The First Part. Outside the Gate of the Town

I am the Spirit that always denies!⁶

Faust. The First Part. Faust’s Study

Dear friend, all theory is gray,

And green the golden tree of life.

Faust. The First Part. Mephistopheles and the Student

Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.

Faust. The First Part. Mephistopheles and the Student

Law is mighty, mightier necessity.

Faust. The Second Part, act I, A Spacious Hall

Once a man’s thirty, he’s already old,

He is indeed as good as dead.

It’s best to kill him right away.

Faust. The Second Part, II, The Gothic Chamber

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Faust. The Second Part, II, Classical Walpurgis Night

The deed is everything, the glory nothing.

Faust. The Second Part, IV, A High Mountain Range

Who strives always to the utmost,

For him there is salvation.⁷

Faust. The Second Part, V, Mountain Gorges

The Eternal Feminine draws us on.⁸

Faust. The Second Part, V, Heaven, last line

In limitations he first shows himself the master,

And the law can only bring us freedom.

What We Bring [1802]

It is part of my nature: I would rather commit an injustice than endure disorder.

The Siege of Mainz [1822]

Create, artist! Do not talk!

Saying

O’er all the hilltops

Is quiet now,

In all the treetops

Hearest thou

Hardly a breath;

The birds are asleep in the trees:

Wait; soon like these

Thou too shalt rest.⁹

Wanderer’s Nightsong

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

Proverbs in Prose

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

Proverbs in Prose

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Proverbs in Prose

The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.

Proverbs in Prose

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Proverbs in Prose

A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

Proverbs in Prose

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.¹

Proverbs in Prose

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.

Proverbs in Prose

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.²

Proverbs in Prose

Everything that emancipates the spirit without giving us control over ourselves is harmful.

Proverbs in Prose

America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.³

Almanac for the Muses [1831]

Without haste, but without rest.

Motto

More light!⁴

Last words

He who doesn’t see his lover’s faults as virtues is not in love.⁵

Posthumous Maxims

Pierre Simon de Laplace

1749–1827

Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eyes.

Oeuvres, vol. VII, Théorie Analytique des Probabilités [1812–1820], introduction

The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus.

Oeuvres, VII, Théorie Analytique des Probabilités, introduction

Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.⁶

From ERIC TEMPLE BELL, Men of Mathematics [1937]

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau

1749–1791

Go and tell those who have sent you that we are here by the will of the nation and that we shall not leave save at the point of bayonets.

Speech in the States-General [June 23, 1789]

John Philpot Curran

1750–1817

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance;⁷ which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

Speech upon the Right of Election of the Lord Mayor of Dublin [July 10, 1790]

James Madison

1751–1836

By a faction, understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

The Federalist [1787], no. 10

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment of different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.… But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

The Federalist, no. 10

To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of… faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.

The Federalist, no. 10

From this view of the subject, it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.… Hence it is, that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

The Federalist, no. 10

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

The Federalist, no. 47

A nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato. And in every other nation, the most rational government will not find it a superfluous advantage to have the prejudices of the community on its side.

The Federalist, no. 49

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The Federalist, no. 51

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Speech in the Virginia Convention [June 16, 1788]

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.

Letter to W. T. Barry [August 4, 1822]

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

1751–1816

’Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.

The Rivals [1775], act I, sc. ii

I know you are laughing in your sleeve.

The Rivals, II, i

If I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!

The Rivals, III, iii

Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.

The Rivals, IV, i

Through all the drama—whether damned or not—

Love gilds the scene, and women guide the plot.

The Rivals, epilogue

Tale-bearers are as bad as the tale-makers.

The School for Scandal [1777], act I, sc. i

Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen;

Here’s to the widow of fifty;

Here’s to the flaunting, extravagant quean,

And here’s to the housewife that’s thrifty.

    Let the toast pass—

    Drink to the lass;

I’ll warrant she’ll prove an excuse for the glass.

The School for Scandal, III, iii

An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance.

The School for Scandal, IV, i

Be just before you’re generous.

The School for Scandal, IV, i

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy.

The Critic [1779], act I, sc. i

Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!

The Critic, I, ii

A practitioner in panegyric, or, to speak more plainly, a professor of the art of puffing.

The Critic, I, ii

The number of those who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves is very small indeed.

The Critic, I, ii

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

The Critic, II, i

You write with ease to show your breeding,

But easy writing’s curst hard reading.

Clio’s Protest [1819]

The right honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

Sheridaniana. Speech in Reply to Mr. Dundas

Johann Heinrich Voss

1751–1826

Who does not love wine, women, and song

Remains a fool his whole life long.¹

Attributed

Fanny Burney

1752–1840

Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

Cecilia [1782], ch. 6

Thomas Chatterton¹

1752–1770

Mie love ys dedde,

Gon to hys death-bedde,

Al under the wyllowe-tree.

Mynstrelles Songe²

Philip Freneau

1752–1832

Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;

They took the spear—but left the shield.³

To the Memory of the Brave Americans Who Fell at Eutaw Springs, S.C., September 8, 1781 [1786], st. 5

O come the time, and haste the day,

When man shall man no longer crush,

When Reason shall enforce her sway,

Nor these fair regions raise our blush,

Where still the African complains,

And mourns his yet unbroken chains.

On the Emigration to America and Peopling the Western Country [1786]

Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

1752–1831

Sturm und Drang [Storm and Stress]

Title of play [1776]

Gouverneur Morris

1752–1816

The mob begin to think and to reason. Poor reptiles! it is with them a vernal morning; they are struggling to cast off their winter’s slough, they bask in the sunshine, and ere noon they will bite, depend upon it. The gentry begin to fear this.… I see, and I see it with fear and trembling, that if the disputes with Great Britain continue, we shall be under the worst of all possible dominions; we shall be under the domination of a riotous mob.

Letter to John Penn [May 20, 1774]

Joseph de Maistre

1753–1821

In my lifetime I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; thanks to Montesquieu, I even know that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare that I have never in my life met him; if he exists, he exists unknown to me.⁴

Considerations on France [1796]. On Divine Influence in Constitutions

Every nation has the government it deserves.

Letter to X [1811]

Antoine de Rivarol

1753–1801

What is not clear is not French.

Discours sur l’Universalité de la Langue Française [1784]

Phillis Wheatley

1753–1784

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate

Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:

What pangs excruciating must molest,

What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?

Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d

That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:

Such, such my case. And can I then but pray

Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral [1773]. To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for North-America, &c.

George Crabbe

1754–1832

In idle wishes fools supinely stay;

Be there a will, and wisdom finds a way.

The Birth of Flattery [1807]

Habit with him was all the test of truth,

“It must be right: I’ve done it from my youth.”

The Borough [1810]. Letter 3, The Vicar

Wild were his dreams, and oft he rose in fright,

Waked by his view of horrors in the night,—

Horrors that would the sternest minds amaze,

Horrors that demons might be proud to raise:

And though he felt forsaken, grieved at heart,

To think he lived from all mankind apart,

Yet, if a man approached, in terrors he would start.

The Borough. Letter 22, The Poor of the Borough: Peter Grimes

At certain stations he would view the stream,

As if he stood bewildered in a dream,

Or that some power had chained him for a time,

To feel a curse or meditate on crime.

The Borough. Letter 22, The Poor of the Borough: Peter Grimes

With friends and gay companions round them, then

Men boldly speak and have the hearts of men;

Who, with opponents seated, miss the aid

Of kind applauding looks, and grow afraid.

Tales [1810]. The Dumb Orators

William Drennan

1754–1820

Nor one feeling of vengeance presume to defile

The cause, or the men, of the Emerald Isle.¹

Erin [1795], st. 3

Joseph Joubert

1754–1824

The soul paints itself in our machines.

Notebooks² [1794]

God is the place where I do not remember the rest.

Notebooks [1796]

The style is the thought itself.

Notebooks [1798]

Everything is made through images. They enter us through all the other senses, as through the eye. An echo (they say) is an image of the voice. All our affections are produced by images of touching. Our whole body is a mirror.

Notebooks [1803]

The paper is patient, but the reader is not.

Notebooks [1808]

Half myself mocks the other half.

Notebooks [1813]

Jeanne Manon Phlipon Roland de la Platière [Madame Roland]

1754–1793

O liberty! O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!

Last words, before her death on the guillotine. From ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE, Histoire des Girondins [1847]

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

1754–1838

Black as the devil,

Hot as hell,

Pure as an angel,

Sweet as love.³

Recipe for coffee

[Of the Bourbons:] They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.⁴

Attributed. From CHEVALIER DE PANAT, letter to Mallet du Pan [January 1796]

[Of the battle of Borodino, 1812:] It is the beginning of the end.⁵

From ÉDOUARD FOURNIER [1819–1880], L’Esprit dans l’Histoire [1857]

The United States has thirty-two religions but only one dish.

Attributed

Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man who misses one.

Attributed

[To a young diplomat:] Don’t be eager!⁶

From CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE, Portraits de Femmes [1858]. Madame de Staël

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.⁷

Attributed.

Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac

1755–1841

The tree of liberty only grows when watered by the blood of tyrants.

Speech in the National Convention [January 16, 1793]

It is only the dead who do not return.

Speech [1794]

Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

1755–1826

Animals feed themselves, men eat; but only wise men know the art of eating.

The Physiology of Taste¹ [1825]. Aphorisms

Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.

The Physiology of Taste. Aphorisms

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.

The Physiology of Taste. Aphorisms

Alcohol is the prince of liquids, and carries the palate to its highest pitch of exaltation.²

The Physiology of Taste. On Drinks

Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian

1755–1794

Pleasure of love lasts only a moment, sorrow of love lasts all life long.³

Célestine [1784]

Samuel Hahnemann

1755–1843

Similia similibus curantur [Likes are cured by likes].

Organon of the Rational Art of Healing [1810]

Nathan Hale

1755–1776

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

Last words, before being hanged by the British as a spy [September 22, 1776]

Alexander Hamilton

1755–1804

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.⁴

Letter to Robert Morris [April 30, 1781]

I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced.… This government has for its object public strength and individual security.

Debates of the Federal Convention⁵ [June 18, 1787]

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.… The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.

Debates of the Federal Convention

We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Debates of the Federal Convention [June 26, 1787]

The rights of neutrality will only be respected, when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

The Federalist [1787–1788], no. 11

Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness. Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!

The Federalist, no. 11

Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.

The Federalist, no. 15

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

The Federalist, no. 15

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

The Federalist, no. 51

In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.

The Federalist, no. 79

The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words, the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

The Federalist, no. 84

I have always preferred a connection with you to that of any other country. We think in English and have a similarity of prejudices and predilections.

To British diplomat George Beckwith at a secret meeting [October 1789]

Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite… to the attainment of the ends of such power.

Opinion on the Constitutionality of the Bank [February 23, 1791]

I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.

Letter to George Washington [November 11, 1794]

Louis XVIII

1755–1824

Punctuality is the politeness of kings.¹

A favorite saying

John Marshall

1755–1835

It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.… If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.… This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 1317 [1803]

We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.

McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316, 407 [1819]

This provision is made in a constitution, intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.

McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316, 415

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.

McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316, 421

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316, 431

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will.

Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheaton (19 U.S.) 264, 389 [1821]

The Cherokee Nation… is a distinct community, occupying its own territory… which the citizens of Georgia have no right to enter but with the assent of the Cherokees themselves or in conformity with treaties and with the acts of Congress.²

Worcester v. Georgia, 315 U.S. 515 [1832]

Martin Joseph Routh

1755–1854

You will find it a very good practice always to verify your references, sir.

From J. W. BURGON [1813–1888], Memoir of Dr. Routh, Quarterly Review [July 1878]

Aaron Burr

1756–1836

Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

Quoted in JAMES PARTON [1822–1891], The Life and Times of Aaron Burr [1864]

Henry [Light-Horse Harry] Lee

1756–1818

To the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

Eulogy on the death of Washington³ [December 1799]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1756–1791

A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed, if he always remains in the same place.

Letter to Leopold Mozart [September 11, 1778]

I would say that in an opera the poetry must be the obedient daughter of the music.

Letter to Leopold Mozart [October 13, 1781]

Here, people talk of nothing but—Figaro; nothing is played, blown, sung, and whistled but—Figaro; no opera visited but Figaro and all the time Figaro. Certainly a great honor for me.

On the Prague production of The Marriage of Figaro, in a letter to Gottfried von Jacquin [January 15, 1787]

William Blake

1757–1827

How sweet I roam’d from field to field,

And tasted all the summer’s pride,

Till I the prince of love beheld,

Who in the sunny beams did glide!

Poetical Sketches [1783]. Song (How Sweet I Roamed), st. 1

He loves to sit and hear me sing,

Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;

Then stretches out my golden wing,

And mocks my loss of liberty.

Poetical Sketches. Song (How Sweet I Roamed), st. 4

Like a fiend in a cloud,

With howling woe,

After night I do crowd,

And with night will go.

Poetical Sketches. Mad Song, st. 3

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

“Pipe a song about a Lamb.”

So I piped with merry cheer;

“Piper, pipe that song again.”

So I piped; he wept to hear.

Songs of Innocence [1789–1790]. Introduction, st. 1, 2

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain’d the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

Songs of Innocence. Introduction, st. 5

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life and bid thee feed

By the stream and o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing, woolly, bright.

Songs of Innocence. The Lamb, st. 1

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee:

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb.

He is meek and he is mild;

He became a little child.

I a child, and thou a lamb,

We are called by his name.

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Songs of Innocence. The Lamb, st. 2

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O! my soul is white;

White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

Songs of Innocence. The Little Black Boy, st. 1

And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love,

And these black bodies and this sunburnt face

Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

Songs of Innocence. The Little Black Boy, st. 4

I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear

To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;

And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him and he will then love me.

Songs of Innocence. The Little Black Boy, st. 7

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry ’weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep!

So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

Songs of Innocence. The Chimney Sweeper, st. 1

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity, a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Songs of Innocence. The Divine Image, st. 3

When the voices of children are heard on the green

And laughing is heard on the hill,

My heart is at rest within my breast

And everything else is still.

Songs of Innocence. Nurse’s Song, st. 1

Can I see another’s woe,

And not be in sorrow too?

Can I see another’s grief,

And not seek for kind relief?

Songs of Innocence. On Another’s Sorrow, st. 1

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?

Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?

Or Love in a golden bowl?

The Book of Thel [1789–1792]. Thel’s Motto

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [1790–1793]. Note to The Voice of the Devil

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 3.

Eternity is in love with the production of time.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 10

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 15

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 22

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 41

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 44

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 46

Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 66

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 67

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 69

Enough! or too much.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Proverbs of Hell, l. 70

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. A Memorable Fancy

If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. A Memorable Fancy

For every thing that lives is Holy.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. A Song of Liberty

Never seek to tell thy love

Love that never told can be;

For the gentle wind does move

Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart;

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears—

Ah, she doth depart.

Soon as she was gone from me

A traveler came by

Silently, invisibly—

Oh, was no deny.

Poems [written c. 1791–1792] from Blake’s Notebook. Never Seek to Tell

Love to faults is always blind,

Always is to joy inclin’d,

Lawless, wing’d, and unconfin’d,

And breaks all chains from every mind.

Poems from Blake’s Notebook. Love to Faults

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

Poems from Blake’s Notebook. Several Questions Answered, no. 1, He Who Binds

What is it men in women do require?

The lineaments of Gratified Desire.

What is it women do in men require?

The lineaments of Gratified Desire.

Poems from Blake’s Notebook. Several Questions Answered, 4, What Is It

Hear the voice of the Bard!

Who Present, Past, and Future sees,

Whose ears have heard

The Holy Word

That walk’d among the ancient trees.

Songs of Experience [1794]. Introduction, st. 1

Turn away no more.

Why wilt thou turn away?

The starry floor,

The wat’ry shore

Is giv’n thee till the break of day.

Songs of Experience. Introduction, st. 4

Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.

Songs of Experience. The Clod and the Pebble, st. 1

Love seeketh only self to please,

To bind another to its delight,

Joys in another’s loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.

Songs of Experience. The Clod and the Pebble, st. 3

O Rose, thou art sick.

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Songs of Experience. The Sick Rose

Little Fly,

Thy summer’s play

My thoughtless hand

Has brushed away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance

And drink and sing,

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

Songs of Experience. The Fly, st. 1–3

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

Songs of Experience. The Tyger, st. 1, 2

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Songs of Experience. The Tyger, st. 4, 5

In every cry of every man,

In every infant’s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

Songs of Experience. London, st. 2

But most through midnight streets I hear

How the youthful harlot’s curse

Blasts the newborn infant’s tear

And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

Songs of Experience. London, st. 4

Pity would be no more,

If we did not make somebody poor;

And Mercy no more could be,

If all were as happy as we.

Songs of Experience. The Human Abstract, st. 1

My mother groan’d! my father wept.

Into the dangerous world I leapt:

Helpless, naked, piping loud,

Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Songs of Experience. Infant Sorrow, st. 1

I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe;

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

Songs of Experience. A Poison Tree, st. 1

Cruelty has a human heart,

And Jealousy a human face;

Terror, the human form divine,

And Secrecy, the human dress.

A Divine Image,¹ st. 1

To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize is the alone distinction of merit—general knowledges are those knowledges that idiots possess.

Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, pp. xcvii–xcviii

And throughout all eternity

I forgive you, you forgive me.

Poems [c. 1804] from Blake’s Notebook. My Specter, st. 14

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau.

Mock on, mock on—’tis all in vain!

You throw the sand against the wind,

And the wind blows it back again.

Poems [c. 1804] from Blake’s Notebook. Mock On, st. 1

There is a smile of love,

And there is a smile of deceit,

And there is a smile of smiles

In which these two smiles meet.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript [c. 1805]. The Smile, st. 1

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 1

A robin redbreast in a cage

Puts all Heaven in a rage.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 5

A dog starv’d at his master’s gate

Predicts the ruin of the state.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 9

He who shall hurt the little wren

Shall never be belov’d by men.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 29

A truth that’s told with bad intent

Beats all the lies you can invent.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 53

Man was made for joy and woe,

And when this we rightly know

Through the world we safely go.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 56

He who shall teach the child to doubt

The rotting grave shall ne’er get out.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 87

He who doubts from what he sees

Will ne’er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt

They’d immediately go out.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 107

The harlot’s cry from street to street

Shall weave old England’s winding sheet.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 115

God Appears and God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night,

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day.

Poems from the Pickering Manuscript. Auguries of Innocence, l. 129

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold,

Bring me my arrows of desire,

Bring me my spear—O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

Milton [c. 1809]

Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring;

   The Lark sitting upon his earthy bed: just as the morn

   Appears; listens silent; then springing from the waving Corn-field! loud

   He leads the Choir of the Day! trill, trill, trill, trill,

   Mounting upon the wings of light into the Great Expanse:

   Reechoing against the lovely blue & shining heavenly Shell:

   His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather

   On throat & breast & wings vibrates with the effluence.

Milton

Grown old in love from seven till seven times seven,

I oft have wish’d for Hell for ease from Heaven.

Poems [c. 1807–1809] from Blake’s Notebook. Grown Old in Love

Poetry fettered fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed, or flourish, in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish!

Jerusalem [c. 1818–1820]. To the Public, plate 1

He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars;

General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer:

For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.

Jerusalem, ch. 3, plate 55, l. 60

England! awake! awake! awake!

Jerusalem thy sister calls!

Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death

And close her from thy ancient walls?

Jerusalem, 4, prefatory poem, plate 77, st. 1

The vision of Christ that thou dost see

Is my vision’s greatest enemy.

The Everlasting Gospel [written c. 1818], sec. 4, l. 1

Both read the Bible day and night,

But thou read’st black where I read white.

The Everlasting Gospel, 4, l. 13

This life’s dim windows of the soul

Distorts the heavens from pole to pole

And leads you to believe a lie

When you see with, not through, the eye.¹

The Everlasting Gospel, 5, l. 101

James Gillray

c. 1757–1815

The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street²

Title of cartoon [1797]

Fisher Ames

1758–1808

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.

Speech in the House of Representatives [1795]

John Heath

1758–1810

Love of wisdom [philosophy] the guide of life.³

Greek phrase for Phi Beta Kappa, society founded at the College of William and Mary [December 5, 1776]

James Monroe

1758–1831

National honor is national property of the highest value.

First Inaugural Address [March 4, 1817]

The American continents… are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

Annual Message to Congress [December 2, 1823]. The Monroe Doctrine

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do.

Annual Message to Congress. The Monroe Doctrine

We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we… shall not interfere. But with the governments… whose independence we have… acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling, in any other manner, their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

Annual Message to Congress. The Monroe Doctrine

Horatio Nelson, Viscount Nelson

1758–1805

Westminster Abbey, or victory!

At the battle of Cape St. Vincent [February 14, 1797]. From ROBERT SOUTHEY, Life of Nelson [1813], ch. 4

I have only one eye, I have a right to be blind sometimes.… I really do not see the signal.

At the battle of Copenhagen [1801]. From ROBERT SOUTHEY, Life of Nelson, 9

Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight beyond all others.

Memorandum to the fleet, off Cadiz [October 9, 1805]

But, in case signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.

Memorandum to the fleet, off Cadiz

England expects every man will do his duty.⁴

At the battle of Trafalgar [October 21, 1805]. From ROBERT SOUTHEY, Life of Nelson [1813], ch. 9

Thank God, I have done my duty.

At the battle of Trafalgar. From ROBERT SOUTHEY, Life of Nelson, 9

Kiss me, Hardy.

At the battle of Trafalgar. From ROBERT SOUTHEY, Life of Nelson, 9

Red Jacket [Sagoyewatha]¹

c. 1758–1830

We first knew you a feeble plant which wanted a little earth whereon to grow. We gave it to you; and afterward, when we could have trod you under our feet, we watered and protected you; and now you have grown to be a mighty tree, whose top reaches the clouds, and whose branches overspread the whole land, whilst we, who were the tall pine of the forest, have become a feeble plant and need your protection.

Statement [c. 1792]

Maximilien Robespierre

1758–1794

Terror is nothing other than prompt, stern, inflexible justice; terror thus issues from virtue; it is less a particular maxim than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the most pressing needs of the fatherland.²

Speech to the National Convention [February 5, 1794]

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

Speech to the National Convention

Death is the beginning of immortality.

Speech to the National Convention [July 26, 1794]

Robert Burns

1759–1796

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi’ bickering brattle!

To a Mouse [1785], st. 1

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social union.

To a Mouse, st. 2

The best laid schemes o’ mice and men

Gang aft a-gley.

To a Mouse, st. 7

        Nature’s law,

That man was made to mourn.

Man Was Made to Mourn [1786], st. 4

Man’s inhumanity to man.

Makes countless thousands mourn!

Man Was Made to Mourn, st. 7

He wales a portion with judicious care;

And “Let us worship God” he says, with solemn air.

The Cotter’s Saturday Night [1786], st. 12

From scenes like these, old Scotia’s grandeur springs,

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad:

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

“An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

The Cotter’s Saturday Night, st. 19

Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire,

That’s a’ the learning I desire.

First Epistle to J. Lapraik [1786], st. 13

The social, friendly, honest man,

Whate’er he be,

’Tis he fulfills great Nature’s plan,

And none but he!

Second Epistle to J. Lapraik [1786], st. 15

On ev’ry hand it will allow’d be,

He’s just—nae better than he should be.

A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton [1786]

His locked, lettered, braw brass collar

Showed him the gentleman an’ scholar.

The Twa Dogs [1786], st. 3

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion.

To a Louse [1786], st. 8

An atheist-laugh’s a poor exchange

For Deity offended.

Epistle to a Young Friend, st. 9

There’s nought but care on ev’ry han’,

In every hour that passes, O:

What signifies the life o’ man,

An’ ’t were nae for the lasses, O.

Green Grow the Rashes, O [1787], st. 1

Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears

Her noblest work she classes, O:

Her prentice han’ she tried on man,

An’ then she made the lasses, O.

Green Grow the Rashes, O, st. 5

Green grow the rashes, O;

Green grow the rashes, O;

The sweetest hours that e’er I spend

Are spent among the lasses, O.

Green Grow the Rashes, O, chorus

I wasna fou, but just had plenty.

Death and Dr. Hornbook [1787], st. 3

John Barleycorn got up again,

And sore surprised them all.

John Barleycorn [1787], st. 3

Then gently scan your brother man,

Still gentler sister woman;

Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,

To step aside is human.

Address to the Unco Guid [1787], st. 7

O, my Luve is like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June.

O, my Luve is like the melodie,

That’s sweetly played in tune.

Johnson’s Musical Museum [1787–1796]. A Red, Red Rose, st. 1

Contented wi’ little and cantie wi’ mair.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. Contented wi’ Little, st. 1

Ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae weary fu’ o’ care!

Thou’ll break my heart, thou warbling bird,

That wantons thro’ the flowering thorn!

Thou minds me o’ departed joys,

Departed never to return.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. The Banks o’ Doon, st. 1

Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure

Thrill the deepest notes of woe.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. Sensibility How Charming, st. 4

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;

Ae farewell and then forever!

Johnson’s Musical Museum. Ae Fond Kiss, st. 1

But to see her was to love her,

Love but her, and love forever.

Had we never lov’d sae kindly,

Had we never lov’d sae blindly,

Never met—or never parted—

We had ne’er been brokenhearted.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. Ae Fond Kiss, st. 2

It was a’ for our rightfu’ King

We left fair Scotland’s strand.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King, st. 1

Now a’ is done that men can do,

And a’ is done in vain.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. It Was A’ for Our Rightfu’ King, st. 2

John Anderson my jo, John,

When we were first acquent,

Your locks were like the raven,

Your bonie brow was brent;

But now your brow is beld, John,

Your locks are like the snaw,

But blessings on your frosty pow,

John Anderson my jo!

Johnson’s Musical Museum. John Anderson My Jo, st. 1

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,

The birthplace of valor, the country of worth!

Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,

The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. My Heart’s in the Highlands, st. 1

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;

A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,

My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.

Johnson’s Musical Museum. My Heart’s in the Highlands, chorus

O whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad:

Tho’ father and mither and a’ should gae mad.

Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to min’?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And days o’ auld lang syne?

Auld Lang Syne [1788], st. 1

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet

For auld lang syne!

Auld Lang Syne, chorus

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,

Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise.

My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream,

Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Afton Water [1789], st. 1

The voice of Nature loudly cries,

And many a message from the skies,

That something in us never dies.

New Year’s Day, st. 3

But pleasures are like poppies spread—

You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed;

Or like the snow falls in the river—

A moment white—then melts forever.

Tam o’ Shanter, l. 59

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!

What dangers thou canst make us scorn!

Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil;

Wi’ usquebae, we’ll face the devil!

Tam o’ Shanter, l. 105

As Tammie glow’red, amazed, and curious,

The mirth and fun grew fast and furious.

Tam o’ Shanter, l. 143

Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn,

That while a lassie she had worn,

In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,

It was her best, and she was vauntie.

Tam o’ Shanter, l. 171

“Weel done, Cutty Sark!”¹

Tam o’ Shanter, l. 189

She is a winsome wee thing,

She is a handsome wee thing,

She is a lo’esome wee thing,

  This sweet wee wife o’ mine.

My Wife’s a Winsome Wee Thing [1792], chorus

The golden hours on angel wings

Flew o’er me and my dearie;

For dear to me as light and life

Was my sweet Highland Mary.

Highland Mary [1792], st. 2

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it;

But we hae meat, and we can eat,

And sae the Lord be thankit.

The Selkirk Grace [1793] (attributed)

O Mary, at thy window be!

It is the wish’d, the trysted hour.

Mary Morison [1793], st. 1

Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,

Scots wham Bruce has aften led,

Welcome to your gory bed

    Or to victorie.

Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;

See the front o’ battle lour!

See approach proud Edward’s power—

    Chains and slaverie!

Scots Wha Hae [1794], st. 1, 2

Lay the proud usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty’s in every blow!

Let us do or die!

Scots Wha Hae, st. 6

The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,

The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

For A’ That and A’ That [1795], st. 1

For a’ that and a’ that,

It’s coming yet, for a’ that,

That man to man the world o’er

Shall brothers be for a’ that.

For A’ That and A’ That, st. 5

For a’ that, and a’ that,

An’ twice as muckle ’s a’ that,

I’ve lost but ane, I’ve twa behin’,

I’ve wife eneugh for a’ that.

Posthumous Pieces [1799]. The Jolly Beggars, chorus

God knows, I’m no the thing I should be,

Nor am I even the thing I could be.

Posthumous Pieces. To the Reverend John M’Math, st. 8

If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;

If there is none, he made the best of this.

Posthumous Pieces. Epitaph on William Muir

Georges Jacques Danton

1759–1794

Everything belongs to the fatherland when the fatherland is in danger.

Speech to the Legislative Assembly [August 28, 1792]

Audacity, more audacity, always audacity.²

Speech to the Legislative Assembly [September 2, 1792]

After bread, the first need of the people is education.

Speech [August 13, 1793]

Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.

Last words, addressed to the executioner

Joseph Fouché

1759–1820

Death is an eternal sleep.

Inscription on French cemetery gates ordered by Fouché [1794]

William Pitt

1759–1806

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Speech in the House of Commons [November 18, 1783]

Johann [Christoph] Friedrich von Schiller

1759–1805

The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.

The Conspiracy of Fiesco [1783], act I, sc. vii

Joy, thou spark from Heav’n immortal,

Daughter of Elysium!

Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing

Goddess, to thy shrine we come.

Thy sweet magic brings together

What stern Custom spreads afar;

All men become brothers

Where thy happy wing-beats are.¹

Ode to Joy [1785], st. 1

World history is the world’s court.²

Resignation [1786]

What one refuses in a minute

No eternity will return.

Resignation

O who knows what slumbers in the background of the times?

Don Carlos [1787], act I, sc. i

Great souls suffer in silence.

Don Carlos, I, iv

The richest monarch in the Christian world;

The sun in my own dominions never sets.³

Don Carlos, I, vi

If you want to know yourself,

Just look how others do it;

If you want to understand others,

Look into your own heart.

Tabulae Votivae (Votive Tablets) [1797]

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

Wallenstein’s Camp [1798], prologue

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.

Wallenstein’s Camp, prologue

Life is earnest, art is gay.

Wallenstein’s Camp, prologue

Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.

Wallenstein’s Camp, sc. vi

Many a crown shines spotless now

That yet was deeply sullied in the winning.

The Death of Wallenstein⁴ [1798], act II, sc. ii

There’s no such thing as chance;

And what to us seems merest accident

Springs from the deepest source of destiny.

The Death of Wallenstein, II, iii

War nourishes war.⁵

The Piccolomini [1799], act I, sc. ii

I am better than my reputation.

Mary Stuart [1801], act III, sc. iv

Pain is short, and joy is eternal.

The Maid of Orleans, last lines

The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.

Wilhelm Tell [1804], act III, sc. i

Who reflects too much will accomplish little.

Wilhelm Tell, III, i

You saw his weakness, and he will never forgive you.

Wilhelm Tell, III, i

This feat of Tell, the archer, will be told

While yonder mountains stand upon their base.

By heaven! The apple’s cleft right through the core.

Wilhelm Tell, III, iii

Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

1759–1797

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

A Vindication of the Rights of Men [1790]

Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.

A Vindication of the Rights of Men

Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman [1792], ch. 3

If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 3

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 4

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weakness.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 4

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 4

Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 9

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 11

Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavor to settle that power on a divine right which will not bear the investigation of reason.

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 11

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

The French Revolution [1794], bk. V, ch. 4

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark [1796], letter 19

It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, 22

François Noël Babeuf [Gracchus]

1760–1797

We aim at something more sublime and more equitable—the common good, or the community of goods.… We demand, we would have, the communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, fruits which are for everyone.

Manifesto of the Equals [c. 1795]

Camille Desmoulins

1760–1794

I am thirty-three—the age of the good sans-culotte Jesus; an age fatal to revolutionists.

Said before his execution

[Claude] Joseph Rouget de Lisle

1760–1836

Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!…

Aux armes, citoyens!

Formez vos bataillons!

Marchons! Marchons! Qu’un sang impur

Abreuve nos sillons!

[Forward, sons of France,

The day of glory has come!…

To arms, citizens!

Line up in battalions!

Let us march on! Let the impure blood

of enemies drench our fields!]

The Marseillaise¹ [1792]

Antoine [Jacques Claude Joseph] Boulay de la Meurthe

1761–1840

It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.²

On the execution of the Duc d’Enghien [1804], quoted in C.-A. STE.-BEUVE, Nouveaux Lundis [1870]

George Colman the Younger

1762–1836

Not to be sneezed at.

The Heir-at-Law [1797], act II, sc. i

John Bull;³ or, The Englishman’s Fireside

Title of play [1803]

Says he, “I am a handsome man, but I’m a gay deceiver.”

Love Laughs at Locksmiths, II, song

Johann Paul Friedrich Richter [Jean Paul]

1763–1825

Weltschmerz.¹

Selina; or, Above Immortality [1827]

Samuel Rogers

1763–1855

Never less alone than when alone.

Human Life [1819], l. 756

It doesn’t much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find next morning that it was someone else.

Table Talk

Kobayashi Issa

1763–1828

In its eye

the far-off hills are mirrored—

dragonfly!²

Haiku

The world of dew

Is the world of dew,

And yet…

And yet…

Haiku

Gaston Pierre Marc, Duc de Lévis

1764–1830

Noblesse oblige [Rank has its obligations].

Maxims and Reflections [1808]

Thomas Morton

1764–1838

What will Mrs. Grundy say? What will Mrs. Grundy think?

Speed the Plow [1798], act I, sc. i

Ann Radcliffe

1764–1823

Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns,

And as the portal opens to receive me,

A voice in hollow murmurs through the courts

Tells of a nameless deed.

The Mysteries of Udolpho [1794], motto

Robert Goodloe Harper

1765–1825

Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.³

Toast at banquet for John Marshall [June 18, 1798]

James Smithson

1765–1829

To found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.⁴

Bequest [1829] with which the Smithsonian Institution was established [1846]

Thomas Robert Malthus

1766–1834

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.

An Essay on the Principle of Population [1798], ch. 1

The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher class.

An Essay on the Principle of Population, ch. 2

Ernst Friedrich Herbert von Münster

1766–1839

Absolutism tempered by assassination.

Description of the Russian Constitution

Carolina Oliphant, Baroness Nairne

1766–1845

Charlie is my darling, the young Chevalier.

Life and Songs [1869]. Charlie Is My Darling⁵

I’m wearin’ awa’

To the land o’ the leal.

Life and Songs. The Land o’ the Leal

Germaine de Staël [Anna Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël-Holstein]

1766–1817

Love is the whole history of a woman’s life, it is but an episode in a man’s.¹

De l’Influence des Passions [1796]

A man must know how to defy opinion; a woman how to submit to it.

Delphine [1802]

To understand everything makes one tolerant.²

Corinne [1807], bk. XVIII, ch. 5

Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love.

Reflections on Suicide [1813]

John Quincy Adams

1767–1848

The Country is so totally given up to the Spirit of party, that not to follow blind-fold the one or the other is an inexpiable offence—The worst of these parties has the popular torrent in its favor, and uses its triumph with all the unprincipled fury of a faction; while the other gnashes its teeth, and is waiting with all the impatience of revenge, for the time when its turn may come to oppress and punish by the people’s favor.

Diary entry [December 31, 1803]

I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum [Let justice be done though heaven may perish]. My toast would be, may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.

Letter to John Adams [August 1, 1816]

With the Declaration of Independence on their lips and the merciless scourge of slavery in their hands, a more flagrant image of human inconsistency can scarcely be conceived than one of our Southern slave-holding republicans.

Diary entry [December 27, 1819]

[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

Address [July 4, 1821]

America… well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extraction, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.… She might become dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

Address [July 4, 1821]

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.

Letter to James Lloyd [October 1, 1822]

The public history of all countries, and all ages, is but a sort of mask, richly colored. The interior working of the machinery must be foul.

Diary entry [November 9, 1822]

This house will bear witness to his piety; this town, his birthplace, to his munificence; history to his patriotism; posterity to the depth and compass of his mind.

From his epitaph for John Adams³ [1829]

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do.

Letter to A. Bronson [July 30, 1838]

To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is… the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence.

Report on the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution [c. 1846]

This is the last of earth! I am content.

Last words [February 21, 1848]

Black Hawk⁴

1767–1838

I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. His heart is dead.… He is now a prisoner to the white man.

Speech upon surrender, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin [August 27, 1832]

[Black Hawk] has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men, who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war.¹ It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it.

Speech upon surrender, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin

Andrew Jackson

1767–1845

The individual who refuses to defend his rights when called by his Government, deserves to be a slave, and must be punished as an enemy of his country and friend to her foe.

Proclamation to the people of Louisiana from Mobile [September 21, 1814]

The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country, than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger.

To troops who had abandoned their lines during the battle of New Orleans [January 8, 1815]

Our Federal Union! it must be preserved!

Toast at Jefferson Birthday Celebration [1830]

Every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add… artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.

Veto of the Bank Bill [July 10, 1832]

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.

Veto of the Bank Bill

[On the Supreme Court’s upholding, in Worcester v. Georgia [1832], of legal impediments to the expulsion of Cherokees from their land:] John Marshall has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.

Attributed

One man with courage makes a majority.

Attributed

Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just

1767–1794

Nobody can rule guiltlessly.²

Address to the Convention [November 13, 1792]

No liberty for the enemies of liberty.³

Jacobin slogan, 1793. Attributed

Happiness is a new idea in Europe.⁴

Report on the Means of Implementing the Decree Against the Enemies of the Revolution [1794]

Jean-Baptiste Say

1767–1832

It is production which opens a demand for products.… A product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value.⁵

A Treatise on Political Economy [1803]

François René de Chateaubriand

1768–1848

[On his conversion to Christianity:] I wept and I believed.⁶

Le Génie du Christianisme [1802]

The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.⁷

Le Génie du Christianisme

Aristocracy has three successive ages: the age of superiorities, the age of privileges, the age of vanities. Originating in the first, it degenerates in the second and becomes extinct in the third.

Mémoires d’Outre Tombe (Memoirs from Beyond the Grave) [1848–1850], bk. 1, ch. 1

Murder will never be in my eyes an object of admiration and an argument for freedom; I know nothing more servile, more despicable, more cowardly, more narrow-minded than a terrorist.

Mémoires d’Outre Tombe, 4, 13

Napoleon was all the weaknesses and all the greatnesses of man.¹

Mémoires d’Outre Tombe, 22, 20

Charlotte Corday [Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont]

1768–1793

I killed one man to save one hundred thousand.

At her trial for the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat [1743–1793] [July 1793]

Friedrich Schleiermacher

1768–1834

I lie on the bosom of the infinite world. At this moment I am its soul, for I feel all its powers and its infinite life as my own.

On Religion² [1799]. On the Essence of Religion

Tecumseh³

1768–1813

These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above has appointed this place for us, on which to light our fires, and here we will remain. As to boundaries, the Great Spirit knows no boundaries, nor will his red children acknowledge any.⁴

To Joseph Barron, messenger of President James Madison [1810]

My father! The Great Spirit is my father! The earth is my mother—and on her bosom I will recline.

Council at Vincennes, Indiana Territory [August 14, 1810]. Answer to request to sit at “his father’s” (Governor William Henry Harrison’s) side

Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?

Council at Vincennes, Indiana Territory [August 14, 1810]. Speech to Harrison

Our lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. He gave to our ancestors the lands which we possess. We are determined to defend them, and if it is His will, our bones shall whiten on them, but we will never give them up.⁵

Speech to Major General Henry Procter, British commander, Fort Malden [September 1813]

Napoleon I [Napoleon Bonaparte]

1769–1821

Soldiers, from the summit of yonder pyramids forty centuries look down upon you.

In Egypt [July 21, 1798]

Go, sir, gallop, and don’t forget that the world was made in six days. You can ask me for anything you like, except time.

To an aide [1803]. From R. M. JOHNSTON [1867–1920], The Corsican [1910]

A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root.

[1803]. From J. CHRISTOPHER HEROLD [1919–1964], The Mind of Napoleon [1955]

The battle of Austerlitz is the finest of all those I have ever fought: forty-five flags, more than a hundred and fifty cannon, the ensigns of the Russian Imperial Guard, twenty generals, thirty thousand prisoners and, horrible sight, more than twenty thousand killed!

Letter to Empress Joséphine [December 2, 1805]

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.⁶

To the Abbé du Pradt, on the return from Russia [1812], referring to the retreat from Moscow

You write to me that it’s impossible; the word is not French.

Letter to General Lemarois [July 9, 1813]

What is the throne?—a bit of wood gilded and covered with velvet. I am the state—I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public—people wash their dirty linen at home.⁷ France has more need of me than I of France.

To the Senate [1814]

France is invaded; I am leaving to take command of my troops, and, with God’s help and their valor, I hope soon to drive the enemy beyond the frontier.

At Paris [January 23, 1814]

The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast.

At Montereau [February 17, 1814]

The Allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to the reestablishment of peace in Europe, he, faithful to his oath, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to quit France, and even to relinquish life, for the good of his country.

Act of Abdication [April 4, 1814]

Unite for the public safety, if you would remain an independent nation.

Proclamation to the French People [June 22, 1815]

Wherever wood can swim, there I am sure to find this flag of England.

At Rochefort [July 1815]

Whatever shall we do in that remote spot? Well, we will write our memoirs. Work is the scythe of time.

On board H.M.S. Bellerophon [August 1815]

[Of his relations with the Empress Josephine:] I generally had to give in.

On St. Helena [May 19, 1816]

My maxim was, la carrière est ouverte aux talents [the road is open to the talented], without distinction of birth or fortune.

On St. Helena [March 3, 1817]

Two o’clock in the morning courage: I mean unprepared courage.¹

[December 4, 5, 1815]. From EMMANUEL DE LAS CASES [1766–1842], Mémorial de Ste-Hélène [1823]

I never was truly my own master; but was always controlled by circumstances.

[November 11, 1816]. From EMMANUEL DE LAS CASES, Mémorial de Ste-Hélène

Madame Montholon having inquired what troops he considered the best, “Those which are victorious, Madame,” replied the Emperor.

From LOUIS DE BOURRIENNE [1769–1834], Memoirs [1829]

A silk stocking filled with mud.

Description of Talleyrand²

An army marches on its stomach.³

Attributed

Every French soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack.⁴

Attributed

Impossibility is the phantom of the fearful and the refuge of cowards.

Attributed

Perfidious Albion.⁵

Attributed

Chief of the Army.⁶

Last words

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

1769–1852

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

Dispatch from the field of Waterloo [June 1815]

I used to say of him [Napoleon] that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.

[November 2, 1831]. From PHILIP HENRY, EARL OF STANHOPE [1781–1855], Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington [1888]

The only thing I am afraid of is fear.

[November 3, 1831]. From PHILIP HENRY STANHOPE, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington

Ours [our army] is composed of the scum of the earth—the mere scum of the earth.

[November 4, 1831]. From PHILIP HENRY STANHOPE, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington

[Of troops sent to fight in the War of 1812:] They wanted this iron fist to command them.

[November 8, 1840]. From PHILIP HENRY STANHOPE, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington

There is no mistake; there has been no mistake; and there shall be no mistake.

Wellingtoniana [1832], p. 78

I don’t care a twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Attributed

The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

From SIR WILLIAM FRASER [1826–1898], Words on Wellington [1889]

Publish and be damned.

Attributed. His response when the courtesan Harriette Wilson threatened to publish her memoirs and his letters

Ludwig van Beethoven

1770–1827

I want to seize fate by the throat.

Letter to Dr. Franz Wegeler [November 16, 1801]

What humiliation when someone who stood next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or when someone heard the shepherd boy singing and again I heard nothing. Such misfortune brought me to the edge of despair, and I might have brought an end to my life—only my art held me back.

The Heiligenstadt Testament [1802]

I despise the world which does not intuitively feel that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Quoted by Bettina von Arnim in a letter to Goethe [May 28, 1810]

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

Letter to Bettina von Arnim [August 11, 1810]

Only art and science can raise men to the level of the gods.

Letter to Emilie M. [July 17, 1812]

The world is a king, and, like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse—it will not submit to the mold of flattery.

Conversations [March 1820]

Es muss sein [It must be]!

String Quartet no. 16 in F Major, op. 135 [1826]. Notation at Allegro in final movement

Pierre Jacques Étienne, Count Cambronne

1770–1842

The Guards die, but never surrender.¹

Attributed. Reply to surrender demand at Waterloo [1815]

George Canning

1770–1827

I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first.

The Anti-Jacobin, no. 11 [1797]. The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder, st. 9

A steady patriot of the world alone,

The friend of every country but his own.

The Anti-Jacobin, no. 36 [1798]. New Morality, l. 113

Give me th’avowed, th’erect, the manly foe,

Bold I can meet—perhaps may turn his blow;

But of all plagues, good Heav’n, thy wrath can send,

Save, save, oh! save me from the Candid Friend!²

The Anti-Jacobin, no. 36. New Morality, l. 207

William Clark

1770–1838

Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian, this great Pacific Octean which we been So long anxious to See.

Journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition [November 7, 1805], upon reaching the estuary of the Columbia River

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1770–1831

The truth is concrete.

Encyclopedia of the Physical Sciences [1817–1830], introduction

Philosophy is its own time comprehended in thoughts.

Philosophy of Right³ [1821], preface

What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.

Philosophy of Right

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk.

Philosophy of Right

What experience and history teach is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

Philosophy of History⁴ [1832], introduction

Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.

Philosophy of History, introduction

The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.

Philosophy of History, introduction

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.

Philosophy of History, introduction

It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: “Is it true in and for itself?”

Philosophy of History, pt. III, sec. 3, ch. 2

James Hogg

1770–1835

Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much, as consigning them to eternal damnation.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner [1824]

Friedrich Hölderlin

1770–1843

Ah, where will I find

Flowers, come winter,

And where the sunshine

And shade of the earth?

Walls stand cold

And speechless, in the wind

The weathervanes creak.¹

Half of Life [c. 1801]

Near and

Hard to grasp, the god.

Yet where danger lies,

Grows that which saves.

Patmos [1802]

Joseph Hopkinson

1770–1842

Hail, Columbia! happy land!

Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!

Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause.

Hail, Columbia² [1798], st. 1

William Wordsworth

1770–1850

———A simple child,³

That lightly draws its breath,

And feels its life in every limb,

What should it know of death?

We Are Seven [1798], st. 1

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

Lines Written in Early Spring [1798], st. 6

Nor less I deem that there are Powers

Which of themselves our minds impress;

That we can feed this mind of ours

In a wise passiveness.

Expostulation and Reply [1798], st. 6

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your teacher.

The Tables Turned [1798], st. 4

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

The Tables Turned, st. 6

    That best portion of a good man’s life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey [1798], l. 33

        Blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, l. 37

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, l. 47

        The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colors and their forms, were then to me

An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, nor any interest

Unborrowed from the eye.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, l. 76

    I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, l. 88

Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her.

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, l. 122

Fair seedtime had my soul, and I grew up

Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.

The Prelude [written 1799–1805, published 1850], bk. I, l. 301

Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows

Like harmony in music; there is a dark

Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles

Discordant elements, makes them cling together

In one society.

The Prelude, I, l. 340

        The grim shape

Towered up between me and the stars, and still,

For so it seemed, with purpose of its own

And measured motion like a living thing,

Strode after me.

The Prelude, I, l. 381

        Where the statue stood

Of Newton with his prism and silent face,

The marble index of a mind forever

Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

The Prelude, III, l. 60

But Europe at that time was thrilled with joy,

France standing on the top of golden hours,

And human nature seeming born again.

The Prelude, VI, l. 339

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!

The Prelude, XI, l. 108

        There is

One great society alone on earth:

The noble Living and the noble Dead.

The Prelude, XI, l. 393

Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak

A lasting inspiration, sanctified

By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved,

Others will love, and we will teach them how;

Instruct them how the mind of man becomes

A thousand times more beautiful than the earth

On which he dwells.

The Prelude, XIV, l. 444

Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.

Lyrical Ballads [2nd ed., 1800]. Preface

In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs—in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.

Lyrical Ballads. Preface

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.

Lyrical Ballads. Preface

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide

Into a lover’s head!

“O mercy!” to myself I cried,

“If Lucy should be dead!”

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known [1800], st. 7

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:¹

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways [1800]

A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees.

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal [1800]

Something between a hindrance and a help.

Michael [1800], l. 189

I traveled among unknown men,

In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then

What love I bore to thee.

I Traveled Among Unknown Men [1807], st. 1

My heart leaps up when I behold

    A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

    Or let me die!

The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.¹

My Heart Leaps Up [1807]

Sweet childish days, that were as long

As twenty days are now.

To a Butterfly (I’ve Watched You Now a Full Half-Hour) [1807], st. 2

I thought of Chatterton,² the marvelous boy,

The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;

Of him³ who walked in glory and in joy

Following his plow, along the mountainside:

By our own spirits are we deified:

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

Resolution and Independence [1807], st. 7

Choice word and measured phrase, above the reach

Of ordinary men.

Resolution and Independence, st. 14

And mighty poets in their misery dead.

Resolution and Independence, st. 17

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty.

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 [1807], l. 1

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will!

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802, l. 11

Plain living and high thinking are no more:

The homely beauty of the good old cause

Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,

And pure religion breathing household laws.

Written in London, September 1802 [1807]

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,

The holy time is quiet as a nun

Breathless with adoration.

It Is a Beauteous Evening [1807], l. 1

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the year;

And worship’st at the Temple’s inner shrine,

God being with thee when we know it not.

It Is a Beauteous Evening, l. 12

Once did she hold the gorgeous east in fee:

And was the safeguard of the west.

On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic [1807], l. 1

    Thou hast great allies;

Thy friends are exultations, agonies,

And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

To Toussaint L’Ouverture [1807], l. 12

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee: she is a fen

Of stagnant waters.

London, 1802 [1807], l. 1

Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life’s common way,

In cheerful godliness.

London, 1802, l. 9

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold

Which Milton held.

It Is Not to Be Thought Of [1807], l. 11

The music in my heart I bore

Long after it was heard no more.

The Solitary Reaper [1807], st. 4

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

        To me did seem

    Appareled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore—

    Turn wheresoe’er I may,

        By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood [1807], st. 1

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 2

    The sunshine is a glorious birth;

    But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 2

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 4

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

    Hath had elsewhere its setting,

        And cometh from afar:

    Not in entire forgetfulness,

    And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

    From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

    Upon the growing boy.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 5

The youth, who daily farther from the east

    Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

    And by the vision splendid

    Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 5

O joy! that in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That nature yet remembers

What was so fugitive!

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 9

High instincts before which our mortal nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 9

        Truths that wake,

To perish never.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 9

        Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 9

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 10

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober coloring from an eye

That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, st. 11

She was a phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely apparition, sent

To be a moment’s ornament.

She Was a Phantom of Delight [1807], st. 1

And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine.

She Was a Phantom of Delight, st. 3

A perfect woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command.

And yet a Spirit still, and bright

With something of angelic light.

She Was a Phantom of Delight, st. 3

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud [1807], st. 1

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, st. 2

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, st. 2

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, st. 3

        That inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, st. 4

Stern daughter of the voice of God!

O Duty!

Ode to Duty [1807], st. 1

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;

And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.

Ode to Duty, st. 7

The light that never was, on sea or land,

The consecration, and the poet’s dream.

Elegiac Stanzas. Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm [1807], st. 4

A deep distress hath humanized my Soul.

Elegiac Stanzas. Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, st. 9

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he

That every man in arms should wish to be?

Character of the Happy Warrior [1807], l. 1

Who, doomed to go in company with pain,

And fear, and bloodshed, miserable train!

Turns his necessity to glorious gain.

Character of the Happy Warrior, l. 12

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room.

Nuns Fret Not [1807], l. 1

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The World Is Too Much with Us [1807], l. 1

        Great God! I’d rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

The World Is Too Much with Us, l. 9

Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?

Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day,

Festively she puts forth in trim array.

Where Lies the Land [1807], l. 1

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,

Are a substantial world, both pure and good:

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

Personal Talk [1807], sonnet 3

A power is passing from the earth.

Lines on the Expected Dissolution of Mr. Fox [1807], st. 5

Two voices are there: one is of the sea,¹

One of the mountains; each a mighty voice.

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland [1807], l. 1

Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

Letter to Lady Beaumont [May 21, 1807]

        Strongest minds

Are often those of whom the noisy world

Hears least.

The Excursion² [1814], bk. I, l. 91

        The good die first,

And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust

Burn to the socket.

The Excursion, I, l. 500

        I have seen

A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract

Of inland ground, applying to his ear

The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,

To which, in silence hushed, his very soul

Listened intensely; and his countenance soon

Brightened with joy, for from within were heard

Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed

Mysterious union with its native sea.

Even such a shell the universe itself

Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times,

I doubt not, when to you it doth impart

Authentic tidings of invisible things;

Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power;

And central peace, subsisting at the heart

Of endless agitation.

The Excursion, IV, l. 1132

    One in whom persuasion and belief

Had ripened into faith, and faith become

A passionate intuition.

The Excursion, IV, l. 1293

Surprised by joy—impatient as the wind.

Surprised by Joy [1815], l. 1

                    the Gods approve

The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul.

Laodamia [1815], st. 13

An ampler ether, a diviner air.

Laodamia, 18

Enough, if something from our hands have power

To live, and act, and serve the future hour.

The River Duddon [1820], sonnet 34, Afterthought, l. 10

We feel that we are greater than we know.

The River Duddon, 34, Afterthought, l. 14

The unimaginable touch of Time.

Ecclesiastical Sonnets [1822], pt. III, sonnet 34. Mutability

But hushed be every thought that springs

From out the bitterness of things.

Elegiac Stanzas. Addressed to Sir G. H. B. [1827], st. 7

Sir Walter Scott

1771–1832

I cannot tell how the truth may be;

I say the tale as ’twas said to me.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel [1805], canto II, st. 22

In peace, Love tunes the shepherd’s reed;

In war, he mounts the warrior’s steed;

In halls, in gay attire is seen;

In hamlets, dances on the green.

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,

And men below, and saints above;

For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel, III, st. 2

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d

As home his footsteps he hath turn’d

From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there breathe, go, mark him well;

For him no Minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentered all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel, VI, st. 1

O Caledonia! stern and wild,

Meet nurse for a poetic child!

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood;

Land of the mountain and the flood!

The Lay of the Last Minstrel, VI, st. 2

November’s sky is chill and drear,

November’s leaf is red and sear.

Marmion [1808], canto I, introduction, st. 1

Stood for his country’s glory fast,

And nail’d her colors to the mast!

Marmion, I, introduction, st. 10

And come he slow, or come he fast,

It is but Death who comes at last.

Marmion, II, st. 30

Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best.

Marmion, V, st. 12 [Lochinvar, st. 1]

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

Marmion, V, st. 12 [Lochinvar, st. 1]

With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.

Marmion, V, st. 12 [Lochinvar, st. 5]

Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill;

But let it whistle as it will,

We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

Marmion, VI, introduction, st. 1

        And dar’st thou, then,

To beard the lion in his den,

The Douglas in his hall?

Marmion, VI, introduction, st. 14

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

When first we practice to deceive!

Marmion, VI, introduction, st. 17

O Woman! in our hours of ease,

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!

Marmion, VI, st. 30

To all, to each, a fair goodnight,

And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light!

Marmion, L’Envoy

The stag at eve had drunk his fill,

Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,

And deep his midnight lair had made

In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade.

The Lady of the Lake [1810], canto I, st. 1

In listening mood she seemed to stand,

The guardian Naiad of the strand.

The Lady of the Lake, I, st. 17

The will to do, the soul to dare.

The Lady of the Lake, I, st. 21

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,

Dream of battled fields no more,

Days of danger, nights of waking.

The Lady of the Lake, I, st. 31

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!¹

The Lady of the Lake, II, st. 19

Like the dew on the mountain,

Like the foam on the river,

Like the bubble on the fountain,

Thou art gone, and forever!

The Lady of the Lake, III, st. 16 [Coronach, st. 3]

Respect was mingled with surprise,

And the stern joy which warriors feel

In foemen worthy of their steel.

The Lady of the Lake, V, st. 10

It’s no fish ye’re buying, it’s men’s lives.

The Antiquary [1816], ch. 11

Time will rust the sharpest sword,

Time will consume the strongest cord;

That which molders hemp and steel,

Mortal arm and nerve must feel.

Harold the Dauntless [1817], canto I, st. 4

Sea of upturned faces.

Rob Roy [1817], ch. 20

My foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor.

Rob Roy, 34

There is a southern proverb—fine words butter no parsnips.

The Legend of Montrose [1819], ch. 3

As old as the hills.

The Monastery [1820], ch. 9

Oh, poverty parts good company.

The Abbot [1820], ch. 7

Tell that to the marines—the sailors won’t believe it.¹

Redgauntlet [1824], vol. II, ch. 7

Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit.

The Talisman [1825], ch. 24

A miss is as good as a mile.

Journal [December 3, 1825]

Sydney Smith

1771–1845

In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book, or goes to an American play, or looks at an American picture or statue?… Under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy, and sell, and torture?

In Edinburgh Review [January–May 1820]

If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes—some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong—and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole.²

Sketches of Moral Philosophy [1850]

Preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 3

Avoid shame, but do not seek glory—nothing so expensive as glory.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 4

Take short views, hope for the best, and trust in God.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 6

Not body enough to cover his mind decently with; his intellect is improperly exposed.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 9

He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 9

Ah, you flavor everything; you are the vanilla of society.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 9

As the French say, there are three sexes—men, women, and clergymen.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 9

Daniel Webster struck me much like a steam engine in trousers.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 9

Live always in the best company when you read.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 10

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 10

He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 11

Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.³

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 11

What you don’t know would make a great book.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 11

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 11

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea?—how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 11

That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

Lady Holland’s Memoir, I, 11

Dorothy Wordsworth

1771–1855

A thick fog obscured the distant prospect entirely, but the shapes of the nearer trees and the dome of the wood dimly seen and dilated… The shapes of the mist, slowly moving along, exquisitely beautiful; passing over the sheep they almost seemed to have more of life than those quiet creatures. The unseen birds singing in the mist.

Alfoxden Journal [March 1, 1798]

I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing.

Grasmere Journal [April 15, 1802]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1772–1834

O the one life within us and abroad,

Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,

A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,

Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere—

Methinks, it should have been impossible

Not to love all things in a world so filled.

The Eolian Harp [1795], l. 26

    And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic harps diversely fram’d,

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the Soul of each, and God of All?

The Eolian Harp, l. 44

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

“By thy long gray beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner [1798], pt. I, st. 1

The guests are met, the feast is set:

May’st hear the merry din.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I, st. 2

He holds him with his glittering eye—

The Wedding Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years’ child:

The Mariner hath his will.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I, st. 4

The ship was cheered, the harbor cleared,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I, st. 6

And now there came both mist and snow,

And it grew wondrous cold:

And ice, mast-high, came floating by,

As green as emerald.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I, st. 13

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around:

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

Like noises in a swound!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I, st. 15

“God save thee, ancient Mariner!

From the fiends, that plague thee thus!—

Why look’st thou so?”—“With my crossbow

I shot the Albatross.”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I, st. 20

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, II, st. 5

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, II, st. 8

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, II, st. 9

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, II, st. 10

About, about, in reel and rout

The death fires danced at night.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, II, st. 11

I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,

And cried, A sail! a sail!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, III, st. 4

Her lips were red, her looks were free,

Her locks were yellow as gold:

Her skin was white as leprosy,

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she,

Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, III, st. 11

“The game is done! I’ve won, I’ve won!”

Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, III, st. 12

The sun’s rim dips, the stars rush out:

At one stride comes the dark;

With far-heard whisper o’er the sea

Off shot the specter bark.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, III, st. 13

We listened and looked sideways up!

Fear at my heart, as at a cup,

My lifeblood seemed to sip.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, III, st. 14

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,

And cursed me with his eye.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, III, st. 15

I fear thee, ancient Mariner!

I fear thy skinny hand!

And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

As is the ribbed sea-sand.¹

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, IV, st. 1

Alone, alone, all, all alone;

Alone on a wide, wide sea.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, IV, st. 3

O happy living things! no tongue

Their beauty might declare:

A spring of love gushed from my heart,

And I blessed them unaware.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, IV, st. 14

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,

Beloved from pole to pole.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, V, st. 1

The man hath penance done,

And penance more will do.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, V, st. 26

Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VI, st. 10

Is this the hill? is this the kirk?

Is this mine own countree?

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VI, st. 14

No voice; but oh! the silence sank

Like music on my heart.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VI, st. 22

I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;

That moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me:

To him my tale I teach.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VII, st. 17

O Wedding Guest! This soul hath been

Alone on a wide wide sea:

So lonely ’twas, that God himself

Scarce seemèd there to be.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VII, st. 19

He prayeth well who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VII, st. 22

He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VII, st. 23

A sadder and a wiser man

He rose the morrow morn.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, VII, st. 25

’Tis a month before the month of May,

And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

Christabel [1797–1800], pt. I, l. 21

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can.

Christabel, I, l. 49

Her gentle limbs did she undress,

And lay down in her loveliness.

Christabel, I, l. 237

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

Christabel, I, l. 252

Alas! they had been friends in youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth;

And constancy lives in realms above;

And life is thorny; and youth is vain;

And to be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness in the brain.

Christabel, II, l. 408

The frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind.

Frost at Midnight [1798], l. 1

    Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

Frost at Midnight, l. 65

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place

(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,

Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,

Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,

And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,

Cries out, “Where is it?”

Fears in Solitude [1798], l. 81

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round.

Kubla Khan [1798], l. 1

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

Kubla Khan, l. 14

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.

Kubla Khan, l. 25

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

Kubla Khan, l. 30

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

Kubla Khan, l. 35

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Kubla Khan, l. 37

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honeydew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Kubla Khan, l. 42

Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows,

Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.

The Homeric Hexameter (translated from SCHILLER) [1799?]

In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column;

In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

The Ovidian Elegiac Metre (translated from SCHILLER) [1799]

The ready way to make the mind grow awry is to lace it too tight—

Notebook [1801]

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Hymn Before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni [1802], last line

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole,

Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

An Epigram [1802]

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Dejection: An Ode [1802], st. 2

        It were a vain endeavor,

        Though I should gaze forever

On that green light that lingers in the west:

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

Dejection: An Ode, st. 3

O lady! we receive but what we give

And in our life alone does Nature live.

Dejection: An Ode, st. 4

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

Enveloping the earth.

Dejection: An Ode, st. 4

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud—

We in ourselves rejoice!

And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,

All melodies the echoes of that voice,

All colors a suffusion from that light.

Dejection: An Ode, st. 5

Trochee trips from long to short;

From long to long in solemn sort

Slow Spondee stalks.

Metrical Feet [1806]

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,

Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots.

On Donne’s Poetry [c. 1818]

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—

The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—

And Winter slumbering in the open air,

Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!

And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,

Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Work Without Hope [February 21, 1825], l. 1

Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,

And Hope without an object cannot live.

Work Without Hope, l. 13

In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language for something within me that already and forever exists, than observing anything new.

Anima Poetae (Soul of the Poet) [1805], ch. 4

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke—Ay!—and what then?

Anima Poetae, 9

Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or at the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.

Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton [1811–1812]

The last speech [Iago’s soliloquy], the motivehunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful!

Notes on Shakespeare [c. 1812]

The most general definition of beauty… Multeity in Unity.

On the Principles of Genial Criticism [1814]

Not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry.

Biographia Literaria [1817], ch. 1

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

Biographia Literaria, 1

I have seen gross intolerance shewn in support of toleration; sectarian antipathy most obtrusively displayed in the promotion of an undistinguishing comprehension of sects; and acts of cruelty (I had almost said) of treachery, committed in furtherance of an object vitally important to the cause of humanity; and all this by men too of naturally kind dispositions and exemplary conduct.

Biographia Literaria, 10

Until you understand a writer’s ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

Biographia Literaria, 12

During the act of knowledge itself, the objective and subjective are so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which of the two the priority belongs.

Biographia Literaria, 12

The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.

Biographia Literaria, 13

The secondary [imagination]… dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.

Biographia Literaria, 13

The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.

Biographia Literaria, 13

The two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination.

Biographia Literaria, 14

That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.

Biographia Literaria, 14

A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.

Biographia Literaria, 14

A poem of any length neither can be, or ought to be, all poetry.

Biographia Literaria, 14

The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power… imagination.

Biographia Literaria, 14

[Imagination] reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.

Biographia Literaria, 14

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

Biographia Literaria, 15

While [Shakespeare] darts himself forth and passes into all the forms of human character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the flood, [Milton] attracts all forms and things to himself, into the unity of his own Ideal. All things and modes of action shape themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare becomes all things, yet for ever remaining himself.

Biographia Literaria, 15

Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.¹

Biographia Literaria, 15

The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.²

Biographia Literaria, 17

I include in the meaning of a word not only its correspondent object, but likewise all the associations which it recalls. For language is framed to convey not the object alone, but likewise the character, mood and intentions of the person who is representing it.

Biographia Literaria, 22

It is among the mysteries, and abides in the dark ground-work of our nature, to crave an outward confirmation of that something within us, which is our very self, that something, not made up of our qualities and relations, but itself the supporter and substantial basis of all these. Love me, and not my qualities, may be a vicious and an insane wish, but it is not a wish wholly without a meaning.

Biographia Literaria, 23

Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation.

On Poesy or Art [1818]

The artist must imitate that which is within the thing, that which is active through form and figure, and discourses to us by symbols.

On Poesy or Art

The heart should have fed upon the truth, as insects on a leaf, till it be tinged with the color, and show its food in every… minutest fiber.

On Poesy or Art

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from,—as pickpockets are observed commonly to walk with their hands in their breeches’ pockets.

Table Talk [January 4, 1823]

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in their best order.

Table Talk [July 12, 1827]

The man’s desire is for the woman; but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

Table Talk [July 23, 1827]

That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.

Table Talk

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.

The Friend. The Improvisatore [1828]

Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that anyone born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure that no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian.… The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other considers it a power.

Table Talk [July 2, 1830]

        Beneath this sod

A poet lies, or that which once seemed he—

Oh, lift a thought in prayer for S.T.C.!

That he, who many a year, with toil of breath,

Found death in life, may here find life in death.

Epitaph written for himself [1833]

Novalis [Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg]

1772–1801

We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.

Pollen [1798]

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.

Fragments and Studies [1799–1800]

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that Fate and character are the same conception.¹

Heinrich von Ofterdingen [1802], bk. 2

We do not understand speech, because speech does not understand itself, nor wish to; the true Sanskrit would speak in order to speak, because speech is its delight and essence.²

The Novices of Sais [1802]

Josiah Quincy Jr.

1772–1864

If this bill [for the admission of Orleans Territory as a State] passes, I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations; and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation—amicably if they can; violently if they must.³

Speech in the House of Representatives [January 14, 1811]

David Ricardo

1772–1823

Labor, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labor is that price which is necessary to enable the laborers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.

On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation [1817], ch. 5

Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

On Protection to Agriculture [1820], sec. 5

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

On Protection to Agriculture, sec. 6

Friedrich von Schlegel

1772–1829

The historian is a prophet in reverse.

Athenaeum [1798–1800]

William Henry Harrison⁴

1773–1841

We admit of no government by divine right… the only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

Inaugural Address [March 4, 1841]

John Randolph

1773–1833

The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it.

Speech in the House of Representatives [March 5, 1806]

[Of Edward Livingston:] He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.

From W. CABELL BRUCE [1860–1946], John Randolph of Roanoke [1923], vol. II

Robert Southey

1774–1843

It was a summer evening;

Old Kaspar’s work was done,

And he before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun;

And by him sported on the green

His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

The Battle of Blenheim [1798], st. 1

“ ’Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he,

“Who fell in the great victory.”

The Battle of Blenheim, st. 3

But what they fought each other for,

I could not well make out.

The Battle of Blenheim, st. 6

“And everybody praised the duke,

Who this great fight did win.”

“But what good came of it at last?”

Quoth little Peterkin.

“Why, that I cannot tell,” said he;

“But ’twas a famous victory.”

The Battle of Blenheim, st. 11

“You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,

“The few locks which are left you are gray;

You are hale, Father William—a hearty old man:

Now tell me the reason, I pray.”

The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them¹ [1799], st. 1

“In the days of my youth, I remembered my God,

And he hath not forgotten my age.”

The Old Man’s Comforts and How He Gained Them, st. 6

And then they knew the perilous rock,

And blessed the Abbot of Aberbrothok.

The Inchcape Rock² [1802], st. 4

Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock—

“O Christ! It is the Inchcape Rock.”

The Inchcape Rock, st. 15

Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

The Curse of Kehama [1810], motto

Jane Austen³

1775–1817

An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it.

Sense and Sensibility [1811], bk. I, ch. 2

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

Sense and Sensibility, I, 12

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Pride and Prejudice [1813], ch. 1

She [Mrs. Bennet] was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.

Pride and Prejudice, 1

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

Pride and Prejudice, 6

A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

Pride and Prejudice, 6

May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?

Pride and Prejudice, 14

Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth—and it was soon done—done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire.

Pride and Prejudice, 15

You have delighted us long enough.

Pride and Prejudice, 18

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

Pride and Prejudice, 22

Mrs. Bennet was restored to her usual querulous serenity.

Pride and Prejudice, 42

You ought certainly to forgive them, as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.

Pride and Prejudice, 57

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

Pride and Prejudice, 57

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Pride and Prejudice, 58

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.

Mansfield Park [1814], ch. 22

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

Mansfield Park, 48

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

Emma [1815], ch. 9

It was a delightful visit—perfect, in being much too short.

Emma, 13

With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please every feature works.

Emma, 13

Nobody who has not been in the interior of a family can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.

Emma, 18

The sooner every party breaks up, the better.

Emma, 25

Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.

Emma, 34

“Only a novel”… in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

Northanger Abbey [1818], ch. 5

She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning.

Persuasion [1818], ch. 4

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

Letters. To her sister Cassandra [December 24, 1798]

We met a gentleman in a buggy, who, on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall—and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.

Letters. To her sister Cassandra [May 17, 1799]

Where shall I begin? Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?

Letters. To her sister Cassandra [June 15, 1808]

3 or 4 families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on.

Letters. To her niece Anna Austen [September 9, 1814]

The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labor.

Letters. To J. Edward Austen [December 16, 1816]

Jacob Henry

1775–1847

The proud monuments of liberty knew that… governments were only concerned about the actions and conduct of man, and not his speculative notions. Who among us feels himself so exalted above his fellows, as to have a right to dictate to them their mode of belief?

Speech on being refused his seat, on religious grounds, in the North Carolina legislature [1808]

Charles Lamb

1775–1834

I have had playmates, I have had companions,

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days—

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Old Familiar Faces [1798]

Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don’t much care if I never see a mountain in my life.

Letter to William Wordsworth [1801]

Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral.

Letter to Robert Southey [1815]

[Of Coleridge:] An archangel a little damaged.

Letter to William Wordsworth [1816]

The red-letter days, now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.

Essays of Elia [1823]. Oxford in the Vacation

Your borrowers of books—those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

Essays of Elia. The Two Races of Men

Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.

Essays of Elia. A Chapter on Ears

Credulity is the man’s weakness, but the child’s strength.

Essays of Elia. Witches, and Other Night Fears

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

Essays of Elia. Valentine’s Day

Presents, I often say, endear absents.

Essays of Elia. A Dissertation upon Roast Pig

I came home forever!

Letter to Bernard Barton [1825], on leaving his “33 years’ desk” at the East India House

Who first invented work, and bound the free

And holiday-rejoicing spirit down?

Work

Would I could sell or give you some of my leisure! POSITIVELY, THE BEST THING A MAN CAN HAVE TO DO IS NOTHING!

Letter to Bernard Barton [August 10, 1827]

I love to lose myself in other men’s minds.

Last Essays of Elia [1833]. Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading

Books think for me.

Last Essays of Elia. Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man’s self to himself.

Last Essays of Elia. The Convalescent

A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Last Essays of Elia. Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are the Best

The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture.

Last Essays of Elia. Popular Fallacies: XIII, That You Must Love Me and Love My Dog

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

Table Talk. In the Athenaeum [1834]

Walter Savage Landor

1775–1864

Ah what avails the sceptred race,

Ah what the form divine!

Rose Aylmer [1806]

Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one.

Imaginary Conversations [1824–1829]. Chesterfield and Chatham

There is delight in singing, though none hear

Beside the singer.

To Robert Browning [1846]

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;

Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.

I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;

It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

I Strove with None [1853]

J[oseph] M[allord] W[illiam] Turner

1775–1851

The sun is God.

Spoken in his last weeks; quoted by John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera [1871–1884]

John Constable

1776–1837

There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may,—light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

Quoted in C. R. LESLIE [1794–1859], Memoirs of the Life of John Constable [1843]

Thomas Campbell

1777–1844

’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,

And robes the mountain in its azure hue.¹

Pleasures of Hope [1799], pt. I, l. 7

On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,

No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;

No harp like my own could so cheerily play,

And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.²

The Harper [1799], st. 1

’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,

And coming events cast their shadows before.³

Lochiel’s Warning [1802]

Oh leave this barren spot to me!

Spare, woodman, spare the beechen tree!

The Beech Tree’s Petition, st. 1

Henry Clay

1777–1852

If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.

Speech in the House of Representatives [January 22, 1812]

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.

Speech at Ashland, Kentucky [March 1829]

I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.… The Union, sir, is my country.

Speech in the Senate [1848]

The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity—unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.

Speech in the Senate [January 29, 1850]

I would rather be right than be President.⁴

Speech in the Senate [1850]

Lorenzo Dow

1777–1834

You will be damned if you do.—And you will be damned if you don’t [definition of Calvinism].

Reflections on the Love of God

Carl Friedrich Gauss

1777–1855

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

From SARTORIUS VON WALTERSHAUSEN [1809–1876], Gauss zum Gedächtniss (Gauss: A Memorial) [1856]

Heinrich von Kleist

1777–1811

Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god.¹

On the Marionette Theater [1810]

Roger B. Taney

1777–1864

[On slaves and their descendants:] They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

Dred Scott v. Sandford [1857]

Valentine Blacker

1778–1823

Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry!

From EDWARD HAYES [b. 1800?], Ballads of Ireland [1856]. Oliver’s Advice, An Orange Ballad

Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux

1778–1868

In my mind, he was guilty of no error—he was chargeable with no exaggeration—he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.

Present State of the Law [February 7, 1828]

The great unwashed.

Attributed

Robert Emmet

1778–1803

Let no man write my epitaph.… When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written.²

On being sentenced to death for Irish nationalist activity [September 19, 1803]

William Hazlitt

1778–1830

Hamlet is a name: his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet’s brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader’s mind. It is we who are Hamlet.

Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays [1817]

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

Political Essays [1819]. The Times Newspaper

One has no notion of him [William Cobbett] as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns readers.… He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; “lays waste” a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the government itself. He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.³

Table Talk [1821–1822]. Character of Cobbett

It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.

Table Talk. On the Ignorance of the Learned

Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn, and laughter.

Table Talk. The Indian Jugglers

What I mean by living to one’s self is living in the world, as in it, not of it.… It is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things;… to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it.

Table Talk. On Living to One’s Self

There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.

Table Talk. On Living to One’s Self

He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart looks at the busy world through the loop-holes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in the fray.

Table Talk. On Living to One’s Self

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself.

Table Talk. On Going a Journey

When I am in the country I wish to vegetate like the country.

Table Talk. On Going a Journey

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

Table Talk. On Going a Journey

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner—and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.

Table Talk. On Going a Journey

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

Table Talk. On the Fear of Death

I have thought and suffered too much to be willing to have thought and suffered in vain.

Table Talk. On the Fear of Death

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

Sketches and Essays [1823]. On Prejudice

If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago.

Sketches and Essays. On Reading New Books

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

Characteristics [1823], no. 416

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best.

My First Acquaintance with Poets [1823]

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.

On Dreams [1823]

I believe in the theoretical benevolence, and the practical malignity of man.

Aphorisms on Man [1830], no. 46

Stephen Decatur

1779–1820

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.¹

Toast given at Norfolk [April 1816]. From ALEXANDER SLIDELL MACKENZIE [1803–1849], Life of Stephen Decatur² [1848]

Francis Scott Key

1779–1843

Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The Star-Spangled Banner [September 14, 1814], st. 1

Blessed with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto, “In God is our trust.”

The Star-Spangled Banner, st. 4

Clement Clarke Moore

1779–1863

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring—not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

A Visit from St. Nicholas [December 1823]

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!”

A Visit from St. Nicholas

Thomas Moore

1779–1852

Go where glory waits thee!

But while fame elates thee,

Oh, still remember me!

Irish Melodies [1807–1834]. Go Where Glory Waits Thee, st. 1

Oh, breathe not his name! let it sleep in the shade,

Where cold and unhonor’d his relics are laid.

Irish Melodies. Oh, Breathe Not His Name, st. 1

The harp that once through Tara’s halls

The soul of music shed,

Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls

As if that soul were fled.

Irish Melodies. The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls, st. 1

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms

Which I gaze on so fondly today,

Were to change by tomorrow and fleet in my arms,

Like fairy gifts fading away,

Thou would’st still be ador’d as this moment thou art,

Let thy loveliness fade as it will,

And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart

Would entwine itself verdantly still.

Irish Melodies. Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, st. 1

’Tis the last rose of summer,

Left blooming alone;

All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone.

Irish Melodies. The Last Rose of Summer, st. 1

The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone,

In the ranks of death you’ll find him.

His father’s sword he has girded on,

And his wild harp slung behind him.

Irish Melodies. The Minstrel Boy, st. 1

    And the best of all ways

    To lengthen our days

Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.

Irish Melodies. The Young May Moon, st. 1

You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,

But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.¹

Irish Melodies. Farewell! But Whenever, st. 3

The light that lies

In woman’s eyes,

Has been my heart’s undoing.

Irish Melodies. The Time I’ve Lost in Wooing, st. 1

    My only books

    Were woman’s looks,

And folly’s all they’ve taught me.

Irish Melodies. The Time I’ve Lost in Wooing, st. 1

Oft in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me,

Fond Memory brings the light

Of other days around me;

    The smiles, the tears,

    Of boyhood’s years,

The words of love then spoken;

    The eyes that shone

    Now dimmed and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken.

National Airs [1815]. Oft in the Stilly Night, st. 1

    I feel like one,

    Who treads alone

Some banquet hall deserted,

    Whose lights are fled,

    Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed.

National Airs. Oft in the Stilly Night, st. 2

What though youth gave love and roses,

Age still leaves us friends and wine.

National Airs. Spring and Autumn, st. 1

Joseph Story

1779–1845

[The law] is a jealous mistress, and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not to be won by trifling favors, but by lavish homage.

The Value and Importance of Legal Studies [August 5, 1829]

William Ellery Channing

1780–1842

We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity. “To us,” as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, “there is one God, even the Father.” With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God.

Unitarian Christianity [Baltimore, 1819]

I see the marks of God in the heavens and the earth, but how much more in a liberal intellect, in magnanimity, in unconquerable rectitude, in a philanthropy which forgives every wrong, and which never despairs of the cause of Christ and human virtue! I do and I must reverence human nature.… I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.

Likeness to God [Providence, Rhode Island, 1828]

There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when… to dare is the highest wisdom.

Complete Works [1879]. The Union [1829]

Karl von Clausewitz

1780–1831

War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.¹

On War² [1833]

The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently—like the effect of a fog or moonshine—gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance.³

On War

Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.

On War

Charles Caleb Colton

1780–1832

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.

Lacon [1820–1822], vol. I, no. 183

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

Lacon, I, 217

Philip Hone

1780–1851

By and by we shall have balloons and pass over to Europe between sun and sun. Oh, for the good old days of heavy post-coaches and speed at the rate of six miles an hour!

Diary [November 28, 1844]

Charles Miner

1780–1865

When I see a merchant overpolite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter—thinks I, that man has an ax to grind.

Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe [1815]. Who’ll Turn Grindstones⁴

Frances [Milton] Trollope

1780–1863

Let no one who wishes to receive agreeable impressions of American manners, commence their travels in a Mississippi steamboat.

Domestic Manners of the Americans [1832]

Ebenezer Elliott

1781–1849

Not kings and lords, but nations!

Not thrones and crowns, but men!

Corn Law Rhymes [1828]. When Wilt Thou Save the People?, st. 1

What is a communist? One who hath yearnings

For equal division of unequal earnings.

Poetical Works [1846]. Epigram

James Lawrence

1781–1813

Tell the men to fire faster and not to give up the ship; fight her till she sinks.⁵

On board the U.S. frigate Chesapeake [June 1, 1813]

John C[aldwell] Calhoun

1782–1850

The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.

Speech [February 13, 1835]

A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.¹

Speech [May 27, 1836]

I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good.

Slavery a Positive Good, speech to U.S. Senate [February 6, 1837]

The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

Speech in the Senate [February 19, 1847]

Thomas H. Palmer

1782–1861

’Tis a lesson you should heed,

Try, try again.

If at first you don’t succeed,

Try, try again.

Teacher’s Manual² [1840]

Ann Taylor

1782–1866

Jane Taylor

1783–1824

Who ran to help me when I fell,

And would some pretty story tell,

Or kiss the place to make it well?

    My mother.

Original Poems for Infant Minds [1804]. My Mother [by ANN TAYLOR], st. 6

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are,

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky!³

Rhymes for the Nursery [1806]. The Star, st. 1

I like little pussy, her coat is so warm;

And if I don’t hurt her she’ll do me no harm.

Rhymes for the Nursery. I Like Little Pussy [by JANE TAYLOR], st. 1

Daniel Webster

1782–1852

It is, sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet there are those who love it.

Dartmouth College Case [1818]

Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

Speech [April 2, 1824]

We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce in all minds a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country.

Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument [June 17, 1825]

Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote.⁴

Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson, Faneuil Hall, Boston [August 2, 1826]

It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment—Independence now and Independence forever.⁵

Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson, Faneuil Hall, Boston

Washington is in the clear upper sky.

Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson, Faneuil Hall, Boston

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is.⁶ Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever.

Second Speech on Foote’s Resolution [January 26, 1830]

The people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people.¹

Second Speech on Foote’s Resolution

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.

Second Speech on Foote’s Resolution

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.

Second Speech on Foote’s Resolution

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession.

Argument on the murder of Captain White [April 6, 1830]

He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.

Speech on Hamilton [March 10, 1831]

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

Speech [June 3, 1834]

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Speech [March 15, 1837]

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization.

On Agriculture [January 13, 1840]

America has furnished to the world the character of Washington. And if our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have entitled them to the respect of mankind.

On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument [June 17, 1843]

Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.

Speech [July 25 and 27, 1846]

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

Speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner [May 10, 1847]

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.

Speech [July 17, 1850]

Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty.

Letter [April 1851]

Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers, a monster watch; and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

On the Old Man of the Mountain;² attributed

I still live.

Last words [October 24, 1852]

Simón Bolívar

1783–1830

A state too extensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability.

Letter from Jamaica [Summer 1815]

Those who have served the cause of the revolution have plowed the sea.

Attributed

The three greatest dolts in the world: Jesus Christ, Don Quixote, and I.

Attributed

Reginald Heber

1783–1826

From Greenland’s icy mountains,

From India’s coral strand,

Where Afric’s sunny fountains

Roll down their golden sand.

Hymns. Missionary Hymn [1819], st. 1

Though every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile.

Hymns. Missionary Hymn, st. 2

Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee:

Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!

God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity.

Hymns. Holy, Holy, Holy! [1827]

Washington Irving

1783–1859

The renowned and antient city of Gotham.¹

Salmagundi [November 11, 1807]

How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.

Knickerbocker’s History of New York [1809], bk. II, ch. 3

His wife “ruled the roast,” and in governing the governor, governed the province, which might thus be said to be under petticoat government.

Knickerbocker’s History of New York, IV, 4

They claim to be the first inventors of those recondite beverages, cocktail, stonefence, and sherry cobbler.

Knickerbocker’s History of New York, IV, 241

Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.

The Sketch-Book [1819–1820]. Rip Van Winkle

A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

The Sketch-Book. Rip Van Winkle

That happy age when a man can be idle with impunity.

The Sketch-Book. Rip Van Winkle

Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

Bracebridge Hall [1822]. Bachelors

The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land.

Wolfert’s Roost [1855]. The Creole Village

Stendhal [Henri Beyle]

1783–1842

I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.

De l’Amour (On Love) [1822], ch. 1

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.

De l’Amour, 60

Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.

De l’Amour, fragments

In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives.

De l’Amour, fragments

Courtiers of all ages feel one great need: to speak in such a way that they do not say anything.

Racine and Shakespeare [1823]

A novel is a mirror that strolls along a highway. Now it reflects the blue of the skies, now the mud puddles underfoot.

Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black)² [1830]

There is no such thing as “natural law”: this expression is nothing but old nonsense. Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.

Le Rouge et le Noir

The count had reached his fifties: a cruel word whose resonance can perhaps be fully appreciated only by a man desperately in love.

La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) [1839], ch. 7

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.

Reply to Balzac [October 30, 1840]

Wit lasts no more than two centuries.

Reply to Balzac

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.

Manuscript note [1840]

Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one.

La Vie d’Henri Brulard [1890]

[James Henry] Leigh Hunt

1784–1859

This Adonis in loveliness was a corpulent man of fifty.³

The Examiner [March 22, 1812]

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass.

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket [1817]

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,

Stolen kisses much completer,

Stolen looks are nice in chapels,

Stolen, stolen, be your apples.⁴

Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard [1830], l. 5

There lived a knight, when knighthood was in flow’r,

Who charmed alike the tilt-yard and the bower.

The Gentle Armour [1832], canto I

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.

Abou Ben Adhem [1838]

An angel writing in a book of gold.

Abou Ben Adhem

Write me as one that loves his fellow men.

Abou Ben Adhem

And showed the names whom love of God had bless’d,

And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

Abou Ben Adhem

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

Say that health and wealth have missed me,

Say I’m growing old, but add,

Jenny kissed me.¹

Rondeau [1838]

Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston

1784–1865

We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests it is our duty to follow.

Speech in the House of Commons on foreign policy [March 1, 1848]

Zachary Taylor

1784–1850

Hurrah for Old Kentuck! That’s the way to do it. Give ’em hell, damn ’em.

Shouted to the 2nd Kentucky Regiment on seeing them rally in battle [Buena Vista, Mexico, February 23, 1847]

A little more grape, Captain Bragg.

Attributed [Buena Vista, Mexico, February 23, 1847]

Tell him to go to hell.

Reply to Santa Anna’s demand for surrender [Buena Vista, Mexico, February 23, 1847]

Thomas De Quincey

1785–1859

If a man “whose talk is of oxen” should become an opium-eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to dream at all)—he will dream about oxen.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater [1822–1856]. Preliminary Confessions

The burden of the incommunicable.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater, pt. I

I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life.… Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave.…

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, II

Thou only givest these gifts to man, and thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!

Confessions of an English Opium Eater, II

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbathbreaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts [1827]

Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense life of the social instincts, none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing.

Suspiria de Profundis [1845]

Lady Caroline Lamb

1785–1828

[Of Byron:] Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Journal [March 1812]

Thomas Love Peacock

1785–1866

Not drunk is he who from the floor

Can rise alone and still drink more;

But drunk is he who prostrate lies,

Without the power to drink or rise.

The Misfortunes of Elphin [1829], ch. 3, heading (translated from the Welsh)

Ancient sculpture is the true school of modesty. But where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant.

Crotchet Castle [1831], ch. 7

Oliver Hazard Perry

1785–1819

We have met the enemy, and they are ours.¹

Dispatch from U.S. brig Niagara to General William Henry Harrison, announcing his victory at the battle of Lake Erie [September 10, 1813]

Samuel Woodworth

1785–1842

How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,

When fond recollection presents them to view!

The Old Oaken Bucket

The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,

The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well.

The Old Oaken Bucket

David Crockett

1786–1836

I leave this rule for others when I’m dead,

Be always sure you’re right—then go ahead.²

Narrative of the Life of Colonel Crockett [1834]

If I could rest anywhere it would be in Arkansaw where the men are of the real half-horse, half-alligator breed such as grows nowhere else on the face of the earth.

Narrative of the Life of Colonel Crockett

Benjamin Robert Haydon

1786–1846

In fireside conversation he was weak and inconsistent, but he was in his glory in the fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of a flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature tremble.

Autobiography and Journals [published 1853], on John Keats

William Learned Marcy

1786–1857

They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.

Speech in the Senate [January 1832]

Winfield Scott

1786–1866

Say to the seceded States, “Wayward sisters, depart in peace.”

Letter to W. H. Seward [March 3, 1861]

Seattle³

c. 1786–1866

When the last red man has vanished from this earth, and his memory is only a story among the whites, these shores will still swarm with the invisible dead of my people. And when your children’s children think they are alone in the fields, the forests, the shops, the highways, or the quiet of the woods, they will not be alone. There is no place in this country where a man can be alone. At night when the streets of your town and cities are quiet, and you think they are empty, they will throng with the returning spirits that once thronged them, and that still love these places. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.

Speech to governor of Washington Territory [c. 1855]

François Guizot

1787–1874

Enrich yourselves!⁴

Speech [March 1, 1843]

Emma Willard

1787–1870

Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

The Cradle of the Deep [1831]

George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron

1788–1824

“Friendship is Love without his wings!”

L’Amitié Est l’Amour sans Ailes⁵ [written 1806]

Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of Man, without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the memory of Boatswain, a dog.

Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog [1808]

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend.

Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog

I’ll publish right or wrong:

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers [1809], l. 5

’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;

A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in ’t.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l. 51

A man must serve his time to every trade

Save censure—critics all are ready-made.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l. 63

With just enough of learning to misquote.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l. 66

        As soon

Seek roses in December, ice in June;

Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff;

Believe a woman or an epitaph,

Or any other thing that’s false, before

You trust in critics.

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, l. 75

Maid of Athens, ere we part,

Give, oh give me back my heart!

Maid of Athens [1810], st. 1

Vex’d with mirth the drowsy ear of night.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, canto I [1812], st. 2

Had sigh’d to many, though he loved but one.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, I, st. 5

Might shake the saintship of an anchorite.¹

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, I, st. 11

War, war is still the cry, “War even to the knife!”²

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, I, st. 86

Gone—glimmering through the dream of things that were.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II [1812], st. 2

A schoolboy’s tale, the wonder of an hour!

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II, st. 2

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II, st. 76

Where’er we tread ’tis haunted, holy ground.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II, st. 88

What is the worst of woes that wait on age?

What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?

To view each loved one blotted from life’s page,

And be alone on earth, as I am now.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II, st. 98

Once more upon the waters, yet once more!

And the waves bound beneath me as a steed

That knows his rider!

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III [1816], st. 2

        Years steal

Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb;

And life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 8

There was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium’s capital had gather’d then

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men.

A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell.

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 21

Did ye not hear it?—No! ’twas but the wind,

Or the car rattling o’er the stony street.

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 22

        Thou fatal Waterloo.

Millions of tongues record thee, and anew

Their children’s lips shall echo them, and say—

“Here, where the sword united nations drew,

Our countrymen were warring on that day!”

And this is much, and all which will not pass away.³

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 35

He who ascends to mountaintops, shall find

The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;

He who surpasses or subdues mankind

Must look down on the hate of those below.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 45

I live not in myself, but I become

Portion of that around me: and to me

High mountains are a feeling, but the hum

Of human cities torture.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 72

Fame is the thirst of youth.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 112

        I stood

Among them, but not of them; in a shroud

Of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, st. 113

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,

A palace and a prison on each hand.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV [1818], st. 1

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 1

She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,

Rising with her tiara of proud towers

At airy distance, with majestic motion,

A ruler of the waters and their powers.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 2

The beings of the mind are not of clay;

Essentially immortal, they create

And multiply in us a brighter ray

And more beloved existence.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 5

’Tis solitude should teach us how to die;

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give

No hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 33

Let these describe the undescribable.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 53

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying,

Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 98

Alas! our young affections run to waste,

Or water but the desert.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 120

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 122

Butcher’d to make a Roman holiday!

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 141

“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;

And when Rome falls—the world.”¹

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 145

Oh! that the desert were my dwelling place.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 177

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 178

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin—his control

Stops with the shore.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 179

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 179

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow—

Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 182

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form

Glasses itself in tempests.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 183

Dark-heaving—boundless, endless, and sublime—

The image of Eternity.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 183

And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy

I wanton’d with thy breakers.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, IV, st. 184

    I awoke one morning and found myself famous.

Entry in Memoranda after publication of first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. From THOMAS MOORE, Life of Byron [1830], ch. 14

I die—but first I have possess’d,

And come what may, I have been bless’d.

The Giaour [1813], l. 1114

    The fatal facility of the octosyllabic verse.

The Corsair [1814]. Dedication

Such hath it been—shall be—beneath the sun

The many still must labor for the one.

The Corsair, canto I, st. 8

The Cincinnatus of the West,

Whom envy dared not hate,

Bequeathed the name of Washington

To make man blush there was but one!

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte [1814], st. 19

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow’d to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

Hebrew Melodies [1815]. She Walks in Beauty, st. 1

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,

When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Hebrew Melodies. The Destruction of Sennacherib, st. 1

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,

Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Hebrew Melodies. The Destruction of Sennacherib, st. 6

There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay.

Stanzas for Music [1815], st. 1

Sighing that Nature form’d but one such man,

And broke the die, in molding Sheridan.

Monody on the Death of Sheridan [1816], l. 117

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art.

The Prisoner of Chillon [1816]. Sonnet on Chillon, l. 1

A light broke in upon my brain—

It was the carol of a bird;

It ceased, and then it came again,

The sweetest song ear ever heard.

The Prisoner of Chillon. Sonnet on Chillon, st. 10

My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea;

But, before I go, Tom Moore,

Here’s a double health to thee!

Here’s a sigh to those who love me,

And a smile to those who hate;

And, whatever sky’s above me,

Here’s a heart for every fate.

To Thomas Moore [1817], st. 1, 2

So we’ll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

By the light of the moon.

So We’ll Go No More A-Roving [1817]

Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most

Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,

The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.

Manfred [1817], act I, sc. i

The day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined.… The first turned me quite hot and thirsty, and made me shake so that I could hardly hold the opera-glass (I was close, but determined to see, as one should see every thing, once, with attention); the second and third (which shows how dreadfully soon things grow indifferent), I am ashamed to say, had no effect on me as a horror, though I would have saved them if I could.

Letter to John Murray [May 30, 1817]

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,

Which melts like kisses from a female mouth.

Beppo [1818], st. 44

[Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge:] I wish he would explain his explanation.

Don Juan. Dedication [written 1818], st. 2

But—Oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,

Inform us truly, have they not henpeck’d you all?

Don Juan, canto I [1818], st. 22

Her stature tall—I hate a dumpy woman.

Don Juan, I, st. 61

What men call gallantry, and gods adultery,

Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.

Don Juan, I, st. 63

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded

That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

Don Juan, I, st. 83

A little still she strove, and much repented,

And whispering “I will ne’er consent”—consented.

Don Juan, I, st. 117

’Tis sweet to hear the watchdog’s honest bark

Bay deep-mouth’d welcome as we draw near home;

’Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark

Our coming, and look brighter when we come.

Don Juan, I, st. 123

Sweet is revenge—especially to women.

Don Juan, I, st. 124

Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.

Don Juan, I, st. 133

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

’Tis woman’s whole existence.

Don Juan, I, st. 194

What is the end of fame? ’tis but to fill

A certain portion of uncertain paper:

Some liken it to climbing up a hill,

Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapor.

Don Juan, I, st. 218

There’s nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms

As rum and true religion.

Don Juan, II [1819], st. 34

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry

Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

Don Juan, II, st. 53

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,

Sermons and soda water the day after.

Don Juan, II, st. 178

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;

The best of life is but intoxication.

Don Juan, II, st. 179

        For man, to man so oft unjust,

Is always so to women; one sole bond

Awaits them, treachery is all their trust;

Taught to conceal, their bursting hearts despond

Over their idol, till some wealthier lust

Buys them in marriage—and what rests beyond?

A thankless husband, next a faithless lover,

Then dressing, nursing, praying, and all’s over.

Don Juan, II, st. 200

In her first passion woman loves her lover,

In all the others, all she loves is love.

Don Juan, III [1821], st. 3

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,

He would have written sonnets all his life?

Don Juan, III, st. 8

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!¹

Where burning Sappho loved and sung.

Don Juan, III, st. 86 [song, st. 1]

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set.

Don Juan, III, st. 86 [song, st. 1]

The mountains look on Marathon,

And Marathon looks on the sea;

And musing there an hour alone,

I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

Don Juan, III, st. 86 [song, st. 3]

Earth! render back from out thy breast

A remnant of our Spartan dead!

Of the three hundred grant but three,

To make a new Thermopylae.

Don Juan, III, st. 86 [song, st. 7]

What, silent still? and silent all?

Ah! no;—the voices of the dead

Sound like a distant torrent’s fall.

Don Juan, III, st. 86 [song, st. 8]

        I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb,

And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.

Don Juan, IV [1821], st. 101

There’s not a sea the passenger e’er pukes in,

Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

Don Juan, V [1821], st. 5

And put himself upon his good behavior.

Don Juan, V, st. 47

A lady of “a certain age,” which means Certainly aged.

Don Juan, VI [1823], st. 69

Not so Leonidas and Washington,

Whose every battlefield is holy ground,

Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone.

Don Juan, VIII [1823], st. 5

When Bishop Berkeley said “there was no matter,”

And proved it—’twas no matter what he said.

Don Juan, XI [1823], st. 1

And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but

The truth in masquerade.

Don Juan, XI, st. 37

’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,

Should let itself be snuff’d out by an article.

Don Juan, XI, st. 60 (of John Keats)

The English winter—ending in July,

To recommence in August.

Don Juan, XIII [1823], st. 42

Society is now one polish’d horde,

Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

Don Juan, XIII, st. 95

        All human history attests

That happiness for man—the hungry sinner!—

Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

Don Juan, XIII, st. 99

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,

Sadder than owl songs or the midnight blast,

Is that portentous phrase, “I told you so.”

Don Juan, XIV [1823], st. 50

’Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction.²

Don Juan, XIV, st. 101

The antique Persians taught three useful things—

To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth.

Don Juan, XVI [1824], st. 1

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;

The days of our youth are the days of our glory;

And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty

Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa [1821], st. 1

All farewells should be sudden.

Sardanapalus [1821], act V

    The best of prophets of the future is the past.

Journal [January 28, 1821]

        Because

He is all-powerful, must all-good, too, follow?

I judge but by the fruits—and they are bitter—

Which I must feed on for a fault not mine.

Cain [1821], act I, sc. i

Who killed John Keats?

“I,” says the Quarterly,

So savage and Tartarly;

“ ’Twas one of my feats.”

John Keats [c. 1821]

        He seems

To have seen better days, as who has not

Who has seen yesterday?

Werner [1822], act I, sc. i

The “good old times”—all times when old are good—

Are gone.

The Age of Bronze [1823], st. 1

[Of Napoleon:] Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones,

Whose table earth—whose dice were human bones.

The Age of Bronze, st. 3

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west

Cheers the tar’s labor or the Turkman’s rest.¹

The Island [1823], canto II, st. 19

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone!

On My Thirty-sixth Year [1824], st. 2

Seek out—less often sought than found—

A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;

Then look around, and choose thy ground,

And take thy rest.

On My Thirty-sixth Year, st. 10

[On the poem Don Juan:] Is it not life, is it not the thing?—Could any man have written it—who has not lived in the world?—and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage?—in a vis a vis?—on a table?—and under it?

Letter to Douglas Kinnaird [October 26, 1819]

Now Barabbas was a publisher.

Alleged alteration in the Bible, John 18:40²

Sarah Josepha Hale

1788–1879

Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece was white as snow,

And everywhere that Mary went,

The lamb was sure to go.

Mary’s Lamb,³ st. 1. From The Juvenile Miscellany [September 1830]

Arthur Schopenhauer

1788–1860

Whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

The World as Will and Idea [1819], vol. 1

To those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this very real world of ours, with all its suns and galaxies, is—nothing.

The World as Will and Idea, vol. 1

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.

The World as Will and Idea, vol. II

A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Parerga and Paralipomena⁴ [1851],

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Parerga and Paralipomena

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.

Studies in Pessimism⁵ [1851]. Psychological Observations

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Studies in Pessimism. Psychological Observations

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

Studies in Pessimism. Psychological Observations

The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Essays. Personality; or, What a Man Is

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

Essays. Personality; or, What a Man Is

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred.

Counsels and Maxims, ch. 2

James Fenimore Cooper

1789–1851

Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character than the native warrior of North America. In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and self-devoted; in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and commonly chaste.

The Last of the Mohicans [1826]

[Coming upon a woodland lake:] This is grand! ’tis solemn! ’tis an education of itself to look upon!

The Deerslayer [1841], ch. 2

The American axe! It has made more real and lasting conquests than the sword of any warlike people that ever lived; but they have been conquests that have left civilization in their train instead of havoc and destruction.… A brief quarter of a century has seen these wonderful changes wrought; and at the bottom of them all lies this beautiful, well-prized, ready, and efficient implement, the American axe!

The Chainbearer [1845], ch. 6

Astolphe Louis Léonard, Marquis de Custine

1790–1857

This empire [Russia], vast as it is, is only a prison to which the emperor holds the key.

La Russie en 1839.¹ Peterhof, July 23, 1839

Whoever has really seen Russia will find himself content to live anywhere else. It is always good to know that a society exists where no happiness is possible because, by a law of nature, man cannot be happy unless he is free.

La Russie en 1839. Conclusion

Fitz-Greene Halleck

1790–1867

Green be the turf above thee,

Friend of my better days!

None knew thee but to love thee,

Nor named thee but to praise.

On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake [1820], st. 1

One of the few, the immortal names

That were not born to die.

Marco Bozzaris [1855], st. 7

Alphonse de Lamartine

1790–1869

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

From A. G. G. D’ORSAY [1801–1852], Letter to John Forster [1850]

Samuel F[inley] B[reese] Morse

1791–1872

If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.

Quoted in The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse [1875]

John Howard Payne

1791–1852

’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.²

Home, Sweet Home. From the opera Clari, the Maid of Milan [1823]

Victor Cousin

1792–1867

We need religion for religion’s sake, morality for morality’s sake, art for art’s sake.

Cours de Philosophie [1818]

Frederick Marryat

1792–1848

It’s just six of one and half a dozen of the other.

The Pirate [1836], ch. 4

I am sure the Americans can fix nothing without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you part, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink.… They commence it early in life, and they continue it, until they drop into the grave.

A Diary in America [1839], series 2

Joseph Mohr

1792–1848

Silent night! Holy night!¹

All is calm, all is bright.

Holy Night [1818]

Giacomo [Antonio] Rossini

1792–1868

Wagner has beautiful moments but awful quarters of an hour.

In conversation, April 1867; quoted in Emil Naumann, Italiensiche Tondichter, von Palestrina bis auf die Gegenwart [1876]

Lord John Russell

1792–1878

If peace cannot be maintained with honor, it is no longer peace.

Speech at Greenock [September 19, 1853]

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1792–1822

Power, like a desolating pestilence,

Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,

Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,

Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,

A mechanized automaton.

Queen Mab [1813], pt. III

The awful shadow of some unseen Power

Floats though unseen among us—visiting

This various world with as inconstant wing

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty [1816], st. 1

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon

Of human thought or form.

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, st. 2

Some say that gleams of a remoter world

Visit the soul in sleep—that death is slumber,

And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber

Of those who wake and live.

Mont Blanc [1816], st. 3

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;

Nought may endure but Mutability.

Mutability [1816], st. 4

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,

If to the human mind’s imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?

Mont Blanc [1817]

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read.

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias [1817]

Can man be free if woman be a slave?

The Revolt of Islam [1818]

I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,

Till death like sleep might steal on me.

Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples [1818], st. 4

        Ere Babylon was dust,

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,

Met his own image walking in the garden,

That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

Prometheus Unbound [1818–1819], act I, l. 191

The good want power, but to weep barren tears.

The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.

The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;

And all best things are thus confused with ill.

Prometheus Unbound, I, l. 625

Peace is in the grave.

The grave hides all things beautiful and good:

I am a God and cannot find it there.

Prometheus Unbound, I, l. 638

From the dust of creeds outworn.

Prometheus Unbound, I, l. 697

Forms more real than living man,

Nurslings of immortality!

Prometheus Unbound, I, l. 748

To know nor faith, nor love nor law; to be

Omnipotent but friendless is to reign.

Prometheus Unbound, II, sc. iv, l. 47

Death is the veil which those who live call life:

They sleep, and it is lifted.¹

Prometheus Unbound, III, iii, l. 113

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;

To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

Prometheus Unbound, IV, l. 570

        I love all waste

And solitary places; where we taste

The pleasure of believing what we see

Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.

Julian and Maddalo [1819], l. 14

        It is our will

That thus enchains us to permitted ill—

We might be otherwise—we might be all

We dream of happy, high majestical.

Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek,

But in our mind?

Julian and Maddalo, l. 170

Chameleons feed on light and air:

Poets’ food is love and fame.

An Exhortation [1819], st. 1

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes.

Ode to the West Wind [1819], l. 1

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;

Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!

Ode to the West Wind, l. 13

        Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher.

Ode to the West Wind, l. 23

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Ode to the West Wind, l. 44

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Ode to the West Wind, l. 57

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Ode to the West Wind, l. 68

Men of England, wherefore plow

For the lords who lay ye low?

Song to the Men of England [1819], st. 1

I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright.

The Indian Serenade [1819], st. 1

Hell is a city much like London—

A populous and smoky city.

Peter Bell the Third [1819], pt. III, st. 1

An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king.²

England in 1819 [written 1819], l. 1

I met Murder on the way—

He had a mask like Castlereagh.³

The Mask of Anarchy [written 1819], st. 2

        One by one, and two by two,

He tossed them human hearts to chew.

The Mask of Anarchy, st. 3

Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number—

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you—

Ye are many—they are few.

The Mask of Anarchy, st. 38, 91

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

To a Skylark [1821], st. 1

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

To a Skylark, st. 2

Thou art unseen—but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

To a Skylark, st. 4

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

To a Skylark, st. 18

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness,

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

To a Skylark, st. 21

The world’s great age begins anew,

The golden years return,

The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn.

Hellas, l. 1060

The world is weary of the past,

Oh, might it die or rest at last!

Hellas, final chorus

What! alive, and so bold, O earth?

Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon [1821], st. 1

I weep for Adonais [John Keats]¹—he is dead!

Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears

Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

Adonais [1821], st. 1

        Till the Future dares

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be

An echo and a light unto eternity!

Adonais, st. 1

To that high capital, where kingly Death

Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,

He came.

Adonais, st. 7

Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!

Adonais, st. 10

Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,

But grief returns with the revolving year.

Adonais, st. 18

        The intense atom glows

A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

Adonais, st. 20

Alas! that all we loved of him should be,

But for our grief, as if it had not been,

And grief itself be mortal!

Adonais, st. 21

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,

Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,

Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

Adonais, st. 21

He hath awakened from the dream of life.

Adonais, st. 39

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;

Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

And that unrest which men miscall delight

Can touch him not and torture not again;

From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain.

Adonais, st. 40

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he.

Adonais, st. 41

He is made one with Nature: there is heard

His voice in all her music, from the moan

Of thunder to the song of night’s sweet bird.

Adonais, st. 42

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely.

Adonais, st. 43

The One remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments—Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

Adonais, st. 52

The soul of Adonais, like a star,

Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.

Adonais, st. 55

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odors, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

To——: Music, When Soft Voices Die [1821]

One word is too often profaned

For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdained

For thee to disdain it.

To——: One Word Is Too Often Profaned [1821], st. 1

The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,

The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow.

To——: One Word Is Too Often Profaned, st. 2

Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, Spirit of Night!

To Night [1821], st. 1

Rarely, rarely, comest thou,

Spirit of Delight!

Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou [1821], st. 1

Let me set my mournful ditty

To a merry measure;

Thou wilt never come for pity,

Thou wilt come for pleasure.

Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou, st. 4

When the lamp is shattered

The light in the dust lies dead—

When the cloud is scattered

The rainbow’s glory is shed.

When the Lamp Is Shattered [1822], st. 1

Best and brightest, come away!

To Jane: The Invitation [1822], l. 1

Away, away, from men and towns,

To the wild wood and the downs.

To Jane: The Invitation, l. 21

The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person not our own.… The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.

A Defense of Poetry [1821]

We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life; our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can digest.

A Defense of Poetry

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

A Defense of Poetry

The most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.

A Defense of Poetry

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.

A Defense of Poetry

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

A Defense of Poetry

Thaddeus Stevens

1792–1868

I care not what you say of negro equality; I care not what you say of radicalism; these are my principles, and with the help of God I shall die with them. I ask no epitaph, I shall have none; but I shall go with a pure consciousness of having tried to serve the whole human race, and never having injured a human being.

Speech [September 27, 1866]

Though the President is Commander-in-Chief, Congress is his commander; and, God willing, he shall obey. He and his minions shall learn that this is not a Government of kings and satraps, but a Government of the people, and that Congress is the people.

Speech in House of Representatives [January 3, 1867]

Think not I would slander my native land; I would reform it. Twenty years ago I denounced it as a despotism. Then, twenty million white men enchained four million black men. I pronounce it no nearer to a true Republic now when twenty-five million of a privileged class exclude five million from all participation in the rights of government.

Speech in House of Representatives

John Clare

1793–1864

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?

My friends forsake me like a memory lost.

I Am [c. 1844], l. 1

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie—

The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

I Am, l. 17

Till kicked and torn and beaten out he lies

And leaves his hold and cackles, groans, and dies.

Badger [c. 1835–1837]

Lover of swamps

The quagmire overgrown

With hassock tufts of sedge—where fear encamps

Around thy home alone

The trembling grass

Quakes from the human foot

Nor bears the weight of man to let him pass

Where he alone and mute

Sitteth at rest

To the Snipe [1821–1824], l. 1

Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one

And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on

I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone

Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away

Remembrances [1832?], l. 1

O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away

Remembrances, l. 29

Say maiden wilt thou go with me

In this strange death of life-to-be

To live in death and be the same

Without this life or home or name

At once to be and not to be

An Invite to Eternity [c. 1847], l. 17

There is nothing but poetry about the existence of childhood real simple soul-moving poetry the laughter and joy of poetry and not its philosophy and there is nothing of poetry about manhood but the reflection and the remembrance of what has been—nothing more

From the notebooks

Felicia [Dorothea] Hemans

1793–1835

The breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast,

And the woods, against a stormy sky,

Their giant branches tossed.

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers [1826], st. 1

A band of exiles moored their bark

On a wild New England shore.

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, st. 2

The boy¹ stood on the burning deck,

Whence all but he had fled.

Casabianca [1826], st. 1

The stately homes of England!

How beautiful they stand,

Amidst their tall ancestral trees,

O’er all the pleasant land!²

The Homes of England [1827], st. 1

Henry Francis Lyte

1793–1847

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide:

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Eventide [1847], st. 1

Lucretia [Coffin] Mott

1793–1880

Let woman then go on—not asking favors, but claiming as a right the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being—let her receive encouragement for the proper cultivation of all her powers, so that she may enter profitably into the active business of life… Then in the marriage union, the independence of the husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal.

Discourse on Woman [December 17, 1849], last paragraph

William Cullen Bryant

1794–1878

To him who in the love of Nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.

Thanatopsis [1817–1821], l. 1

Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature’s teachings.

Thanatopsis, l. 14

        The hills,

Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.

Thanatopsis, l. 37

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan which moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Thanatopsis, l. 73

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

To a Waterfowl [1818], st. 8

The groves were God’s first temples.

A Forest Hymn [1824]

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.

The Death of the Flowers [1832], st. 1

These are the gardens of the desert, these

The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,

For which the speech of England has no name—

The prairies.

The Prairies [1833]

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again.

The Battlefield [1839], st. 9

Thomas Corwin

1794–1865

If I were a Mexican I would tell you: Have you not room enough in your own country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine we will greet you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable graves.

Speech to the U.S. Senate, opposing appropriations for the Mexican War [February 11, 1847]

Cornelius Vanderbilt

1794–1877

You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.

Letter to former business associates [1853]

William Whewell

1794–1866

It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.

Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, aphorism 39

Thomas Carlyle

1795–1881

Were we to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it… above all others, the Mechanical Age.… The same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.

Signs of the Times [1829]

Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or soot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it.

On Boswell’s Life of Johnson [1832]

The stupendous Fourth Estate, whose wide world-embracing influences what eye can take in?¹

On Boswell’s Life of Johnson

All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.

On Boswell’s Life of Johnson

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

On Boswell’s Life of Johnson

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored) [1833–1834], bk. I, ch. 4

He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing.

Sartor Resartus, I, 5

Man is a tool-using animal.… Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Sartor Resartus, I, 5

Be not the slave of Words.

Sartor Resartus, I, 8

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.

Sartor Resartus, II, 1

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

Sartor Resartus, II, 4

The Everlasting No.

Sartor Resartus, II, 7 (chapter title)

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

Sartor Resartus, II, 7

Great men are the inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History.

Sartor Resartus, II, 8

The Everlasting Yea.

Sartor Resartus, II, 9 (chapter title)

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden—“Speech is silvern, Silence is golden”; or, as I might rather express it, speech is of time, silence is of eternity.²

Sartor Resartus, III, 3

France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams.

History of the French Revolution [1837], pt. I, bk. I, ch. 1

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.

History of the French Revolution, I, III, 7

A whiff of grapeshot.

History of the French Revolution, I, V, 3

Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.

History of the French Revolution, I, VI, 2

Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.

History of the French Revolution, I, VII, 4

History a distillation of rumor.

History of the French Revolution, I, VII, 5

The sea-green Incorruptible [Robespierre].

History of the French Revolution, II, VI, 7

Aristocracy of the Moneybag.

History of the French Revolution, II, VII, 7

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and gives in the long run a net result of zero.

Chartism [1839], ch. 6, Laissez-Faire

A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays [1839–1857]. Richter

The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. The State of German Literature

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Sir Walter Scott

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Sir Walter Scott

The uttered part of a man’s life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Sir Walter Scott

The history of the world is but the biography of great men.¹

On Heroes and Hero Worship [1841]. The Hero as Divinity

A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

On Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Poet

The Age of Miracles is forever here!

On Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Priest

All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

On Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Man of Letters

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

On Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Man of Letters

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

On Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Man of Letters

“A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work”: it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.

Past and Present [1843], bk. I, ch. 3

Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!²

Past and Present, II, 9

All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble.… A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.

Past and Present, III, 4

Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

Past and Present, III, 8

He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.

Past and Present, III, 12

Captains of Industry.

Past and Present, IV, 4 (chapter title)

As dark misery settles down on us, and our refuges of lies fall in pieces one after one, the hearts of men, now at last serious, will turn to refuges of truth. The eternal stars shine out again, so soon as it is dark enough.

Past and Present, IV, 8

He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.

Introduction to Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches [1845]

Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science.³

Latter Day Pamphlets, no. 1 [1850]

“Genius” (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).⁴

Life of Frederick the Great [1858–1865], bk. IV, ch. 3

Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!⁵

Life of Frederick the Great, XVI, 1

So here hath been dawning

Another blue Day:

Think wilt thou let it

Slip useless away.

Today [1823–1833]

John Woodcock Graves

1795–1886

D’ ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?

D’ ye ken John Peel at the break of day?

D’ ye ken John Peel when he’s far far away

With his hounds and his horn in the morning?

’Twas the sound of his horn brought me from my bed,

And the cry of his hounds, has me ofttimes led;

For Peel’s view-hollo would waken the dead,

Or the fox from his lair in the morning.

John Peel [1832]

John Keats

1795–1821

To one who has been long in city pent,

’Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven.

Poems. Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent

He mourns that day so soon has glided by:

E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

Poems. Sonnet. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent

Much have I travel’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Poems. Sonnet. On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

And other spirits there are standing apart

Upon the forehead of the age to come;

These, these will give the world another heart,

And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum

Of mighty workings——?

Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

Poems. Sonnet. Addressed to the Same (Benjamin Robert Haydon)

The poetry of earth is never dead.

Poems. Sonnet. On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm

Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed

That my own soul has to itself decreed.

Poems. Sleep and Poetry, l. 96

And can I ever bid these joys farewell?

Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,

Where I may find the agonies, the strife

Of human hearts.

Poems. Sleep and Poetry, l. 122

        A drainless shower

Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power;

’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.

Poems. Sleep and Poetry, l. 235

But strength alone though of the Muses born

Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,

Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchers

Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs

And thorns of life; forgetting the great end

Of poesy, that it should be a friend

To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.

Poems. Sleep and Poetry, l. 241

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

Endymion [1818], preface

The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thicksighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.

Endymion, preface

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Endymion, bk. I, l. 1

Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks

Our ready minds to fellowship divine,

A fellowship with essence; till we shine,

Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold

The clear religion of heaven!

Endymion, I, l. 777

A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.

Endymion, I, l. 857

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,

Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.

Poems. Lamia, II, l. 1

Do not all charms fly

At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

Poems. Lamia, II, l. 229

Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings.

Poems. Lamia, II, l. 234

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,

And went all naked to the hungry shark;

For them his ears gush’d blood; for them in death

The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

Half-ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel,

That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

Poems. Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, st. 15

St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.

The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold.

Poems. The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 1

The music, yearning like a God in pain.

Poems. The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 7

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,

Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart

Made purple riot.

Poems. The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 16

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;

Loosens her fragrant bodice; by degrees

Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees.

Poems. The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 26

Beyond a mortal man impassion’d far

At these voluptuous accents, he arose,

Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star

Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;

Into her dream he melted, as the rose,

Blendeth its odour with the violet,—

Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows

Like Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet

Against the window-panes; St. Agnes’ moon hath set.

Poems. The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 36

And they are gone: aye, ages long ago

These lovers fled away into the storm.

Poems. The Eve of St. Agnes, st. 42

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 1

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 1

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O, for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 2

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 3

Already with thee! tender is the night.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 4

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 5

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—

To thy high requiem become a sod.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 6

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 7

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 8

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Poems. Ode to a Nightingale, st. 8

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape?

Poems. Ode on a Grecian Urn, st. 1

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Poems. Ode on a Grecian Urn, st. 1

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter.

Poems. Ode on a Grecian Urn, st. 2

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Poems. Ode on a Grecian Urn, st. 2

Forever piping songs forever new.

Poems. Ode on a Grecian Urn, st. 3

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

Poems. Ode on a Grecian Urn, st. 4

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”¹—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Poems. Ode on a Grecian Urn, st. 5

        To make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours.

Poems. Ode to Psyche, st. 3

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

To let the warm Love in!

Poems. Ode to Psyche, st. 5

Ever let the fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home.

Poems. Fancy, l. 1

Souls of Poets dead and gone,

What Elysium have ye known,

Happy field or mossy cavern,

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Have ye tippled drink more fine

Than mine host’s Canary wine?

Poems. Lines on the Mermaid Tavern

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.

Poems. To Autumn, st. 1

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers.

Poems. To Autumn, st. 2

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Poems. To Autumn, st. 3

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.

Poems. Ode on Melancholy, st. 1

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.

Poems. Ode on Melancholy, st. 2

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:

Ay, in the very temple of Delight

Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,

Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;

His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,

And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Poems. Ode on Melancholy, st. 3

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made

Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self.

Poems. Hyperion: A Fragment, I, l. 35

Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.

Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,

Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,

Creations and destroyings, all at once

Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,

And deify me, as if some blithe wine

Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,

And so become immortal.

Poems. Hyperion: A Fragment, III, l. 113

My spirit is too weak—mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep

Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die

Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.¹

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats [1848], edited by Richard Monckton Milnes [1809–1885]

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Fragment: This Living Hand

O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing!

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci,² st. 1

I met a lady in the meads

Full beautiful, a faery’s child;

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, st. 4

She looked at me as she did love,

And made sweet moan.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, st. 5

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, st. 10

It keeps eternal whisperings around

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, On the Sea³

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Sonnet. When I Have Fears

When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Sonnet. When I Have Fears

    Then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Sonnet. When I Have Fears

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Sonnet. Bright Star⁴

I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not.

Letter to Benjamin Bailey [November 22, 1817]

The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth.

Letter to Benjamin Bailey

I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness—I look not for it if it be not in the present hour—nothing startles me beyond the Moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights—or if a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the Gravel.

Letter to Benjamin Bailey

At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

Letter to George and Thomas Keats [December 22, 1817]

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds [February 3, 1818]

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity—it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance.

Letter to John Taylor [February 27, 1818]

If poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

Letter to John Taylor

Scenery is fine—but human nature is finer.

Letter to Benjamin Bailey [March 13, 1818]

Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: We read fine—things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the Author.

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds [May 3, 1818]

I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds

The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation & watchfulness in itself—That which is creative must create itself—In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice.—I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

Letter to James Hessey [October 8, 1818]

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats [October 14, 1818]

What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet.

Letter to Richard Woodhouse [October 27, 1818]

As to the poetical character itself… it is not itself—it has no self—it is every thing and nothing… It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen.

Letter to Richard Woodhouse

A Poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no Identity—he is continually infor[ming]—and filling some other Body.

Letter to Richard Woodhouse

A Man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory—and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life—a life like the scriptures, figurative.… Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative—Shakespeare led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it.

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats [February 14–May 3, 1819]

I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of—I am however young writing at random—straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness—without knowing the bearing of any one assertion of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats [March 19, 1819]

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced—Even a proverb is no Proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it.

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats

Call the world if you Please “The vale of Soul-making.”

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats [April 21, 1819]

Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to School an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

Letter to George and Georgiana Keats

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

To Fanny Brawne [July 25, 1819]

“If I should die,” said I to myself, “I have left no immortal work behind me—nothing to make my friends proud of my memory—but I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember’d.”

To Fanny Brawne [c. February 1820]

I have an habitual feeling of my real life having passed, and that I am leading a posthumous existence.

Letter to Charles Armitage Brown; Keats’s last letter [November 30, 1820]

I can scarcely bid you good bye even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you!

Letter to Charles Brown; [November 30, 1820]

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.¹

Epitaph for himself [1821]

Leopold von Ranke

1795–1886

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It only wants to show what actually happened.²

Geschichte der Romanischen und Germanischen Volker von 1494 bis 1514 (History of the Romance and Germanic Peoples, 1494–1514) [1824], preface

Fanny [Frances] Wright

1795–1852

The press does not speak the voice of the nation. It does not even speak the voice of those who write for it.

[1829]

Alfred Bunn

1796–1860

I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,

With vassals and serfs at my side.

The Bohemian Girl [1843], act II, song

Horace Mann

1796–1859

No man has the right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books.

The Duty of Owning Books [1859]

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

Aphorism

Czar Nicholas I [Nicholas Pavlovich]

1796–1855

We have on our hands a sick man—a very sick man. It will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune, if one of these days, he should slip away from us, especially before all of the necessary arrangements were made.

Remark to the British ambassador [January 11, 1853], on Turkey; origin of the phrase “the sick man of Europe”

William Hickling Prescott

1796–1859

Respect for forms is an essential element of freedom.

The Conquest of Mexico [1843], bk. 2, ch. 1

What, then, must have been the emotions of the Spaniards, when, after working their toilsome way into the upper air, the cloudy tabernacle parted before their eyes, and they beheld these fair scenes in all their pristine magnificence and beauty!³ It was like the spectacle which greeted the eyes of Moses from the summit of Pisgah, and, in the warm glow of their feelings, they cried out, “It is the promised land!”

The Conquest of Mexico, III, 8

Drawing his sword he [Pizarro] traced a line with it on the sand from East to West. Then, turning towards the South, “Friends and comrades!” he said, “on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the South.” So saying, he stepped across the line.

The Conquest of Peru [1847], bk. II, ch. 4

Joseph Brackett

1797–1882

’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,

’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

Simple Gifts⁴ [1848]

Paul Delaroche

1797–1856

[Upon first seeing a daguerreotype:] From today painting is dead.

Attributed [1839]

Heinrich Heine

1797–1856

On wings of song, my dearest,

I will carry you off.

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges¹

I cannot tell why this imagined

Despair has fallen upon me;

The ghost of an ancient legend

That will not let me be.

Lorelei²

Child, you are like a flower,

So sweet and pure and fair.

I look at you, and sadness

Touches me with a prayer.

Du bist wie eine Blume³

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

Almansor: A Tragedy [1823]

Don’t send a poet to London.

English Fragments [1828], ch. 2, London

Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea.

History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany [1834], vol. I

People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.

The French Stage [1837], ch. 9

Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of Saint John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.

Lutezia; or, Paris⁴ [1854]

The future smells of Russian leather, of blood, of godlessness and of much whipping. I advise our grandchildren to come into the world with very thick skin on their backs.

Lutezia; or, Paris

So we keep asking, over and over,

Until a handful of earth

Stops our mouths—

But is that an answer?

Lazarus [1854], sec. 1, st. 4

Of course he [God] will forgive me; that’s his business.⁵

Last words [1856]

No author is a man of genius to his publisher.

Attributed

Sir Charles Lyell

1797–1875

Although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal eye, but to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation of our race, and is not even withheld from penetrating into the dark secrets of the ocean, or the interior of the solid globe; free, like the spirit which the poet described as animating the universe.

Principles of Geology, vol. I [1830], ch. 13

Franz Schubert

1797–1828

For many and many a year I sang songs. Whenever I tried to sing of love, it turned to pain. And again, when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love.

My Dream [1822]

Do you know any merry music? I don’t!⁶

Remark recorded in the diary of Eduard Bauernfeld [May 31, 1873]

Mary [Wollstonecraft] Shelley

1797–1851

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus [1818], Letter I

I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

Frankenstein, ch. 5

I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created.

Frankenstein, 5

All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us.

Frankenstein, 10

In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature.

Frankenstein, 24

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed—my dearest pleasure when free.

On her childhood; introduction to 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Sojourner Truth [Isabella Van Wagener]

c. 1797–1883

Frederick, is God dead?

Question to speaker FREDERICK DOUGLASS [c. 1850]

That man… says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and aren’t I a woman?… I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and aren’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well—and aren’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen them most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and aren’t I a woman?

Speech at Woman’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio [1851]

I sell the shadow to support the substance.

Caption on her calling card

That… man… says women can’t have as much rights as man, cause Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from?… From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him.

Speech at Woman’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio

The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another.

Saying

Alfred de Vigny

1797–1863

I love the sound of the horn, at night, in the depth of the woods.¹

Le Cor (The Horn) [1826]

God! how sad is the sound of the horn deep in the woods!²

Le Cor

Auguste Comte

1798–1857

Love our principle, order our foundation, progress our goal.

Système de Politique Positive [1851–1854]

Nothing at bottom is real except humanity.³

Système de Politique Positive

The dead govern the living.

Catéchisme Positiviste [1852]

Eugène Delacroix

1798–1863

O young artist, you search for a subject—everything is a subject. Your subject is yourself, your impressions, your emotions in the presence of nature.

Oeuvres Littéraires [1829–1863], pt. II, ch. 2, On Painting

The new is very ancient, one might almost say that it is always the most ancient thing there is.⁴

Journal [June 8, 1850]

Painting is only a bridge linking the painter’s mind with that of the viewer.

Journal [July 18, 1850]

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing.⁵

Journal [February 25, 1852]

The first virtue of a painting is to be a feast for the eyes.

Journal [June 22, 1863]

August Heinrich Hoffmann [Hoffmann von Fallersleben]

1798–1874

Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles [Germany above everything].

Title of poem [September 1, 1841]

Giacomo [Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro] Leopardi

1798–1837

And then I call to mind Eternity,

The ages that are dead, and the living present

And all the noise of it. And thus it is

In that immensity my thought is drowned:

And sweet to me the foundering in that sea.

L’Infinito [The Infinite]¹ [1819]

What were we?

What was that bitter instant

We called life?

Coro dei morti [Chorus of the Dead]² [1824]

Glimmering stars of the Great Bear,

I never thought I’d be back to see you

Shining down on my father’s garden,

Nor talk to you ever again from the windows

Of this house where I spent my childhood

And saw the last of my happiness vanish.

Le Ricordanze [Memories]² [1829]

No one is so completely disenchanted with the world, nor knows it so thoroughly, nor is so much disgusted with it, but that when it begins to smile upon him he does not become partially reconciled to it.³

Pensieri [early 1830s]

Every day we lose something; one of the illusions, which are our only riches, perishes or diminishes. Experience or truth divests us every day of part of our possessions. We do not live, except in losing.⁴

Zibaldone, I, 467 [1817–1832]

Boredom and bitterness

Is life; and the rest, nothing; the world is dirt.

Lie quiet now. Despair

For the last time. Fate granted to our kind

Only to die.

A se stesso [To Himself]¹ [1833]

The time will come when this universe and nature herself will be no more. And just as of very great human kingdoms and empires and of their marvelous exploits, which were so very famous in other ages, there remains no sign of fame whatsoever; so too of the entire world, and of the infinite vicissitudes and calamities of all created things, no single trace will remain; but a naked silence and a most profound quiet will fill the immensity of space. Thus, this stupendous and frightening mystery of universal existence, before it can be declared or understood, will vanish and be lost.⁵

Operette Morali [1835]. The Song of the Great Wild Rooster

As Anacreon wished he could be changed into a mirror to be continuously looked at by his beloved, or into a skirt to cover her, or into an ointment to anoint her, or into water to wash her, or into a breast band so that she would press him to her bosom, or into a pearl which she would wear around her neck, or into a shoe that at least she might press him with her foot—similarly, I would like to be changed for a while into a bird so that I could experience the contentment and the joy of their life.

Operette Morali.⁵ In Praise of Birds

Jules Michelet

1798–1874

All science is one: language, literature and history, physics, mathematics and philosophy; subjects which seem the most remote from one another are in reality connected, or rather they all form a single system.

Lecture at the Collège Saint-Barbe [August 17, 1825]

England is an empire, Germany is a nation, a race, France is a person.

Histoire de France [1833–1867]

The silences of history must be made to speak [Il faut faire parler les silences de l’histoire].⁶

Journal entry [January 30, 1842]

[Amos] Bronson Alcott

1799–1888

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.

Orphic Sayings. From The Dial [July 1840]. The Teacher

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps,

Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

Tablets [1868]

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

Table Talk [1877]. Quotation

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

Table Talk. Discourse

Honoré de Balzac

1799–1850

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

Physiologie du Mariage [1829]

Marriage must ceaselessly combat a monster that devours everything: habit.

Physiologie du Mariage

“Life is a machine fueled by money, is it not?”

Gobseck [1830]¹

I have been doing a horrendous amount of work and my orgies take the form of books.²

Letter to Zulma Carraud [April 14, 1830]

In the desert there is all—and yet nothing.… God is there and man is not.

A Passion in the Desert [1830]

Where would we all be if it were required to look into the source of every fortune!

L’Auberge Rouge [The Red Inn, 1831]

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.

Lettres [1832]

Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.

The Duchess of Langeais [1834]

Our heart is a treasury; if you spend all its wealth at once you are ruined. We find it as difficult to forgive a person for displaying his feeling in all its nakedness as we do to forgive a man for being penniless.

Le Père Goriot³ (Old Goriot) [1835]

The secret of great fortunes with no apparent source is a forgotten crime.

Le Père Goriot

And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pygmies, came into the world.⁴

Les Employés (The Government Clerks) [1836]

Those sweetly smiling angels with pensive looks, innocent faces, and cash-boxes for hearts.

La Cousine Bette [1846], ch. 15

I shatter every obstacle.⁵

Inscribed on his walking stick

Thomas Hood

1799–1845

I remember, I remember

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn.

I Remember, I Remember [1827], st. 1

        Now ’tis little joy

To know I’m farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy.

I Remember, I Remember, st. 4

And there is even a happiness

That makes the heart afraid.

Ode to Melancholy [1827]

There’s not a string attuned to mirth

But has its chord in melancholy.

Ode to Melancholy

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand shadowless like silence, listening

To silence.

Ode: Autumn [1827], st. 1

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat in unwomanly rags

Plying her needle and thread—

        Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt.

The Song of the Shirt [1843], st. 1

She sang the Song of the Shirt.

The Song of the Shirt, st. 1

O men, with sisters dear!

O men, with mothers and wives!

It is not linen you’re wearing out,

But human creatures’ lives!

The Song of the Shirt, st. 4

O God! that bread should be so dear,

And flesh and blood so cheap!

The Song of the Shirt, st. 5

One more unfortunate,

Weary of breath,

Rashly importunate,

Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care;

Fashioned so slenderly,

Young, and so fair!

The Bridge of Sighs [1844], st. 1, 2

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member—

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds—

November!

No! [1844]

Mary Howitt

1799–1888

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the Spider to the Fly;

“ ’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.”

The Spider and the Fly [1844]

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

1799–1837

        Reason’s icy intimations,

and records of a heart in pain.

Eugene Onegin¹ [1823], dedication

Unforced, as conversation passed,

he had the talent of saluting

felicitously every theme,

of listening like a judge supreme

while serious topics were disputing,

or, with an epigram-surprise,

of kindling smiles in ladies’ eyes.

Eugene Onegin, ch. 1, st. 5

Love passed, the muse appeared, the weather

of mind got clarity newfound;

now free, I once more weave together

emotion, thought, and magic sound.

Eugene Onegin, 2, st. 59

And thus he² mused: “From here, indeed

Shall we strike terror in the Swede;

And here a city, by our labor

Founded, shall gall our haughty neighbor;

‘Here cut’—so Nature gives command—

‘Your window through on Europe: stand

Firm-footed by the sea, unchanging!’ ”

The Bronze Horseman³ [written 1833]

John Brown

1800–1859

Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends… every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

Last speech to the court [November 2, 1859]

I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done… in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done!

Last speech to the court

This is a beautiful country.

Remark as he rode to the gallows, seated on his coffin [December 2, 1859]

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay

1800–1859

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

Essay on Mitford’s History of Greece [1824]

Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

On Milton [1825]

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.

On Milton

The English Bible—a book which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

On John Dryden [1828]

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

Southey’s Colloquies on Society [1830]

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

On Moore’s Life of Lord Byron [1831]

Reform, that you may preserve.

Debate on the First Reform Bill [March 2, 1831]

Such night in England ne’er had been, nor ne’er again shall be.

The Armada [1833], l. 34

I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.

Minute on Indian Education [February 2, 1835]

She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.⁴

On Leopold von Ranke’s History of the Popes [1840]

In order that he might rob a neighbor whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.

On Frederick the Great [1842]

To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late;

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods?

Lays of Ancient Rome [1842]. Horatius, st. 27

He [Richard Steele] was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

Review of Lucy Aikin’s Life and Writings of Addison [1843]

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

History of England [1849–1861], vol. I, ch. 1

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

History of England, I, 2

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

Letter to H. S. Randall, author of a Life of Thomas Jefferson [May 23, 1857]

Helmuth von Moltke

1800–1891

First ponder, then dare.¹

Attributed

Perpetual peace is a dream, and it is not even a beautiful dream. War is an element in the order of the world ordained by God. In it the noblest virtues of mankind are developed; courage and the abnegation of self, faithfulness to duty, and a spirit of sacrifice: the soldier gives his life. Without war the world would stagnate, and lose itself in materialism.²

Letter to Johann Kaspar Bluntschli [December 11, 1880]

No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force.

Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften [1880]

Nat Turner

1800–1831

’Twas my object to carry terror and destruction wherever we went.³

The Confessions of Nat Turner [1832]

Jane [Baillie] Welsh Carlyle

1801–1866

A positive engagement to marry a certain person at a certain time, at all haps and hazards, I have always considered the most ridiculous thing on earth.

To Thomas Carlyle [January 1825]

In spite of the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ity, or merge it in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I still find myself a self-subsisting and alas! self-seeking me.

To John Sterling [June 4, 1835]

Oh Lord! If you but knew what a brimstone of a creature I am behind all this beautiful amiability!

To Eliza Stodart [February 29, 1836]

Instead of boiling up individuals into the species, I would draw a chalk circle round every individuality, and preach to it to keep within that, and preserve and cultivate its identity.

To John Sterling [August 5, 1845]

I can see that the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled.

To Thomas Carlyle [September 28, 1845]

The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.

Journal, August 1849

Thomas Cole

1801–1848

Over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.

Essay on American Scenery [1835]

David Glasgow Farragut

1801–1870

Damn the torpedoes—full speed ahead!

At the battle of Mobile Bay [August 5, 1864]

George Perkins Marsh

1801–1882

Man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords.

Man and Nature [1864], ch. 1

Cardinal John Henry Newman

1801–1890

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom;

Lead thou me on!

The night is dark, and I am far from home;

Lead thou me on!

Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.

The Pillar of Cloud [1833]. Lead Kindly Light, st. 1

May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last!

Sermon [1834]. Wisdom and Innocence¹

In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine [1845], ch. 1

Growth [is] the only evidence of life.

Apologia pro Vita Sua (Defense of One’s Life) [1864], ch. 1

From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.

Apologia pro Vita Sua, ch. 2

It is thy very energy of thought

Which keeps thee from thy God.

Dream of Gerontius [1866], pt. III

There is a knowledge which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labor.

The Idea of a University [1873]. Discourse V, pt. 6

Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem [From shadows and symbols into the truth]!

His own epitaph at Edgbaston

William Henry Seward

1801–1872

Shall I tell you what this collision [of free and slave labor] means?… It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation.

Speech at Rochester, New York [October 25, 1858]

I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward.

Speech at Rochester, New York

Brigham Young

1801–1877

This is the place!

On first seeing the valley of the Great Salt Lake [July 24, 1847]

Lydia Maria Child

1802–1880

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans [1833]

They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!

An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans

Over the river and through the wood,

To grandfather’s house we go;

    The horse knows the way

    To carry the sleigh,

Through the white and drifted snow.

Flowers for Children [1844–1846]. Thanksgiving Day, st. 1

Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I’ll come and rap at the ballot box.

Letter to Sarah Shaw [August 3, 1856]

Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being.

Message to woman suffrage supporters [c. 1875]

David Christy

1802–c. 1868

Cotton Is King; or, The Economical Relations of Slavery.¹

Title of book [1855]

Alexandre Dumas the Elder

1802–1870

All for one, one for all, that is our motto.

The Three Musketeers [1844], ch. 9

Let us look for the woman.²

The Mohicans of Paris [1854–1855], vol. III, ch. 10, 11

Victor Hugo

1802–1885

The scaffold is the only edifice which revolutions don’t abolish.

The Last Day of a Condemned Man [1832]. Preface

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.³

Histoire d’un Crime [written 1852], conclusion

Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo! Dismal plain!⁴

Les Châtiments (Castigations) [1853]. Expiation

You have created a new thrill.⁵

Letter to Baudelaire [October 6, 1859]

So long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

Les Misérables [1862]. Preface

The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved.

Les Misérables. Fantine, bk V, ch. 4

Napoleon… mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream.

Les Misérables. Cosette, I, 13

Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.

Les Misérables. Cosette, I, 16

Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.

Les Misérables. Cosette, I, 17

Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers.

Les Misérables. Cosette, V, 10

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

Les Misérables. Cosette, VII, 8

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.

Les Misérables. Cosette, VIII, 8

What is admirable in the clash of young minds is that no one can foresee the spark that sets off an explosion, or predict what kind of explosion it will be.

Les Misérables⁶. Marius, IV, 5

It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.

Les Misérables. Jean Valjean, IX, 5

To rise at six, to dine at ten,

To sup at six, to sleep at ten,

Makes a man live for ten times ten.

Inscription over the door of Hugo’s study

I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party of revolution, civilization.

This party will make the twentieth century.

There will issue from it first the United States of Europe, then the United States of the World.

On the wall of the room in which Hugo died, Place des Vosges, Paris

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

1802–1838

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

The Poor

Harriet Martineau

1802–1876

Wealth and opinion were practically worshipped before Washington opened his eyes on the sun which was to light him to his deeds; and the worship of Opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.

Society in America [1837], vol. II

George Pope Morris

1802–1864

Woodman, spare that tree!

Touch not a single bough!

In youth it sheltered me,

And I’ll protect it now.

Woodman, Spare That Tree [1830], st. 1

William Allen

1803–1879

Fifty-four forty, or fight!¹

Speech in the Senate [1844]

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

1803–1849

If there were dreams to sell,

What would you buy?

Some cost a passing-bell;

Some a light sigh.

Dream-Pedlary [1851], st. 1

Hector Berlioz

1803–1869

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Attributed

George Borrow

1803–1881

I learned… to fear God, and to take my own part.

Lavengro [1851], ch. 86

Youth is the only season for enjoyment, and the first twenty-five years of one’s life are worth all the rest of the longest life of man, even though those five-and-twenty be spent in penury and contempt, and the rest in the possession of wealth, honors, respectability.

The Romany Rye [1857], ch. 30

Orestes A. Brownson

1803–1876

What we object to is the division of society into two classes, of which one class owns the capital, and the other performs the labor.

Defense of the article The Laboring Classes [October 1840]

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Baron Lytton

1803–1873

In other countries poverty is a misfortune—with us it is a crime.

England and the English [1833]

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Richelieu [1839], act II, sc. ii

It was a dark and stormy night.²

Paul Clifford [1840], opening words

William Driver

1803–1886

I name thee Old Glory.

As the flag was hoisted to the masthead of his brig³

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803–1882

I confess I am a little cynical on some topics & when a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands & purity of its heart.

Journal [December 10, 1824]

To think is to act.

Motto for Journal [1835]

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Journal [August 31, 1838]

Do your thing & I shall know you.

Journal [July 7, 1839]

We die of words. We are hanged, drawn and quartered by dictionaries. We walk in the vale of shadows. It is an age of hobgoblins.

Journal [September 14–17, 1839]

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.

All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

Poems. Each and All, st. 1

I like a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles;

Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that cowlèd churchman be.

Poems. The Problem, st. 1

Line in nature is not found;

Unit and universe are round;

In vain produced, all rays return;

Evil will bless, and ice will burn.

Poems. Uriel, st. 2

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow.

Poems. The Snowstorm, l. 1

              Enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Poems. The Snowstorm, l. 8

In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes,

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods.

Poems. The Rhodora, l. 1

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.

Poems. The Rhodora, l. 9

Things are in the saddle,

And ride mankind.

Poems. Ode Inscribed to W. H. Channing, st. 6

There are two laws discrete,

Not reconciled—

Law for man, and law for thing.

Poems. Ode Inscribed to W. H. Channing, st. 7

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good fame,

Plans, credit and the Muse,

Nothing refuse.

Poems. Give All to Love, st. 1

Heartily know,

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive.

Poems. Give All to Love, st. 6

Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,

And all their botany is Latin names.

Poems. Blight

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Poems. Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, Concord, Massachusetts [July 4, 1837], st. 1

“Pass in, pass in,” the angels say,

“In to the upper doors,

Nor count compartments of the floors,

But mount to paradise

By the stairway of surprise.”

Poems. Merlin I

God said, I am tired of kings,

I suffer them no more;

Up to my ear the morning brings

The outrage of the poor.

May-Day and Other Pieces [1867]. Boston Hymn, st. 2

Today unbind the captive,

So only are ye unbound;

Lift up a people from the dust,

Trump of their rescue, sound!

May-Day and Other Pieces. Boston Hymn, st. 17

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,

So near is God to man,

When Duty whispers low, Thou must,

The youth replies, I can.

May-Day and Other Pieces. Voluntaries, III

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

And marching single in an endless file,

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

May-Day and Other Pieces. Days

It is time to be old,

To take in sail.

May-Day and Other Pieces. Terminus

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime.

May-Day and Other Pieces. Terminus

If the red slayer think he slays,

Or if the slain think he is slain,

They know not well the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again.¹

May-Day and Other Pieces. Brahma

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;

I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

May-Day and Other Pieces. Brahma

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

Journal [December 20, 1822]

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see—not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

Journal [April 11, 1834]

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Journal [June 27, 1839]

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Journal [October 1842]

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Journal [May 25, 1843]

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Journal [August 1847]

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

Journal [May 1849]

Blessed are those who have no talent!

Journal [February 1850]

The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.

Journal [February 12(?), 1851]

I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.¹

Journal [February 1855]

The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?

Nature [1836, 1849]. Introduction

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

Nature, sec. 1

Standing on the bare ground… all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

Nature, 1

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

Nature, 3

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Nature, 4

A man is a god in ruins.

Nature, 4

The scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking.

The American Scholar [1837], introduction

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

The American Scholar, sec. 2

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

The American Scholar, 2

Character is higher than intellect.

The American Scholar, 3

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended.

The American Scholar, 3

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

The American Scholar, 3

I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat.

The American Scholar, 3

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.²

The American Scholar, 3

If utterance is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man. Always the seer is a sayer.

Divinity School Address [1838]

Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid.

Literary Ethics [1838]

I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.

Essays: First Series [1841]. History

We are always coming up with the emphatic facts of history in our private experience and verifying them here. All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography.

Essays: First Series. History

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

Essays: First Series. History

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.… The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Essays: First Series. Self-Reliance

Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good.

Essays: First Series. Compensation

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Essays: First Series. Compensation

All mankind love a lover.

Essays: First Series. Love

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

Almost all people descend to meet.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

Happy is the house that shelters a friend.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

Two may talk and one may hear, but three cannot take part in a conversation of the most sincere and searching sort.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.

Essays: First Series. Friendship

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Essays: First Series. Prudence

Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease;¹ all others run into this one.

Essays: First Series. Circles

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Essays: First Series. Circles

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Essays: First Series. Art

A man may love a paradox without either losing his wit or his honesty.

Walter Savage Landor. From The Dial [1841], XII

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

The Conservative [1842]

For it is not meters, but a metermaking argument that makes a poem—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.

Essays: Second Series [1844]. The Poet

Language is the archives of history.… Language is fossil poetry.

Essays: Second Series. The Poet

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Essays: Second Series. Experience

The less government we have, the better—the fewer laws, and the less confided power.

Essays: Second Series. Politics

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

Essays: Second Series. Nominalist and Realist

Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much.

Essays: Second Series. Nominalist and Realist

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.

Essays: Second Series. Nominalist and Realist

As to what are called the masses, and common men—there are no common men. All men are at last of a size.

Representative Men [1850]. The Uses of Great Men

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

Representative Men. The Uses of Great Men

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Representative Men. Plato; or, The Philosopher

Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.

Representative Men. Plato; or, The Philosopher

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.¹

Representative Men. Montaigne; or, The Skeptic

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?

Representative Men. Montaigne; or, The Skeptic

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

The Conduct of Life [1860]. Fate

Men are what their mothers made them.

The Conduct of Life. Fate

The one prudence in life is concentration; the one evil is dissipation.

The Conduct of Life. Power

The world is his, who has money to go over it.

The Conduct of Life. Wealth

Art is a jealous mistress.

The Conduct of Life. Wealth

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.

The Conduct of Life. Culture

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

The Conduct of Life. Behavior

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.

The Conduct of Life. Considerations by the Way

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

The Conduct of Life. Considerations by the Way

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

The Conduct of Life. Considerations by the Way

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

The Conduct of Life. Beauty

Never read any book that is not a year old.

The Conduct of Life. In Praise of Books

Instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party. Pounding beans² is good to the end of pounding empires one of these days; but if, at the end of years, it is still only beans!

Eulogy for Henry David Thoreau [1862]

There are always two parties, the party of the Past and the party of the Future; the Establishment and the Movement.

Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England [1867]

The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself.… The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there; but no one else could ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book, and ransack every page.

Journal [July 2, 1867]

Colleges hate geniuses, just as convents hate saints.

Uncollected Lectures [1870]. Public and Private Education

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Society and Solitude [1870]. Civilization

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops—no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

Society and Solitude. Civilization

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

Society and Solitude. Art

A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

Society and Solitude. Art

We boil at different degrees.

Society and Solitude. Eloquence

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

Society and Solitude. Works and Days

’Tis the good reader that makes the good book;… in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear.

Society and Solitude. Success

We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.

Society and Solitude. Old Age

A mollusk is a cheap edition [of man] with a suppression of the costlier illustrations, designed for dingy circulation, for shelving in an oyster-bank or among the seaweed.

Power and Laws of Thought [c. 1870]

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.

Letters and Social Aims. Social Aims

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.¹

Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions.

Letters and Social Aims. The Comic

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Fortune of the Republic [1878]

To live without duties is obscene.

Lectures and Biographical Sketches [1883]. Aristocracy

Speak the affirmative; emphasize your choice by utter ignoring of all that you reject.

Lectures and Biographical Sketches. The Preacher

Genius has no taste for weaving sand.

Lectures and Biographical Sketches. The Scholar

This world we live in is but thickened light.

Lectures and Biographical Sketches. The Scholar

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits.

The Natural History of Intellect [1893]

When you strike at a king, you must kill him.

Recollected by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR. From MAX LERNER [1902–1992], The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes [1943]

Robert Stephen Hawker

1803–1875

And shall Trelawny die?²

Here’s twenty thousand Cornish men

Will know the reason why.

The Song of the Western Men [1825], st. 1

James Clarence Mangan

1803–1849

Solomon! where is thy throne? It is gone in the wind.

Babylon! where is thy might? It is gone in the wind.

Like the swift shadows of Noon, like the dreams of the Blind,

Vanish the glories and pomps of the earth in the wind.³

Poems [1845]. Gone in the Wind

Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield

1804–1881

A dark horse, which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph.

The Young Duke [1831], bk. II, ch. 5

Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.⁴

Reply to a taunt by Daniel O’Connell

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

Henrietta Temple [1837], bk. II, ch. 4

Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.

Maiden speech in the House of Commons [1837]

Two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws… the rich and the poor.

Sybil; or, The Two Nations [1845], bk. II, ch. 5

Property has its duties as well as its rights.¹

Sybil; or, The Two Nations, 11

A precedent embalms a principle.

Speech on the expenditures of the country [February 22, 1848]

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Speech [January 24, 1860]

Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those newfangled theories.

Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference [November 25, 1864]

I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.

To friends, on being made prime minister [1868]

When a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire.

Lothair [1870], ch. 28

“My idea of an agreeable person,” said Hugo Bohun, “is a person who agrees with me.”

Lothair, 41

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester [April 3, 1872]

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

Speech [July 24, 1877]

Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace—but a peace I hope with honor.

Speech in the House of Commons [July 16, 1878]

A series of congratulatory regrets.

Speech at Knightsbridge [July 27, 1878]

A sophistical rhetorician [Gladstone], inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Speech at Knightsbridge

The harebrained chatter of irresponsible frivolity.

Speech at the Guildhall, London [November 9, 1878]

No, it is better not. She would only ask me to take a message to Albert.

On his deathbed, declining a visit from Queen Victoria

Gavarni [Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier]

1804–1866

Les Enfants Terribles [The Terrible Children].

Title of series of prints [1865]

Mikhail [Ivanovich] Glinka

1804–1857

Nations create music, composers only arrange it.

Attributed

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1804–1864

It is difficult to be convinced of the death of one whom we have deemed another self.

The Wives of the Dead² [1832]

Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.

Young Goodman Brown [1835]

By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places—whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest—where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.

Young Goodman Brown

Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another, and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.

Wakefield [1835]

As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.

The Maypole of Merrymount [1836]

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

The Scarlet Letter [1850]. The Custom-House

On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A.

The Scarlet Letter, ch. 2

My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.

The Scarlet Letter, 4

There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.

The Scarlet Letter, 5

“Never, never!” whispered she. “What we did had a consecration of its own.”

The Scarlet Letter, 17

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

The Scarlet Letter, 18

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

The Scarlet Letter, 20

The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.

Twice-Told Tales [1851], preface

Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral—the truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones.

The House of the Seven Gables [1851], preface

God will give him blood to drink!

The House of the Seven Gables, ch. 1

Life is made up of marble and mud.

The House of the Seven Gables, 2

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.

The House of the Seven Gables, 2

It is often instructive to take the woman’s, the private and domestic view, of a public man; nor can anything be more curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits intended for engraving, and the pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand, behind the original’s back.

The House of the Seven Gables, 8

All his life long, he had been learning how to be wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson thoroughly at heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness.

The House of the Seven Gables, 10

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

The House of the Seven Gables, 11

What we call real estate—the solid ground to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

The House of the Seven Gables, 17

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

The House of the Seven Gables, 20

Of all the events which constitute a person’s biography, there is scarcely one… to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

The House of the Seven Gables, 21

The hand of one person may express more than the face of another.

American Notebooks [1841–1852]

Some man of powerful character to command a person, morally subjected to him, to perform some act. The commanding person suddenly to die; and, for all the rest of his life, the subjected one continues to perform that act.

American Notebooks

The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they two were in the deepest solitude.

American Notebooks

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women.

Letter to William Ticknor [1855]

He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.

Journal [November 20, 1856], on Herman Melville

Osceola

1804–1838

When I make up my mind, I act. If I speak, what I say, I will do. If the hail rattles, let the flowers be crushed. The oak of the forest will lift up its head to the sky and the storm, towering and unscathed.

Statement during treaty negotiation, Second Seminole War [1836]

Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

1804–1869

Vigny, more secret,

As if in his tower of ivory, retired before noon.¹

Pensées d’Août (Thoughts of August), to M. Villemain [1837], st. 3

George Sand [Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant]

1804–1876

Love, bumping his head blindly against all the obstacles of civilization.

Indiana [1832], preface

No human creature can give orders to love.

Jacques [1834]

That which constitutes adultery is not the hour that she accords to her lover: it is the night that she afterward passes in the arms of her husband.

Jacques

Deliberately, women are given a deplorable education.… While man frees himself from constraining civil and religious bonds, he is only too glad to have woman hold tightly to the Christian principle of suffering and keeping her silence.

Letters to Marcie [1837]

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.

Mauprat [1837]

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.

Consuelo [1842]

Masterpieces are only lucky attempts.

François the Waif [1848]

They [the peasants] were born kings of the earth far more truly than those who possess it only from having bought it.

The Haunted Pool [1851]

In our wholly factitious society, to have no cash at all means frightful want or absolute powerlessness.

Histoire de Ma Vie (Story of My Life) [1856]

One has to have known a thousand persons in order to depict one.

Histoire de Ma Vie

Revolutions… have put one half of France in mourning for the other.

Histoire de Ma Vie

The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes.

Nouvelles Lettres d’un Voyageur [1869]

I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that He was indifferent.

Impressions et Souvenirs [1896]

Sarah Flower Adams

1805–1848

E’en though it be a cross

That raiseth me;

Still all my song would be,

Nearer, My God, to Thee,

Nearer, My God, to Thee,

    Nearer to Thee.

Nearer, My God, to Thee, st. 1

Hans Christian Andersen

1805–1875

They could see she was a real princess and no question about it, now that she had felt one pea all the way through twenty mattresses and twenty more feather beds. Nobody but a princess could be so delicate.

Fairy Tales² [1835]. The Princess and the Pea

We [sea folk] can live to be three hundred years old, but when we perish we turn into mere foam on the sea.

Fairy Tales. The Little Mermaid

“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.

Fairy Tales. The Emperor’s New Clothes

The little live nightingale… had come to sing of comfort and hope. As he sang, the phantoms grew pale, and still more pale, and the blood flowed quicker and quicker through the Emperor’s feeble body. Even Death listened, and said, “Go on, little nightingale, go on!”

Fairy Tales. The Nightingale

His own image… was no longer the reflection of a clumsy, dirty, gray bird, ugly and offensive. He himself was a swan! Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.

Fairy Tales. The Ugly Duckling

William Lloyd Garrison

1805–1879

Our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind.

Motto of The Liberator [1831]

Let Southern oppressors tremble—let their secret abettors tremble—let their Northern apologists tremble—let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

The Liberator, no. 1 [January 1, 1831]

I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation.

The Liberator, 1

I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard!

The Liberator, 1

The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.

Resolution adopted by the Anti-Slavery Society [January 27, 1843]

Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.

Speech at the Woman’s Rights Convention [1853]

Sidney Sherman

1805–1873

Remember the Alamo!¹

Battle cry, San Jacinto [April 21, 1836]; attributed

Alexis de Tocqueville

1805–1859

To live in freedom one must grow used to a life full of agitation, change, and danger.

Journey to England [1835]

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

Democracy in America,² vol. I, pt. I [1835], ch. 3

Within these limits the power vested in the American courts of justice of pronouncing a statute to be unconstitutional forms one of the most powerful barriers that have ever been devised against the tyranny of political assemblies.

Democracy in America, I, I, 6

I have never been more struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans than in the manner in which they elude the numberless difficulties resulting from their Federal Constitution.

Democracy in America, I, I, 8

In America, there are no noblemen or men of letters, and the people distrust the wealthy. Lawyers therefore constitute the superior political class and the most intellectual segment of society.

Democracy in America, I, II, 8

There is virtually no political question in the United States that does not sooner or later resolve itself into a judicial question.

Democracy in America, I, II, 8

The American’s principal means of action is liberty; the Russian’s, servitude.

Their points of departure are different, their ways diverse. Yet each seems called by a secret design of Providence some day to sway the destinies of half the globe.

Democracy in America, I, II, 10

They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

Democracy in America, I, II, 18

America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration.

Democracy in America, I, II, 18

In the United States, the majority takes it upon itself to provide individuals with a range of ready-made opinions and thus relieves them of the obligation to form their own.

Democracy in America, II, I, 2

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.… Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

Democracy in America, II, I, 17

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Democracy in America [1840], II, II, 2

I reproach equality not for leading men into the pursuit of forbidden pleasures but for absorbing them entirely in the search for permitted ones.

Democracy in America, II, II, 11

Various forms of religious madness are quite common in the United States.¹

Democracy in America, II, II, 12

If I were asked… to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people [the Americans] ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.

Democracy in America, II, III, 12

The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness.

Democracy in America, II, III, 17

Never was any such event [the French Revolution], stemming from factors so far back in the past, so inevitable yet so completely unforeseen.

The Old Regime and the French Revolution² [1856], pt. I, ch. 1

When a people which has put up with an oppressive rule over a long period without protest suddenly finds the government relaxing its pressure, it takes up arms against it.

The Old Regime and the French Revolution, III, 4

Experience teaches that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform itself.³

The Old Regime and the French Revolution, III, 4

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1806–1861

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.

To George Sand, A Desire [1844]

Knowledge by suffering entereth,

And life is perfected by death.

A Vision of Poets [1844], last lines

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

The Cry of the Children [1844], st. 1

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless.

Grief [1844], l. 1

Therefore to this dog will I,

Tenderly not scornfully,

Render praise and favor.

To Flush, My Dog [1844], st. 14

“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said. But there

The silver answer rang—“Not Death, but Love.”

Sonnets from the Portuguese [1850], no. 1

Because God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, 26

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, 43

        I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, 43

        Life, struck sharp on death,

Makes awful lightning.

Aurora Leigh⁴ [1857], bk. I, l. 210

I should not dare to call my soul my own.

Aurora Leigh, II, l. 786

A little sunburnt by the glare of life.

Aurora Leigh, IV, l. 1140

And trade is art, and art’s philosophy,

In Paris.

Aurora Leigh, VI, l. 96

Since when was genius found respectable?

Aurora Leigh, VI, l. 275

John Stuart Mill

1806–1873

The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.

On Liberty [1859], introduction

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

On Liberty, ch. 2

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

On Liberty, 2

It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake.

On Liberty, 2

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

On Liberty, 2

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.

On Liberty, 2

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.

On Liberty, 3

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called.

On Liberty, 3

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.

On Liberty, 4

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, insofar as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

On Liberty, 5

Liberty consists in doing what one desires.

On Liberty, 5

Unearned increment.

Dissertations and Discussions [1859]

Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government.

Dissertations and Discussions

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

Utilitarianism [1863], ch. 2

Everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.

The Subjection of Women [1869], ch. 1

It is only a man here and there who has any tolerable knowledge of the character even of the women of his own family.

The Subjection of Women, 1

The generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal.

The Subjection of Women, 2

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

The Subjection of Women, 4

The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence, when the most fundamental of the social relations [marriage] is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and in cultivation.

The Subjection of Women, 4

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

Autobiography [1873], ch. 5

The habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings.

Autobiography, 5

With respect to the persons and affairs of their own day [people] insensibly adopt the modes of feeling and judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company they keep.

Autobiography, 7

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz

1807–1873

The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive the light, there must have been light to enter it.

Geological Sketches [1870], ch. 2

Study nature, not books.

Motto

Giuseppe Garibaldi

1807–1882

I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not with his lips only, follow me.

From G. M. TREVELYAN [1876–1962], Garibaldi’s Defense of the Roman Republic [1907–1911]

James Henry Hammond

1807–1864

No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.

Speech to U.S. Senate [March 4, 1858]

Robert E[dward] Lee

1807–1870

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

On seeing a Federal charge repulsed at Fredericksburg [December 1862]

After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.

General Order No. 9 [April 10, 1865]

Strike the tent.

Last words [October 12, 1870]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1807–1882

I heard the trailing garments of the Night

Sweep through her marble halls.

Hymn to Night [1839], st. 1

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

A Psalm of Life [1839], st. 1, 2

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

A Psalm of Life, st. 4

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime.

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.

A Psalm of Life, st. 7

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

A Psalm of Life, st. 9

It was the schooner Hesperus,

That sailed the wintry sea;

And the skipper had taken his little daughter,

To bear him company.

The Wreck of the Hesperus [1842], st. 1

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of Norman’s Woe!

The Wreck of the Hesperus, st. 22

Under the spreading chestnut tree

The village smithy stands;

The smith a mighty man is he

With large and sinewy hands.

And the muscles of his brawny arms

Are strong as iron bands.

The Village Blacksmith [1842], st. 1

His brow is wet with honest sweat,

He earns whate’er he can,

And looks the whole world in the face,

For he owes not any man.

The Village Blacksmith, st. 2

Something attempted, something done,

Has earned a night’s repose.

The Village Blacksmith, st. 7

Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

The Rainy Day [1842], st. 3

A banner with the strange device,

Excelsior!

Excelsior [1842], st. 1

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

The Day Is Done [1845], st. 1

        The bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.

The Day Is Done, st. 5

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

The Day Is Done, st. 11

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where.

The Arrow and the Song [1845], st. 1

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks…

Stand like Druids of old.

Evangeline [1847], l. 1

Build me straight, O worthy Master!

Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel.

The Building of the Ship [1849], l. 1

And see! she stirs!

She starts—she moves—she seems to feel

The thrill of life along her keel.

The Building of the Ship, l. 349

        Sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

The Building of the Ship, l. 378

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.

Kavanagh: A Tale [1849]

All your strength is in your union.

All your danger is in discord;

Therefore be at peace henceforward,

And as brothers live together.

The Song of Hiawatha [1855], pt. I

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,

Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,

Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

The Song of Hiawatha, III

From the waterfall he named her,

Minnehaha, Laughing Water.

The Song of Hiawatha, IV

If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.

The Courtship of Miles Standish [1858], pt. III

“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

The Courtship of Miles Standish, III

The long mysterious Exodus of death.

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport [1858], st. 1

        A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

My Lost Youth [1858], refrain

I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tides tossing free;

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,

And the beauty and majesty of the ships,

And the magic of the sea.

My Lost Youth, st. 3

A Lady with a Lamp [Florence Nightingale] shall stand

In the great history of the land,

A noble type of good,

Heroic womanhood.

Santa Filomena [1858], st. 10

Between the dark and the daylight,

When the night is beginning to lower,

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,

That is known as the Children’s Hour.

The Children’s Hour [1860], st. 1

I hear in the chamber above me

The patter of little feet.

The Children’s Hour, st. 2

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,

And Edith with golden hair.

The Children’s Hour, st. 3

Listen, my children, and you shall hear,

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

Tales of a Wayside Inn [1863–1874], pt. I, The Landlord’s Tale: Paul Revere’s Ride, st. 1

One if by land, and two if by sea;¹

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm.

Tales of a Wayside Inn, I, The Landlord’s Tale: Paul Revere’s Ride, st. 2

The fate of a nation was riding that night.

Tales of a Wayside Inn, I, The Landlord’s Tale: Paul Revere’s Ride, st. 8

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,

Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;

So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,²

Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.

Tales of a Wayside Inn, III, The Theologian’s Tale: Elizabeth, pt. IV

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books.

Morituri Salutamus³ [1874], st. 21

Three silences there are: the first of speech,

The second of desire, the third of thought.

The Three Silences of Molinos [1877]

The holiest of all holidays are those

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

The secret anniversaries of the heart.

Holidays [1878]

In the long, sleepless watches of the night.

The Cross of Snow [1879]

There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead;

And when she was good

She was very, very good,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

There Was a Little Girl⁴

John Greenleaf Whittier

1807–1892

No fetters in the Bay State—no slave upon our land!

Massachusetts to Virginia [1843], st. 24

        From those great eyes

The soul has fled:

When faith is lost, when honor dies,

The man is dead!

Ichabod⁵ [1850], st. 8

Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

The Barefoot Boy [1856], st. 1

Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,

Knowledge never learned of schools.

The Barefoot Boy, st. 2

The age is dull and mean. Men creep,

Not walk.

Lines Inscribed to Friends Under Arrest for Treason Against the Slave Power [1856], st. 1

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: “It might have been!”¹

Maud Muller [1856], st. 53

Up from the meadows rich with corn,

Clear in the cool September morn.

Barbara Frietchie [1864], st. 1

The clustered spires of Frederick stand

Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

Barbara Frietchie, st. 2

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

Barbara Frietchie, st. 18

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

Barbara Frietchie, st. 21

The sun that brief December day

Rose cheerless over hills of gray,

And, darkly circled, gave at noon

A sadder light than waning moon.

Snowbound [1866], l. 1

Shut in from all the world without,

We sat the clean-winged hearth about.

Snowbound, l. 155

Angel of the backward look.

Snowbound, l. 714

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

Forgive our foolish ways!

Reclothe us in our rightful mind,

In purer lives Thy service find,

In deeper reverence, praise.

The Brewing of Soma [1872]

Salmon P[ortland] Chase

1808–1873

The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.

Decision in Texas v. White, 7 Wallace 725 [1868]

Jefferson Davis

1808–1889

All we ask is to be left alone.

Address at inauguration as president of the Confederacy [1861]

Andrew Johnson

1808–1875

If I have played the Judas, who has been my Christ that I have played the Judas with? Was it Thad Stevens? Was it Wendell Phillips? Was it Charles Sumner? These are the men that stop and compare themselves with the Savior; and everybody that differs with them in opinion, and to try to stay and arrest their diabolical and nefarious policy, is to be denounced as a Judas.

Speech, St. Louis [September 8, 1866]; cited in articles of impeachment against Johnson, 1868

Alphonse Karr

1808–1890

The more things change, the more they remain the same.²

Les Guêpes (The Wasps) [January 1849]

Marie Edme Patrice Maurice, Comte de Mac-Mahon

1808–1893

Here I am, and here I stay.³

At Sevastopol [September 1855]

Gérard de Nerval [Gérard Labrunie]

1808–1855

The jailer is another kind of captive—is the jailer envious of his prisoner’s dreams?

Fragments de Faust [1828]

Dream is a second life. I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread.

Aurélia⁴ [1854], pt. I

For those who have no faith in immortality, its joys and sorrows, certain fatal situations can result in despair and suicide.

Aurélia, II

Everything is alive, everything is in motion, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays that emanate from me or from others flow directly through the infinite chain of creation whose transparent network is in continuous communication with the planets and the stars. A captive here on earth for the moment, I commune with the chorus of stars and they join in my sorrows and joys.

Aurélia, VI

I am the somber one, the unconsoled widower,

The Prince of Aquitaine whose tower was destroyed.¹

My only star is dead, and my star-studded lute

Wears the black sun of Melancholy.

Les Chimères [1854]. El Desdichado

In what way is a lobster more ridiculous than a dog, a cat, a gazelle, a lion, or any other animal you take for a walk? I’m fond of lobsters. They’re peaceful, serious, know the secrets of the deep, don’t bark, and don’t invade our privacy like dogs.

On walking with a leashed lobster in the Palais-Royal gardens. From THÉOPHILE GAUTIER, Portraits et Souvenirs Littéraires [1875]

George Washington Patten

c. 1808–1882

If we must perish in the fight,

Oh! let us die like men.

Oh! Let Us Die like Men, st. 4

Samuel Francis Smith

1808–1895

My country, ’tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing:

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrims’ pride,

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring.

America [1831], st. 1

Long may our land be bright

With freedom’s holy light;

Protect us by thy might,

Great God, our King!

America, st. 4

Charles Robert Darwin

1809–1882

If we choose to let conjecture run wild then animals our fellow brethren in pain, disease death & suffering & famine; our slaves in the most laborious work, our companion in our amusements, they may partake, from our origin in one common ancestor we may be all netted together.²

Journal entry [February 1838]

Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world.

The Voyage of the Beagle [1839], ch. 11, on the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego

Daily it is forced home on the mind of the geologist, that nothing, not even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the level of the crust of this earth.

The Voyage of the Beagle, ch. 15, Passage of the Cordillera

[On the idea that species are not immutable:] It is like confessing a murder.

Letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker [January 11, 1844]

Both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—the mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth.

The Voyage of the Beagle [1845], ch. 17. Galapagos Archipelago

I never dreamed that islands, about fifty or sixty miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, would have been differently tenanted.

The Voyage of the Beagle, 18. Galapagos Archipelago

Though I shall get more kicks than half-pennies, I will, life serving, attempt my work.

Letter to Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker [September 10, 1845]

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.

On the Origin of Species [1859], ch. 3

The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.³

On the Origin of Species, 3

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.⁴

On the Origin of Species, 3

All we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction. When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.

On the Origin of Species, 3

When the views advanced by me in this volume, and by Mr. Wallace, and when analogous views on the origin of species are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that there will be a considerable revolution in natural history.

On the Origin of Species, 3

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.

On the Origin of Species, 3

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers.

On the Origin of Species, 4

For my part,… I look at the natural geological record, as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines.

On the Origin of Species, 9

From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one, and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.

On the Origin of Species, 15

I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.

Letter to Asa Gray [May 22, 1860]

I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.

Letter to Asa Gray

I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design, or indeed of design of any kind, in the details.

Letter to J. D. Hooker [July 12, 1870]

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

The Descent of Man [1871], introduction

The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter at a remote period, Man, the wonder and the glory of the universe, proceeded.¹

The Descent of Man, ch. 6

A hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits.

The Descent of Man, 21

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs—as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

The Descent of Man, 21

The plow is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man’s inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly plowed, and still continues to be thus plowed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.

The Formation of Vegetable Mold Through the Action of Worms [1881], ch. 7

I love fools’ experiments. I am always making them.

From Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by FRANCIS DARWIN

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

Autobiography [1892], ch. 2

Edward FitzGerald

1809–1883

Wake! For the Sun who scatter’d into flight

The Stars before him from the Field of night,

Drives Night along with them from Heav’n and strikes

The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,¹ st. 1

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to flight:

And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 1 [first edition]

Now the New Year reviving old Desires,

The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 4

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

The Winter garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 7 [first edition]

Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say:

Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 9

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness—

Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 12

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,

Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 13

Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai

Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,

How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp

Abode his destin’d Hour, and went his way.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 17

I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 19

Ah, my Belovèd, fill the Cup that clears

Today of past Regrets and future Fears:

Tomorrow!—Why, Tomorrow I may be

Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 21

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best

That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 22

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 24

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument

About it and about: but evermore

Came out by the same door wherein I went.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 27

And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d—

“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 28

There was the Door to which I found no Key;

There was the Veil through which I might not see.

Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee

There was—and then no more of Thee and Me.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 32

        “While you live,

Drink!—for, once dead, you never shall return.”

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 35

’Tis all a Checkerboard of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 49

        Striking from the Calendar

Unborn Tomorrow and dead Yesterday.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 57

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 71

Ah, Moon of my Delight who know’st no wane.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 74

After a momentary silence spake

Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make;

“They sneer at me for leaning all awry:

What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?”

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 86

Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 87

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

Have done my credit in this World much wrong:

Have drown’d my Glory in a shallow Cup,

And sold my Reputation for a Song.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 93

I wonder often what the Vintners buy

One half so precious as the stuff they sell.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 95

Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire

To grasp this Sorry Scheme of Things entire,

Would not we shatter it to bits—and then

Remold it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 99

And when like her, O Saki, you shall pass

Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on the Grass,

And in your joyous errand reach the spot

Where I made One—turn down an empty Glass!

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 101

William Ewart Gladstone

1809–1898

Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.

Speech in the House of Commons [1858]

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.

Speech on the Reform Bill [1866]

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

Speech at Liverpool [June 28, 1886]

I have always regarded that Constitution as the most remarkable work known to me in modern times to have been produced by the human intellect, at a single stroke (so to speak), in its application to political affairs.

Letter to the committee in charge of the celebration of the centennial of the American Constitution [July 20, 1887]

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Attributed

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

1809–1852

It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.

The Inspector-General [1836], epigraph

What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves!

The Inspector-General, V, viii

And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.

Dead Souls [1842], vol. I, ch. 7

Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born: in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes.…

Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all falls back and is left behind!… And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange force contained in these passing strange steeds? Steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?… Rus, whither are you speeding so? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.¹

Dead Souls, II, concluding paragraphs

I shall laugh my bitter laugh.

Epitaph on Gogol’s tombstone

Oliver Wendell Holmes

1809–1894

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Beneath it rung the battle shout,

And burst the cannon’s roar—

The meteor of the ocean air

Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Old Ironsides² [1830], st. 1

There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young.

No Time like the Old Time, st. 1

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table [1858], ch. 2

Man has his will—but woman has her way!

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 2

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 2

There at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas. Three Johns: 1. The real John; known only to his Maker. 2. John’s ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him. 3. Thomas’s ideal John; never the real John, nor John’s John, but often very unlike either. Three Thomases: 1. The real Thomas. 2. Thomas’s ideal Thomas. 3. John’s ideal Thomas.¹

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 3

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 4 [The Chambered Nautilus, st. 5]

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 6

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,

That was built in such a logical way

It ran a hundred years to a day?

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 11 [The Deacon’s Masterpiece, st. 1]

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.

Logic is logic. That’s all I say.

The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 11 [The Deacon’s Masterpiece, st. 12]

He comes of the Brahmin caste of New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy.

The Brahmin Caste of New England [1860]

Abraham Lincoln

1809–1865

If the good people, in their wisdom, shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.

Address at New Salem, Illinois [March 9, 1832]

Politicians [are] a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with the greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.

Speech in the Illinois Legislature [January 11, 1837]

If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Address at the Young Men’s Lyceum, Springfield, Illinois [January 27, 1838]

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

Address at the Young Men’s Lyceum, Springfield, Illinois

I hate [slavery] because it deprives the republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.

Speech at Peoria, Illinois [October 16, 1854]

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

Speech at Bloomington, Illinois [May 19, 1856]

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

Speech at the Republican State Convention, Springfield, Illinois [June 16, 1858]

Nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.²

Second campaign speech against Stephen Douglas, Springfield, Illinois [July 17, 1858]

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Fragment [August 1, 1858?]. From ROY P. BASLER [1906–1989], The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln [1953], vol. II, p. 532

When… you have succeeded in dehumanizing the Negro; when you have put him down and made it forever impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out in darkness like that which broods over the spirits of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you?

Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois [September 11, 1858]

That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself.

Reply, seventh and last joint debate, Alton, Illinois [October 15, 1858]

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Letter to H. L. Pierce and others [April 6, 1859]

Public opinion in this country is everything.

Speech at Columbus, Ohio [September 16, 1859]

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee [September 30, 1859]

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Address at Cooper Union, New York [February 27, 1860]

No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.

Farewell Address, Springfield, Illinois [February 11, 1861]

If we do not make common cause to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

Address at Cleveland, Ohio [February 15, 1861]

It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.

First Inaugural Address [March 4, 1861]

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one.

First Inaugural Address

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

First Inaugural Address

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

First Inaugural Address

I think the necessity of being ready increases. Look to it.

Letter (this is the whole message) to Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania [April 8, 1861]

This is essentially a people’s contest.… It is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.

Message to Congress in Special Session [July 4, 1861]

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.

First Annual Message to Congress [December 3, 1861]

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

Letter to Horace Greeley [August 22, 1862]

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.… I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

Letter to Horace Greeley [August 22, 1862]

On the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation [September 22, 1862]¹

[I feel] somewhat like the boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.

Reply as to how he felt about the New York elections. From Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly [November 22, 1862]

If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.

Second Annual Message to Congress [December 1, 1862]

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the last generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.

Second Annual Message to Congress

Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

Letter to Major General Joseph Hooker [January 26, 1863]

The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.

Letter to James C. Conkling [August 26, 1863]

I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

Letter to James H. Hackett [November 2, 1863]

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people,² shall not perish from the earth.

Address at Gettysburg [November 19, 1863]

The President last night had a dream. He was in a party of plain people and as it became known who he was they began to comment on his appearance. One of them said, “He is a common-looking man.” The President replied, “Common-looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.”

Diary entry written by John Hay³ [December 23, 1863]

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

Letter to A. G. Hodges [April 4, 1864]

I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded that it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.

Reply to the National Union League [June 9, 1864]

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.

Response to a serenade [November 10, 1864]

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me.

Reply to the Missouri Committee of Seventy [1864]

Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Letter to Mrs. Bixby¹ [November 21, 1864]

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

Second Inaugural Address [March 4, 1865]

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Second Inaugural Address

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Address to an Indiana Regiment [March 17, 1865]

Important principles may and must be inflexible.

Last public address, Washington, D.C. [April 11, 1865]

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.

To a caller at the White House. From ALEXANDER K. MCCLURE [1828–1909], Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories [1904]

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Conversation at the White House. From FRANCIS B. CARPENTER [1830–1900], Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln [1866]

Edgar Allan Poe

1809–1849

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

A Dream Within a Dream [1827, revised 1849], l. 10

The happiest day—the happiest hour

My sear’d and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride and power,

I feel hath flown.

The Happiest Day [1827], st. 1

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw.

Alone [written 1829, published 1875], l. 1

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicean barks of yore,

That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

The weary, wayworn wanderer bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

To the glory that was Greece,

And the grandeur that was Rome.

To Helen [1831], st. 1, 2

If I could dwell

Where Israfel¹

Hath dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

A mortal melody,

While a bolder note than this might swell

From my lyre within the sky.

Israfel [1831], st. 8

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city, lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

The City in the Sea [1831], st. 1

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

The City in the Sea, st. 3

And when, amid no earthly moans,

Down, down that town shall settle hence,

Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,

Shall do it reverence.

The City in the Sea, st. 5

Thou wast that all to me, love,

For which my soul did pine—

A green isle in the sea, love,

A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

And all the flowers were mine.

To One in Paradise [1834], st. 1

And all my days are trances,

And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy gray eye glances,

And where thy footstep gleams—

In what ethereal dances,

By what eternal streams.

To One in Paradise, st. 4

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

The Fall of the House of Usher [1839]

In the greenest of our valleys

By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace—

Radiant palace—reared its head.

The Haunted Palace [1839], st. 1

[In response to charges that he had been influenced by the Germans:] If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul—that I have deduced this terror only from its legitimate sources, and urged it only to its legitimate results.

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque [1840]

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors and looking them piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed.

The Man of the Crowd [1840]

As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue [1841]

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The Masque of the Red Death [1842]

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

The Conqueror Worm [1843], st. 3

While the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

The Conqueror Worm, st. 5

What constitutes the essence, the nare, the principle of diddling is, in fact, peculiar to the class of creatures that wear coats and pantaloons. A crow thieves; a fox cheats; a weasel outwits; a man diddles.

Raising the Wind; or Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences [1843]

True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

The Tell-Tale Heart [1843]

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

The Premature Burial [1844]

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of Space—out of Time.

Dreamland [1845], st. 1

With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence: they must not—they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.

The Raven and Other Poems [1845], preface

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

The Raven [1845], st. 1

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

The Raven, st. 2

        Sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Nameless here for evermore.

The Raven, st. 2

The silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.

The Raven, st. 3

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

The Raven, st. 5

“Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

The Raven, st. 8

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!”

The Raven, st. 15

“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

The Raven, st. 17

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.

The Raven, st. 18

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—nevermore!

The Raven, st. 18

The Imp of the Perverse.¹

Title of story [1845]

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

The Cask of Amontillado [1846]

The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crispèd and sere—

The leaves they were withering and sere:

It was night in the lonesome October

Of my most immemorial year.

Ulalume [1847], st. 1

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Ulalume, st. 1

The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.

Eureka: A Prose Poem [1848]

“Over the Mountains

Of the Moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldly ride,”

The shade replied—

“If you seek for Eldorado!”

Eldorado [1849], st. 4

And the fever called “Living”

Is conquered at last.

For Annie [1849], st. 1

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

Annabel Lee [1849], st. 1

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

Annabel Lee, st. 2

And neither the angels in Heaven above

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

Annabel Lee, st. 5

In her sepulcher there by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Annabel Lee, st. 6

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells.

The Bells [1849], st. 1

I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase “a long poem” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

The Poetic Principle [1850]

There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified—more supremely noble than this very poem—this poem per se—this poem which is a poem and nothing more—this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.

The Poetic Principle

Pierre Joseph Proudhon

1809–1865

Property is theft!¹

What Is Property? [1840], ch. 1

God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood; God is tyranny and poverty; God is evil. For as long as men bow before altars, mankind will remain damned, the slaves of kings and priests.

Economic Contradictions [1846]

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1809–1892

There hath he lain for ages and will lie

Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

The Kraken [1830], l. 11

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange.²

Mariana [1830], st. 1

She said, “I am aweary, aweary,

I would that I were dead!”

Mariana, refrain

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;

Tomorrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New Year;

Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

The May Queen [1832], st. 1

In the afternoon they came unto a land

In which it seemed always afternoon.

The Lotos-Eaters [1832], st. 1

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tir’d eyelids upon tir’d eyes.

The Lotos-Eaters. Choric Song, st. 1

        Ah, why

Should life all labor be?

The Lotos-Eaters. Choric Song, st. 4

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,

And in a little while our lips are dumb.

Let us alone. What is it that will last?

All things are taken from us, and become

Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.

The Lotos-Eaters. Choric Song, st. 4

Give us long rest or death, dark death or dreamful ease.

The Lotos-Eaters. Choric Song, st. 4

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore

Than labor in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

Oh rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

The Lotos-Eaters. Choric Song, last lines

’Tis only noble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets,

And simple faith than Norman blood.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere [1833], st. 7

A still small voice spake unto me,

“Thou art so full of misery,

Were it not better not to be?”

The Two Voices [1834], st. 1

I know that age to age succeeds,

Blowing a noise of tongues and deeds,

A dust of systems and of creeds.

The Two Voices, st. 69

‘Moreover, something is or seems,

That touches me with mystic gleams,

Like glimpses of forgotten dreams—

‘Of something felt, like something here;

Of something done, I know not where;

Such as no language may declare.’

The Two Voices, st. 127

Many-tower’d Camelot.

The Lady of Shalott [1842], pt. I, st. 1

“Tirra lirra,” by the river

Sang Sir Lancelot.

The Lady of Shalott, III, st. 4

She left the web, she left the loom,

She made three paces thro’ the room,

She saw the water-lily bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,

She look’d down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack’d from side to side.

“The curse is come upon me,” cried

The Lady of Shalott.

The Lady of Shalott, III, st. 5

        The great brand

Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon,

And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,

Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,

Seen where the moving isles of winter shock

By night, with noises of the northern sea,

So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur.

Morte d’Arthur [1842], l. 136

        Half light, half shade,

She stood, a sight to make an old man young.

The Gardener’s Daughter [1842], l. 139

        Ah! when shall all men’s good

Be each man’s rule, and universal peace

Lie like a shaft of light across the land,

And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,

Through all the circle of the golden year?

The Golden Year [1842], l. 47

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race.

Ulysses [1842], l. 1

        I will drink

Life to the lees.

Ulysses, l. 6

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honor’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravel’d world.

Ulysses, l. 13

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Ulysses, l. 30

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

Ulysses, l. 51

        The deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Ulysses, l. 55

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses, l. 70

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn:

Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.

Locksley Hall [1842], l. 1

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Locksley Hall, l. 20

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

Locksley Hall, l. 49

        This is the truth the poet sings,

That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Locksley Hall, l. 75

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams.

Locksley Hall, l. 79

For I dipp’d into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew

From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.

Locksley Hall, l. 119

Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

Locksley Hall, l. 127

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapp’d in universal law.

Locksley Hall, l. 130

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

Locksley Hall, l. 137

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Locksley Hall, l. 141

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine,

Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.

Locksley Hall, l. 151

I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Locksley Hall, l. 168

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.

Locksley Hall, l. 182

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Locksley Hall, l. 184

And o’er the hills and far away

Beyond their utmost purple rim,

Beyond the night, across the day,

Through all the world she followed him.

The Day Dream [1842]. The Departure, st. 4

My strength is as the strength of ten,

Because my heart is pure.

Sir Galahad [1842], st. 1

Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman’s boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O, for the touch of a vanish’d hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, Break, Break [1842], st. 1–3

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

Break, Break, Break, st. 4

Sweet and low, sweet and low,

Wind of the western sea,

Low, low, breathe and blow,

Wind of the western sea!

Over the rolling waters go,

Come from the dying moon, and blow,

Blow him again to me;

While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps.

The Princess [1847], III [song, Sweet and Low, st. 1]

The splendor falls on castle walls

And snowy summits old in story:

The long light shakes across the lakes,

And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

The Princess, IV [song, The Splendor Falls, st. 1]

The horns of Elfland faintly blowing.

The Princess, IV [song, The Splendor Falls, st. 2]

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy autumn fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

The Princess, IV [song, Tears, Idle Tears, st. 1]

Dear as remember’d kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

The Princess, IV [song, Tears, Idle Tears, st. 4]

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;

Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:

The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

The Princess, VII [song, Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, st. 1]

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,

And all thy heart lies open unto me.

The Princess, VII [song, Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal, st. 3]

        Sweet is every sound,

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;

Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn,

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees.

The Princess, VII, l. 203

Believing where we cannot prove.

In Memoriam¹ [1850]. Prologue, st. 1

Our little systems have their day.

In Memoriam. Prologue, st. 5

Let knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before.

In Memoriam. Prologue, st. 7

I sometimes hold it half a sin

To put in words the grief I feel;

For words, like Nature, half reveal

And half conceal the Soul within.

In Memoriam, pt. 5, st. 1

But, for the unquiet heart and brain

A use in measured language lies;

The sad mechanic exercise,

Like dull narcotics numbing pain.

In Memoriam, 5, st. 2

He is not here; but far away

        The noise of life begins again,

        And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the blank day.

In Memoriam, 7, st. 3

And from his ashes may be made

The violet of his native land.

In Memoriam, 18, st. 1

I do but sing because I must,

And pipe but as the linnets sing.

In Memoriam, 21, st. 6

’Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.¹

In Memoriam, 27, st. 4

How fares it with the happy dead?

In Memoriam, 44, st. 1

Be near me when my light is low.

In Memoriam, 50, st. 1

And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.

In Memoriam, 50, st. 2

Do we indeed desire the dead

Should still be near us at our side?

In Memoriam, 51, st. 1

        But what am I?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

In Memoriam, 54, st. 5

Nature, red in tooth and claw.

In Memoriam, 56, st. 4

O Sorrow, wilt Thou live with me

No casual mistress, but a wife.

In Memoriam, 59, st. 1

So many worlds, so much to do,

So little done, such things to be.

In Memoriam, 73, st. 1

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

In Memoriam, 96, st. 3

He seems so near, and yet so far.

In Memoriam, 97, st. 6

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky!

In Memoriam, 106, st. 1

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

In Memoriam, 106, st. 2

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

In Memoriam, 106, st. 7

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.

        O earth, what changes hast thou seen!

        There, where the long street roars, hath been

The stillness of the central sea.

In Memoriam, 123, st. 1

Love is and was my lord and king.

In Memoriam, 126, st. 1

        Wearing all that weight

Of learning lightly like a flower.

In Memoriam, epilogue, st. 10

One God, one law, one element,

And one far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves.

In Memoriam, epilogue, st. 36

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring’d with the azure world he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

The Eagle [1851]

Bury the Great Duke

With an empire’s lamentation.

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington [1852], st. 1

The last great Englishman is low.

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, st. 3

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of death

Rode the six hundred.

The Charge of the Light Brigade² [1854], st. 1

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismay’d?

The Charge of the Light Brigade, st. 2

Someone had blundered.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, st. 2

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, st. 2

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volley’d and thunder’d.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, st. 3

Into the jaws of death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, st. 3

I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.

The Brook [1855], song, st. 1

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

The Brook, song, st. 6

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,

Dead perfection, no more.

Maud [1855], pt. I, sec. ii, l. 6

And ah for a man to arise in me,

That the man I am may cease to be!

Maud, I, x, st. 6

Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown,

Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone.

Maud, I, xxii, st. 1

All night have the roses heard

The flute, violin, bassoon;

All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d

To the dancers dancing in tune;

Till a silence fell with the waking bird,

And a hush with the setting moon.

Maud, I, xxii, st. 3

She is coming, my own, my sweet;

Were it ever so airy a tread,

My heart would hear her and beat,

Were it earth in an earthy bed;

My dust would hear her and beat,

Had I lain for a century dead;

Would start and tremble under her feet,

And blossom in purple and red.

Maud, I, xxii, st. 11

Ah Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us

What and where they be.

Maud, II, iv, st. 3

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,

The vapors weep their burthen to the ground,

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,

And after many a summer dies the swan.

Tithonus [1860], l. 1

Here at the quiet limit of the world.

Tithonus, l. 7

Man’s word is God in man.

Idylls of the King [1859–1885]. The Coming of Arthur, l. 132

Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful.

Idylls of the King. The Coming of Arthur, l. 284

Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great.

Idylls of the King. The Marriage of Geraint, l. 352

It is the little rift within the lute,

That by and by will make the music mute,

And ever widening slowly silence all.

Idylls of the King. Merlin and Vivien, l. 388

Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,

Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.

Idylls of the King. Lancelot and Elaine, l. 1

He makes no friend who never made a foe.

Idylls of the King. Lancelot and Elaine, l. 1082

The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months,

The months will add themselves and make the years,

The years will roll into the centuries,

And mine will ever be a name of scorn.

Idylls of the King. Guinevere, l. 619

I found Him in the shining of the stars,

I mark’d Him in the flowering of His fields,

But in His ways with men I find Him not.

Idylls of the King. The Passing of Arthur, l. 9

And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new;

And God fulfills himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Idylls of the King. The Passing of Arthur, l. 407

        More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

Idylls of the King. The Passing of Arthur, l. 415

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.

Idylls of the King. The Passing of Arthur, l. 445

Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds.

Enoch Arden [1864], l. 222

The worst is yet to come.

Sea Dreams [1864], l. 301

        He said likewise

That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,

That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,

But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

The Grandmother [1864], st. 8

Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!

Northern Farmer: New Style [1869], st. 5

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

Flower in the Crannied Wall [1869]

All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.

To Virgil [1882], st. 3

Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.

The Ancient Sage [1885], l. 68

I am Merlin

Who follow the Gleam.

Merlin and the Gleam [1889], st. 1

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Crossing the Bar [1889], st. 1, 2

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark.

Crossing the Bar, st. 3

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

Crossing the Bar, st. 4

Robert Charles Winthrop

1809–1894

Our Country—whether bounded by the St. John’s and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded¹ or described, and be the measurements more or less—still our Country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands.

Toast at Faneuil Hall [Fourth of July, 1845]

Henry Alford

1810–1871

Come, ye thankful people, come,

Raise the song of harvest-home;

All is safely gathered in,

Ere the winter storms begin.

Come, Ye Thankful People, Come [1844]

P[hineas] T[aylor] Barnum

1810–1891

The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived.

The Life of P. T. Barnum: Written by Himself [1855]

Pierre [Jean François Joseph] Bosquet

1810–1861

It is magnificent, but it is not war.²

On the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava [October 25, 1854]

Margaret Fuller

1810–1850

Who would be a goody that could be a genius?

On women³

For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life.

Review [1836] of The Life of Sir James Mackintosh

I myself am more divine than any I see.

Letter to Emerson [March 1, 1838]

The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.

The Dial [July 1843], The Great Lawsuit

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century [1845]

It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores.

Papers on Literature and Art [1846]

I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli [1852], vol. I, pt. 4

Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and pruning knife.

Diary. From THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON, Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli [1884], ch. 18

I accept the universe.¹

Attributed

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

1810–1865

A man is so in the way in the house.

Cranford [1851–1853], ch. 1

I’ll not listen to reason.… Reason always means what someone else has got to say.

Cranford, 14

James Sloan Gibbons

1810–1892

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.

Three Hundred Thousand More² [1862], st. 1

William Miller

1810–1872

Wee Willie Winkie rins through the town,

Upstairs and downstairs, in his nichtgown,

Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock,

“Are the weans in their bed? for it’s now ten o’clock.”

Willie Winkie [1863]

Alfred de Musset

1810–1857

I have come too late into a world too old.³

Rolla [1833]

Do Not Trifle with Love.⁴

Title of a comedy [1834]

Theodore Parker

1810–1860

Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.

A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion [1842]

A democracy—that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people;⁵ of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness’ sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.

The American Idea⁶ [May 29, 1850]

Robert [Alexander] Schumann

1810–1856

Hats off, gentlemen—a genius!

On first hearing Frédéric Chopin’s music [1831]

Edmund Hamilton Sears

1810–1876

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold:

“Peace on the earth, good will to men

From heav’n’s all-gracious King.”

The world in solemn stillness lay

To hear the angels sing.

The Angel’s Song [1850], st. 1

Martin Farquhar Tupper

1810–1889

Nature’s own Nobleman, friendly and frank,

Is a man with his heart in his hand!

Nature’s Nobleman [1844], st. 1

Fanny Fern [Sara Payson Parton]

1811–1872

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

Fern Leaves [1853]

Théophile Gautier

1811–1872

Everything passes—Robust art

Alone is eternal.

The bust

Survives the city.¹

L’Art [1832]

Horace Greeley

1811–1872

The best business you can go into you will find on your father’s farm or in his workshop. If you have no family or friends to aid you, and no prospect opened to you there, turn your face to the great West,² and there build up a home and fortune.

From JAMES PARTON [1822–1891], Life of Horace Greeley [1855]. To Aspiring Young Men

I never said all Democrats were saloon keepers. What I said was that all saloon keepers were Democrats.

Attributed

Wendell Phillips

1811–1884

When I look upon these crowded thousands, and see them trample on their consciences and the rights of their fellow-men at the bidding of a piece of parchment, I say my curse be on the Constitution of these United States.

Speech against the Fugitive Slave Law [October 30, 1842]

Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back.

Speech [January 8, 1852]

We live under a government of men—and morning newspapers.

Speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society [January 28, 1852]

The best use of laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.

Speech [April 12, 1852]

Every man meets his Waterloo at last.

Speech [November 1, 1859]

More than all other people, we are afraid of each other.

Speech given to celebrate the Irish patriot Daniel O’Connell [August 6, 1870]

Harriet Beecher Stowe³

1811–1896

Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her and her pursuer.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin [1852], ch. 8

I [Topsy] ’spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody never made me.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 20

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 20

My soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it,—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 33

All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order.

The Chimney-Corner, pt. 2, Woman’s Sphere [1868]

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did His dictation.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin [1879], Introduction

Charles Sumner

1811–1874

Already the muster has begun. The strife is no longer local, but national. Even now, while I speak, portents hang on all the arches of the horizon, threatening to darken the broad land, which already yawns with the mutterings of civil war.

The Crime Against Kansas; speech in Senate [May 1856]

Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be.

Slavery and the Rebellion; speech at Cooper Institute [November 5, 1864]

There is the National flag. He must be cold, indeed, who can look upon its folds rippling in the breeze without pride of country. If in a foreign land, the flag is companionship, and country itself, with all its endearments.

Are We a Nation? [November 19, 1867]

William Makepeace Thackeray

1811–1863

However, why should we allude to these charges, or rake up private scandal of near sixty years old? It was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.

The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [1844]

[Of the young Becky Sharp:] She had the dismal precocity of poverty.

Vanity Fair [1847–1848], vol. I, ch. 2

This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.¹

Vanity Fair, I, 4

Them’s my sentiments.

Vanity Fair, I, 21

Everybody in Vanity Fair must have remarked how well those live who are comfortably and thoroughly in debt; how they deny themselves nothing; how jolly and easy they are in their minds.

Vanity Fair, I, 22

How to Live Well on Nothing a Year.

Vanity Fair, I, 36 (title)

I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.

Vanity Fair, II, 1

Ah! Vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?—Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

Vanity Fair, II, 27

He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.

The Book of Snobs [1848], ch. 2

Rake’s Progress.²

Pendennis [1848–1850], ch. 19 (title)

’Tis not the dying for a faith that’s so hard, Master Harry—every man of every nation has done that—’tis the living up to it that’s difficult.

Henry Esmond [1852], bk. I, ch. 6

The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?

The Newcomes [1853–1855], ch. 20

Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered.

The Virginians [1857–1859], ch. 4

Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

The Virginians, 61

It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England.

The Four Georges [1860]. George III

Robert Browning

1812–1889

The year’s at the spring

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hillside’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn:

God’s in his heaven—

All’s right with the world.

Pippa Passes [1841], pt. I

Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.

Pippa Passes, II

In the morning of the world,

When earth was nigher heaven than now.

Pippa Passes, III

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon.

Incident of the French Camp [1842], st. 1

“You’re wounded!” “Nay,” the soldier’s pride

Touched to the quick, he said:

“I’m killed, Sire!” And his chief beside,

Smiling the boy fell dead.

Incident of the French Camp, st. 5

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive.

My Last Duchess [1842], l. 1

        She had

A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad.

My Last Duchess, l. 21

        I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together.

My Last Duchess, l. 45

Marching along, fifty-score strong,

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

Cavalier Tunes [1842]. Marching Along, st. 1

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Cavalier Tunes. Boot and Saddle, refrain

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,

By famous Hanover city.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin [1845], st. 1

Rats!

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, st. 2

And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,

Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats.

Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,

Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,

Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,

Families by tens and dozens,

Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—

Followed the Piper for their lives.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, st. 7

When the liquor’s out, why clink the cannikin?

The Flight of the Duchess [1845], st. 16

It’s a long lane that knows no turnings.

The Flight of the Duchess, st. 17

We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him,

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,

Made him our pattern to live and to die!

The Lost Leader¹ [1845], st. 1

It was roses, roses all the way.

The Patriot [1845], st. 1

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three.

How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix [1845], st. 1

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:

And straight was a path of gold for him,

And the need of a world of men for me.

Parting at Morning [1845]

Oh, to be in England now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!

Home Thoughts, from Abroad [1845], l. 1

That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

Home Thoughts, from Abroad, l. 14

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the northwest died away;

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay.

Home Thoughts, from the Sea [1845], l. 1

The Savior at his sermon on the mount,

Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan

Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off.

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church [1845], l. 59

And then how I shall lie through centuries,

And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,

And see God made and eaten all day long,

And feel the steady candle flame, and taste

Good strong thick stupefying incense smoke!

The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church, l. 80

Let’s contend no more, Love,

Strive nor weep:

All be as before, Love,

—Only sleep!

A Woman’s Last Word [1855], st. 1

Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles.

Love Among the Ruins [1855], st. 1

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!

        Earth’s returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

        Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

        Love is best!

Love Among the Ruins, st. 7

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,

        (If our loves remain)

        In an English lane.

De Gustibus [1855], st. 1

Open my heart, and you will see

Graved inside of it, “Italy.”

De Gustibus, st. 2

Escape me?

Never—

Beloved!

While I am I, and you are you.

Life in a Love [1855], l. 1

To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall,

And baffled, get up and begin again.

Life in a Love, l. 13

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,

And did he stop and speak to you,

And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems, and new!²

Memorabilia [1855], st. 1

Who knows but the world may end tonight?

The Last Ride Together [1855], st. 2

The instant made eternity—

And heaven just prove that I and she

Ride, ride together, forever ride?

The Last Ride Together, st. 10

He ventured neck or nothing—heaven’s success

Found, or earth’s failure.

A Grammarian’s Funeral [1855], l. 109

That low man seeks a little thing to do,

Sees it and does it;

This high man, with a great thing to pursue,

Dies ere he knows it.

That low man goes on adding one to one,

His hundred’s soon hit;

This high man, aiming at a million,

Misses an unit.

That, has the world here—should he need the next,

Let the world mind him!

This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed

Seeking shall find Him.

A Grammarian’s Funeral, l. 113

        Days decrease,

And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

Andrea del Sarto [1855], l. 44

Less is more.¹

Andrea del Sarto, l. 78

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what’s a heaven for?

Andrea del Sarto, l. 97

I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.

Andrea del Sarto, l. 244

        Truth that peeps

Over the glasses’ edge when dinner’s done.

Bishop Blougram’s Apology [1855], l. 17

The common problem, yours, mine, everyone’s,

Is—not to fancy what were fair in life

Provided it could be—but, finding first

What may be, then find how to make it fair

Up to our means.

Bishop Blougram’s Apology, l. 87

Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset touch,

A fancy from a flower bell, someone’s death,

A chorus ending from Euripides.

Bishop Blougram’s Apology, l. 183

Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.

The honest thief, the tender murderer,

The superstitious atheist, demirep

That loves and saves her soul in new French books.

Bishop Blougram’s Apology, l. 396

        You call for faith:

I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.

The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,

If faith o’ercomes doubt.

Bishop Blougram’s Apology, l. 601

No, when the fight begins within himself,

A man’s worth something.

Bishop Blougram’s Apology, l. 693

While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord.

A Toccata of Galuppi’s [1855], st. 6

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

A Toccata of Galuppi’s, st. 14

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

A Toccata of Galuppi’s, st. 15

        We’re made so that we love

First when we see them painted, things we have passed

Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;

And so they are better, painted—better to us,

Which is the same thing. Art was given for that.

Fra Lippo Lippi [1855], l. 300

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

Abt Vogler [1864], st. 9

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard.

Abt Vogler, st. 10

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made.

Our times are in his hand.

Rabbi Ben Ezra [1864], st. 1

Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

Rabbi Ben Ezra, st. 4

Then welcome each rebuff

That turns earth’s smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!

Be our joys three parts pain!

Strive, and hold cheap the strain;

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

Rabbi Ben Ezra, st. 6

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me.

Rabbi Ben Ezra, st. 7

Therefore I summon age

To grant youth’s heritage.

Rabbi Ben Ezra, st. 13

Look not thou down but up!

Rabbi Ben Ezra, st. 30

Such ever was love’s way: to rise, it stoops.

A Death in the Desert [1864], l. 134

Progress, man’s distinctive mark alone,

Not God’s, and not the beasts’: God is, they are;

Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.

A Death in the Desert, l. 586

How sad and bad and mad it was—

But then, how it was sweet!

Confessions [1864], st. 9

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face.

Prospice [1864], l. 1

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears

Of pain, darkness, and cold.

Prospice, l. 17

We find great things are made of little things,

And little things go lessening till at last

Comes God behind them.

Mr. Sludge, “The Medium” [1864], l. 1112

’Tis because stiffish cock-tail, taken in time,

Is better for a bruise than arnica.

Mr. Sludge, “The Medium,” l. 1478

O Lyric Love, half angel and half bird,

And all a wonder and a wild desire.

The Ring and the Book [1868–1869], bk. I, l. 1391

That’s all we may expect of man, this side

The grave: his good is—knowing he is bad.

The Ring and the Book, VI, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, l. 142

’Twas a thief said the last kind word to Christ:

Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

The Ring and the Book, VI, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, l. 869

All poetry is difficult to read,

—The sense of it is, anyhow.

The Ring and the Book, VII, Pompilia, l. 1154

Faultless to a fault.

The Ring and the Book, IX, Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, l. 1175

        The curious crime, the fine

Felicity and flower of wickedness.

The Ring and the Book, X, The Pope, l. 589

You never know what life means till you die:

Even throughout life, ’tis death that makes life live,

Gives it whatever the significance.

The Ring and the Book, XI, Guido, l. 2373

A man in armor is his armor’s slave.

Herakles [1871]

        That far land we dream about,

Where every man is his own architect.

Red Cotton Nightcap Country [1873], pt. II

        A secret’s safe

’Twixt you, me, and the gatepost!

The Inn Album [1875], II

Ignorance is not innocence but sin.

The Inn Album, V

Have you found your life distasteful?

My life did and does smack sweet.

Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?

Mine I saved and hold complete.

Do your joys with age diminish?

When mine fail me, I’ll complain.

Must in death your daylight finish?

My sun sets to rise again.

At the “Mermaid” [1876], st. 10

Out of the wreck I rise.

Ixion [1883], l. 121

Never the time and the place

And the loved one all together!

Never the Time and the Place [1883]

But little do or can the best of us:

That little is achieved through Liberty.

Why I Am a Liberal [1885], l. 9

A minute’s success pays the failure of years.

Apollo and the Fates [1886], st. 42

Samuel Dickinson Burchard

1812–1891

We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.

Speaking for a deputation of clergymen calling upon James G. Blaine, the Republican presidential candidate, in New York [October 29, 1884]

Charles Dickens

1812–1870

A smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing.

Sketches by Boz [1836–1837]. Tales, ch. 3

He had used the word [humbug] in its Pickwickian sense.

Pickwick Papers [1836–1837], ch. 1

“An observer of human nature, sir,” said Mr. Pickwick.

Pickwick Papers, 2

There are very few moments in a man’s existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.

The Pickwick Papers, 4

“It wasn’t the wine,” murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. “It was the salmon.”

Pickwick Papers, 8

I wants to make your flesh creep.

Pickwick Papers, 8

I took a good deal o’ pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was very young, and shift for hisself. It’s the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.

Pickwick Papers, 20

Eccentricities of genius.

Pickwick Papers, 30

Keep yourself to yourself.

Pickwick Papers, 32

Poetry’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked poetry ’cept a beadle on Boxin’ Day.

Pickwick Papers, 33

She’ll wish there was more, and that’s the great art o’ letter-writin’.

Pickwick Papers, 33

Never mind the character, and stick to the alleybi.

Pickwick Papers, 33

She knows wot’s wot, she does.

Pickwick Papers, 37

They don’t mind it; it’s a regular holiday to them—all porter and skittles.¹

Pickwick Papers, 41

Anythin’ for a quiet life, as the man said wen he took the sitivation at the lighthouse.

Pickwick Papers, 43

Oliver Twist has asked for more!

Oliver Twist [1837–1838], ch. 2

“The artful Dodger.”

Oliver Twist, 8

“Hard,” replied the Dodger. “As nails,” added Charley Bates.

Oliver Twist, 9

There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast.

Oliver Twist, 10

There’s light enough for wot I’ve got to do.

Oliver Twist, 47

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble… “the law is a ass, a idiot.”

Oliver Twist, 51

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

Nicholas Nickleby [1838–1839], ch. 4

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur.

Nicholas Nickleby, 5

Oh! they’re too beautiful to live, much too beautiful!

Nicholas Nickleby, 14

The infant phenomenon.

Nicholas Nickleby, 23

The unities, sir… are a completeness—a kind of universal dove-tailedness with regard to place and time.

Nicholas Nickleby, 24

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

Nicholas Nickleby, 49

All is gas and gaiters.

Nicholas Nickleby, 49

My life is one demd horrid grind.

Nicholas Nickleby, 64

He has gone to the demnition bowwows.

Nicholas Nickleby, 64

What is the odds so long as the fire of soul is kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the wing of friendship never moults a feather!

The Old Curiosity Shop [1841], ch. 2

She’s the ornament of her sex.

The Old Curiosity Shop, 5

That vague kind of penitence which holidays awaken next morning.

The Old Curiosity Shop, 40

It was a maxim with Foxey—our revered father, gentlemen—“Always suspect everybody.”

The Old Curiosity Shop, 66

Rather a tough customer in argyment.

Barnaby Rudge [1841], ch. 1

Oh gracious, why wasn’t I born old and ugly?

Barnaby Rudge, 70

Any man may be in good spirits and good temper when he’s well dressed. There ain’t much credit in that.

Martin Chuzzlewit [1843–1844], ch. 5

With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.

Martin Chuzzlewit, 8

“Do not repine, my friends,” said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. “Do not weep for me. It is chronic.”

Martin Chuzzlewit, 9

Keep up appearances whatever you do.

Martin Chuzzlewit, 11

“Do other men for they would do you.” That’s the true business precept.

Martin Chuzzlewit, 11

Buy an annuity cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else that watches the speculation.

Martin Chuzzlewit, 18

Leave the bottle on the chimleypiece, and don’t ask me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged.

Martin Chuzzlewit, 19

He’d make a lovely corpse.

Martin Chuzzlewit, 25

Oh Sairey, Sairey, little do we know wot lays afore us!

Martin Chuzzlewit, 40

I don’t believe there’s no sich a person!

Martin Chuzzlewit, 49

Oh, but he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

A Christmas Carol [1843], stave 1

“Bah,” said Scrooge. “Humbug!”

A Christmas Carol, 1

I [Marley’s Ghost] wear the chain I forged in life.

A Christmas Carol, 1

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” “Long past?” inquired Scrooge.… “No. Your past.”

A Christmas Carol, 2

In came a fiddler… and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.

A Christmas Carol, 2

I am the Ghost of Christmas Present.

A Christmas Carol, 3

As good as gold [Tiny Tim].

A Christmas Carol, 3

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

A Christmas Carol, 3

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” said Scrooge.

A Christmas Carol, 4

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

A Christmas Carol, 4

It was a turkey! He could never have stood upon his legs, that bird! He would have snapped ’em off short in a minute, like sticks of sealing wax.

A Christmas Carol, 5

“Wal’r, my boy,” replied the Captain, “in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words, ‘May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!’ When found, make a note of.”

Dombey and Son [1848], ch. 15

The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it.

Dombey and Son, 23

You’ll find us rough, sir, but you’ll find us ready.

David Copperfield [1849–1850], ch. 3

I am a lone lorn creetur… and everythink goes contrairy with me.

David Copperfield, 3

My father had left a small collection of books in a little room up-stairs, to which I had access… and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company.… This was my only and my constant comfort.

David Copperfield, 4

Barkis is willin’.

David Copperfield, 5

“In case anything turned up,” which was his [Mr. Micawber’s] favorite expression.

David Copperfield, 11

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

David Copperfield, 12

It’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam.

David Copperfield, 14

Never… be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel.

David Copperfield, 15

I’m a very umble person.¹

David Copperfield, 16

The mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles’s head into my head.²

David Copperfield, 17

It was as true… as turnips is. It was as true… as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.

David Copperfield, 21

What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it!

David Copperfield, 22

Nobody’s enemy but his own.

David Copperfield, 25

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.

David Copperfield, 28

Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!

David Copperfield, 28

A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together.

David Copperfield, 30

He’s a-going out with the tide.

David Copperfield, 30

I ate umble pie with an appetite.

David Copperfield, 39

Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse ’em?

David Copperfield, 39

Skewered through and through with office pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

David Copperfield, 43

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

David Copperfield, 45

A man must take the fat with the lean.

David Copperfield, 51

Trifles make the sum of life.

David Copperfield, 53

The seamen said it blew great guns.

David Copperfield, 55

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions.

A Child’s History of England [1851–53], ch. 21

He is an honorable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.

Bleak House [1852–1858], ch. 2

This is a London particular.… A fog, miss.

Bleak House, 3

The Lawyers have twisted it into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case have long disappeared from the face of the earth.… It’s about nothing but Costs, now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about Costs. That’s the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away.

Bleak House, 8

Not to put too fine a point upon it.

Bleak House, 11

[Old Mr. Turveydrop] was not like anything in the world but a model of Deportment.

Bleak House, 14

Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

Hard Times [1854], bk. I, ch. 1

“Are you in pain, dear mother?” “I think there’s a pain somewhere in the room,” said Mrs. Gradgrind, “but I couldn’t positively say that I have got it.”

Hard Times, II, 9

There is a wisdom of the head, and… a wisdom of the heart.

Hard Times, III, 1

I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced had no existence.

Little Dorrit [1857–1858], bk. I, ch. 2

Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Little Dorrit, I, 10

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism, are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism.

Little Dorrit, II, 5

Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

Little Dorrit, II, 28

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

A Tale of Two Cities [1859], bk. I, ch. 1

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!

A Tale of Two Cities, ch. 3

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

A Tale of Two Cities, III, 15

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

Great Expectations [1860–1861], ch. 8

Ever been the best of friends!

Great Expectations, 18

My guiding star always is, Get hold of portable property.

Great Expectations, 24

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.

Great Expectations, 40

Money and goods are certainly the best of references.

Our Mutual Friend [1864–1865], bk. I, ch. 4

I want to be something so much worthier than the doll in the doll’s house.

Our Mutual Friend, I, 55

That’s the state to live and die in!… R-r-rich!

Our Mutual Friend, III, 5

We must scrunch or be scrunched.

Our Mutual Friend, III, 5

Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov

1812–1891

“And he was as intelligent as other people, his soul was pure and clear as crystal; he was noble and affectionate—and yet he did nothing!”

“But why? What was the reason?”

“The reason… what reason was there? Oblomovism!”

Oblomov [1859], pt. IV, ch. 12

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen

1812–1870

Communism is a Russian autocracy turned upside down.

The Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia [1851]

Russia’s future will be a great danger for Europe and a great misfortune for Russia if there is no emancipation of the individual. One more century of present despotism will destroy all the good qualities of the Russian people.

The Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia

The terrible consequences of human speech in Russia necessarily give it an added power.

My Past and Thoughts [1852–1868]

History has no libretto.

Maxim

Edward Lear

1812–1888

There was an Old Man with a beard,

Who said: “It is just as I feared!

    Two owls and a hen,

    Four larks and a wren

Have all built their nests in my beard.”

Book of Nonsense [1846]. Limerick

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

Who has written such volumes of stuff!

Some think him ill-tempered and queer,

But a few think him pleasant enough.

Nonsense Songs [1871]. Preface, st. 1

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,

Leastways if you reckon two thumbs;

Long ago he was one of the singers,

But now he is one of the dumbs.

Nonsense Songs. Preface, st. 3

His body is perfectly spherical,

He weareth a runcible hat.

Nonsense Songs. Preface, st. 5

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

And sang to a small guitar,

“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are.”

The Owl and the Pussycat [1871], st. 1

Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?”

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

To the land where the Bong-tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose.

The Owl and the Pussycat, st. 2

“Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”

The Owl and the Pussycat, st. 3

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon.

The Owl and the Pussycat, st. 3

Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,

And they went to sea in a sieve.

The Jumblies [1871], st. 1

  Calico Pie,

    The little Birds fly

Down to the calico tree,

    Their wings were blue,

    And they sang “Tilly-loo!”

    Till away they flew—

And they never came back to me!

Calico Pie [1871], st. 1

  Calico Jam,

    The little Fish swam,

Over the syllabub sea.

Calico Pie, st. 2

On the coast of Coromandel

    Where the early pumpkins blow,

    In the middle of the woods

    Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

Two old chairs, and half a candle,

One old jug without a handle—

    These were all his worldly goods.

The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò [1877], st. 1

When awful darkness and silence reign

Over the great Gromboolian plain,

Through the long, long wintry nights.

The Dong with the Luminous Nose [1877], st. 1

When storm-clouds brood on the towering heights

Of the hills of the Chankly Bore.

The Dong with the Luminous Nose, st. 1

The Pobble who has no toes

Had once as many as we;

When they said, “Some day you may lose them all”—

He replied, “Fish fiddle-de-dee!”

The Pobble Who Has No Toes [1877], st. 1

It’s a fact the whole world knows,

That Pobbles are happier without their toes.

The Pobble Who Has No Toes, st. 6

Henry Ward Beecher

1813–1887

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore!

Star Papers [1855]. Subtleties of Book Buyers

What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.

Quoted in Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit [1887], selected by WILLIAM DRYSDALE [1852–1901]

Now comes the mystery.

Last words [March 8, 1887]

Claude Bernard

1813–1878

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.

Introduction à l’Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine) [1865]¹

The science of life… is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.

Introduction à l’Étude

Our ideas are only intellectual instruments which we use to break into phenomena; we must change them when they have served their purpose, as we change a blunt lancet that we have used long enough.

Introduction à l’Étude

Art is I; science is we.²

Introduction à l’Étude

All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.

Leçons sur les Phénomènes de la Vie Communs aux Animaux et aux Végétaux (Lessons on Reactions Common to Animals and Plants) [1878–1879]³

Georg Büchner

1813–1837

The revolution is like Saturn—it eats its children.⁴

Danton’s Death [1835]

Some part of me, I don’t know which, contradicts the rest.

Danton’s Death

Woyzeck, I shudder when I think that the earth takes a whole day to rotate. What a waste of time! And where’s it going to end? Woyzeck, the very sight of a millwheel depresses me.

Woyzeck [1837], sc. i

John William Burgon

1813–1888

A rose-red city half as old as time.

Petra [1845]

Harriet Ann Jacobs

1813–1897

Notwithstanding my grandmother’s long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl [1861], ch. 1

Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl, 4

Søren Kierkegaard

1813–1855

The whole of existence frightens me, from the smallest fly to the mystery of the Incarnation; everything is unintelligible to me, most of all myself.

Journal [1839]

Had I followed my pleasure and followed what I plainly have a decided talent for: police spy, I should have been much happier than I afterwards became.

Journal¹ [1843]

Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause—that it must be lived forward.

Journals and Papers¹ [1843], vol. I

Of all ridiculous things in the world what strikes me as the most ridiculous of all is being busy in the world, to be a man quick to his meals and quick to his work.

Either/Or¹ [1843], pt. 1

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.

Either/Or, 1

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations—one can do either this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it—you will regret both.

Either/Or,¹ 2

The absurd… the fact that with God everything is possible. The absurd does not belong to the distinctions that lie within the proper compass of the understanding. It is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen.

Fear and Trembling [1843]. Preliminary Outpouring

The relief in speaking is that it translates me into the universal.

Fear and Trembling.² Epilogue

For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript³ [1846]

He who fights with the future has a more dangerous enemy.

Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits [1847]

Many people think… that the Christian commandments (for instance, loving your neighbor as yourself) are purposely made too strict—rather like the clock being put half an hour fast to prevent them getting up much too late in the morning.

Journal entry⁴ [1848]

Take away the paradox from a thinker and you have a professor.

Journal entry [1849]

John Louis O’Sullivan

1813–1895

That government is best which governs least.⁵

Motto of United States Magazine and Democratic Review [inaugural issue, 1837]

Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.

United States Magazine and Democratic Review [July–August 1845]

Giuseppe Verdi

1813–1901

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.

Letter to Clara Maffei [October 20, 1876]

Richard Wagner

1813–1883

O thou, my gracious evening star.

Tannhäuser [1845]

And world-rule is

the prize of the one

who out of the Rhinegold

fashions a ring

imparting a measureless might.

Das Rheingold [1853]

Within my bosom

smolders a hate

which could send forth

horrors on the world

that once was all my delight.

Die Valkyrie [published 1853]

Mikhail Bakunin

1814–1876

The urge for destruction is also a creative urge.

Reaction in Germany [1842]

From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish, sincerely and energetically.¹

Anarchist manifesto [1870]

We must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda.

Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis [1870]

William Wells Brown

1814–1884

With the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners, and their mothers slaves. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee, while its mother stands a slave behind his chair.

Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter [1853], ch. 1

Frederick William Faber

1814–1863

Faith of our fathers! holy faith!

We will be true to thee till death.

A Pledge of Faithfulness [1849]

Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov

1814–1841

A Hero of Our Time, gentlemen, is indeed a portrait, but not of a single individual; it is a portrait composed of all the vices of our generation in the fullness of their development.

A Hero of Our Time [1840]. Author’s introduction

A solitary sail that rises

White in the blue mist on the foam—

What is it in far lands it prizes?

What does it leave behind at home?

A Sail² [1841], st. 1

Charles Mackay

1814–1889

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds [1841]

When men wish to construct or support a theory, how they torture facts into their service!

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

John Lothrop Motley

1814–1877

As long as he [William of Orange] lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.

The Rise of the Dutch Republic [1856], pt. VI, ch. 7

Edwin McMasters Stanton

1814–1869

Now he [Lincoln] belongs to the ages.

On the death of Lincoln [April 15, 1865]

Otto von Bismarck

1815–1898

Woe to the statesman who does not seek in these times a case for war that still holds up after the war is over.

Speech to Prussian parliament [December 3, 1850]

The great questions of the time are not decided by speeches and majority decisions—that was the error of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.³

Speech to Prussian parliament [September 30, 1862]

Politics is not an exact science.⁴

Speech to Prussian parliament [December 18, 1863]

Only a completely ready state can permit the luxury of a liberal government.

Speech [1866]

Let us put Germany in the saddle, so to speak—it already knows how to ride.

Speech to the North German Reichstag [March 11, 1867]

Politics is the art of the possible.⁵

Remark [August 11, 1867]

A conquering army on the border will not be halted by the power of eloquence.

Speech to the North German Reichstag [September 24, 1867]

We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.

Speech to the Reichstag [February 6, 1888]

Richard Henry Dana

1815–1882

Six days shalt thou labor and do all thou art able,

And on the seventh—holystone the decks and scrape the cable.

Two Years Before the Mast [1840], ch. 3

If California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay [San Francisco] will be the center of its prosperity.

Two Years Before the Mast, 26

David Davis

1815–1886

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.

Ex Parte Milligan, 4 Wallace 2, 120–121 [1866]

Daniel Decatur Emmett

1815–1904

I wish I was in de land ob cotton,

Old times dar am not forgotten.

    Look away, look away,

    Look away, Dixie¹ Land.

Dixie’s Land [1859], st. 1

In Dixie’s land, we’ll took our stand,

To lib an’ die in Dixie!

Dixie’s Land, chorus

John Babsone Lane Soule

1815–1891

Go west, young man.²

Article in the Terre Haute (Indiana) Express [1851]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1815–1902

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.³

First Woman’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York [July 19–20, 1848]. Declaration of Sentiments

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.

First Woman’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York. Declaration of Sentiments

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

First Woman’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York. Resolution IX

The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The Negro’s skin and the woman’s sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man.

Speech before the New York Legislature [February 18, 1860]

Woman’s degradation is in man’s idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth that I have uttered.⁴

Letter to Susan B. Anthony [June 14, 1860]

Our “pathway” is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning.… We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens.

Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson [January 13, 1868]

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion that has breathed upon this earth, has degraded women. There is not one that has not always made her subject to man.

Speech to the Seventeenth Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association [January 1885]

Anthony Trollope

1815–1882

The tenth Muse who now governs the periodical press.

The Warden [1855], ch. 14

The end of a novel, like the end of a children’s dinner party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.

Barchester Towers [1857], ch. 53

One of her instructors in fashion had given her to understand that curls were not the thing. “They’ll always pass muster,” Miss Dunstable had replied, “when they are done up with bank notes.”

Doctor Thorne [1858], ch. 16

There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.

Doctor Thorne, 18

Who is there that abstains from reading that which is printed in abuse of himself?

Phineas Finn [1859], ch. 47

I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.

Framley Parsonage [1861], vol. I, ch. 10

There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood.

Orley Farm [1861]

I have never walked down Fifth Avenue alone without thinking of money. I have never walked there with a companion without talking of it.

North America [1862], ch. 14

Always remember… that when you go into an attorney’s office door, you will have to pay for it, first or last.

The Last Chronicle of Barset [1867], vol. I, ch. 20

It’s dogged as does it. It ain’t thinking about it.

The Last Chronicle of Barset, I, 61

He must have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognize me by my face.

An Autobiography [1883], ch. 1

A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules. It is the tortoise which always catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses more time in glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise to make half his journey.

An Autobiography, 7

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

An Autobiography, 15

It had at this time become my custom… to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour. I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went.

An Autobiography, 15

American dishonesty is rampant; but it is rampant only among a few. It is the great misfortune of the community that those few have been able to dominate so large a portion of the population among which all men can vote, but so few understand for what they are voting.

An Autobiography, 17

Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.

An Autobiography, 19

Charlotte Brontë

1816–1855

We wove a web in childhood,

A web of sunny air.

Retrospection [1846], st. 1

The human heart has hidden treasures,

In secret kept, in silence sealed.

Evening Solace [1846], st. 1

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

Jane Eyre [1847], preface

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Jane Eyre, ch. 12

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

Jane Eyre, 23

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Jane Eyre, 27

Reader, I married him.

Jane Eyre, 38

An abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England.

Shirley [1849], ch. 1

Unromantic as Monday morning.

Shirley, 1

I am neither a man nor a woman but an author.

Letter to William Smith Williams [August 16, 1849]

It is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife.

Letter to Ellen Nussey [August 9, 1854]

Ellen Sturgis Hooper

1816–1848

I slept and dreamed that life was beauty.

I woke—and found that life was duty.

Beauty and Duty [1840]

Eugène Pottier

1816–1887

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation,

Arise, ye wretched of the earth,

For justice thunders condemnation—

A better world’s in birth.

The Internationale¹ [1871]

General Julius von Hartmann

1817–1878

Absolute liberty of military action in time of war is an indispensable condition of military success.… It is a gratuitous illusion to suppose that modern war does not demand far more brutality, far more violence, and an action far more general than was formerly the case.

Military Necessities and Humanity [1877]

Henry David Thoreau

1817–1862

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

By a chance bond together.

Sic Vita [1841], st. 1

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.

Journal [1906]. April 10, 1841

The Indian… stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.

Journal. April 26, 1841

It is a great art to saunter.²

Journal

A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be in Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.

Journal. July 10–12, 1841

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

Journal. February 22 [1845–1847]³

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Journal. November 11, 1850

For years I marched as to a music in comparison with which the military music of the streets is noise & discord. I was daily intoxicated and yet no man could call me intemperate. With all your science can you tell how it is—& whence it is, that light comes into the soul?

Journal. July 16, 1851

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Journal. April 3, 1852

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Journal. June 21, 1852

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Journal. July 14, 1852

Why have we ever slandered the outward? The perception of surfaces will always have the effect of miracle to a sane sense.

Journal. August 23, 1852

I have a room all to myself; it is nature. It is a place beyond the jurisdiction of human governments. There is a prairie beyond your laws. Nature is a prairie for outlaws.

Journal. January 3, 1853

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.

Journal. March 12, 1853

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

Journal, October 28, 1853

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Journal. March 11, 1856

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Journal. September 26, 1859

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

The Maine Woods, Ktaadn [1848]

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Civil Disobedience¹ [1849]

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

Civil Disobedience

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

Civil Disobedience

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.

Civil Disobedience

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

Civil Disobedience

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

Civil Disobedience

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison… the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.

Civil Disobedience

I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

Civil Disobedience

Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers [1849]. Wednesday

It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak, and another to hear.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Wednesday

Even the death of friends will inspire us as much as their lives.… Their memories will be encrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our friends have no place in the graveyard.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Wednesday

Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Thursday

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Thursday

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Thursday

My life has been the poem I would have writ,

But I could not both live and utter it.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. My Life Has Been the Poem I Would Have Writ

As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Friday

What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Friday

It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Friday

The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Friday

The fate of the country… does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

Slavery in Massachusetts [1854]

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Walden [1854], ch. 1, Economy

I have traveled a good deal in Concord.

Walden, 1, Economy

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather, indicates, his fate.

Walden, 1, Economy

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Walden, 1, Economy

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Walden, 1, Economy

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Walden, 1, Economy

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Walden, 1, Economy

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

Walden, 1, Economy

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Walden, 1, Economy

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Walden, 1, Economy

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Walden, 1, Economy

In the long run men hit only what they aim at.

Walden, 1, Economy

The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.

Walden, 1, Economy

It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow unless he sweats easier than I do.

Walden, 1, Economy

When a man dies he kicks the dust.

Walden, 1, Economy

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Walden, 1, Economy

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Walden, 1, Economy

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Walden, 1, Economy

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.

Walden, 1, Economy

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

Walden, 2, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Walden, 2, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Our life is frittered away by detail.… Simplify, simplify.

Walden, 2, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Walden, 2, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Be it life or death, we crave only reality.

Walden, 2, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Walden, 2, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Walden, 3, Reading

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Walden, 3, Reading

I love a broad margin to my life.

Walden, 4, Sounds

Our horizon is never quite at our elbows.

Walden, 5, Solitude

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

Walden, 5, Solitude

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?

Walden, 5, Solitude

I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Walden, 6, Visitors

I was determined to know beans.

Walden, 7, The Beanfield

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.

Walden, 10, Baker Farm

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Walden, 16, The Pond in Winter

While men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.

Walden, 16, The Pond in Winter

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

Walden, 17, Spring

It is not worth while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

Walden, 18, Conclusion

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.

Walden, 18, Conclusion

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Walden, 18, Conclusion

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Walden, 18, Conclusion

It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.

Walden, 18, Conclusion

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Walden, 18, Conclusion

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Walden, 18, Conclusion

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?

A Plea for Captain John Brown [1859]

I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.

A Plea for Captain John Brown

So we defend ourselves and our henroosts, and maintain slavery.

A Plea for Captain John Brown

He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

A Plea for Captain John Brown

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

Walking [1862]

In wildness is the preservation of the world.¹

Walking

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.

Walking

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

Walking

Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

Life Without Principle [1863]

Talk of mysteries!—Think of our life in nature, —daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

The Maine Woods [1864]. Ktaadn

A man may stand there [Cape Cod] and put all America behind him.

Cape Cod [1865], ch. 10

[When asked about life after death:] One world at a time.

Said a few days before his death

Alexander II

1818–1881

Better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait till it begins to abolish itself from below.

Speech in Moscow [March 30, 1856]

Cecil Frances Alexander

1818–1895

All things bright and beautiful,

All creatures great and small,

All things wise and wonderful,

The Lord God made them all.

All Things Bright and Beautiful [1848], st. 1

Once in royal David’s city

Stood a lowly cattle shed,

Where a mother laid her baby

In a manger for his bed:

Mary was that mother mild,

Jesus Christ her little child.

Once in Royal David’s City² [1848], st. 1

Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw]

1818–1885

The wheel that squeaks the loudest

Is the one that gets the grease.

The Kicker

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.³

Proverb [1874]

Emily Brontë

1818–1848

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers

From those brown hills have melted into spring.

Remembrance [1846], st. 3

Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,

How could I seek the empty world again?

Remembrance, st. 8

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,

’Tis all that I implore:

In life and death a chainless soul,

With courage to endure.

The Old Stoic [1846], st. 3

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:

I see Heaven’s glories shine,

And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

Last Lines [1846], st. 1

There is not room for Death.

Last Lines, st. 7

So hopeless is the world without,

The world within I doubly prize;

Thy world, where guile and hate and doubt

And cold suspicion never rise;

Where thou and I and Liberty

Have undisputed sovereignty.

To Imagination [1846], st. 2

[Said by Catherine:] I am Heathcliff.

Wuthering Heights [1847], ch. 9

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

Wuthering Heights, last words

The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling

Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

Stanzas, final lines [1850]

Frederick Douglass

c. 1818–1895

My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age.… For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass [1845], ch. 1

Every tone [of the songs of the slaves] was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 2

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 10

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

Speech at Rochester, New York [July 4, 1852]

You profess to believe that “of one blood God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth”—and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another—yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred!) all men whose skins are not colored like your own!

Speech at Rochester, New York

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

Speech at Rochester, New York

The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.

Speech at the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society annual meeting, New York City [May 1853]

The pleasant moods of a slaveholder are remarkably brittle; they are easily snapped; they neither come often, nor remain long.

My Bondage and My Freedom [1855], ch. 5

The singing of a man cast away on a desolate island, might be as appropriately considered an evidence of his contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave. Sorrow and desolation have their songs, as well as joy and peace. Slaves sing more to make themselves happy, than to express their happiness.

My Bondage and My Freedom, ch. 6

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress [1857], address commemorating West Indian emancipation, Canandaigua, New York

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.… If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

Speech at Canandaigua, New York

The destiny of the colored American… is the destiny of America.

Speech at the Emancipation League, Boston [February 12, 1862]

The relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.

Speech at the Church of the Puritans, New York City [May 1863]

What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

What the Black Man Wants: Speech at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society [January 26, 1865]

If the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot-box, let him alone, don’t disturb him!

What the Black Man Wants

Despite of it all, the Negro remains… cool, strong, imperturbable, and cheerful.

Speech on the twenty-first anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. [April 1883]

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

Speech at the Convention of Colored Men, Louisville, Kentucky [September 24, 1883]

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C. [October 22, 1883]

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. [April 1886]

We Negroes love our country. We fought for it. We ask only that we be treated as well as those who fought against it.

Speech at the World’s Columbian Exposition [August 25, 1892]

George Duffield

1818–1888

Stand up!—stand up for Jesus!

Hymn [1858]

Karl Marx

1818–1883

Religion… is the opium of the people.

Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right [1844], introduction

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to change it.¹

Theses on Feuerbach [1845], no. 11

Hegel remarks somewhere² that all great worldhistoric facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon³ [1852], pt. 1

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1

What was new in what I did was: (1) to demonstrate that the existence of classes is tied only to definite historical phases of development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is only a transition to the dissolution of all classes and leads to the formation of a classless society.

Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer⁴ [March 5, 1852]

I must pursue my goal through thick and thin and I must not allow bourgeois society to turn me into a money-making machine.

Letter to Joseph Weydemeyer [February 1, 1859]

Time is the room of human development.

Value, Price and Profit [1865]

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If it be useless, the labor contained in it is useless, cannot be reckoned as labor, and cannot therefore create value.

Capital¹ [1867–1883], pt. II, ch. 3

The intellectual desolation, artificially produced by converting immature human beings into mere machines.

Capital, II, 10

When commercial capital occupies a position of unquestioned ascendancy, it everywhere constitutes a system of plunder.

Capital, II, 21

Looking upon capitalist production in its details… we find that it is very economical with materialized labor incorporated in commodities. But it is more than any other mode of production prodigal with human lives, with living labor, wasting not only blood and flesh, but also nerves and brains.

Capital, III

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.²

Critique of the Gotha Program [1875]

All I know is that I am not a Marxist.³

Quoted in FRIEDRICH ENGELS, Letter to Conrad Schmidt [August 3, 1890]

Karl Marx

1818–1883

and

Friedrich Engels

1820–1895

A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police spies.

The Communist Manifesto⁴ [1848], opening lines

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to each other, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The Communist Manifesto, sec. 1

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.⁵ The bourgeoisie has, historically, played a most revolutionary role.

The Communist Manifesto, 1

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.

The Communist Manifesto, 1

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.

The Communist Manifesto, 1

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the race of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.⁶

The Communist Manifesto, 1

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

The Communist Manifesto, 2

In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The Communist Manifesto, 2

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The Communist Manifesto, 2

The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be obtained only by forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!¹

The Communist Manifesto, 4

John Mason Neale

1818–1866

Good King Wenceslas looked out

On the feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about,

Deep and crisp and even.

Good King Wenceslas, st. 1

Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest,

Beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed.

Hymn from the Latin of SAINT BERNARD OF CLUNY, De Contemptu Mundi, pt. V, Urbs Syon Aurea [c. 1145; translated 1858], st. 1

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel.

Hymn from the Latin, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel [twelfth century; translated 1861], st. 1

Francis Edward Smedley

1818–1864

All’s fair in love and war.²

Frank Fairlegh [1850], ch. 50

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

1818–1883

A nihilist is a man who does not bow to any authorities, who does not take any principle on trust, no matter with what respect that principle is surrounded.

Fathers and Sons³ [1862], ch. 5

That vague, crepuscular time, the time of regrets that resemble hopes, of hopes that resemble regrets, when youth has passed, but old age has not yet arrived.

Fathers and Sons, 7

The courage not to believe in anything.

Fathers and Sons, 14

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything, is ready, we shall never begin.

Virgin Soil [1877]

Arthur Hugh Clough

1819–1861

A world where nothing is had for nothing.

The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich [1848], pt. VIII

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.

And where the land she travels from? Away,

Far, far behind, is all that they can say⁴.

Where Lies the Land? [1852], published untitled in 1862

And almost everyone when age,

Disease, or sorrows strike him,

Inclines to think there is a God,

Or something very like Him.

Dipsychus [1862], pt. I, sc. v

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been, things remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back through creeks and inlets making

Came, silent, flooding in, the main,

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But westward, look, the land is bright.

Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth [1862]

No graven images may be

Worshipped, except the currency.

The Latest Decalogue [1862], l. 3

Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive

Officiously to keep alive.

The Latest Decalogue, l. 11

Gustave Courbet

1819–1877

It is hard to please everyone. It is impossible to tell you all the insults my painting of this year has won me, but I don’t care, for when I am no longer controversial I will no longer be important.¹

Letter to his family [June 15, 1852]

Alexander Crummell

1819–1898

There is a capacity in human nature for prescience. We were made to live in the future as well as in the past. The qualities both of hope and imagination carry us to the regions which lie beyond us.

Speech at Storer College [May 1885]

George Eliot [Marian Evans Cross]

1819–1880

Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead.

Letter to Sara Hennell [May 1844]

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral.

Scenes of Clerical Life [1858], bk. 3, ch. 25

These fellow mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are.

Adam Bede [1859], ch. 17

There’s no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

Adam Bede, 18

It’s them that take advantage that get advantage i’ this world.

Adam Bede, 32

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

Adam Bede, 42

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

Adam Bede, 42

There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others.

The Mill on the Floss [1860], bk. III, ch. 5

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.²

The Mill on the Floss, V, 4

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

The Mill on the Floss, VI, 3

In our springtime every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.

Felix Holt, the Radical [1866], ch. 18

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

Felix Holt, the Radical, 28

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence.

O May I Join the Choir Invisible [1867]

Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error.

Middlemarch [1871–1872], ch. 10

We all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.

Middlemarch, 10

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.

Middlemarch, 21

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Middlemarch, 22

She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was.

Middlemarch, 48

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us.

Middlemarch, 55

People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.

Middlemarch, 72

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.

Middlemarch, finale

There is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.

Middlemarch, finale

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Middlemarch, finale

        ’Tis God gives skill,

But not without men’s hands: He could not make

Antonio Stradivari’s violins

Without Antonio.

Stradivarius [1873]

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

Daniel Deronda [1876], bk. I, ch. 5

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Daniel Deronda, II, 15

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations.

Daniel Deronda, III, 21

Thomas Dunn English

1819–1902

Oh! don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?

Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown.

Ben Bolt [1843]

Julia Ward Howe

1819–1910

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

Battle Hymn of the Republic [1862], st. 1

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

Battle Hymn of the Republic, st. 5

Charles Kingsley

1819–1875

Give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard’s liners and the electric telegraph, are to me… signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe.

Yeast [1848], ch. 5

Oh Mary, go and call the cattle home…

Across the sands of Dee.

The Sands of Dee [1849], st. 1

For men must work, and women must weep,

And there’s little to earn and many to keep,

Though the harbor bar be moaning.

The Three Fishers [1851], st. 1

When all the world is young, lad,

And all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan, lad,

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad,

And round the world away:

Young blood must have its course, lad,

And every dog his day.

Water Babies [1863]. Song II, st. 1

James Russell Lowell

1819–1891

They are slaves who fear to speak

For the fallen and the weak.

Stanzas on Freedom [1843], st. 4

They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three.

Stanzas on Freedom, st. 4

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

Columbus [1844]

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side.

The Present Crisis [1844], st. 5

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne—

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

The Present Crisis, st. 8

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days.

The Vision of Sir Launfal [1848], st. 5

In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin;

A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak.

A Fable for Critics [1848]

And I honor the man who is willing to sink

Half his present repute for the freedom to think,

And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,

Will risk t’ other half for the freedom to speak.

A Fable for Critics

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,

Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge.

A Fable for Critics

Nature fits all her children with something to do,

He who would write and can’t write, can surely review.

A Fable for Critics

Ez fer war, I call it murder—

There you hev it plain an’ flat;

I don’t want to go no furder

Than my Testyment fer that.

The Biglow Papers. Series I [1848], no. 1, st. 5

You’ve gut to git up airly

Ef you want to take in God.

The Biglow Papers. I, 1, st. 5

Ef you want peace, the thing you’ve gut tu du

Is jes’ to show you’re up to fightin’, tu.

The Biglow Papers. II, 2

When I was a beggarly boy,

And lived in a cellar damp,

I had not a friend nor a toy,

But I had Aladdin’s lamp.

Aladdin [1868], st. 1

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

Democracy [October 6, 1884]

Things always seem fairer when we look back at them, and it is out of that inaccessible tower of the past that Longing leans and beckons.

Literary Essays, vol. I [1864–1890]. A Few Bits of Roman Mosaic

It was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled.

Literary Essays, vol. II [1870–1890]. New England Two Centuries Ago

Herman Melville

1819–1891

The fiendlike skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.

Typee [1846]

When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the viper whose sting is destined to poison all their joys.

Typee, ch. 4

Yes! yes! give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the very breath that the great whales respire!

Redburn [1849], ch. 13

You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.… We are not a nation, so much as a world.

Redburn, 33

Genius all over the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Hawthorne and His Mosses [1850]

And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

White-Jacket [1850], ch. 36

Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization and christianize Christendom?

White Jacket, 64

The grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne [April 16, 1851]

I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as a lamb.

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne [November 1851], on Moby Dick

Call me Ishmael.

Moby-Dick [1851], ch. 1

Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries—stand that man upon his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.… Meditation and water are wedded forever.

Moby-Dick, 1

There floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

Moby-Dick, 1

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Moby-Dick, 3

Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appall!

Moby-Dick, 9

No man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences.

Moby-Dick, 11

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

Moby-Dick, 12

A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

Moby-Dick, 24

And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.

Moby-Dick, 36

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks… strike, strike through the mask!

Moby-Dick, 36

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.

Moby-Dick, 36

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

Moby-Dick, 41

Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

Moby-Dick, 42

But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.

Moby-Dick, 52

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

Moby-Dick, 58

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

Moby-Dick, 82

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul.… He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.

Moby-Dick, 93

Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Moby-Dick, 94

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.

Moby-Dick, 104

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

Moby-Dick, 123

By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.

Moby-Dick, 132

All collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

Moby-Dick, 135

The drama’s done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.

Moby-Dick, epilogue

Dollars damn me.

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne [June 1851]

What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event—the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.

Pierre [1852], bk. IV

One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual’s own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.

Pierre, IV

A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities.

Pierre, IV

Far as we blind moles can see, man’s life seems but an acting upon mysterious hints; it is somehow hinted to us, to do thus or thus. For surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.

Pierre, X

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

Poor Man’s Pudding and Rich Man’s Crumbs [1854]

I would prefer not to.

Bartleby the Scrivener [1856]

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

Bartleby the Scrivener

Dead letters! does it not sound like dead men? Conceive a man by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness, can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters, and assorting them for the flames?

Bartleby the Scrivener

A man with some evil design, would he not be likely to speak well of that stupidity which was blind to his depravity, and malign that intelligence from which it might not be hidden?

The Piazza Tales [1856]. Benito Cereno

No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss.

The Piazza Tales. The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles

What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which life furnishes, towards forming a true estimate of any being, are as insufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to determine the triangle.

The Confidence-Man [1857]

In some moods, the movements of an entire street, as the suspicious man walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic jeer at him.

The Confidence-Man

We read a good deal about stones in the Scriptures. Monument & stumps of the memorials are set up of stones; men are stoned to death; the figurative seed falls in stony places; and no wonder that stones should so largely figure in the Bible. Judea is one accumulation of stones.

Travel journal [January 1857]

The poor old Past,

The Future’s slave.

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War [1866]. The Conflict of Convictions, st. 6

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.

Battle-Pieces. The March into Virginia

        What troops

Of generous boys in happiness thus bred—

Saturnians through life’s Tempe led,

Went from the North and came from the South,

With golden mottoes in the mouth,

To lie down midway on a bloody bed.

Battle-Pieces. On the Slain Collegians, st. 2

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—

Fame or country least their care:

(What like a bullet can undeceive!)

Battle-Pieces. Shiloh, l. 14

    All civil charms

And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe—

Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway

Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,

And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.

Battle-Pieces. The House-top, l. 12

If Luther’s day expand to Darwin’s year,

Shall that exclude the hope—foreclose the fear?

Clarel [1876]. Epilogue

Dies, all dies!

The grass it dies, but in vernal rain

Up it springs and it lives again;

Over and over, again and again

It lives, it dies and it lives again.

Pontoosuce [1924], l. 71

Ah, why should tears the pale cheek fret

For aught that waneth here below.

Let go, let go!

Pontoosuce, l. 88

An uncommon prudence is habitual with the subtler depravity, for it has everything to hide.

Billy Budd [1924], ch. 13

God bless Captain Vere!

Billy Budd, 25

But me they’ll lash in hammock, drop me deep.

Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep.

I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?

Just ease these darbies [manacles] at the wrist,

And roll me over fair!

I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.

Billy Budd, 25

John Ruskin

1819–1900

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Modern Painters, vol. I [1843], pt. I, ch. 2

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

Modern Painters, I, I, 3

The foam is not cruel.¹… The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings… produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the “Pathetic Fallacy.”

Modern Painters, III [1856], IV, 12

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

Modern Painters, V [1860], IX, 7

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

The Stones of Venice [1851–1853], vol. I, ch. 2

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

The Stones of Venice, I, 4

Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be given.

The Stones of Venice, II, 6

Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a source of delight.

Lectures on Architecture and Painting [1853], no. I

There is no wealth but life.

Unto This Last [1862], sec. 77

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

Unto This Last, essay 2

There is no law of history any more than of a kaleidoscope.

Letter to James Anthony Froude [February 1864]

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

Sesame and Lilies [1865], preface

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

Sesame and Lilies. Of Kings’ Treasuries, sec. 8

Borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war protracted.

The Crown of Wild Olive [1866], lecture 1

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

The Crown of Wild Olive, 1

Taste… is the only morality.… Tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you what you are.

The Crown of Wild Olive, 2

Life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality.

Lectures on Art [1870]. III, The Relation of Art to Morals

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

The Eagle’s Nest [1872], ch. 5

Architecture… the adaptation of form to resist force.

Val d’Arno [1874], ch. 6

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

Fors Clavigera [1876], letter 67

Victoria

1819–1901

I will be good.

On first seeing a chart of the line of succession to the throne [March 11, 1830]

Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.

Letter to King Leopold of Belgium [April 4, 1848]

I don’t dislike babies, though I think very young ones rather disgusting.

Letter to her daughter Victoria (Vicky) [May 8, 1872]

He [William Gladstone] speaks to me as if I was a public meeting.

From GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL [1853–1919], Collections and Recollections [1898], ch. 14

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat.

To A. J. Balfour [December 1899]

We are not amused.

Attributed. Upon seeing an imitation of herself by Alexander Grantham Yorke, groom-in-waiting to the Queen [January 2, 1900]. From CAROLINE HOLLAND, Notebooks of a Spinster Lady [1919]

William Ross Wallace

1819–1881

The hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

The Hand That Rules the World, st. 1

Walt Whitman

1819–1892

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

Preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass¹ [1855]

All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain.

Preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God.

Preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass

The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.

Preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass

As I ebb’d with the ocean of life,

As I wended the shores I know,

As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,

Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,

Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,

I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,

Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,

Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,

The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water

and all the land of the globe.

As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life

One’s-Self I sing, a simple separate person,

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word

En-Masse.

One’s-Self I Sing

        O to be self-balanced for contingencies,

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

Me Imperturbe

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.

I Hear America Singing

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

Song of Myself, pt. 1

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.

Song of Myself, 2

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love.

Song of Myself, 5

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Song of Myself, 6

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?

I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

Song of Myself, 7

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,

This is the common air that bathes the globe.

Song of Myself, 17

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

Song of Myself, 20

I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,

I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night.

Press close bare-bosom’d night—press close magnetic nourishing night!

Night of south winds—night of the large few stars!

Still nodding night—mad naked summer night.

Song of Myself, 21

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,

No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,

No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Song of Myself, 24

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

Song of Myself, 24

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.

Song of Myself, 24

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.

Song of Myself, 26

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,

To touch my person to someone else’s is about as much as I can stand.

Song of Myself, 27

Logic and sermons never convince,

The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Song of Myself, 30

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Song of Myself, 31

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Song of Myself, 32

I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

Song of Myself, 33

Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

Song of Myself, 33

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,

And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s self is,

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.

Song of Myself, 48

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Song of Myself, 51

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Song of Myself, 52

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

Song of Myself, 52

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

I Sing the Body Electric, 8

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,

In you I wrap a thousand onward years.

A Woman Waits for Me

As Adam early in the morning,

Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,

Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,

Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,

Be not afraid of my body.

As Adam Early in the Morning

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,

Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,

But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone

there without its friend near, for I knew I could not.

I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.

Song of the Open Road, 1

Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,

Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,

Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,

Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,

Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,

If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

Song of the Broad-Axe, 4

We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,

We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Pioneers! O Pioneers!¹

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight.

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself,

Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Grim

Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,

Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.

The Wound-Dresser

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun, 1

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me again O Nature your primal sanities!

Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun, 1

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world;

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead.

Reconciliation

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, 1

Nor for you, for one alone,

Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,

For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, 7

Come lovely and soothing death,

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,

In the day, in the night, to all, to each,

Sooner or later delicate death.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, 14

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, 14

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

O Captain! My Captain!, st. 1

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

   But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

   Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! My Captain!, st. 3

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became.

There Was a Child Went Forth

Affection that will not be gainsay’d, the sense of what is real, the thought if after all it should prove unreal,

The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the curious whether and how,

Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not flashes and specks what are they?

There Was a Child Went Forth

The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud,

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

There Was a Child Went Forth

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,

And I become the other dreamers.

The Sleepers, 1

I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly,

My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

The Sleepers, 1

City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!

City nested in bays! my city!

Mannahatta

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

The untold want by life and land ne’er granted,

Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find.

The Untold Want

Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,

It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions.

This Compost

Camerado, this is no book,

Who touches this touches a man.

So Long!

        I depart from materials,

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

So Long!

Those things most listened for, certainly those are the things least said.

Open Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson [1856]

As for me, I love screaming, wrestling, boiling-hot days.

Open Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson

He [President Abraham Lincoln] has a face like a hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep-cut, criss-cross lines, and its doughnut complexion.

Letter [March 19, 1863]

Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness of heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us.

Democratic Vistas [1871]

It [Democracy] is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.

Democratic Vistas

I should say, indeed, that only in the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of individuality may the spirituality of religion positively come forth at all… Alone, and identity, and the mood—and the soul emerges, and all statements, churches, sermons, melt away like vapors. Alone, and silent thought and awe, and aspiration—and then the interior consciousness, like a hitherto unseen inscription, in magic ink, beams out its wondrous lines to the sense.

Democratic Vistas

I say of all this tremendous and dominant play of solely materialistic bearings upon current life in the United States, with the results as already seen, accumulating, and reaching far in the future, that they must either be confronted and met by at least an equally subtle and tremendous force-infusion for purposes of spiritualization, for the pure conscience, for genuine esthetics, and for absolute and primal manliness and womanliness—or else our modern civilization, with all its improvements, is in vain, and we are on the road to a destiny, a status, equivalent, in its real world, to that of the fabled damned.

Democratic Vistas

The Real War Will Never Get in the Books. And so good-bye to the war.

Specimen Days [1882]. The Real War Will Never Get in the Books

Such was the war. It was not a quadrille in a ball-room. Its interior history will not only never be written—its practicality, minutiae of deeds and passions, will never even be suggested.

Specimen Days. The Real War Will Never Get in the Books

I had a sort of dream-trance the other day, in which I saw my favorite trees step out and promenade up, down and around, very curiously—with a whisper from one, leaning down as he pass’d me, We do all this on the present occasion, exceptionally, just for you.

Specimen Days. Thoughts Under an Oak—a Dream

To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too.

Collect [1882]. Notes Left Over

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age—I and my book—casting backward glances over our travel’d road.

November Boughs [1888]. A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads

The reader will always have his or her part to do, just as much as I have had mine. I seek less to state or display any theme or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the theme or thought—there to pursue your own flight.

November Boughs. A Backward Glance o’er Travel’d Roads

The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.

November Boughs. A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads

Books are not men—

Notebook entry

Susan B[rownell] Anthony

1820–1906

The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South.

Speech on No Union with Slaveholders [1857]

Make [your employers] understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women.

The Revolution (woman suffrage newspaper) [October 8, 1868]

Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.

The Revolution (woman suffrage newspaper) [March 18, 1869]

When a woman… is thrown upon her own resources, she has to choose one of two things, marriage or prostitution.

Debate with Frederick Douglass, New York [May 12, 1869]

Woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.

Speech in San Francisco [July 1871]

Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can “the consent of the governed” be given, if the right to vote be denied?

Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote? Speech [1873] before her trial for voting

Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circumstances of life.

Speech on Social Purity [spring 1875]

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

Speech at convention of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association [1896]

No advanced step taken by women has been so bitterly contested as that of speaking in public. For nothing which they have attempted, not even to secure the suffrage, have they been so abused, condemned and antagonized.

Fifty Years of Work for Woman [February 15, 1900]

Émile Augier

1820–1889

Nostalgia for the mud.¹

Le Mariage d’Olympe [1855]

Dion Boucicault

1820–1890

Yes, quit the house and never darken the threshold of its doors again.

Flying Scud [1866], act I

Florence Nightingale

1820–1910

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.²

Notes on Hospitals [1859], preface

Theodore O’Hara

1820–1867

Sons of the dark and bloody ground.³

The Bivouac of the Dead [1847], st. 9

George Frederick Root

1820–1895

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! the boys are marching,

Cheer up, comrades, they will come,

And beneath the starry flag

We shall breathe the air again

Of the free land in our own beloved home.

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! [1862]

Yes, we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once again,

Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.

The Battle Cry of Freedom [1863]

Sir William Howard Russell

1820–1907

The Russians dashed on towards that thin redline streak tipped with a line of steel.⁴

To The Times of London from the Crimea, describing the British infantry at Balaklava [October 25, 1854]

William Tecumseh Sherman

1820–1891

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it: and those who brought war into our Country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.

Letter to James M. Calhoun, mayor of Atlanta, and others [September 12, 1864]

Hold the fort! I am coming!⁵

Attributed signal from Kennesaw Mountain to General John Murray Corse at Allatoona Pass [October 5, 1864]

I can make the march and make Georgia howl.

Telegram to Ulysses S. Grant [October 9, 1864]

We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.

Letter to Henry W. Halleck [December 24, 1864]

The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.

Speech at St. Louis [July 20, 1865]

War is at best barbarism.… Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

Attributed to a graduation address at Michigan Military Academy [June 19, 1879]

I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.¹

Message to Republican National Convention [June 5, 1884]

Herbert Spencer

1820–1903

The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many “in shallows and in miseries,” are the decrees of a large, farseeing benevolence.

Social Statics [1851], pt. III, ch. 25

Every cause produces more than one effect.

Essays on Education [1861]. On Progress: Its Law and Cause

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

Essays on Education. On Manners and Fashion

This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called “natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.”²

Principles of Biology [1864–1867], pt. III, ch. 12

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

Essays [1891]. State Tamperings with Money Banks

Harriet Tubman

c. 1820–1913

When I found I had crossed that line,³ I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything.

To her biographer Sarah H. Bradford [c. 1868]

I started with this idea in my head, “There’s two things I’ve got a right to… death or liberty.”

To her biographer Sarah H. Bradford

’Twant me, ’twas the Lord. I always told him, “I trust to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,” and he always did.

To her biographer Sarah H. Bradford

John Tyndall

1820–1893

Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion.

Title of treatise [1863]

The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.

Fragments of Science, vol. II. Scientific Materialism [1868]

Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence.

Fragments of Science, II. Science and Man [1877]

Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.

Fragments of Science, II. Professor Virchow and Evolution [1879]

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

1821–1881

Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea.

Journal Intime [November 16, 1864]

Charm: the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.⁴

Journal Intime [1866]

To know how to grow old is the masterwork of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

Journal Intime [September 21, 1874]

Charles Baudelaire

1821–1867

Hypocrite lecteur—mon semblable—mon frère

[Hypocrite reader—my double—my brother]!

Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) [1861]. Au Lecteur (To the Reader), st. 10

The poet is like the prince of the clouds

Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer;

Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers,

His giant wings prevent him from walking.¹

Les Fleurs du Mal. L’Albatros, st. 4

Perfumes, colors and sounds echo one another.²

Les Fleurs du Mal. Correspondances

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,

Richness, quietness and pleasure.³

Les Fleurs du Mal. L’Invitation au Voyage, refrain

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.⁴

Les Fleurs du Mal. Spleen, l. 1

I am the wound and the knife!

I am the blow and the cheek!

I am the limbs and the wheel—

The victim and the executioner!⁵

Les Fleurs du Mal. L’Héautontimorouménos (The Self-Tormentor)

Here is the charming evening, the criminal’s friend;

It comes like an accomplice, with stealthy tread.⁶

Les Fleurs du Mal. Le Crépuscule du Soir (Twilight)

What is that sad, dark island?—It is Cythera,

They tell us, a country famous in song,

Banal Eldorado of all the old bachelors.

Look! after all, it is a poor land!⁷

Les Fleurs du Mal. Un Voyage à Cythère

O Death, old captain, it is time! raise the anchor!⁸

Les Fleurs du Mal. Le Voyage, pt. VIII

Be charming, and shut up!⁹

Les Fleurs du Mal. Sonnet d’Automne, st. 1

What do I care that you are good?

Be beautiful! and be sad!¹⁰

Nouvelles Fleurs du Mal [1866–1868]. Madrigal Triste, st. 1

Dandyism is the last spark of heroism amid decadence.

Le peintre de la vie moderne [1863]

It is much easier to decide outright that everything about the garb of an age is absolutely ugly than to devote oneself to the task of distilling from it the mysterious element of beauty that it may contain.

Le peintre de la vie moderne

This life is a hospital, where each patient is possessed by a desire to change beds.¹¹

Petits Poèmes en Prose [1869], no. 48

There are in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God, the other towards Satan.

Mon Coeur mis à nu, XIX

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.¹²

Mon Coeur mis à nu, XXII

Every newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a tissue of horrors. Wars, crimes, thefts, lecheries, tortures, the evil deeds of princes, of nations, of private individuals; an orgy of universal atrocity. And it is with this loathsome appetizer that civilized man daily washes down his morning repast.

Mon Coeur mis à nu, LXVIII

One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.

Mon Coeur mis à nu

You must shock the bourgeois.¹³

Attributed

Crowfoot¹⁴

1821–1890

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Last words [1890]

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky

1821–1881

Man is a creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.¹

The House of the Dead [1860], pt. 1, ch. 1

Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions² [1863]

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.

Notes from the Underground³ [1864], ch. 2

Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional town on the whole terrestrial globe.

Notes from the Underground, 2

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

Notes from the Underground, 9

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!

Crime and Punishment³ [1866], book I, ch. 2

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

Crime and Punishment, 3, 6

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the best recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.

The Idiot [1869], pt. 3

Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.

Demons³ [1872], pt. II, ch. 7, spoken by Shigalyov.⁴

If there is no God, then I am God.

Demons³ [1872], III, ch. 6, spoken by Kirillov.

A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.

The Brothers Karamazov³ [1879–1880], bk. I, ch. 2

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.

The Brothers Karamazov, II, 6

I want to tell you now about the insects to whom God gave “sensual lust.”… I am that insect, brother, and it is said of me especially. All we Karamazovs are such insects, and, angel as you are, that insect lives in you too, and will stir a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest—worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side.

The Brothers Karamazov, III, 3

What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

The Brothers Karamazov, III, 3

If the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

The Brothers Karamazov, V, 4

Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love of humanity I don’t want it.… I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket.… It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.

The Brothers Karamazov, V, 4

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature… and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.⁵

The Brothers Karamazov, V, 4

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

The Brothers Karamazov, V, 5

We have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift that brought them such suffering, was, at last, lifted from their hearts.

The Brothers Karamazov, V, 5

I ponder, “What is hell?” I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

The Brothers Karamazov, spoken by Father Zossima

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.

The Brothers Karamazov, VI, 3

Who doesn’t desire his father’s death?

The Brothers Karamazov, XII, 5

They have their Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!

The Brothers Karamazov, XII, 9

But profound as psychology is, it’s a knife that cuts both ways.

The Brothers Karamazov, XII, 10

We have all come out of Gogol’s Overcoat.¹

Attributed

Mary Baker Eddy

1821–1910

Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures [1875], ch. 10

Gustave Flaubert

1821–1880

One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet [August 12, 1846]

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet [October 22, 1846]

But since everything has its reason, and the fantasy of an individual seems to me just as legitimate as the appetite of a million men and capable of holding just as important a place in the world, we must… live for our vocation, climb up into our ivory tower, and there, like a dancer amid her perfumes, remain alone with our dreams.²

Letter to Louise Colet [April 24, 1852]

The author in his work should be like God in the universe: everywhere present and nowhere visible.

Letter to Louise Colet [December 9, 1852]

There was an air of indifference about them [the male guests], a calm produced by the gratification of every passion… that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one’s vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.

Madame Bovary³ [1857], pt. I, ch. 8

It never occurred to her that if the drainpipes of a house are clogged, the rain may collect in pools on the roof; and she suspected no danger until suddenly she discovered a crack in the wall.

Madame Bovary, II, 5

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.⁴

Madame Bovary, II, 12

She [Madame Bovary] had that indefinable beauty that comes from happiness, enthusiasm, success—a beauty that is nothing more or less than a harmony of temperament and circumstances.

Madame Bovary, II, 12

We shouldn’t maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.⁵

Madame Bovary, III, 6

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling and havoc-wreaking.

Madame Bovary, III, 8

Anyone’s death always releases something like an aura of stupefaction, so difficult is it to grasp this irruption of nothingness and to believe that it has actually taken place.

Madame Bovary, III, 9

The writer in his work must be like God in his creation—invisible and all-powerful: he must be everywhere felt, but never seen.

Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie [March 18, 1857]

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie [September 4, 1858]

Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom.

Letter to George Sand [May 10, 1867]

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Letter to Gertrude Tennant [December 25, 1876]

I am Madame Bovary.¹

From FRANCIS STEEGMULLER [1906–1994], Flaubert and Madame Bovary [1939], pt. 3

Nathan Bedford Forrest

1821–1877

Get there first with the most men.²

Reported by General Basil Duke and General Richard Taylor

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz

1821–1894

Nature as a whole possesses a store of force which cannot in any way be either increased or diminished… therefore, the quantity of force in Nature is just as eternal and unalterable as the quantity of matter.… I have named [this] general law “The Principle of the Conservation of Force.”³

Über die Erhaltung der Kraft (On the Conservation of Force) [1847]

Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain. All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces.

Academic discourse, Heidelberg [1862]

Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

1821–1873

So fades the portion of our early world,

Still on the ambit hangs the purple air;

Yet, while we lean to read the secret there,

The stream that by green shore-sides plashed and purled

Expands; the mountains melt to vapors rare,

And life alone circles out flat and bare.

Sonnets, First Series [1854–1860]

His heart was in his garden; but his brain

Wandered at will among the fiery stars.

Sonnets: Second Series [1860]

William H[enry] Vanderbilt

1821–1885

The public be damned.

Reply to a newspaper reporter [October 2, 1882]

Matthew Arnold

1822–1888

Be his [Sophocles’]

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,

From first youth tested up to extreme old age,

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild:

Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

To a Friend [1849], l. 8

Others abide our question. Thou art free.

We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,

Out-topping knowledge.

Shakespeare [1849], l. 1

Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful:

The seeds of godlike power are in us still:

Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.

Written in Emerson’s Essays [1849], l. 11

Come, dear children, let us away;

Down and away below!

Now my brothers call from the bay,

Now the great winds shoreward blow,

Now the salt tides seaward flow;

Now the wild white horses play,

Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

The Forsaken Merman [1849], st. 1

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control,

His sad lucidity of soul.

Resignation [1849], l. 197

The world in which we live and move

Outlasts aversion, outlasts love:

Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,

Remorse, grief, joy.

Resignation, l. 215

Yet they, believe me, who await

No gifts from Chance, have conquered Fate.

Resignation, l. 247

We cannot kindle when we will

The fire that in the heart resides,

The spirit bloweth and is still,

In mystery our soul abides.

Morality [1852], st. 1

Calm Soul of all things! make it mine

To feel, amid the city’s jar,

That there abides a peace of thine,

Man did not make, and can not mar.

Lines Written in Kensington Gardens [1852], st. 10

Hither and thither spins

The windborne, mirroring soul;

A thousand glimpses wins,

And never sees a whole.

Empedocles on Etna [1852], act I, sc. ii, l. 82

We do not what we ought;

What we ought not, we do;

And lean upon the thought

That chance will bring us through.

Empedocles on Etna, I, ii, l. 237

Is it so small a thing

To have enjoyed the sun,

To have lived light in the spring,

To have loved, to have thought, to have done;

To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?

Empedocles on Etna, II, l. 397

The day in its hotness,

The strife with the palm;

The night in her silence,

The stars in their calm.

Empedocles on Etna, II, l. 465

Yes, in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,

Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.

To Marguerite. Continued [1852], l. 1

But often in the world’s most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life.

The Buried Life [1852], l. 45

And long we try in vain to speak and act

Our hidden self, and what we say and do

Is eloquent, is well—but ’tis not true!

The Buried Life, l. 64

What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.

Preface to Poems [1853]

Go, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill.

The Scholar Gypsy [1853], st. 1

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven: and we,

Light half-believers of our casual creeds,

Who never deeply felt, nor clearly willed…

Who hesitate and falter life away,

And lose tomorrow the ground won today—

Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

The Scholar Gypsy, st. 18

Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear,

And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;

Before this strange disease of modern life,

With its sick hurry, its divided aims,

Its heads o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife.

The Scholar Gypsy, st. 21

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,

Still clutching the inviolable shade.

The Scholar Gypsy, st. 22

Strew on her roses, roses,

And never a spray of yew!

In quiet she reposes;

Ah, would that I did too!

Requiescat [1853], st. 1

Her cabined, ample spirit

It fluttered and failed for breath.

Tonight it doth inherit

The vasty hall of death.

Requiescat, st. 4

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

Sohrab and Rustum, l. 656

Sanity—that is the great virtue of the ancient literature; the want of that is the great defect of the modern, in spite of its variety and power.

Preface to Poems [1854]

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,

The other powerless to be born.

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse [1855], st. 15

The translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author: that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble.

On Translating Homer [1861]

The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.

On Translating Homer

Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself.

Democracy [1861]

For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.

The Function of Criticism at the Present Time [1864]

I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

Whispering from her towers [Oxford] the last enchantments of the Middle Age.… Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!

Essays in Criticism, first series [1865], preface

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and wisely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.

Essays in Criticism, first series. Heinrich Heine

Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children of the light.

Essays in Criticism, first series. Heinrich Heine

On the breast of that huge Mississippi of falsehood called History, a foam-bell more or less is no consequence.¹

Essays in Criticism, first series. Literary Influence of Academies [1864]

That sweet city [Oxford] with her dreaming spires.

Thyrsis [1866], st. 2

The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I.

Thyrsis, st. 6

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night

In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.

Thyrsis, st. 14

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light

Gleams, and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Dover Beach [1867], st. 1

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Dover Beach, st. 1

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean.

Dover Beach, st. 2

The sea of faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach, st. 3, 4

Creep into thy narrow bed,

Creep, and let no more be said!

The Last Word [1867], st. 1

Let the long contention cease!

Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

The Last Word, st. 2

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!

Let the victors, when they come,

When the forts of folly fall,

Find thy body by the wall.

The Last Word, st. 4

Cruel, but composed and bland,

Dumb, inscrutable and grand,

So Tiberius might have sat,

Had Tiberius been a cat.

Poor Matthias [1867]

Style… is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.

On the Study of Celtic Literature [1867], sec. 6

Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,

Of what we say we feel—below the stream,

As light, of what we think we feel—there flows

With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,

The central stream of what we feel indeed.

Below the surface-stream [1869]

The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.

Culture and Anarchy [1869], preface

Our society distributes itself into Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace; and America is just ourselves, with the Barbarians quite left out, and the Populace nearly.

Culture and Anarchy, preface

I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflection, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture.

Culture and Anarchy, introduction

Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.

Culture and Anarchy. Sweetness and Light

Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming is the character of perfection as culture conceives it.

Culture and Anarchy. Sweetness and Light

He who works for sweetness and light united, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.

Culture and Anarchy. Sweetness and Light

The men of culture are the true apostles of equality.

Culture and Anarchy. Sweetness and Light

Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.

Culture and Anarchy. Barbarians, Philistines, Populace

Conduct is three-fourths of our life and its largest concern.

Literature and Dogma [1873], ch. 1

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.

God and the Bible [1875]

Choose equality.

Mixed Essays [1879]. Equality

Inequality… has the natural and necessary effect, under the present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower class.

Mixed Essays. Equality

For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.

Introduction to T. H. WARD [1845–1926], English Poets [1880]

That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

A Word About America [1882]

Rudolf [Julius Emanuel] Clausius

1822–1888

Heat cannot of itself pass from a colder to a hotter body.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics¹ [1850]

Ulysses S[impson] Grant

1822–1885

No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.

To General S. B. Buckner, Fort Donelson [February 16, 1862]

I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.

Dispatch to Washington, before Spotsylvania Court House [May 11, 1864]

Wherever the enemy goes let our troops go also.

Dispatch to General Henry W. Halleck from City Point, Virginia [August 1, 1864]

The war is over—the rebels are our countrymen again.

Upon stopping his men from cheering after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House [April 9, 1865]

Let us have peace.

Accepting nomination for the presidency [May 29, 1868]

Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty.

Endorsement of a letter relating to the Whiskey Ring [July 29, 1875]

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the State forever separate.

Speech at Des Moines, Iowa [1875]

I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.

Undated note to Dr. John Douglas [July 1885]

Edward Everett Hale

1822–1909

Behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the country herself, your country, and… you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother.

The Man Without a Country [1863]

He loved his country as no other man has loved her, but no man deserved less at her hands.

The Man Without a Country. Epitaph of Philip Nolan

Thomas Hughes

1822–1896

Life isn’t all beer and skittles; but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.¹

Tom Brown’s Schooldays [1857], pt. I, ch. 2

William Porcher Miles

1822–1899

“Vote early and vote often,” the advice openly displayed on the election banners in one of our northern cities.

Speech in the House of Representatives [March 31, 1858]

Frederick Law Olmsted

1822–1903

and

Calvert Vaux

1824–1895

The Park [Central Park, New York City] throughout is a single work of art, and as such subject to the primary law of every work of art, namely, that it shall be framed upon a single, noble motive, to which the design of all its parts, in some more or less subtle way, shall be confluent and helpful.

Report submitted with “Greensward”² Plan, awarded first prize by the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park [April 28, 1858]

It is one great purpose of the Park to supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired workers, who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country, a specimen of God’s handiwork that shall be to them, inexpensively, what a month or two in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks is, at great cost, to those in easier circumstances.

Report submitted with “Greensward” Plan, awarded first prize by the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park

Louis Pasteur

1822–1895

In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.³

Inaugural lecture, University of Lille [December 7, 1854]

No, a thousand times no; there does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit to the tree which bears it.⁴

Pourquoi la France n’a pas trouvé des hommes supérieurs au moment du péril.⁵ From Revue Scientifique [1871]

Science has no fatherland. (La science n’a pas de patrie.)⁶

At the opening of the Institut Pasteur [November 14, 1888]

Red Cloud⁷

1822–1909

We were told that they [federal troops] wished merely to pass through our country… to seek for gold in the Far West.… Yet before the ashes of the council fire are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. You have heard the sound of the white soldier’s axe upon the Little Piney. His presence here is… an insult to the spirits of our ancestors. Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war.

Speech at council at Fort Laramie, Wyoming [1866]

Heinrich Schliemann

1822–1890

I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon.

Telegram to the king of Greece, upon excavating the fifth and last grave at Mycenae [August 1876]

Théodore de Banville

1823–1891

We’ll to the woods no more,

The laurels all are cut.¹

Nous N’Irons Plus aux Bois [1846]

Mary Chesnut

1823–1886

I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend the time now like a spider spinning my own entrails.

Diary entry [March 11, 1861]

This only I see. Like the patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.

Diary entry [March 18, 1861]

We are divorced, North from South, because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate—a “séparation à l’agréable,” as the French say it, and not a horrid fight for divorce.

Diary entry [March 1861]

Does anybody wonder so many women die? Grief and constant anxiety kill nearly as many women as men die on the battlefield.

Diary entry [June 9, 1862]

William Johnson Cory

1823–1892

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead;

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.

I wept as I remembered how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,

A handful of gray ashes, long, long ago at rest,

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy Nightingales, awake,

For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

Heraclitus [1858]. Translated from Callimachus²

Richard Genée

1823–1895

and

Carl Haffner

1804–1874

Happy is he who can forget what cannot be changed.³

Die Fledermaus (The Bat) [1874], act I

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

1823–1911

When a thought takes one’s breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.

Preface to EMILY DICKINSON’S Poems, first series [1890]

Leopold Kronecker

1823–1891

God made integers, all else is the work of man.

From a speech made in 1886, as quoted in HEINRICH WEBER’s obituary of Kronecker [1893]

F[riedrich] Max Müller

1823–1900

There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man. All religions, so far as I know them, had the same purpose; all were links in a chain which connects heaven and earth, and which is held, and always was held, by one and the same hand.

Letter to M. K. Schermerhorn [1883]

Francis Parkman

1823–1893

A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil.

Pioneers of France in the New World [1865], introduction

The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: Shall France remain here or shall she not?

Montcalm and Wolfe [1884], introduction

Coventry Patmore

1823–1896

Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;

They lift their heavy lids, and look;

And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,

They read with joy, then shut the book.

The Angel in the House [1854–1856], bk. 1, canto 8. Prelude 2: The Revelation

A Woman is a foreign land,

Of which, though there he settle young,

A man will ne’er quite understand

The customs, politics, and tongue.

The Angel in the House, bk. II, canto 9. Prelude 2: The Foreign Land

For want of me the world’s course will not fail;

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;

The truth is great, and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail or not.

The Unknown Eros [1877]. Magna Est Veritas

Those who know God know that it is quite a mistake to suppose that there are only five senses.

The Rod, the Root, and the Flower [1896]. Aurea Dicta, no. 142

[Joseph] Ernest Renan

1823–1892

The whole of history is incomprehensible without him [Jesus].

Life of Jesus [1863], introduction

O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul.

Prayer of a Skeptic

John Sherman

1823–1900

I have come home to look after my fences.

Speech to his neighbors, Mansfield, Ohio

William Marcy Tweed [Boss Tweed]

1823–1878

As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?

Statement by the “Boss” of Tammany Hall on the ballot in New York City [November 1871]

Alfred Russel Wallace

1823–1913

Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a preexisting closely allied species.

On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species [1855]

William Allingham

1824–1889

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren’t go a-hunting

For fear of little men.

The Fairies, st. 1

Barnard Elliott Bee

1824–1861

There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall!

Of General T. J. Jackson at the battle of Bull Run [July 21, 1861]

Phoebe Cary

1824–1871

And though hard be the task,

“Keep a stiff upper lip.”

Keep a Stiff Upper Lip

[William] Wilkie Collins

1824–1889

“I haven’t much time to be fond of anything,” says Sergeant Cuff. “But when I have a moment’s fondness to bestow, most times… the roses get it.”

The Moonstone [1868]. First Period, ch. 12

I begin to believe in only one civilizing influence—the discovery one of these days, of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men’s fears shall force them to keep the peace.

Letter to Emil Lehmann [August 7, 1870]

Alexandre Dumas the Younger

1824–1895

Business? It’s quite simple. It’s other people’s money.¹

La Question d’Argent (The Question of Money) [1857], act II, sc. vii

Thomas Jonathan [Stonewall] Jackson

1824–1863

My duty is to obey orders.

A favorite aphorism

Let us cross over the river, and rest under the trees.

Last words [May 10, 1863]

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

1824–1907

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.

Popular Lectures and Addresses [1891–1894]

George Macdonald

1824–1905

Said the Wind to the Moon, “I will blow you out!”

The Wind and the Moon, st. 1

The world and my being, its life and mine, were one. The microcosm and macrocosm were at length atoned, at length in harmony. I lived in everything; everything entered and lived in me.

Lilith [1895]

Home, as you may or may not know, is the only place where you can go out and in. There are places you can go into, and places you can go out of; but the one place, if you do but find it, where you may go out and in both, is home.

Lilith

T[homas] H[enry] Huxley

1825–1895

I cannot but think that he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission.

On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences [1854]

To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

On the Educational Value of the Natural History Sciences

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules.

Darwiniana. The Origin of Species [1860]

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature [1863]

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge [1866]

The chess board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.

A Liberal Education [1868]

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

A Liberal Education

The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Biogenesis and Abiogenesis [1870]

Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.

On University Education [1876]

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

On Elemental Instruction in Physiology [1877]

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

The Coming of Age of The Origin of Species [1880]

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

The Coming of Age of The Origin of Species

For his successful progress, as far as the savage state, man has been largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the ape and the tiger.

Evolution and Ethics [1893]

I asserted—and I repeat—that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.

Reply to Wilberforce’s question.¹ From LEONARD HUXLEY [1860–1933], Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley [1900], vol. I

George Edward Pickett

1825–1875

Up, men, and to your posts! Don’t forget today that you are from Old Virginia.

Command at the beginning of his division’s charge at Gettysburg [July 3, 1863]

Adelaide Anne Procter

1825–1864

Seated one day at the organ,

I was weary and ill at ease,

And my fingers wandered idly

Over the noisy keys.

A Lost Chord² [1858], st. 1

But I struck one chord of music

Like the sound of a great Amen.

A Lost Chord, st. 2

William Whiting

1825–1878

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,

Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep,

O, hear us when we cry to Thee

For those in peril on the sea!

The Hymn of the U.S. Navy³ [1860]. Eternal Father, Strong to Save, st. 1

Walter Bagehot

1826–1877

So long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to understanding.

The English Constitution [1867], ch. 2

The sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.

The English Constitution, 3

[The British monarchy:] Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants.

The English Constitution, 4

Carlo Collodi [Carlo Lorenzini]

1826–1890

“Lies, my boy, are known in a moment. There are two kinds of lies, lies with short legs and lies with long noses. Yours, just now, happen to have long noses.”

The Adventures of Pinocchio [1883], spoken by the Fairy to Pinocchio

J[ohn] W[illiam] De Forest

1826–1906

The Great American Novel.

Title of essay, The Nation [January 9, 1868]

Stephen Collins Foster

1826–1864

Oh! Susanna, oh, don’t you cry for me,

I’ve come from Alabama, with my banjo on my knee.

Oh! Susanna¹ [1848], chorus

Gwine to run all night!

Gwine to run all day!

I’ll bet my money on de bobtail nag—

Somebody bet on de bay.

Camptown Races [1850], chorus

Way down upon the Swanee River,

Far, far away,

There’s where my heart is turning ever;

There’s where the old folks stay.

The Old Folks at Home [1851], st. 1

All the world is sad and dreary

Ev’rywhere I roam,

Oh! darkies, how my heart grows weary,

Far from the old folks at home.

The Old Folks at Home, chorus

Weep no more, my lady,

Oh! weep no more today!

We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,

For the old Kentucky home far away.

My Old Kentucky Home [1853], chorus

I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,

Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.

Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair [1854], st. 1

I’m coming, I’m coming, for my head is bending low;

I hear those gentle voices calling, “Old Black Joe.”

Old Black Joe [1860], st. 3

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,

Starlight and dewdrop are waiting for thee.

Beautiful Dreamer [1864], st. 1

G[eorge] W[illiam] Hunt

c. 1829–1904

We don’t want to fight, but, by jingo, if we do,

We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money, too.

Song² [1878]

George B[rinton] McClellan

1826–1885

All quiet along the Potomac.

Frequent report from his Union headquarters [1861]

[Samuel] Ward McAllister

1827–1895

There are only about 400 people in fashionable New York Society. If you go outside that number you strike people who are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make other people not at ease.

Quoted in The New York Tribune [March 25, 1888]

Anna Bartlett Warner

1827–1915

Jesus loves me—this I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

The Love of Jesus [1858]

Henrik Ibsen

1828–1906

Look into any man’s heart you please, and you will always find, in every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed.

Pillars of Society³ [1877], act III

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom—they are the pillars of society.

Pillars of Society, IV

Our house has never been anything but a playroom. I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Daddy’s doll child. And the children in turn have been my dolls. I thought it was fun when you came and played with me, just as they thought it was fun when I went and played with them. That’s been our marriage, Torvald.

A Doll’s House³ [1879], act III

If I’m ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That’s why I can’t stay here with you any longer.

A Doll’s House, III

I have another duty equally sacred… My duty to myself.

A Doll’s House, III

Helmer: First and foremost, you are a wife and mother.

Nora: That I don’t believe any more. I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as much as you are.

A Doll’s House, III

To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

Ghosts¹ [1881], act I

I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

Ghosts, II

Mother, give me the sun.

Ghosts, III

I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.

Letter to Georg Brandes [January 3, 1882]

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.

An Enemy of the People¹ [1882], act I

The minority is always right.

An Enemy of the People, IV

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

An Enemy of the People, V

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

An Enemy of the People, V

Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom… as deep as they can get… hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff—and all the other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.

The Wild Duck¹ [1884], act II

Take the life-lie away from the average man and straightaway you take away his happiness.

The Wild Duck, V

Oh courage… oh yes! If only one had that… Then life might be livable, in spite of everything.

Hedda Gabler² [1890], act II

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

The Master Builder³ [1892], act I

And when I stood there, high over everything, and was hanging the wreath over the vane, I said to him: Hear me now, thou Mighty One! From this day forward, I will be a free builder—I too, in my sphere—just as thou in thine. I will never more build churches for thee—only homes for human beings.

The Master Builder, III

George Meredith

1828–1909

I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel [1859]

Kissing don’t last: cookery do!

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

Not till the fire is dying in the grate,

Look we for any kinship with the stars.

Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold,

And the great price we pay for it full worth;

We have it only when we are half earth.

Modern Love [1862], st. 4

What are we first? First, animals; and next

Intelligences at a leap; on whom

Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb.

Modern Love, st. 30

In tragic life, God wot,

No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:

We are betrayed by what is false within.

Modern Love, st. 43

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul

When hot for certainties in this our life!

Modern Love, st. 50

[Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dullness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness yet to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher.

The Egoist [1879]. Prelude

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

The Egoist, ch. 7

For singing till his heaven fills,

’Tis love of earth that he instills,

And ever winging up and up,

Our valley is his golden cup,

And he the wine which over flows

To lift us with him as he goes.

The Lark Ascending [1881], l. 65

The song seraphically free

Of taint of personality.

The Lark Ascending, l. 95

A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.

Diana of the Crossways [1885], ch. 1

What a woman thinks of women is the test of her nature.

Diana of the Crossways, 1

With patient inattention hear him prate.

Bellerophon [1887], st. 4

Full lasting is the song, though he,

The singer, passes.

The Thrush in February [1888], st. 17

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1828–1882

The blessed damozel leaned out

From the gold bar of Heaven;

Her eyes were deeper than the depth

Of waters stilled at even;

She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

The Blessed Damozel [1850], st. 1

One thing then learned remains to me—

The woodspurge has a cup of three.

The Woodspurge [1870], st. 4

Tell me now in what hidden way is

Lady Flora the lovely Roman?

Where’s Hipparchia, and where is Thaïs,

Neither of them the fairer woman.

Where is Echo, beheld of no man

Only heard on river and mere—

She whose beauty was more than human?…

But where are the snows of yesteryear?

The Ballad of Dead Ladies (After François Villon) [1870], st. 1

A sonnet is a moment’s monument—

Memorial from the soul’s eternity

To one dead deathless hour.

Sonnets from the House of Life [1870–1881]. Poem

   My name is Might-have-been;

I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell.

Sonnets from the House of Life, 97, A Superscription

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell;

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

Sudden Light [1881], st. 1

Henry Timrod

1828–1867

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,

 Sleep martyrs of a fallen cause!—

Though yet no marble column craves

 The pilgrim here to pause.¹

Lines; Charleston Daily Courier [1866]

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

1828–1910

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

Diary entry [January 6, 1853]

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

Sevastopol in May 1855 [1855]

One can live splendidly in the world, if one can work and love, work for that which one loves, and love that at which one works.²

Letter to Valeria Arsenyev [November 9, 1856]

“What’s this? am I falling? my legs are giving way under me,” he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it.

War and Peace [1865–1869],³ bk. III, ch. 16

In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

War and Peace, IX, 1

The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience.

War and Peace, X, 16

He [Platon Karataev] did not understand, and could not grasp the significance of words taken apart from the sentence. Every word and every action of his was the expression of a force uncomprehended by him, which was his life.

War and Peace, XII, 13

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

War and Peace, XV, 1

The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words—that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible.

War and Peace, epilogue, pt. II, ch. 1

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.¹

Anna Karenina [1875–1877], pt. I, ch. 1

She [Anna] was doing what she always did when she saw him [Vronsky]—comparing the image of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, and impossible in reality) with him as he was.²

Anna Karenina, IV, 2

Ivan Ilych’s life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

The Death of Ivan Ilych³ [1886]

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continuous despair.

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

The syllogism he had learned from Kiezewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius—man in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Six feet of land was all that he needed.

How Much Land Does a Man Need? [1886]

Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will be—the tragedy of the bedroom.

From Maksim Gorky. Reminiscences of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy [1920]

Jules Verne

1828–1905

Nothing can astound an American.

From the Earth to the Moon [1865], ch. 3

Mobilis in mobili.⁴

Mobile in the mobile element.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea [1870]; the motto of Captain Nemo’s ship, Nautilus

Geronimo

1829–1909

It [Arizona] is my land, my home, my father’s land, to which I now ask to be allowed to return. I want to spend my last days there, and be buried among those mountains. If this could be I might die in peace, feeling that my people, placed in their native homes, would increase in numbers, rather than diminish as at present, and that our name would not become extinct.

To President Grant from the reservation at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, after surrender [1877]

Carl Schurz

1829–1906

My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

Remarks in the U.S. Senate [February 29, 1872]

Charles Dudley Warner

1829–1900

What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

My Summer in a Garden [1870]. Third Week

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

My Summer in a Garden. Fifteenth Week

Thomas Edward Brown

1830–1897

A Garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

My Garden [1875]

Porfirio Díaz

1830–1915

Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.

Attributed

Emily Dickinson

1830–1886

Surgeons must be very careful

When they take the knife!

Underneath their fine incisions

Stirs the Culprit—Life!

No. 108 [c. 1859]¹

For each ecstatic instant

We must an anguish pay

In keen and quivering ratio

To the ecstasy.

No. 125 [c. 1859], st. 1

To fight aloud, is very brave—

But gallanter, I know

Who charge within the bosom

The Cavalry of Woe—

No. 126 [c. 1859], st. 1

These are the days when Birds come back—

A very few—a Bird or two—

To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume

The old—old sophistries of June—

A blue and gold mistake.

No. 130 [c. 1859], st. 1, 2

The thought beneath so slight a film—

Is more distinctly seen—

As laces just reveal the surge—

Or Mists—the Apennine—

No. 210 [c. 1860]

I taste a liquor never brewed,

From Tankards scooped in Pearl—

No. 214 [c. 1860], st. 1

Inebriate of Air—am I—

And Debauchee of Dew—

Reeling—through endless summer days—

From inns of Molten Blue—

No. 214, st. 2

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats—

And Saints—to windows run—

To see the little Tippler

Leaning against the—Sun—

No. 214, st. 4

Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple

Leaping like Leopards to the Sky…

And the Juggler of Day is gone.

No. 228 [c. 1861]

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

No. 254 [c. 1861], st. 1

There’s a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons—

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes—

No. 258 [c. 1861], st. 1

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you—Nobody—too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!

How public—like a Frog—

To tell one’s name—the livelong June—

To an admiring Bog!

No. 288 [c. 1861]

I tasted—careless—then—

I did not know the Wine

Came once a World—Did you?

Oh, had you told me so—

This Thirst would blister—easier—now

No. 296 [c. 1861], st. 3

The Soul selects her own Society—

Then—shuts the Door—

To her divine Majority—

Present no more—

No. 303 [c. 1862], st. 1

I’ll tell you how the Sun rose—

A Ribbon at a time—

No. 318 [1862], l. 1

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—

I keep it, staying at Home—

With a bobolink for a Chorister—

And an Orchard, for a Dome—

No. 324 [1862], st. 1

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last—

I’m going, all along.

No. 324, st. 3

After great pain, a formal feeling comes.

No. 341 [c. 1862], st. 1

Of Course—I prayed—

And did God Care?

He cared as much as on the Air

A Bird—had stamped her foot—

And cried “Give Me”—

No. 376 [c. 1862], l. 1

No Rack can torture me—

My Soul—at Liberty—

Behind this mortal Bone

There knits a bolder One—

No. 384 [c. 1862], st. 1

Except Thyself may be

Thine Enemy—

Captivity is Consciousness—

So’s Liberty.

No. 384, st. 4

Good Morning—Midnight—

I’m coming Home—

Day—got tired of Me—

How could I—of Him?

No. 425 [c. 1862], st. 1

Much Madness is divinest Sense—

To a discerning Eye—

Much Sense—the starkest Madness—

’Tis the Majority

In this, as All, prevail—

Assent—and you are sane—

Demur—you’re straightway dangerous—

And handled with a Chain.

No. 435 [c. 1862]

This is my letter to the World

That never wrote to Me—

The simple News that Nature told—

With tender Majesty.

No. 441 [c. 1862], st. 1

I died for Beauty—but was scarce

Adjusted in the Tomb

When One who died for Truth, was lain

In an adjoining Room—

No. 449 [c. 1862], st. 1

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night—

We talked between the Rooms—

Until the Moss had reached our lips—

And covered up—our names—

No. 449, st. 3

It was not Death, for I stood up,

And all the Dead, lie down—

No. 510 [c. 1862], st. 1

I reckon—when I count at all—

First—Poets—Then the Sun—

Then Summer—Then the Heaven of God—

And then—the List is done—

But, looking back—the First so seems

To Comprehend the Whole—

The Others look a needless Show—

So I write—Poets—All—

No. 569 [c. 1862], st. 1, 2

I asked no other thing—

No other—was denied—

I offered Being—for it—

The Mighty Merchant sneered—

Brazil? He twirled a Button—

Without a glance my way—

“But—Madam—is there nothing else—

That We can show—Today?”

No. 621 [c. 1862]

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

For—put them side by side—

The one the other will contain

With ease—and You—beside.

No. 632 [1862], st. 1

I cannot live with You—

It would be Life—

And Life is over there—

Behind the Shelf.

No. 640 [c. 1862], st. 1

And that White Sustenance—

Despair—

No. 640, st. 12

Pain—has an Element of Blank—

It cannot recollect

When it begun—or if there were

A time when it was not—

No. 650 [c. 1862], st. 1

Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that—My Business is Circumference.

Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson [July 1862]

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me—

The Carriage held but just Ourselves

And Immortality.

No. 712 [c. 1863], st. 1

Alter! When the Hills do—

Falter! When the Sun

Question if His Glory

Be the Perfect One—

Surfeit! When the Daffodil

Doth of the Dew—

Even as Herself—Sir—

I will—of You—

No. 729 [c. 1863]

God gave a Loaf to every Bird—

But just a Crumb—to Me—

No. 791 [c. 1863], st. 1

This quiet Dust was Gentlemen and Ladies

And Lads and Girls—

Was laughter and ability and Sighing,

And Frocks and Curls.

No. 813 [c. 1864], st. 1

Adventure most unto itself

The Soul condemned to be—

Attended by a single Hound

Its own identity.

No. 822 [c. 1864], st. 4

Dying! To be afraid of thee

One must to thine Artillery

Have left exposed a Friend—

Than thine old Arrow is a Shot

Delivered straighter to the Heart

The leaving Love behind.

No. 831 [c. 1864], st. 1

Love—is anterior to Life—

Posterior—to Death—

Initial of Creation, and

The Exponent of Earth.

No. 917 [c. 1864]

If I can stop one Heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one Life the Aching

Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin

Unto his Nest again

I shall not live in Vain.

No. 919 [c. 1864]

A narrow Fellow in the Grass

Occasionally rides—

No. 986 [c. 1865], st. 1

But never met this Fellow

Attended or alone

Without a tighter breathing

And Zero at the Bone—

No. 986, last stanza

The Dying, is a trifle, past

But living, this include

The dying multifold—without

The Respite to be dead.

No. 1013 [c. 1865]

’Twas my one Glory—

Let it be

Remembered

I was owned of Thee—

No. 1028 [c. 1865]

I never saw a Moor—

I never saw the Sea—

Yet know I how the Heather looks

And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God

Nor visited in Heaven—

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the Checks were given—

No. 1052 [c. 1865]

Experiment to me

Is every one I meet

If it contain a Kernel?

The Figure of a Nut

Presents upon a Tree

Equally plausibly,

But Meat within, is requisite

To Squirrels, and to Me.

No. 1073 [c. 1865]

The Bustle in a House

The Morning after Death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon Earth—

The Sweeping up the Heart,

And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity.

No. 1078 [c. 1866]

These Strangers, in a foreign World,

Protection asked of me—

Befriend them, lest Yourself in Heaven

Be found a Refugee—

No. 1096 [c. 1864]

We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise

And then, if we are true to plan

Our statures touch the skies.

No. 1176 [c. 1870], st. 1

How do most people live without any thoughts? There are many people in the world,—you must have noticed them in the street,—how do they live? How do they get strength to put on their clothes in the morning?

Quoted by Thomas Wentworth Higginson in a letter to his wife [August 16, 1870]

A word is dead

When it is said,

Some say.

I say it just

Begins to live

That day.

No. 1212 [c. 1872]

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry—

This Traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of Toll—

How frugal is the Chariot

That bears the Human Soul!

No. 1263 [c. 1873]

I thought that nature was enough

Till Human nature came

But that the other did absorb

As Parallax a Flame—

No. 1286 [c. 1873], st. 1

Until the Desert knows

That Water grows

His Sands suffice

But let him once suspect

That Caspian Fact

Sahara dies.

No. 1291 [c. 1873], st. 1

Not with a Club, the Heart is broken

Nor with a Stone—

A Whip so small you could not see it

I’ve known

To lash the Magic Creature

Till it fell.

No. 1304 [c. 1874], st. 1

A little Madness in the Spring

Is wholesome even for the King.

No. 1333 [c. 1875]

Love’s stricken “why”

Is all that love can speak—

Built of but just a syllable

The hugest hearts that break.

No. 1368 [c. 1876]

I am glad you love the Blossoms so well. I hope you love Birds too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven.

Letter to Eugenia Hall [1876]

The Pedigree of Honey

Does not concern the Bee—

A Clover, any time, to him,

Is Aristocracy.

No. 1627 [c. 1884], version II

Eden is that old-fashioned House

We dwell in every day

Without suspecting our abode

Until we drive away.

No. 1657 [n.d.], st. 1

I took one Draught of Life—

I’ll tell you what I paid—

Precisely an existence—

The market price, they said.

They weighed me, Dust by Dust—

They balanced Film with Film,

Then handed me my Being’s worth—

A single Dram of Heaven!

No. 1725 [n.d.]

My life closed twice before its close—

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

No. 1732 [n.d.]

That it will never come again

Is what makes life so sweet.

No. 1741 [n.d.], st. 1

The only secret people keep

Is Immortality.

No. 1748 [n.d.]

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

No. 1755 [n.d.]

Elysium is as far as to

The very nearest Room

If in that Room a Friend await

Felicity or Doom—

What Fortitude the Soul contains,

That it can so endure

The accent of a coming Foot—

The opening of a Door—

No. 1760 [n.d.]

That Love is all there is,

Is all we know of Love;

It is enough, the freight should be

Proportioned to the groove.

No. 1765 [n.d.]

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

From MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI [1866–1943], Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson [1924]

Little Cousins, Called back.¹

Last letter [May 1886]

Mother Jones [Mary Harris Jones]

1830–1930

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!

The Autobiography of Mother Jones [1925], ch. 6

I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country. You don’t need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!

Speech [1915], quoted in The Autobiography of Mother Jones, 22

Alexander Muir

1830–1906

   And joined in love together,

The Thistle, Shamrock, Rose entwine

The Maple Leaf forever!

The Maple Leaf Forever [1867]

Christina Georgina Rossetti

1830–1894

My heart is like a singing bird.

A Birthday [1861], st. 1

   The birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

A Birthday, st. 2

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree.

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember

And if thou wilt, forget.

Song [1862], st. 1

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land.

Remember [1862], l. 1

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Remember, l. 13

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter,

Long ago.

A Christmas Carol

Oh roses for the flush of youth,

And laurel for the perfect prime;

But pluck an ivy branch for me

Grown old before my time.

Song [1862]

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

Who Has Seen the Wind? [1872], st. 2

God strengthen me to bear myself;

That heaviest weight of all to bear,

Inalienable weight of care.

Who Shall Deliver Me? [1875], st. 1

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes: work never begun.

Time Flies: A Reading Diary [January 5, 1885]

Sleeping at last, the trouble and turmoil over,

Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,

Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,

Sleeping at last.

Sleeping at Last [1893], st. 1

Alexander Smith

1830–1867

Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.

Dreamthorp [1863]. Of Death and the Fear of Dying

George Graham Vest

1830–1904

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.… When all other friends desert, he remains.¹

Speech in the Senate [1884]

James A[bram] Garfield

1831–1881

Fellow citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!

Attributed speech on the assassination of Lincoln [April 15, 1865]

I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins² on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus and libraries without him.

Address to Williams College Alumni, New York [December 28, 1871]

Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Earl of Lytton [Owen Meredith]

1831–1891

Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.

Last Words of a Sensitive Second-Rate Poet

James Clerk Maxwell

1831–1879

All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers, so that the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers.

On Faraday’s Lines of Force [1856]

Philip Henry Sheridan

1831–1888

The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.³

Attributed remark at Fort Cobb, Indian Territory [January 1869]

Sitting Bull⁴

c. 1831–1890

What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?… What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?

Statement

Louisa May Alcott

1832–1888

Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.

Little Women [1868–1869], pt. I, ch. 1

Housekeeping ain’t no joke.

Little Women, I, 11

The spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction over the placid face upon the pillow—a face so full of painless peace, that those who loved it best smiled through their tears, and thanked God that Beth was well at last.

Little Women, II, 17

Women have been called queens a long time, but the kingdom given them isn’t worth ruling.

An Old-Fashioned Girl [1870], ch. 13

Resolved to take Fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.

From EDNAH D. CHENEY [1824–1904], Louisa May Alcott, Her Life, Letters, and Journals [1889], ch. 5

Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]

1832–1898

All in the golden afternoon

Full leisurely we glide,

For both our oars with little skill

By little arms are plied

While little hands make vain pretense

Our wanderings to guide.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland [1865], introduction, st. 1

Down the Rabbit-Hole.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, title of ch. 1

“What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ch. 1

Do cats eat bats?… Do bats eat cats?

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1

Curiouser and curiouser!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 2

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!¹

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 2

“I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” said cunning old Fury;

“I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 3

Oh my fur and whiskers!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 4

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 5

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,

“And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

Do you think, at your age, it is right?”²

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You Are Old, Father William, st. 1

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,

Has lasted the rest of my life.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You Are Old, Father William, st. 6

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”

Said his father. “Don’t give yourself airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You Are Old, Father William, st. 8

“If everybody minded their own business,” said the Duchess in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 6

“Talking of axes,” said the Duchess, “chop off her head!”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 6

Speak roughly to your little boy,

And beat him when he sneezes:

He only does it to annoy,

Because he knows it teases.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 6

“All right,” said the [Cheshire] Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 6

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.

“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.”

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 7

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a teatray in the sky.¹

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 7

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I can’t take more.”

“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 7

They drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M… such as mousetraps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are “much of a muchness.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 7

The Queen turned crimson with fury, and after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, began screaming, “Off with her head! Off with—”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 8

“Tut, tut, child,” said the Duchess. “Everything’s got a moral if only you can find it.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 9

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.²

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 9

“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied, “and the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 9

“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,

“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Lobster-Quadrille, st. 1

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Lobster-Quadrille, st. 1

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 10

’Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare

“You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.”³

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. ’Tis the Voice of the Lobster

Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Turtle Soup

Begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 12

Sentence first—verdict afterwards.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 12

You’re nothing but a pack of cards!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 12

Child of the pure, unclouded brow

And dreaming eyes of wonder!

Though time be fleet and I and thou

Are half a life asunder,

Thy loving smile will surely hail

The love-gift of a fairy tale.

Through the Looking-Glass [1872], introduction, st. 1

“The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never, never forget!”

“You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.”

Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 1

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!

Through the Looking-Glass. Jabberwocky, st. 1, 2

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

Through the Looking-Glass. Jabberwocky, st. 4–6

Curtsy while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.

Through the Looking-Glass, 2

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Through the Looking-Glass, 2

Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes when you walk—and remember who you are!

Through the Looking-Glass, 2

“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

Through the Looking-Glass, 4

The sun was shining on the sea,

Shining with all his might:

He did his very best to make

The billows smooth and bright—

And this was odd, because it was

The middle of the night.

Through the Looking-Glass. The Walrus and the Carpenter, st. 1

The Walrus and the Carpenter

Were walking close at hand:

They wept like anything to see

Such quantities of sand:

“If this were only cleared away,”

They said, “it would be grand!”

“If seven maids with seven mops

Swept it for half a year,

Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,

“That they could get it clear?”

“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,

And shed a bitter tear.

Through the Looking-Glass. The Walrus and the Carpenter, st. 4, 5

“O Oysters, come and walk with us!”

The Walrus did beseech.

“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,

Along the briny beach.”

Through the Looking-Glass. The Walrus and the Carpenter, st. 6

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—

Of cabbages—and kings—

And why the sea is boiling hot—

And whether pigs have wings.”

Through the Looking-Glass. The Walrus and the Carpenter, st. 11

But answer came there none¹—

And this was scarcely odd, because

They’d eaten every one.

Through the Looking-Glass. The Walrus and the Carpenter, st. 18

Twopence a week, and jam every other day.

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 5

“The rule is, jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday—but never jam today.”

“It must come sometimes to ‘jam today,’” Alice objected.

“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: today isn’t any other day, you know.”

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 5

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 5

“There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 5

They gave it me—for an unbirthday present.

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 6

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knockdown argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 6

It’s as large as life and twice as natural.

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 7

His answer trickled through my head,

Like water through a sieve.

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 8

What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?

Through the Looking-Glass, st. 9

“Speak when you’re spoken to!” the Queen sharply interrupted her.

“But if everybody obeyed that rule,” said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, “and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that—”

Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 9

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream—

Lingering in the golden gleam—

Life, what is it but a dream?

Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 12

He would answer to “Hi!” or to any loud cry

Such as “Fry me!” or “Fritter my wig!”

To “What-you-may-call-um!” or

 “What-was-his-name!”

But especially “Thing-um-a-jig!”

The Hunting of the Snark [1876]. Fit I, st. 9

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,

Tropics, Zones and Meridian Lines?”

So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply,

“They are merely conventional signs!”

The Hunting of the Snark, II, st. 3

There was silence supreme! Not a shriek, not a scream,

Scarcely even a howl or a groan,

As the man they called “Ho!” told his story of woe

In an antediluvian tone.

The Hunting of the Snark, III, st. 3

It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul.

The Hunting of the Snark, III, st. 11

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;

They pursued it with forks and hope;

They threatened its life with a railway share;

They charmed it with smiles and soap.

The Hunting of the Snark, V, st. 1

For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

The Hunting of the Snark, VIII, st. 9

He thought he saw an Elephant,

That practiced on a fife:

He looked again, and found it was

A letter from his wife.

“At length I realize,” he said,

“The bitterness of Life!”

Sylvie and Bruno [1889], ch. 5

He thought he saw an Albatross

That fluttered round the lamp:

He looked again, and found it was

A penny postage stamp.

“You’d best be getting home,” he said,

“The nights are very damp.”

Sylvie and Bruno, 12

H[enry] C[lay] Work

1832–1884

Father, dear father, come home with me now,

The clock in the belfry strikes one;

You said you were coming right home from the shop

As soon as your day’s work was done.

Come Home, Father [1864], st. 1

“Hurrah! hurrah! we bring the Jubilee!

Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!”

So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,

While we were marching through Georgia.

Marching Through Georgia [1865], chorus

Johannes Brahms

1833–1897

If there is anybody here I have not offended, I apologize.

Upon leaving a party; attributed

Major-General Charles C. Gordon

1833–1885

Now mark this, if the Expeditionary Force, and I ask no more than two hundred men, does not come in ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honor of our country. Goodbye.

Khartoum journal, final entry [December 14, 1885]

John Marshall Harlan

1833–1911

Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.

Dissenting opinion, Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537, 559 [1896]

Robert [Green] Ingersoll

1833–1899

Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners of his honor.

Speech nominating Blaine for President, National Republican Convention [June 15, 1876]

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

The Gods [1876]

Every cradle asks us “Whence?” and every coffin “Whither?” The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as well as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.

Address at a child’s grave [January 8, 1882]

We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead.

Address at a child’s grave

Justice is the only worship.

Love is the only priest.

Ignorance is the only slavery.

Happiness is the only good.

The time to be happy is now,

The place to be happy is here,

The way to be happy is to make others so.

Creed¹

Alfred Nobel

1833–1896

My factories may make an end of war sooner than your congresses. The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops.

From Bertha von Suttner, Memoiren [Stuttgart, 1909]

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton

1834–1902

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

Letter [January 23, 1861]

There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.

Letter to Mary Gladstone [April 24, 1881]

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Letter to Mary Gladstone

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton [April 5, 1887]

Advice to Persons About to Write History—Don’t.

Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, postscript

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The History of Freedom and Other Essays [1907], ch. 1

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned—the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

The History of Freedom and Other Essays, 8

Sabine Baring-Gould

1834–1924

Onward, Christian soldiers,

Marching as to war,

With the Cross of Jesus

Going on before!

Onward, Christian Soldiers² [1864], st. 1

Now the day is over,

Night is drawing nigh;

Shadows of the evening

Steal across the sky.

Now the Day Is Over [1865], st. 1

Charles Farrar Browne [Artemus Ward]

1834–1867

My pollertics, like my religion, bein of a exceedin accommodatin character.

Artemus Ward: His Book [1862]. The Crisis

The Puritans nobly fled from a land of despotism to a land of freedim, where they could not only enjoy their own religion, but could prevent everybody else from enjoyin his.¹

London Punch Letters, no. 5 [1866]

Edgar Degas

1834–1917

Drawing is not form, but a way of seeing form.

Quoted by Paul Valéry in Degas. Dance. Drawing [1937]

Some forms of success are indistinguishable from panic.²

Notebooks

A picture is something which requires as much knavery, trickery, and deceit as the perpetration of a crime. Paint falsely, and then add the accent of nature.

Attributed

Charles William Eliot

1834–1926

Enter to grow in wisdom.

Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.

Inscriptions on the 1890 Gate to Harvard Yard

To the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry:

The white officers, taking life and honor in their hands, cast in their lot with men of a despised race unproved in war, and risked death as inciters of servile insurrection if taken prisoners, besides encountering all the common perils of camp march and battle.

The black rank and file volunteered when disaster clouded the Union cause, served without pay for eighteen months till given that of white troops, faced threatened enslavement if captured, were brave in action, patient under heavy and dangerous labors, and cheerful amid hardships and privations.

Together they gave to the nation and the world undying proof that Americans of African descent possess the pride, courage, and devotion of the patriot soldier. One hundred and eighty thousand such Americans enlisted under the Union flag in 1863–1865.

Inscription on the Robert Gould Shaw Monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Boston Common [1897]³

Marshall Field

1834–1906

Give the lady what she wants!

Instruction to manager of his Chicago department store

Ernst Heinrich Haeckel

1834–1919

Ontogenesis, or the development of the individual, is a short and quick recapitulation of phylogenesis,⁴ or the development of the tribe to which it belongs, determined by the laws of inheritance and adaptation.

The History of Creation⁵ [1868]

Walter Kittredge

1834–1905

We’re tenting tonight on the old campground,

Give us a song to cheer

Our weary hearts, a song of home

And friends we love so dear.

Tenting on the Old Campground [1864], st. 1

William Morris

1834–1896

Had she come all the way for this,

To part at last without a kiss?

Yea, had she borne the dirt and rain

That her own eyes might see him slain

Beside the haystack in the floods?

The Haystack in the Floods [1858], l. 1

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,

Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?

The Earthly Paradise [1868–1870]. An Apology, st. 4

Love is enough, though the world be awaning.

Love Is Enough [1872]

If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

The Beauty of Life [1880]

What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realization at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth.

How I Became a Socialist [1894]

Frank [Richard] Stockton

1834–1902

Which came out of the opened door—the lady or the tiger?

The Lady or the Tiger? [1884]

James Thomson

1834–1882

The City is of Night; perchance of Death,

But certainly of Night.

The City of Dreadful Night [1874], st. 1

I find no hint throughout the Universe

Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse;

I find alone Necessity Supreme.

The City of Dreadful Night, st. 14

James McNeill Whistler

1834–1903

The rare few, who, early in life, have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies [1890]

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labor, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter—perfect in its bud as in its bloom—with no reason to explain its presence—no mission to fulfill—a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist—a puzzle to the botanist—an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

Art should be independent of all claptrap—should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

I am not arguing with you—I am telling you.

The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

Wilde: I wish I’d said that.

Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

From L. C. INGLEBY [1876–1923], Oscar Wilde [1907]

Thomas Brigham Bishop

1835–1905

John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave,

His soul is marching on.

John Brown’s Body, st. 1

Phillips Brooks

1835–1893

O little town of Bethlehem!

How still we see thee lie;

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by;

Yet in thy dark streets shineth

The everlasting Light;

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight.

O Little Town of Bethlehem [1867], st. 1

Samuel Butler

1835–1902

A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.

Life and Habit [1877], ch. 8

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.

Letter to Miss E. M. A. Savage [November 21, 1884]

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy—very unhappy—it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness.

The Way of All Flesh [1903], ch. 6

Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

The Way of All Flesh, 14

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

The Way of All Flesh, 19

Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.

Notebooks [1912]. Elementary Morality

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Notebooks. Life

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Notebooks. Life

God is Love—I dare say. But what a mischievous devil Love is!

Notebooks. God Is Love

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Notebooks. Truth and Convenience: Falsehood

Andrew Carnegie

1835–1919

Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.¹

Triumphant Democracy [1886]

Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.

Wealth. From the North American Review [June 1889]

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

Wealth. From the North American Review

The man who dies… rich dies disgraced.

Wealth. From the North American Review

Adah Isaacs Menken

1835–1868

Souls for sale! souls for sale!

Souls for gold! who’ll buy?

In the pent-up city, through the wild rush and beat of human hearts, I hear this unceasing, haunting cry:

Souls for sale! souls for sale!

Infelicia [1868]. Sale of Souls

Theodore Tilton

1835–1907

Pleasure comes, but not to stay:

Even this shall pass away!

The King’s Ring [1867]. Even This Shall Pass Away

Mark Twain² [Samuel Langhorne Clemens]

1835–1910

The serene confidence which a Christian feels in four aces.

Letter to The Golden Era (San Francisco) [May 22, 1864]

I have had a “call” to literature, of a low order—i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit… seriously scribbling to excite the laughter of God’s creatures.

Letter to Orion and Mary Clemens [October 19, 1865]

I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County³ [1865]

I’ll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

The Innocents Abroad [1869], ch. 19

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.

Roughing It [1872]

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

Sketches [1875]. A Mysterious Visit

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer [1876], ch. 2

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do.… Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 2

She makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won’t let me sleep in the woodshed.… The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 35

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.… Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it.

Speech. The Weather [1876]

I am a great & sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, & all His works must be contemplated with respect.

Letter to William Dean Howells [December 28(?), 1877]

I’m the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake.… When I’m playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder!

Life on the Mississippi [1883], ch. 3

I can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer’s morning… the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun.

Life on the Mississippi, 4

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

Life on the Mississippi, 6

Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.

Life on the Mississippi, 7

When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the reason that I have known him before—met him on the river.

Life on the Mississippi, 18

The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for six million dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it.

Life on the Mississippi, 22

There is no architecture in New Orleans, except in the cemeteries.

Life on the Mississippi, 41

All the modern inconveniences.

Life on the Mississippi, 43

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [1885]. Notice

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch. 1

It was kind of solemn, drifting down the big still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it warn’t often that we laughed, only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather, as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us at all, that night, nor the next, nor the next.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 12

We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 18

It was a monstrous big river down there.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 19

“Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin’, exiled, trampled-on, and sufferin’ rightful King of France.”

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 19

All kings is mostly rapscallions.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 23

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 26

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn’t make enough for them both to get drunk on.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 31

You can’t pray a lie.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 31

I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 31

I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 43

He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath-day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it.

Letter to William Dean Howells [February 27, 1885]

The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Letter to George Bainton [October 15, 1888]

We saw a faraway town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it, on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen, out of a picture.

“Bridgeport?” said I, pointing.

“Camelot,” said he.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court [1889]. A Word of Explanation

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, ch. 22

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 43

Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.

Pudd’nhead Wilson [1894]. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, ch. 1

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. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 2

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 5

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 8

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 10

As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 11

Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 15

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 16

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 19

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.

Pudd’nhead Wilson. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar, 19

[Citing a familiar “American joke”:] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us [1895]

He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly.

Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses [1895]

When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn’t say it. This is Cooper.

Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

Be good and you will be lonesome.

Following the Equator [1897]. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, frontispiece caption

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 5

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 7

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 8

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 10

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 19

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 practice either of them.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 20

“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 25

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 27

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others—his last breath.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 42

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. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 45

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 65

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

Following the Equator. Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, 66

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Note to London correspondent of the New York Journal [June 1, 1897]

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

Card sent to the Young People’s Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn [February 16, 1901]

The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.¹

The Czar’s Soliloquy [1905]

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.

Autobiographical Dictation [November 24, 1906]

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work.

Letter to an Unidentified Person [August 28, 1908]

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them, and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception ensues.

The Mysterious Stranger [1922], 9

Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

The Mysterious Stranger, 10

O kind missionary, O compassionate missionary, leave China! come home and convert these Christians!

Europe and Elsewhere [1923]. The United States of Lyncherdom

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man—the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Autobiography [1924], vol. I

[Man] has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights… sexual intercourse!… His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.

Letters from the Earth [1962], II

[The Bible] has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.

Letters from the Earth, III

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter.

From ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE [1861–1937], Mark Twain, A Biography [1912]

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.

Attributed

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.¹

Attributed

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Attributed

Isabella Mary Beeton

1836–1865

A place for everything and everything in its place.²

The Book of Household Management [1861]

Sir W[illiam] S[chwenck] Gilbert

1836–1911

My name is John Wellington Wells,

I’m a dealer in magic and spells,

 In blessings and curses

 And ever-filled purses,

In prophecies, witches, and knells.

The Sorcerer [1877], act 1

I’m called Little Buttercup—dear little Buttercup,

Though I could never tell why.

H.M.S. Pinafore [1878], act I

I am the Captain of the Pinafore;

And a right good captain too!

H.M.S. Pinafore, I

And I’m never, never sick at sea!

 What, never?

 No, never!

 What, never?

 Hardly ever!

He’s hardly ever sick at sea!

Then give three cheers, and one cheer more

For the hardy Captain of the Pinafore!

H.M.S. Pinafore, I

When I was a lad I served a term

As office boy to an Attorney’s firm.

I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor

And I polished up the handle of the big front door.

I polished up that handle so carefullee

That now I am the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

H.M.S. Pinafore, I

Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,

And you all may be Rulers of the Queen’s Navee!

H.M.S. Pinafore, I

Things are seldom what they seem,

Skim milk masquerades as cream.

H.M.S. Pinafore, II

He is an Englishman!

For he himself has said it,

And it’s greatly to his credit,

That he is an Englishman!

H.M.S. Pinafore, II

It is, it is a glorious thing

To be a Pirate King.

Pirates of Penzance [1879], act I

I am the very model of a modern Major-General.

I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,

I know the Kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,

From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

Pirates of Penzance, I

When the foeman bares his steel,

   Tarantara, tarantara!

We uncomfortable feel,

   Tarantara.

Pirates of Penzance, II

When constabulary duty’s to be done,

The policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

Pirates of Penzance, II

Come, friends, who plow the sea,

 Truce to navigation,

 Take another station;

Let’s vary piracee

With a little burglaree.³

Pirates of Penzance, II

You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind,

The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.

And everyone will say,

As you walk your mystic way,

“If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,

Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!”

Patience [1881], act I

Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band,

If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.

And everyone will say,

As you walk your flowery way,

“If he’s content with a vegetable love, which would certainly not suit me,

Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!”

Patience, I

Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!

Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow, ye masses.

Iolanthe [1882], act I

The Law is the true embodiment

Of everything that’s excellent.

It has no kind of fault or flaw,

And I, my Lords, embody the Law.

Iolanthe, I

I often think it’s comical

How nature always does contrive

That every boy and every gal,

That’s born into the world alive,

Is either a little Liberal,

Or else a little Conservative!

Iolanthe, II

The House of Peers, throughout the war,

Did nothing in particular,

 And did it very well.

Iolanthe, II

When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety,

I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety.

Iolanthe, II

For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich—

Which is something between a large bathing machine and a very small second-class carriage.

Iolanthe, II

Faint heart never won fair lady!

Nothing venture, nothing win—

Blood is thick, but water’s thin—

In for a penny, in for a pound¹—

It’s Love that makes the world go round!

Iolanthe, II

A wandering minstrel I—

 A thing of shreds and patches,

 Of ballads, songs and snatches,

And dreamy lullaby!

The Mikado [1885], act I

To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock,

In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,

Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,

From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.

The Mikado, I

I can’t help it. I was born sneering.

The Mikado, I

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,

I’ve got a little list—I’ve got a little list.

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed—who never would be missed.

The Mikado, I

Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,

All centuries but this, and every country but his own.

The Mikado, I

Three little maids from school are we,

Pert as a schoolgirl well can be,

Filled to the brim with girlish glee.

The Mikado, I

Ah, pray make no mistake,

We are not shy;

We’re very wide awake,

The moon and I!

The Mikado, II

Here’s a pretty state of things!

Here’s a pretty how-de-do!

The Mikado, II

My object all sublime

I shall achieve in time—

To let the punishment fit the crime.²

The Mikado, II

A source of innocent merriment!

The Mikado, II

   On a cloth untrue

   With a twisted cue

And elliptical billiard balls.

The Mikado, II

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

The Mikado, II

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la,

Have nothing to do with the case.

The Mikado, II

On a tree by a river a little tomtit

Sang “Willow, titwillow, titwillow!”

And I said to him, “Dicky-bird, why do you sit

Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow!’

“Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?” I cried,

“Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?”

With a shake of his poor little head he replied,

“Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!”

The Mikado, II

If you wish in the world to advance,

Your merits you’re bound to enhance,

 You must stir it and stump it,

 And blow your own trumpet,

Or, trust me, you haven’t a chance!

Ruddigore [1887], act I

When the footpads quail at the night-bird’s wail, and black dogs bay at the moon,

Then is the specters’ holiday—then is the ghosts’ high noon!

Ruddigore, II

No soldier in that gallant band

Hid half as well as he did.

He lay concealed throughout the war,

And so preserved his gore, O!

The Gondoliers [1889], act I

Of that there is no manner of doubt—

No probable, possible shadow of doubt—

No possible doubt whatever.

The Gondoliers, I

The gratifying feeling that our duty has been done.

The Gondoliers, II

When everyone is somebodee,

Then no one’s anybody!

The Gondoliers, II

Bret Harte [Francis Brett Harte]

1836–1902

Tell the boys I’ve got the Luck with me now.

The Luck of Roaring Camp [1868]

Beneath this tree lies the body of JOHN OAKHURST, who struck a streak of bad luck on the 23rd of November, 1850, and handed in his checks on the 7th of December, 1850.

The Outcasts of Poker Flat [1869]

Which I wish to remark,

And my language is plain,

That for ways that are dark

And for tricks that are vain,

The heathen Chinee is peculiar,

Which the same I would rise to explain.

Plain Language from Truthful James [1870]

Jane Ellice Hopkins

1836–1904

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.¹

Work Amongst Working Men [1870]

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

1836–1895

Through his passion nature has given man into woman’s hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.²

Venus in Furs [1870]

John Burroughs

1837–1921

One goes to Nature only for hints and half-truths. Her facts are crude until you have absorbed them or translated them.… It is not so much what we see as what the thing seen suggests.

Signs and Seasons [1886]. A Sharp Lookout

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

The Light of Day [1900]. The Modern Skeptic

We are rooted to the air through our lungs and to the soil through our stomachs. We are walking trees and floating plants.

Leaf and Tendril [1908]. The Grist of the Gods

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

Time and Change [1912]. The Gospel of Nature

Nature is always young, and there is no greater felicity than to share in her youth. I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

The Summit of the Years [1913]

Grover Cleveland

1837–1908

Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.³

Inaugural Address [March 4, 1885]

George Dewey

1837–1917

You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.

To the captain of Admiral Dewey’s flagship at the battle of Manila Bay [May 1, 1898]

William Dean Howells

1837–1920

Our novelists, therefore, concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and seek the universal in the individual rather than the social interests.

The Editor’s Study [Harper’s, September 1886]

Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.

My Mark Twain [1910]

What the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.

To EDITH WHARTON; quoted in her French Ways and Their Meaning [1919]

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.

Attributed

J[ohn] P[ierpont] Morgan

1837–1913

A man always has two reasons for what he does—a good one, and the real one.

From OWEN WISTER [1860–1938], Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship [1930]

Any man who has to ask about the annual upkeep of a yacht can’t afford one.

Attributed

Horace Porter

1837–1921

A mugwump is a person educated beyond his intellect.

A slogan of the Cleveland-Blaine campaign [1884]

Algernon Charles Swinburne

1837–1909

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

And the brown bright nightingale amorous

Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,

The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

Atalanta in Calydon [1865], chorus, st. 1

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Atalanta in Calydon, st. 4

Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears;

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure, with pain for leaven;

Summer, with flowers that fell;

Remembrance fallen from heaven,

And madness risen from hell;

Strength without hands to smite;

Love that endures for a breath;

Night, the shadow of light,

And life, the shadow of death.

Atalanta in Calydon, chorus, st. 1

O splendid and sterile Dolores,

Our Lady of Pain.

Dolores [1866], st. 9

The delight that consumes the desire,

The desire that outruns the delight.

Dolores, st. 14

What ailed us, O gods, to desert you

For creeds that refuse and restrain?

Come down and redeem us from virtue,

Our Lady of Pain.

Dolores, st. 35

Lo, this is she that was the world’s delight.

Laus Veneris [1866], st. 3

Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be

Where air might wash and long leaves cover me;

Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,

Or where the wind’s feet shine along the sea.

Laus Veneris, st. 14

I will go back to the great sweet mother,

Mother and lover of men, the sea.

The Triumph of Time [1866], st. 33

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end.

Hymn to Proserpine [1866], l. 1

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean;¹ the world has grown gray from thy breath;

We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.

Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;

But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.

Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;

For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.

Hymn to Proserpine, l. 35

If love were what the rose is,

And I were like the leaf,

Our lives would grow together

In sad or singing weather.

A Match [1866], st. 1

If you were April’s lady,

And I were lord in May.

A Match, st. 5

If you were queen of pleasure,

And I were king of pain,

We’d hunt down love together,

Pluck out his flying feather,

And teach his feet a measure,

And find his mouth a rein.

A Match, st. 6

Here, where the world is quiet;

Here, where all trouble seems

Dead winds’ and spent waves’ riot

In doubtful dreams of dreams.

The Garden of Proserpine [1866], st. 1

I am tired of tears and laughter,

And men that laugh and weep;

Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow and reap:

I am weary of days and hours,

Blown buds of barren flowers,

Desires and dreams and powers

And everything but sleep.

The Garden of Proserpine, st. 2

And the best and the worst of this is

That neither is most to blame,

If you have forgotten my kisses

And I have forgotten your name.

An Interlude [1866], st. 14

I am that which began;

Out of me the years roll;

Out of me God and man;

I am equal and whole;

God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

Hertha [1871], st. 1

Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn!

A Ballad of François Villon [1878], st. 3

Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother’s name.

A Ballad of François Villon, refrain

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,

At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee,

Walled round with rocks as an inland island,

The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.

A Forsaken Garden [1878], st. 1

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon,

If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live;

And to give thanks is good, and to forgive.

Ave Atque Vale: In Memory of Charles Baudelaire [1878], st. 17

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which.

The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell [1880], st. 7

Henry [Brooks] Adams

1838–1918

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

The Education of Henry Adams [1907], ch. 1

Accident counts for much in companionship as in marriage.

The Education of Henry Adams, 4

Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.

The Education of Henry Adams, 6

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

The Education of Henry Adams, 6

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

The Education of Henry Adams, 6

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or senator, and remain fit for anything else.

The Education of Henry Adams, 7

Friends are born, not made.

The Education of Henry Adams, 7

A friend in power is a friend lost.

The Education of Henry Adams, 7

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

The Education of Henry Adams, 10

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

The Education of Henry Adams, 11

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

The Education of Henry Adams, 12

The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest.

The Education of Henry Adams, 12

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

The Education of Henry Adams, 13

[Charles] Sumner’s mind had reached the calm of water which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contained nothing but itself.

The Education of Henry Adams, 16

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

The Education of Henry Adams, 17

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

The Education of Henry Adams, 20

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.

The Education of Henry Adams, 20

What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.

The Education of Henry Adams, 21

A presidential election was to take place in November, and no one showed much interest in the result. The two candidates were singular persons, of whom it was the common saying that one of them had no friends; the other, only enemies.

The Education of Henry Adams, 21

He had often noticed that six months’ oblivion amounts to newspaper death, and that resurrection is rare. Nothing is easier, if a man wants it, than rest, profound as the grave.

The Education of Henry Adams, 22

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

The Education of Henry Adams, 22

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

The Education of Henry Adams, 24

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

The Education of Henry Adams, 25

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

The Education of Henry Adams, 28

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and, when got, the repose is insupportable.

The Education of Henry Adams, 29

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

The Education of Henry Adams, 31

Even in America, the Indian summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone—but never hustled.

The Education of Henry Adams, 35

John Wilkes Booth

1838–1865

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!

After shooting President Lincoln [April 14, 1865]

This country was formed for the white, not for the black man.

Philadelphia Inquirer [April 19, 1865]. “To Whom It May Concern” Letter, November 1864

James Bryce

1838–1922

Europeans often ask, and Americans do not always explain, how it happens that this great office [the presidency], the greatest in the world, unless we except the Papacy, to which any man can rise by his own merits, is not more frequently filled by great and striking men.

The American Commonwealth [1888], vol. I, ch. 8

The government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States.

The American Commonwealth, I, 51

John Milton Hay

1838–1905

It [the Spanish-American War] has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave.

Letter to Theodore Roosevelt [July 27, 1898]

The open door.

To the Cabinet regarding completion of the trade policy he had negotiated with China [January 2, 1900]

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

1838–1903

The Augustinian doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized infants and the Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation… surpass in atrocity any tenets that have ever been admitted into any pagan creed.

History of European Morals [1869], vol. I, ch. 1

George Leybourne

1842–1886

He flies through the air with the greatest of ease,

This daring young man on the flying trapeze;

His figure is handsome, all girls he can please,

And my love he purloined her away!

The Man on the Flying Trapeze¹[1860]

Lydia Kamekeha Liliuokalani

1838–1917

Farewell to thee, farewell to thee…

Until we meet again.

Aloha Oe (Farewell to Thee) [1878]

John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn

1838–1923

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

Voltaire [1872]

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

Rousseau [1876]

The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.

Address on Aphorisms [1887]

John Muir

1838–1914

In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.²

Alaska Fragment [1890]

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

Our National Parks [1901]

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

My First Summer in the Sierra [1911]

All the wilderness seems to be full of tricks and plans to drive and draw us up into God’s light.

My First Summer in the Sierra

These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.

Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

The Yosemite [1912]

The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thought and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains—mountain-dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature’s workshops.

John of the Mountains [1938]

Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

John of the Mountains

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make—leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone—we all dwell in a house of one room—the world with the firmament for its roof—and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.

John of the Mountains

Philippe Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam

1838–1889

I have thought too much to stoop to action!³

Axël [1890]

Live? The servants will do that for us.⁴

Axël

Paul Cézanne

1839–1906

Taste is the best judge, but it is rare. Art is accessible only to a very small number of individuals.⁵

Letter to Émile Bernard [May 12, 1904]

Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate… give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.

From JOACHIM GASQUET [1873–1921], Paul Cézanne⁶[1921]

The landscape reflects itself, humanizes itself, thinks itself in me. I objectify it, project it, fix it upon my canvas.¹

From JOACHIM GASQUET, Paul Cézanne

Treat nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, all in perspective.

From ÉMILE BERNARD [1868–1941], Paul Cézanne [1925]

Monet is only an eye—but what an eye!²

From AMBROISE VOLLARD [1866–1939], Cézanne [1937], ch. 7

Francis Pharcellus Church

1839–1906

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.… Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.³

Editorial in the New York Sun [September 21, 1897]

Henry George

1839–1897

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

Progress and Poverty [1879]. Introductory: The Problem

Joaquim Machado de Assis

1839–1908

There is only one genuine misfortune: not to be born.⁴

Epitaph of a Small Winner [1881]

Walter Pater

1839–1894

Every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance [1873]. Mirandola

Hers is the head upon which all “the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed?

Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci [Mona Lisa]

She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has molded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci [Mona Lisa]

All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance. The School of Giorgione

Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Conclusion

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Conclusion

Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.

Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Conclusion

To know when one’s self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people.

Marius the Epicurean [1885], ch. 6

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art.

Appreciation [1889]. Postscript

Charles Sanders Peirce

1839–1914

Do not block the way of inquiry.

Collected Papers [1931–1958], vol. I, par. 135

The idea does not belong to the soul; it is the soul that belongs to the idea.

Collected Papers, I, 216

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

Collected Papers, V, 211

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

Collected Papers, V, 265

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

Collected Papers, VI, 191

Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.

Collected Papers, VII, 547

When I communicate my thought and my sentiments to a friend with whom I am in full sympathy, so that my feelings pass into him and I am conscious of what he feels, do I not live in his brain as well as in my own—most literally?

Collected Papers, VII, 591

In all the works on pedagogy that ever I read,—and they have been many, big, and heavy,—I don’t remember that any one has advocated a system of teaching by practical jokes, mostly cruel. That, however, describes the method of our great teacher, Experience.

Lectures on Pragmatism [1903]

James Ryder Randall

1839–1908

Avenge the patriotic gore

That flecked the streets of Baltimore,

And be the battle queen of yore,

Maryland! My Maryland!

Maryland! My Maryland! [1861], st. 1

John Davison Rockefeller

1839–1937

God gave me my money. I believe the power to make money is a gift from God.… I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.¹

In an interview [1905]

Alexander [Clubber] Williams

1839–1917

There is more law in a policeman’s nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court.

Attributed

I’ve been having chuck steak ever since I’ve been on the force, and now I’m going to have a bit of tenderloin.²

Attributed

[Henry] Austin Dobson

1840–1921

Time goes, you say? Ah no!

Alas, Time stays, we go.

The Paradox of Time [1875], st. 1

Thomas Hardy

1840–1928

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Hap [1866]

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 [1870], st. 1

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

The Hand of Ethelberta [1876]

In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen.

The Return of the Native [1878], ch. 1

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.

The Return of the Native, 1

The hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance, except, perhaps, fair play.

The Mayor of Casterbridge [1886], ch. 1

And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened, and little things ’a didn’t wish seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will be as nothing!

The Mayor of Casterbridge, 18

That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or be made to grieve on account of me. And that I be not buried in consecrated ground. And that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. And that nobody is wished to see my dead body. And that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. And that no flours be planted on my grave. And that no man remember me.

The Mayor of Casterbridge, 45 [Henchard’s will]

That cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles [1891], ch. 13

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, 59

But nobody did come, because nobody does.

Jude the Obscure [1895], pt. I, ch. 4

The fundamental error of their matrimonial union; that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling.

Jude the Obscure, I, 11

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was specter-gray,

And Winter’s dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The Darkling Thrush [1900], st. 1

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume.

The Darkling Thrush, st. 3

So little cause for carolings

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.

The Darkling Thrush, st. 4

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.

The Man He Killed [1902], st. 5

What of the Immanent Will and its designs?

It works unconsciously as heretofore,

External artistries in circumstance.

The Dynasts [1904–1908], pt. I, forescene

A local cult called Christianity.

The Dynasts, I, Spirit of the Years, sc. vi

My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

The Dynasts, II, Spirit Sinister

And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the Loss of the Titanic) [1914], st. 8

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.

The Voice [1914], st. 1

What of the faith and fire within us

 Men who march away

 Ere the barn cocks say

 Night is growing gray,

Leaving all that here can win us.

Men Who March Away [1914], st. 1

That night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares,

We thought it was the Judgment Day.

Channel Firing [1914], st. 1

We two kept house, the Past and I,

   The Past and I;

Through all my tasks it hovered nigh,

Leaving me never alone.

The Ghost of the Past [1914], st. 1

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.

In Time of “The Breaking of Nations” [1915]

Ah, no; the years, the years;

Down their chiseled names the raindrop plows.

During Wind and Rain [1917], st. 4

Chief Joseph¹

c. 1840–1904

Our chiefs are killed.… The old men are all dead.… The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I can find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.

To the Nez Percé tribe after surrender to General Nelson A. Miles [battle of Bear Paw Mountains, Montana, September 30–October 5, 1877]

Alfred Thayer Mahan

1840–1914

The world has never seen a more impressive demonstration of the influence of sea power upon its history. Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.

The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 [1892], vol. II, p. 118

Claude Monet

1840–1926

Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat… I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found—the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than impossible.

Quoted in Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the Twentieth Century [1998]

William Graham Sumner

1840–1910

The Forgotten Man… delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school… but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and the big divide. Such is the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays—but his chief business in life is to pay.… Who and where is the Forgotten Man in this case, who will have to pay for it all?

Speech. The Forgotten Man [1883]

John Addington Symonds

1840–1893

These things shall be—a loftier race

Than e’er the world hath known shall rise

With flame of freedom in their souls,

And light of knowledge in their eyes.

The Days That Are to Be, st. 1

Émile Zola

1840–1902

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.

My Hates [1866]

My own art is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside all rules and demands of society.

My Hates

Was not a bunch of carrots—yes, a bunch of carrots—studied from nature, and painted unaffectedly, in a personal style, worth all the everlasting smudges of the School of Arts, all that tobacco juice painting, cooked up according to certain given recipes? The day would come when one carrot, originally rendered, would lead to a revolution.¹

L’œuvre [1886]

Every morning, when you get up, swallow, on an empty stomach, a live toad.²

Tous les matins, en vous levant, à jeun, avalez-moi un bon crapaud vivant.

Advice to a young writer in “Le Crapaud” [1896]

Truth is on the march and nothing can stop it.

Article in Le Figaro [November 25, 1897]

J’accuse.

Title of open letter to the president of the French Republic, L’Aurore [January 13, 1898]

Georges Clemenceau

1841–1929

It is easier to make war than peace.³

Speech [1919]

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

Attributed

Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.

Attributed

Antonín Dvořák

1841–1904

I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies…. In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.

New York Herald [May 21, 1893]. The Real Value of Negro Melodies

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

1841–1935

The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.

The Common Law [1881], Lecture I

The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.

The Common Law, I

Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.

The Common Law, I

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Memorial Day Address [1884]

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.

Memorial Day Address

I say to you in all sadness of conviction, that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists.

The Profession of the Law [1886]

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

The Path of the Law [1897]

A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or, to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.

John Marshall [1901]

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.

Compañía de Tabacos v. Collector, 275 U.S. 87, 100 [1904]

Great cases like hard cases make bad law.

Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400 [1904]

General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.

Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 78

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

The Class of ’61. From Speeches [1913]

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.

Law and the Court [1913]

I recognize without hesitation that judges do and must legislate, but they can do so only interstitially; they are confined from molar to molecular motions.

Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 221 [1917]

The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified.

Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222 [1917]

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Natural Law [1918]

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.… The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 [1919]

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 [1919]

I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn.

Letter to Sir Frederick Pollock [1920]

Upon this point a page of history is worth a volume of logic.

New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 [1921]

It is said that this manifesto is more than a theory, that it was an incitement. Every idea is an incitement.

Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 673 [1925]

Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 [1927]

The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.

Panhandle Oil Co. v. Knox, 277 U.S. 223 [1928]

For my part I think it a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the government should play an ignoble part.… If the existing code does not permit district attorneys to have a hand in such dirty business [wiretapping], it does not permit the judge to allow such iniquities to succeed.

Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 470 [1928]

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644, 653 [1928]

The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one’s self: “The work is done.” But just as one says that, the answer comes: “The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains.” The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be, while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living.

Radio address on his ninetieth birthday [March 8, 1931]

Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God.

Reply to a reporter’s question on his ninetieth birthday [March 8, 1931]

Oh, to be seventy again!¹

At ninety, upon seeing a beautiful young woman. Attributed

[On Franklin D. Roosevelt:] Second-class intellect, first-class temperament.

Attributed

W[illiam] H[enry] Hudson

1841–1922

I… thanked the Author of my being for the gift of that wild forest, those green mansions where I had found so great a happiness!

Green Mansions [1904], ch. 5

Joaquin [Cincinnatus Hiner or Heine] Miller

c. 1841–1913

He gained a world; he gave that world

Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

Columbus [1892], st. 5

Pierre Auguste Renoir

1841–1919

I have a predilection for painting that lends joyousness to a wall.

From AMBROISE VOLLARD [1866–1939], Renoir [1919]

Sir Henry Morton Stanley

1841–1904

Doctor Livingstone, I presume?

On meeting David Livingstone in Ujiji, Central Africa [November 10, 1871]

Ambrose Bierce

1842–c. 1914

Mark how my fame rings out from zone to zone:

A thousand critics shouting: “He’s unknown!”

Couplet

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

In the Midst of Life²[1891]. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Achievement, n. the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

The Devil’s Dictionary³ [1906]

Advice, n. the smallest current coin.

The Devil’s Dictionary

Bore, n. a person who talks when you wish him to listen.

The Devil’s Dictionary

Cynic, n. a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

The Devil’s Dictionary

Habit, n. a shackle for the free.

The Devil’s Dictionary

Lawsuit, n. a machine which you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage.

The Devil’s Dictionary

Marriage, n. a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

The Devil’s Dictionary

Prejudice, n. a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

The Devil’s Dictionary

Saint, n. a dead sinner revised and edited.

The Devil’s Dictionary

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Capsule book review. Attributed

William James

1842–1910

I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “This is the real me!”

Letter to his wife, Alice Gibbons James [1878]

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

The Dilemma of Determinism [1884]

Habit is… the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.

The Principles of Psychology [1890], ch. 4

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

The Principles of Psychology, 4

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

The Principles of Psychology, 4

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.

The Principles of Psychology, 4

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.… Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

The Principles of Psychology, 4

Consciousness… does not appear to itself chopped up in bits.… A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

The Principles of Psychology, 9

As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird’s life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.

The Principles of Psychology, 9

As the brain changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.

The Principles of Psychology, 9

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that… it is always interested more in one part of its object [thought] than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

The Principles of Psychology, 9

And our bodies themselves, are they simply ours, or are they us?

The Principles of Psychology, 10

In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

The Principles of Psychology, 10

The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.

The Principles of Psychology, 13

Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.

The Principles of Psychology, 15

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

The Principles of Psychology, 19

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

The Principles of Psychology, 22

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science [1892]

Our faith is faith in someone else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other,—what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up?

The Will to Believe [1896]. Is Life Worth Living?

In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.

The Will to Believe. Is Life Worth Living?

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.

The Will to Believe. Is Life Worth Living?

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

The Will to Believe. Is Life Worth Living?

All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience.

The Will to Believe. The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.

The Will to Believe. The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: “There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important.” This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.

The Will to Believe. The Importance of Individuals

Religion… shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude.

The Varieties of Religious Experience [1902], lecture 2

Religion… is a man’s total reaction upon life.

The Varieties of Religious Experience, 2

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

The Varieties of Religious Experience, 3

There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life’s significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

The Varieties of Religious Experience, 7

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.

The Varieties of Religious Experience, 16

No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner.

The Varieties of Religious Experience, 20

The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.

The Varieties of Religious Experience, 20

No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance.

The Varieties of Religious Experience. Postscript

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

Letter to W. Lutoslawski [May 6, 1906]

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 [September 11, 1906]

The philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos.

Pragmatism [1907], lecture 1

No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, “categories,” supposed necessities; and of looking toward last things, fruits, consequences, facts.

Pragmatism, 2

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

Pragmatism, 3

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

Pragmatism, 6

Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational.

A Pluralistic Universe [1909], lecture 8

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war’s irrationality and horror is of no effect upon him. The horrors make the fascination.

Memories and Studies [1910]. The Moral Equivalent of War

History is a bath of blood.

Memories and Studies

The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it.

Memories and Studies

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

One need only shut oneself in a closet and begin to think of the fact of one’s being there, of one’s queer bodily shape in the darkness (a thing to make children scream at, as Stevenson says), of one’s fantastic character and all, to have the wonder steal over the detail as much as over the general fact of being, and to see that it is only familiarity that blunts it. Not only that anything should be, but that this very thing should be, is mysterious! Philosophy stares, but brings no reasoned solution, for from nothing to being there is no logical bridge.

Some Problems of Philosophy [1911], ch. 3

The “through-and-through” universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all- pervasiveness.… It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak in the name of the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides.

Essays in Radical Empiricism [1912], ch. 12, Absolutism and Empiricism

Prince Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin

1842–1921

Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle… mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle.

Mutual Aid [1902]

Sidney Lanier

1842–1881

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

The Marshes of Glynn [1877], l. 65

As the marsh hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh hen flies

In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:

By so many roots as the marsh grass sends in the sod

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:

Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within

The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

The Marshes of Glynn, l. 71

Into the woods my Master went,

Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came,

Forspent with love and shame.

A Ballad of Trees and the Master [1877], st. 1

Stéphane Mallarmé

1842–1898

Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only spiritual task there is.¹

Letter to Leo d’Orfer [June 27, 1884]

The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.²

Poésies [1887]. Brise Marine (Sea Breeze)

Such as into himself at last Eternity has changed him.³

Poésies. Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe

A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance.⁴

Poésies. Title of poem

To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little: to suggest it, that is the ideal.¹

Sur l’Évolution Littéraire [Enquête de Jules Huret, 1891]

The whole world is made to end up in a beautiful book.²

Sur l’Évolution Littéraire

You don’t make a poem with ideas, but with words.³

From PAUL VALÉRY, Degas, Danse, Dessin [1936]

George Washington Plunkitt

1842–1924

[Definition of “honest graft”:] I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.

From WILLIAM L. RIORDON [1861–1909], Plunkitt of Tammany Hall [1905]

Russell H. Conwell

1843–1925

I say you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich.… Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it! You ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it.

Acres of Diamonds [1890]

Henry James

1843–1916

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination.… To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

Letter to Charles Eliot Norton [January 16, 1871]

It’s a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe.

Letter [1872] quoted in PERCY LUBBOCK [1879–1965], Letters of Henry James [1920], vol. I, biographical note

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 unperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial—he was parochial.

Hawthorne, 4

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

The Portrait of a Lady [1881], ch. 1

The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his—attached to his own like a small garden plot to a deer park.

The Portrait of a Lady, 42

Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

Letter to Grace Norton [July 28, 1883]

His great, his inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of the usual.

Partial Portraits [1888]. Anthony Trollope

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.

The Art of Fiction [1888]

If I should certainly say to a novice, “Write from experience and experience only,” I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.”

The Art of Fiction

We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donnée: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.… If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

The Art of Fiction

There are few things more exciting to me… than a psychological reason.

The Art of Fiction

The sense of having done the best—the sense, which is the real life of the artist and the absence of which is his death, of having drawn from his intellectual instrument the finest music that nature had hidden in it, of having played it as it should be played. He either does that or he doesn’t—and if he doesn’t he isn’t worth speaking of.

The Lesson of the Master [1888]

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.

The Middle Years [1893]

Vereker’s secret… the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.

The Figure in the Carpet [1896]

I have the imagination of disaster, and see life indeed as ferocious and sinister.

Letter to A. C. Benson [June 29, 1896]

I caught him, yes, I held him—it may be imagined with what passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.

The Turn of the Screw [1898], ending

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.

To his nephew Billy James [1902], as cited in Leon Edel: The Master, 1901–1916

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?… What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that.… The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.… Live!

The Ambassadors [1903], bk. V, ch. 2

The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million—a number of possible windows not to be reckoned rather; every one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will.

Prefaces [1907–1909]. The Portrait of a Lady

The fatal futility of Fact.

Prefaces. The Spoils of Poynton

The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.

Prefaces. What Maisie Knew

The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.

Prefaces. The Aspern Papers

In art economy is always beauty.

Prefaces. The Altar of the Dead

I’m glad you like adverbs—I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

Letter to Miss M. Betham Edwards [January 5, 1912]

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art… what we are talking about—and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth—I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.

Letter to Hugh Walpole [August 21, 1913]

It is beyond measure odd, doubtless, that my main association with my “studies,” whether of the infant or the adolescent order, should be with almost anything but the fact of learning—of learning, I mean, what I was supposed to learn.

A Small Boy and Others [1913], ch. 15

I still, in presence of life… have reactions—as many as possible.… It’s, I suppose, because I am that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality, an inexhaustible sensibility. Hence the reactions—appearances, memories, many things, go on playing upon it with consequences that I note and “enjoy” (grim word!) noting. It all takes doing—and I do. I believe I shall do yet again—it is still an act of life.

Letter to Henry Adams [March 21, 1914]

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Letter to H. G. Wells [July 10, 1915]

So it has come at last—the Distinguished Thing.

Of his final illness [December 2, 1915]

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

Quoted by EDITH WHARTON [1862–1937],A Backward Glance [1934], ch. 10

William McKinley

1843–1901

There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could for them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died.

On his decision to claim the Philippine Islands for the United States [1899]

Sarah Bernhardt

1844–1923

Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrity when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.

My Double Life [1907]

Robert Bridges

1844–1930

When men were all asleep, the snow came flying,

In large white flakes falling on the city brown,

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,

Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town.

Shorter Poems, bk. III [1880], no. 2 (London Snow), l. 1

Anatole France [Jacques Anatole François Thibault]

1844–1924

I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard¹[1881]. The Log, December 24, 1849

Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, II, 4

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, II, 4

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

The Red Lily [1894], ch. 7

Gerard Manley Hopkins

1844–1889

It is a happy thing that there is no royal road to poetry. The world should know by this time that one cannot reach Parnassus except by flying thither.

Diary entry [spring 1864]

And I have asked to be

   Where no storms come,

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

   And out of the swing of the sea.

Poems²[1918]. No. 20, Heaven-Haven, st. 2

Elected Silence, sing to me

And beat upon my whorlèd ear,

Pipe me to pastures still and be

The music that I care to hear.

Poems. No. 24, The Habit of Perfection, st. 1

   Thou mastering me

   God! giver of breath and bread;

   World’s strand, sway of the sea;

Lord of living and dead;

Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,

And after it almost unmade, what with dread,

Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?

Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

Poems. No. 28, The Wreck of the Deutschland, st. 1

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

Poems. No. 31, God’s Grandeur, l. 1

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

Poems. No. 32, The Starlight Night, l. 1

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush.

Poems. No. 33, Spring, l. 1

I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn

  Falcon, in his riding

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy!

Poems. No. 36, The Windhover, l. 1

Brute beauty and valor and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here

Buckle!

Poems. No. 36, The Windhover, l. 9

Glory be to God for dappled things.

Poems. No. 37, Pied Beauty, l. 1

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

 Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

 With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

Poems. No. 37, Pied Beauty, l. 7

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise

 Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behavior

 Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-wavier

Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies?

Poems. No. 38, Hurrahing in Harvest, st. 1

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Poems. No. 55, Spring and Fall: To A Young Child, l. 1

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Poems. No. 55, Spring and Fall: To A Young Child, l. 12

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Poems. No. 56, Inversnaid, l. 13

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame.

Poems. No. 57, l. 1

How to keep—is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep

Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty… from vanishing away?

Poems. No. 59, The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo, l. 1

I say that we are wound

With mercy round and round

As if with air.

Poems. No. 60, The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe, l. 34

World-mothering air, air wild,

Wound with thee, in thee isled,

Fold home, fast fold thy child.

Poems. No. 60, The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe, l. 124

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man

In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

Poems. No. 64, Carrion Comfort, l. 1

That night, that year

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Poems. No. 64, Carrion Comfort, l. 13

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Poems. No. 65, No Worst, l. 1

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.

Poems. No. 65, No Worst, l. 9

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night.

Poems. No. 69, I Wake and Feel, l. 1

I am gall, I am heartburn.

Poems. No. 69, I Wake and Feel, l. 9

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

   Is immortal diamond.

Poems. No. 72, That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection, l. 22

No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic style. But as air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music, and design in painting, so design, pattern, or what I am in the habit of calling inscape is what I above all aim at in poetry. Now it is the virtue of design, pattern, or inscape to be distinctive, and it is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I cannot have escaped.

Letter to Robert Bridges [February 15, 1879]

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

1844–1900

Dionysian stirrings arise either through the influence of those narcotic potions of which all primitive races speak in their hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, which penetrates with joy the whole frame of nature. So stirred, the individual forgets himself completely.… His Apollinian consciousness was but a thin veil hiding from him the whole Dionysian realm.

The Birth of Tragedy¹ [1872]

Only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.

The Birth of Tragedy

If certain words and turns of phrase habitual in today’s journalism do not inspire physical disgust, then abandon your pursuit of culture.

Anti-Education² [1872]

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.

Human, All Too Human³[1878], sec. 7

Every tradition grows ever more venerable—the more remote is its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.

Human, All Too Human, 96

Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity.

The Gay Science¹[1882], sec. 4

Masters of the first rank are revealed by the fact that in great as well as small matters they know how to end perfectly, whether it is a matter of ending a melody or a thought, or the fifth act of a tragedy or an action of state. The best of the second rank always become restless as the end approaches and do not manage to slope into the sea in such proud and calm harmony as, for example, the mountains at Portofino—where the Bay of Genoa ends its melody.

The Gay Science, 281

When Zarathustra was alone… he said to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!”²

Thus Spake Zarathustra³[1883–1891], prologue, ch. 2

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, prologue, 3

I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is the Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, prologue, 7

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, II, 29

If ye would go up high, then use your own legs! Do not get yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people’s backs and heads!

Thus Spake Zarathustra, IV, 73

One is no longer at home anywhere; at last one longs to return to that place in which one can somehow be at home, because it is the only place in which one would want to be at home: the Greek world!

Notebook [1885]

It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable.

Beyond Good and Evil⁴[1885–1886], pt. I, sec. 18

It is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.

Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 72

In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.

Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 139

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 146

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets successfully through many a bad night.

Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 157

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 217

Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 227

Mozart, the last chord of a centuries-old great European taste.

Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 245

The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed.

Genealogy of Morals [1887], essay 1, aphorism 9

At the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey is not to be mistaken, the magnificent blond beast, avidly rampant for spoil and victory.

Genealogy of Morals, 1, 11

The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him “better.”

Genealogy of Morals, 2, 15

The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.

Genealogy of Morals, 3, 14

There was really only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

The Antichrist⁵[1888], aphorism 39

Only sick music makes money these days.

The Case of Wagner⁵[1888]

Amor fati: that is my innermost nature. And as regards my long sickness, do I not owe to it unutterably more than I owe to my health?

Nietzsche contra Wagner⁶[1888]

What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man?

The Twilight of the Idols [1888]. Things the Germans Lack, sec. 2

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.

The Twilight of the Idols. Things the Germans Lack, 38

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book—what everyone else does not say in a whole book.

The Twilight of the Idols. Things the Germans Lack, 51

Love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.

The Antichrist¹[1888], aphorism 23

Life always gets harder toward the summit—the cold increases, responsibility increases.

The Antichrist, 57

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too petty—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.

The Antichrist, 62

My doctrine is: Live that thou mayest desire to live again—that is thy duty—for in any case thou wilt live again!

Eternal Recurrence, sec. 27

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening, and not only the grapes are getting brown, a ray of sunlight has just fallen on my life: I looked behind me, I looked before me, and never have I seen so many good things all at once.

Ecce Homo¹ [1888]

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

Ecce Homo

Wherever Germany extends her sway, she ruins culture.

Ecce Homo

As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.

Ecce Homo

My time has not yet come either; some are born posthumously.

Ecce Homo

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

Ecce Homo

One must separate from anything that forces one to repeat No again and again.

Ecce Homo

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy

1844–1881

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.

Ode, st. 1

William Archibald Spooner²

1844–1930

Kinquering Congs their titles take.

Announcing the hymn in college chapel

I remember your name perfectly, but I just can’t think of your face.

Attributed

Paul Verlaine

1844–1896

The long sobs

Of the violins

Of autumn

Pierce my heart

With monotonous languor.³

Poèmes Saturniens (Poems Under Saturn) [1866]. Chanson d’Automne (Autumn Song)

There is weeping in my heart

Like the rain falling on the city.⁴

Romances sans Paroles (Songs Without Words) [1874], poem III

Take eloquence and wring its neck!⁵

Jadis et Naguère (Recently and Formerly) [1884]. L’Art Poetique

And all else is literature.¹

Jadis et Naguère. L’Art Poetique

John B. Bogart

1845–1921

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.

From FRANK M. O’BRIEN [1875–1943], The Story of The (New York) Sun [1918]

W[illiam] K[ingdon] Clifford

1845–1879

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

The Ethics of Belief [1876]

George Saintsbury

1845–1933

Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare.

A Last Scrap Book [1924]

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.

The Book of the Queen’s Dolls’ House [1924]

Punch

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

vol. X, pt. 16 [1846]

What is Matter?—Never mind.

What is Mind?—No matter.

XXIX, 19 [1855]

I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr. Jones.

Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!

CIX, 222 [1895]

Charles Dupee Blake

1846–1903

Rock-a-bye-baby on the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Attributed

Comte de Lautréamont [Isidore Ducasse]

1846–1870

Beautiful… as the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.²

Les Chants de Maldoror [1868–1869]

Charles Prestwich Scott

1846–1932

The primary office of a newspaper is the gathering of news… comment is free, but facts are sacred.

In the Manchester Guardian [May 6, 1926]

Edward Noyes Westcott

1846–1898

Do unto the other feller the way he’d like to do unto you, and do it fust.

David Harum [1898]

Alexander Graham Bell

1847–1922

Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.³

To his assistant [March 10, 1876]

Thomas A[lva] Edison

1847–1931

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whisky. Much better.

Hearst’s International Combined with Cosmopolitan magazine [March 1929]

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Life [1932], ch. 24

Giuseppe Giacosa

1847–1906

and

Luigi Illica

1857–1919

Your tiny hand is frozen, let me warm it in mine.⁴

La Bohème⁵[1896], act I

I lived for art, I lived for love; never did I harm a living soul.¹

Tosca²[1900], act II

Henry Demarest Lloyd

1847–1903

Corporations have no souls, but they can love each other.

Wealth Against Commonwealth [1894]

Albert Pinkham Ryder

1847–1917

The artist needs but a roof, a crust of bread, and his easel, and all the rest God gives him in abundance. He must live to paint and not paint to live.

Attributed

Bram [Abraham] Stoker

1847–1912

Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!

Dracula [1897], ch. 2

For my own part, I don’t believe in a partial liar—this art does not deal in veneer; a liar is a liar right through. Self-interest may prompt falsity of the tongue; but if one prove to be a liar, nothing that he says can ever be believed.

The Lair of the White Worm [1911]

Arthur James Balfour

1848–1930

His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors 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.

The Balfour Declaration. Letter to Lionel Walter, Lord Rothschild [November 2, 1917]

Paul Gauguin

1848–1903

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?³

Title of painting [1897–1898]

Joel Chandler Harris

1848–1908

Jaybird don’t rob his own nes’.

Uncle Remus Songs and Sayings [1886]. Plantation Proverbs

Youk’n hide de fier, but w’at you gwine do wid de smoke?

Uncle Remus: Plantation Proverbs

Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox.

Uncle Remus and His Friends [1892]

Joris Karl Huysmans

1848–1907

The loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own.

À Rebours (Against the Grain)⁴[1884], ch. 9

Alice James

1848–1892

I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn’t happen, I may lose a little of the sense of loneliness and desolation which abides with me.

Diary [May 1889], first entry

Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by-the-way?

Diary [July 12, 1889]

When will women begin to have the first glimmer that above all other loyalties is the loyalty to Truth, i.e., to yourself, that husband, children, friends and country are as nothing to that?

Diary [November 19, 1889]

I suppose one has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience.

Letter to her brother William [September 27, 1890]

Richard Jefferies

1848–1887

It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.

The Story of My Heart [1883]

Sir Edmund [William] Gosse

1849–1928

My father’s theory¹… was defined by a hasty press as being this—that God hid the fossils in the rocks in order to tempt geologists into infidelity.

Father and Son [1907]

With all his faith in the Word of God, he had no confidence in the Divine Benevolence; and with all his passionate piety, he habitually mistook fear for love.

Father and Son

William Ernest Henley

1849–1903

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,

I have not winced nor cried aloud;

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Echoes [1888], no. 4, In Memoriam R. T. Hamilton Bruce (“Invictus”), st. 1, 2

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

Echoes, 4, In Memoriam R. T. Hamilton Bruce (“Invictus”), st. 4

Or ever the knightly years were gone

With the old world to the grave,

I was a King in Babylon

And you were a Christian Slave.

Echoes, 37, To W. A., st. 1

Sarah Orne Jewett

1849–1909

Wrecked on the lee shore of age.

The Country of the Pointed Firs [1896], ch. 7

We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water’s edge.

The Country of the Pointed Firs, 7

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.

The Country of the Pointed Firs, 15

Even funerals in this country of the pointed firs were not without their social advantages and satisfactions.

The Country of the Pointed Firs, 19

To work in silence and with all one’s heart, that is the writer’s lot; he is the only artist who must be solitary and yet needs the widest outlook on the world.

Letter to Willa Cather [December 1908]

Emma Lazarus

1849–1887

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.²

The New Colossus: Inscription for the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor [1883]

Sir William Osler

1849–1919

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

Montreal Medical Journal [1902]

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.

Science and Immortality [1904], ch. 2

Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature—subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today.… The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.³

From HARVEY CUSHING [1869–1939], The Life of Sir William Osler [1925], vol. I, ch. 24 [The Fixed Period]

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.¹

From HARVEY CUSHING, The Life of Sir William Osler, I, 24 [The Fixed Period]

James Whitcomb Riley

1849–1916

The ripest peach is highest on the tree.

The Ripest Peach, st. 1

An’ all us other children, when the supper things is done,

We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun

A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ’at Annie tells about,

An’ the Gobble-uns ’at gits you

Ef you

 Don’t

   Watch

      Out!

Little Orphant Annie [1883], st. 1

Oh! the old swimmin’ hole! When I last saw the place,

The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face.

The Old Swimmin’ Hole [1883], st. 5

O, it sets my heart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

When the Frost Is on the Punkin [1883], st. 3

August Strindberg

1849–1912

An author’s summary judgments of people—this one is stupid, that one brutal, this one jealous, that one stingy—should be challenged by naturalists, who know how rich the soul-complex is and realize that “vice” has a reverse side closely resembling virtue.

Note to Miss Julie [1888]

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.

A Madman’s Diary [1895], pt. 3

Edward Bellamy

1850–1898

We hold the period of youth sacred to education, and the period of maturity, when the physical forces begin to flag, equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation.

Looking Backward, 2000–1887 [1888], ch. 6

The nation guarantees the nurture, education, and comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.

Looking Backward, 9

Hermann Ebbinghaus

1850–1909

Psychology has a long past, but only a short history.

Abriss der Psychologie (Summary of Psychology) [1908], opening sentence

Eugene Field

1850–1895

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night

Sailed off in a wooden shoe—

Sailed on a river of crystal light

Into a sea of dew.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod (Dutch Lullaby) [1889], st. 1

The little toy dog is covered with dust,

But sturdy and staunch he stands;

And the little toy soldier is red with rust,

And his musket molds in his hands;

Time was when the little toy dog was new,

And the soldier was passing fair;

And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue

Kissed them and put them there.

Little Boy Blue [1889], st. 1

’Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain’t no flies on me,

But jest ’fore Christmas I’m as good as I kin be!

Jest ’Fore Christmas [1894], st. 1

Samuel Gompers

1850–1924

To protect the workers in their inalienable rights to a higher and better life; to protect them, not only as equals before the law, but also in their health, their homes, their firesides, their liberties as men, as workers, and as citizens; to overcome and conquer prejudices and antagonism; to secure to them the right to life, and the opportunity to maintain that life; the right to be full sharers in the abundance which is the result of their brain and brawn, and the civilization of which they are the founders and the mainstay.… The attainment of these is the glorious mission of the trade unions.

Speech [1898]

Jane Ellen Harrison

1850–1928

To be a heretic today is almost a human obligation.

Heresy and Humanity [1911]

[Patricio] Lafcadio Hearn [Koizumi Yakumo]

1850–1904

We owe more to our illusions than to our knowledge.

Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan: First Series [1894]

Mary Ellen [Mary Elizabeth] Lease

1850–1933

Raise less corn and more hell!

Advice to Kansas farmers [1890]. Attributed

Henry Cabot Lodge

1850–1924

Let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans.… If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

The Day We Celebrate (Forefathers’ Day). Address, New England Society of Brooklyn [December 21, 1888]

Bill [Edgar Wilson] Nye

1850–1896

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

From Mark Twain’s Autobiography [1924]

Robert Louis Stevenson

1850–1894

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Travels with a Donkey [1878]

Marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses.

Virginibus Puerisque [1881], pt. I, ch. 1

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

Virginibus Puerisque, I, 4, Truth of Intercourse

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

Virginibus Puerisque, II, Crabbed Age and Youth

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

Virginibus Puerisque, III, An Apology for Idlers

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Virginibus Puerisque, III, An Apology for Idlers

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

Virginibus Puerisque, III, An Apology for Idlers

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

Virginibus Puerisque, VI, El Dorado

Now, we know that life is only a stage to play the fool upon as long as the part amuses us. There was one more convenience lacking to modern comfort; a decent easy way to quit that stage; the back stairs to liberty; or, as I said this moment, Death’s private door. This… is supplied by the Suicide Club.

New Arabian Nights [1882]. The Suicide Club

Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—¹

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest—

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Treasure Island [1883], ch. 1

“What is the Black Spot, Captain?”…“That’s a summons, mate.”

Treasure Island, 3

Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight!

Treasure Island, 10

Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.

Treasure Island, 20

Sightseeing is the art of disappointment.

The Silverado Squatters [1883]

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candlelight.

In summer, quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.

A Child’s Garden of Verses [1885]. Bed in Summer, st. 1

A child should always say what’s true

And speak when he is spoken to,

And behave mannerly at table;

At least as far as he is able.

A Child’s Garden of Verses. Whole Duty of Children

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

A Child’s Garden of Verses. Windy Nights, st. 1

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the land of Nod.

A Child’s Garden of Verses. The Land of Nod, st. 3

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

A Child’s Garden of Verses. My Shadow, st. 1

The world is so full of a number of things,

I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

A Child’s Garden of Verses. Happy Thought

When children are playing alone on the green,

In comes the playmate that never was seen.

When children are happy and lonely and good,

The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.

A Child’s Garden of Verses. The Unseen Playmate

He does not hear; he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.

A Child’s Garden of Verses. To Any Reader

All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1886], ch. 10

They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are; being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel.

Kidnapped [1886], ch. 7

Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck.

Memories and Portraits [1887]. A Gossip on Romance

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought.

A Gossip on Romance [1882]

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

 And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

 And the hunter home from the hill.

Underwoods [1887], bk. I, In English. Requiem

My body which my dungeon is,

And yet my parks and palaces.

Underwoods, I, In English. My Body Which My Dungeon Is

Do you know what the Governor of South Carolina said to the Governor of North Carolina? It’s a long time between drinks, observed that powerful thinker.

The Wrong Box, 8

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

Across the Plains [1892]. Lay Morals

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong. I do not say give them up, for they may be all you have, but conceal them like a vice lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

Across the Plains. Lay Morals

Here lies one who meant well, tried a little, failed much:—surely that may be his epitaph of which he need not be ashamed.

Across the Plains. Lay Morals

The untented Kosmos my abode,

I pass, a willful stranger;

My mistress still the open road

And the bright eyes of danger.

Songs of Travel [1896]. Youth and Love, st. 3

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,

With eyes of gold and bramble dew,

Steel-true and blade-straight

The great artificer

Made my mate.

Songs of Travel. My Wife, st. 1

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,

Hills of home!

Songs of Travel. To S. R. Crockett, st. 3

Ice and iron cannot be welded.

Weir of Hermiston [1896]

Our mission in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in the best of spirits.

Letters and Miscellanies of Robert Louis Stevenson [1898]. Reflection and Remarks on Human Life

Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere.… Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.

Prayer¹

Youth is wholly experimental.

Letter to a Young Gentleman

Rose Hartwick Thorpe

1850–1939

She breathed the husky whisper—

“Curfew must not ring tonight.”

Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight [1882], st. 2

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1850–1919

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone.

Solitude,²st. 1

Kate Chopin [Katherine O’Flaherty]

1851–1904

Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her.

The Awakening [1899], ch. VI

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.

The Awakening, VI

She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.

The Awakening, XIX

Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.

The Awakening, XXXVIII

Ferdinand Foch

1851–1929

My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking.³

At the second battle of the Marne [1918]. From B. H. LIDDELL HART, Reputations Ten Years After [1928]

[On the Treaty of Versailles:] This is not peace. It is an armistice for twenty years.

[1919]

David Starr Jordan

1851–1931

“Whatever is not nailed down is mine.” This is the motto of the exploiter. “Whatever can be pried loose is not nailed down.” This is the second maxim in a country where people are rich, caring little in their present prosperity what shall become of the future.

The Call of the Nation: A Plea for Taking Politics out of Politics [1910]

The whole civilized world is still organized more or less completely on the basis of the War System. Democracy demands escape from it, but nowhere has perfect democracy yet existed, because nowhere yet has any nation fully emerged from the shadow of menace.

War and the Breed: The Relation of War to the Downfall of Nations [1915]

Augusta, Lady Gregory

1852–1932

It’s a queer world, sergeant, and it’s little any mother knows when she sees her child creeping on the floor what might happen to it before it has gone through its life, or who will be who in the end.

The Rising of the Moon [1903]

Edwin Markham

1852–1940

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.

The Man with the Hoe¹[1899], st. 1

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,

Is this the handiwork you give to God?

The Man with the Hoe, st. 3

A man to match the mountains² and the sea.

Lincoln, The Man of the People [1901], st. 1

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth,

The smack and tang of elemental things.

Lincoln, The Man of the People, st. 2

He went down

As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,

Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,

And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Lincoln, The Man of the People, st. 4

José [Julian] Martí [y Perez]

1853–1895

A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one’s self from the tyranny of any of them.

On Oscar Wilde [1882]

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

Dedication of the Statue of Liberty [1887]

Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.

Three Heroes [1889]³

I wish to leave the world

By its natural door;

In my tomb of green leaves

They are to carry me to die.

Do not put me in the dark

To die like a traitor;

I am good, and like a good thing

I will die with my face to the sun.

A Morir (To Die) [1894]

Only those who hate the Negro see hatred in the Negro.

Manifesto of Montecristi [1895]

I have lived in the monster [the United States] and I know its insides; and my sling is the sling of David.

Letter to Manuel Mercado [1895]

Cecil [John] Rhodes

1853–1902

I desire to encourage and foster an appreciation of the advantages which will result from the union of the English-speaking peoples throughout the world, and to encourage in the students from the United States of America an attachment to the country from which they have sprung without I hope withdrawing them or their sympathies from the land of their adoption or birth.

His will, establishing the Rhodes Scholarships

Vincent van Gogh

1853–1890

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Letter to Theo van Gogh [July 21, 1882]

The great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.… The great isn’t something accidental; it must be willed.

Letter to Theo van Gogh [October 22, 1882]

I cannot help it that my pictures do not sell. Nevertheless the time will come when people will see that they are worth more than the price of the paint and my own living, very meager after all, that is put into them.

Letter to Theo van Gogh [October 20, 1888]

The sadness will last forever.

Among his last words, to his brother Theo [July 29, 1890]

James A. Bland

1854–1911

Carry me back to old Virginny,

There’s where the cotton and the corn and taters grow;

There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,

There’s where this old darky’s heart am longed to go.

Carry Me Back to Old Virginny [1875], st. 1

Sir James George Frazer

1854–1941

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

The Golden Bough¹[1922], ch. 4

It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back.

The Golden Bough, 18

Imagination works upon man as really as does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid.

The Golden Bough, 21

When all is said and done our resemblances to the savage are still far more numerous than our differences from him.

The Golden Bough, 23

Thomas Riley Marshall

1854–1925

What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.²

Remark while presiding over the Senate

Jules Henri Poincaré

1854–1912

To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.

Science and Hypothesis³[1902]

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.

Science and Hypothesis

Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. But it is this gleam which is everything.

The Value of Science³[1904]

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living.

Science and Method [1908]. The Selection of Facts

Arthur Rimbaud

1854–1891

I say one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by an immense, long, deliberate derangement of all the senses.⁴

Letter to Paul Demeny [May 15, 1871]

I is an other.⁵

Letters to Georges Izambard [May 13, 1871] and Paul Demeny [May 15, 1871]

My sad heart foams at the stern.⁶

Le Coeur Volé (Stolen Heart) [1871]

Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves.⁷

Le Bateau Ivre (The Drunken Boat) [1871]

    I have bathed in the Poem

Of the Sea…

Devouring the green azures.⁸

Le Bateau Ivre

I long for Europe of the ancient parapets.⁹

Le Bateau Ivre

I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands

Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager:

Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile,

A million golden birds, O future Vigor?¹⁰

Le Bateau Ivre

Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: vowels,

Someday I shall recount your latent births.¹¹

Voyelles (Vowels) [1871]

It is found again.

What? Eternity.

It is the sea

Gone with the sun.¹²

L’Éternité [1872]

O seasons, O châteaux,

What soul is without flaws?¹³

O Saisons, O Châteaux [1872]

One evening, I sat Beauty in my lap.—And I found her bitter.—And I cursed her.

Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) [1873]

Old poetics played a large part in my alchemy of the word.

Une Saison en Enfer. Délires II (Deliria II)

I! I who fashioned myself a sorcerer or an angel, who dispensed with all morality, I have come back to the earth.

Une Saison en Enfer. Adieu

One must be absolutely modern.

Une Saison en Enfer. Adieu

Willard Duncan Vandiver

1854–1932

I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.

Speech at a naval banquet in Philadelphia [1899]

Oscar [Fingal O’Flahertie Wills] Wilde

1854–1900

Tread lightly, she is near

Under the snow,

Speak gently, she can hear

The daisies grow.

Requiescat [1874], st. 1

[On Leadville:] Over the piano was printed a notice: Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

Impressions of America [1883]

I was disappointed with Niagara—most people must be disappointed with Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

Impressions of America

What is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Literary and Other Notes, column in The Woman’s World, November 1887

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.

The Decay of Lying [1889]

Paradox though it may seem—and paradoxes are always dangerous things—it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life.

The Decay of Lying

No one survives being overestimated.

Longfellow’s Life [1889]

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

The Critic as Artist [1891]

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891], preface

All art is quite useless.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, preface

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 2

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 5

I can resist everything except temptation.

Lady Windermere’s Fan [1892], act I

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Lady Windermere’s Fan, III

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Lady Windermere’s Fan, III

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Lady Windermere’s Fan, III

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Lady Windermere’s Fan, III

Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.¹

Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?

Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.

A Woman of No Importance [1893], act I

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

A Woman of No Importance, I

Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.

Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.

A Woman of No Importance, I

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

A Woman of No Importance, III

One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

Phrases and Philosophies [1894]

Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

The Importance of Being Earnest [1895], act I

Her hair has turned quite gold from grief.

The Importance of Being Earnest, I

I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.

The Importance of Being Earnest, I

Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else.

The Importance of Being Earnest, I

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

The Importance of Being Earnest, I

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

The Importance of Being Earnest, I

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

The Importance of Being Earnest, II

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

The Importance of Being Earnest, III

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism [1895]

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol [1898], pt. I, st. 3

When a voice behind me whispered low,

“That fellow’s got to swing.”

The Ballad of Reading Gaol, I, st. 4

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word.

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

The Ballad of Reading Gaol, I, st. 7

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

De Profundis [1905]

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

De Profundis

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

From RICHARD ELLMANN [1918–1987], Oscar Wilde [1988]

I am dying beyond my means.

Attributed

Eugene V[ictor] Debs

1855–1926

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 for sedition [September 14, 1918]

Your Honor, the five percent of the people that I have made reference to constitute that element that absolutely rules our country. They privately own all our public necessities. They wear no crowns; they wield no scepters; they sit upon no thrones; and yet they are our economic masters and our political rulers.

Remarks at sentencing on charges of sedition [September 14, 1918]

Let the people take heart, and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.

Remarks at sentencing on charges of sedition

I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison.

Statement at trial for sedition [September 18, 1918]

Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

1855–1897

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Molly Bawn [1878]

Robert M. La Follette Sr.

1855–1925

I think all men recognize that in time of war the citizen must surrender some rights for the common good which he is entitled to enjoy in time of peace. But, sir, the right to control their own government according to constitutional forms is not one of the rights that the citizens of this country are called upon to surrender in time of war.

Speech in the Senate [October 6, 1917 ]

Andrew Mellon

1855–1937

Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.… It will purge the rottenness out of the system.¹

Herbert Hoover, Memoirs [1952]

William Mulholland

1855–1935

There it is. Take it.

Speech at the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct [November 5, 1913]

Olive Schreiner [Ralph Iron]

1855–1920

There never was a man who said one word for woman but he said two for man and three for the whole human race.

The Story of an African Farm [1883], pt. 2, ch. 4

Men are like the earth and we are the moon; we turn always one side to them, and they think there is no other, because they don’t see it—but there is.

The Story of an African Farm, 2, 4

You can’t love a man till you’ve had a baby with him.

The Story of an African Farm, 2, 14

William Sharp [Fiona Macleod]

1855–1905

My heart is a lonely hunter² that hunts on a lonely hill.

The Lonely Hunter, st. 6

L[yman] Frank Baum

1856–1919

The wicked Witch of the East.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz³[1900], ch. 2

The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 2

There is no place like home.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 4

I’m really a very good man; but I’m a very bad Wizard.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 15

Francis Bellamy

1856–1931

I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag⁴ [1888]

Louis D[embitz] Brandeis

1856–1941

The bow must be strung and unstrung; work must be measured not merely by time but also by its intensity; there must be time also for the unconscious thinking which comes to the busy man in his play.

Letter to William Harrison Dunbar [February 2, 1893]

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.⁵

Other People’s Money [1914], ch. 5

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 376 [1927]

They [the makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.

Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478 [1928]

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

Olmstead v. United States 277 U.S. 438, 479 [1928]

To take risks is the very essence of Jewish life, that is, to take necessary risks. The wise man seeks not to avoid but to minimize risks. He minimizes them by using judgment and by knowledge and by thinking. These are, fortunately, preeminently Jewish attributes.

Speech [November 24, 1929]

Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the Nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

New State Ice Company v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 [1932]

The Court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.

Burnet v. Coronado Oil and Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393, 406 [1932]

There is in most Americans some spark of idealism, which can be fanned into a flame. It takes sometimes a divining rod to find what it is; but when found, and that means often, when disclosed to the owners, the results are often most extraordinary.

The Words of Justice Brandeis [1953]

Sigmund Freud

1856–1939

The new psychoanalytic method [is]… somewhat subtle but irreplaceable, so fruitful has it proved to be in explaining obscure unconscious mental processes.¹

Heredity and the Etiology of the Neuroses [1896]

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

The Interpretation of Dreams²[1900], ch. 7

When a member of my family complains to me of having bitten his tongue, pinched a finger, or the like, he does not get the sympathy he hopes for but instead the question: “Why did you do that?”

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life²[1901], ch. 8

The creative writer acts no differently from the child at play: he creates a fantasy world, which he takes very seriously; that is to say, he invests large amounts of emotion in it, while marking it off sharply from reality.

The Creative Writer and Daydreaming² [1907]

Happiness is the deferred fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth brings so little happiness; money is not an infantile wish.

Letter to Wilhelm Fliess³ [January 16, 1898]

Our hysterical patients suffer from reminiscences.

Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis² [1910], no. I

The psychic development of the individual is a short repetition of the course of development of the race.⁴

Leonardo da Vinci²[1910]

The excremental is all too intimately and inseparably bound up with the sexual; the position of the genitals—inter urinas et faeces—remains the decisive and unchangeable factor. One might say here, varying a well-known saying of the great Napoleon: “Anatomy is destiny.”

On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love² [1912]

Another person’s narcissism has a great attraction for those who have renounced part of their own.… It is as if we envied them for maintaining a blissful state of mind.

On Narcissism [1914]

In the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.

Thoughts for the Times on War and Death [1915]

No one believes in his own death.

Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, pt. 2

We believe that civilization has been created under the pressure of the exigencies of life at the cost of satisfaction of the instincts.

Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis²[1916–1917], no. I

If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success with it.

A Childhood Memory of Goethe’s²[1917]

The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.

On his seventieth birthday [1926]. From LIONEL TRILLING, The Liberal Imagination [1957]

The sexual life of adult women is a “dark continent” for psychology.¹

The Question of Lay Analysis² [1926], pt. 4

No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.

The Future of an Illusion² [1927]

It is a curious fact that human beings, incapable of living in individual isolation, nevertheless find the sacrifices that culture asks of them in order to make human coexistence possible a heavy load to bear.

The Future of an Illusion

Culture, in other words, needs to be defended against the individual, and its arrangements, institutions and decrees all serve that end. Their purpose is not only to put in place a certain distribution of goods but also to maintain it; there is a need, in fact, for them to protect against the hostile impulses of humanity everything that serves to tame nature and generate commodities… This gives the impression that culture is something imposed on a reluctant majority by a minority that managed to gain possession of the instruments of power and coercion.³

The Future of an Illusion

A culture which leaves unsatisfied and drives to rebelliousness so large a number of its members neither has a prospect of continued existence nor deserves it.

The Future of an Illusion

Before the problem of the creative writer, analysis must lay down its arms.

Dostoevsky and Parricide²[1928]

Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they could have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety.

Civilization and Its Discontents²[1930], pt. VIII

The ego’s relation to the id might be compared with that of a rider to his horse. The horse supplies the locomotive energy, while the rider has the privilege of deciding on the goal and of guiding the powerful animal’s movement. But only too often there arises between the ego and the id the not precisely ideal situation of the rider being obliged to guide the horse along the path by which it itself wants to go.

New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis² [1933], no. 31

Where id was, there ego shall be.

New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 31

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.

New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, 35

It almost looks as if analysis were the third of those “impossible” professions in which one can be quite sure of unsatisfying results. The other two, much older-established, are the bringing-up of children and the government of nations.

Analysis Terminable and Interminable⁴ [1937]

Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.

Moses and Monotheism² [1938], ch. III, pt. 1

Judaism had been a religion of the father; Christianity became a religion of the son. The old God the Father fell back behind Christ; Christ, the Son, took his place, just as every son had hoped to do in primeval times.

Moses and Monotheism, III, 1

A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.

From ERNEST JONES, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. I [1953], ch. 1

The great question… which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”⁵

From ERNEST JONES, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, vol. II [1955], ch. 16

[Regarding what a normal person should be able to do:] To love and to work.⁶

From ERIK ERIKSON, Childhood and Society [1963]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Attributed

H[enry] Rider Haggard

1856–1925

She-who-must-be-obeyed.

She [1887]

Elbert Hubbard

1856–1915

It is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies, do a thing—“carry a message to Garcia.”¹

A Message to Garcia [March 1899]

Robert E[dwin] Peary

1856–1920

The Eskimo, Ootah, had his own explanation. Said he: “The devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife, or we should never have come back so easily.”

The North Pole [1910]

Henri Philippe Pétain

1856–1951

They shall not pass.²

Attributed. Verdun [February 26, 1916]

George Bernard Shaw

1856–1950

It’s well to be off with the Old Woman before you’re on with the New.

The Philanderer [1893], act II

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The Philanderer, IV

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Mrs. Warren’s Profession [1893], act II

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

Mrs. Warren’s Profession, III

I’m a professional soldier: I fight when I have to, and am very glad to get out of it when I haven’t to. You’re only an amateur: you think fighting’s an amusement.

Arms and the Man [1894], act III

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

Answers to Nine Questions [1896]

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

Candida [1898], act I

The great advantage of a hotel is that it’s a refuge from home life.

You Never Can Tell [1898], act II

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

The Devil’s Disciple [1901], act II

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Man and Superman [1903], epistle dedicatory

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.

Man and Superman, act I

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

Man and Superman, I

Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.

Man and Superman, III

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Man and Superman, III

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Man and Superman. Maxims for Revolutionists

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

Man and Superman. Maxims for Revolutionists

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. Maxims for Revolutionists

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

John Bull’s Other Island [1904], act II

The greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty.

Major Barbara [1905], preface

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

Major Barbara, act II

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.… It would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him.

Dramatic Opinions and Essays [1907]. Blaming the Bard

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

Getting Married [1908], preface

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet [1909]. The Rejected Statement, pt. I

If parents would only realize how they bore their children!

Misalliance [1910], episode I

Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.

A Treatise on Parents and Children [1910]. The Horror of the Perpetual Holiday

Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Quoted in Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works [1911]

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman hate or despise him; English is not accessible even to Englishmen.

Pygmalion¹ [1913], preface

Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you’re driving at another.

Pygmalion, act II

I’m one of the undeserving poor.

Pygmalion, II

Gin was mother’s milk to her.

Pygmalion, III

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Annajanska [1919]

You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”

Back to Methuselah [1921], pt. I, act I

Louis Henri Sullivan

1856–1924

Form ever follows function.

The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered. From Lippincott’s Magazine [March 1896]

To pay attention is to live, and to live is to pay attention.

Kindergarten Chats [1918]

Frederick Winslow Taylor

1856–1915

In the past the man has been first. In the future the System must be first.

The Principles of Scientific Management [1911], ch. 1

Booker T[aliaferro] Washington

1856–1915

In all things that are purely social we [black and white] can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta [September 18, 1895]

Cast down your bucket where you are—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Up from Slavery [1901]

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

Attributed

Woodrow Wilson

1856–1924

The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.… We must be impartial in thought as well as in action.

Message to the Senate [August 19, 1914]

It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

Attributed. On seeing D. W. GRIFFITH’s movie The Birth of a Nation, at the White House [February 18, 1915]

You deal in the raw material of opinion, and, if my convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.

Address to the Associated Press [April 20, 1915]

The example of America must be the example, not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating influence of the world, and strife is not. 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.

Address to Naturalized Citizens [May 10, 1915]

[The Civil War] created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union.

Memorial Day Address [1915]

We have stood apart, studiously neutral.

Message to Congress [December 7, 1915]

America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.

Speech at Des Moines [February 1, 1916]

It must be a peace without victory.… Only a peace between equals can last.

Address to the Senate [January 22, 1917]

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best.

Address to Congress, asking for a declaration of war [April 2, 1917]

The world must be made safe for democracy.

Address to Congress, asking for a declaration of war

The day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.

Address to Congress, asking for a declaration of war

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.

2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas.…

5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.

Address to Congress (The Fourteen Points) [January 8, 1918]

14. A general association of nations must be formed… for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Address to Congress (The Fourteen Points)

We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else.

Address to the Senate on the League of Nations [July 10, 1919]

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know that I am an American.

Speech at Sioux Falls, North Dakota [September 8, 1919]

Edward F[rancis] Albee

1857–1930

Never give a sucker an even break.

Attributed¹

Robert Baden-Powell

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]

Joseph Conrad

1857–1924

It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

An Outcast of the Islands [1896], pt. III, ch. 2

But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives: to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain.

The Nigger of the Narcissus [1898], preface

My task… to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything.

The Nigger of the Narcissus, preface

The ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet.

The Nigger of the Narcissus, ch. 2

Goodbye, brothers! You were a good crowd. As good a crowd as ever fisted with wild cries the beating canvas of a heavy foresail; or tossing aloft, invisible in the night, gave back yell for yell to a westerly gale.

The Nigger of the Narcissus, 5

There is a weird power in a spoken word.… And a word carries far—very far—deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

Lord Jim [1900], ch. 15

That faculty of beholding at a hint the face of his desire and the shape of his dream, without which the earth would know no lover and no adventurer.

Lord Jim, 16

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea.… 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.

Lord Jim

He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success!

Lord Jim

Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth!… A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—goodbye!—Night—Goodbye…!

Youth: A Narrative [1902]

Running… all over the sea trying to get behind the weather.

Typhoon [1902], ch. 2

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 too much.

Heart of Darkness¹ [1902], pt. I

We live, as we dream—alone.

Heart of Darkness, I

No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.

Heart of Darkness, II

Exterminate all the brutes!²

Heart of Darkness, II

The horror! The horror!

Heart of Darkness, III

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

Heart of Darkness, III

His sadness was the sadness of a skeptical mind. He beheld the universe as a succession of incomprehensible images.

Nostromo [1904], pt. III, ch. 10

What is one to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact, mad? Madness alone is truly terrifying.

The Secret Agent [1907], ch. 2

The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality—countermoves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.

The Secret Agent, 4

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

Under Western Eyes [1911], pt. 1

Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.

Under Western Eyes, I, 2

A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. 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, II, 3

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Under Western Eyes, II, 4

Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

A Personal Record [1912], ch. 1

But what I felt most was my being a stranger to the ship; and if all the truth must be told, I was somewhat of a stranger to myself.

The Secret Sharer [1912], ch. 1

It was one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe.

Chance [1913]

Luckily, people, whether mature or not mature (and who really is ever mature?), are for the most part quite incapable of understanding what is happening to them.

Chance

It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world—invulnerable because elusive.

Victory [1915], ch. 2

The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.

The Shadow Line [1916], ch. 1

Émile Coué

1857–1926

Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.¹

Formula of his faith cures, inscribed in his sanitarium, Nancy, France

Clarence [Seward] Darrow

1857–1938

Hanging men in our county jails does not prevent murder. It makes murderers.

Speech at Cook County Jail [1902]

You may hang these boys; you may hang them by the neck until they are dead. But in doing it you will turn your face toward the past.… I am pleading for the future. I am pleading for a time when hatred and cruelty will not control the hearts of men, when we can learn by reason and judgment and understanding and faith that all life is worth saving, and that mercy is the highest attribute of man.

Plea in defense of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, Jr. [August 22, 1924]

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.

Scopes trial, Dayton, Tennessee [July 13, 1925]

I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.

Speech at Toronto [1930]

Reading and experience have taught me that when governments prepare for war the first unit they mobilize is the liars’ brigade.

The Story of My Life [1932]. War

There is no such thing as justice—in or out of court.

Interview at Chicago [April 1936]

John Davidson

1857–1909

In anguish we uplift

A new unhallowed song:

The race is to the swift;

The battle to the strong.

War Song, st. 1

[Johann] Paul Dresser [Jr.]

1857–1906

Oh the moonlight’s fair tonight along the Wabash.

From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay;

Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming,

On the banks of the Wabash, far away.

On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away [1897]

George Gissing

1857–1903

Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets.

New Grub Street [1891]

When I think of all the sorrow and the barrenness that has been wrought in my life by want of a few more pounds per annum than I was able to earn, I stand aghast at money’s significance.

The Private Papers of Henry Rycroft [1903]. Spring, sec. 5

Ferdinand de Saussure

1857–1913

Psychologically, setting aside its expression in words, our thought is simply a vague, shapeless mass.²

Course in General Linguistics [1916], ch. 4

Charles M[onroe] Sheldon

1857–1946

What Would Jesus Do?

Subtitle, In His Steps [1896]

Edgar Smith

1857–1938

You may tempt the upper classes

With your villainous demitasses,

But Heaven will protect the working girl.

Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl [1909]

Thorstein Veblen

1857–1929

The term “leisure,” as here used, does not connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes is non-productive consumption of time. Time is consumed non-productively (1) from a sense of the unworthiness of productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a life of idleness.

The Theory of the Leisure Class [1899], ch. 3

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

The Theory of the Leisure Class, 4

With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.

The Theory of the Leisure Class, 5

The dog… commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery, and as he is also an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in men’s regard as a thing of good repute.

The Theory of the Leisure Class, 6

The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent.

The Theory of the Leisure Class, 7

Liberty Hyde Bailey

1858–1954

If it were possible for every person to own a tree and to care for it, the good results would be beyond estimation.

The Holy Earth [1915]. The Subdividing of the Land

Franz Boas

1858–1942

There is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man. A close connection between race and personality has never been established.

The Mind of Primitive Man [1938 edition]

I believe the present state of our knowledge justifies us in saying that, while individuals differ, biological differences are small. There is no reason to believe that one race is by nature so much more intelligent, endowed with great will power, or emotionally more stable than another, that the difference would materially influence its culture.

Race, Language and Culture [1940]

The behavior of an individual is therefore determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.

Race and Democratic Society [1945], ch. 4

Charles W[addell] Chesnutt

1858–1932

I shall say nothing about the moral effect of disfranchisement upon the white people, or upon the State itself. What slavery made of the Southern whites is a matter of history. The abolition of slavery gave the South an opportunity to emerge from barbarism. Present conditions indicate that the spirit which dominated slavery still curses the fair section over which that institution spread its blight.

The Negro Problem [1903]. The Disfranchisement of the Negro

Émile Durkheim

1858–1917

Religion is something eminently social.

The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life [1912]

Sam Walter Foss

1858–1911

The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,

The brooks for the fishers of song;

To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game

The streams and the woods belong.

The Bloodless Sportsman [1897], st. 3

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.¹

The House by the Side of the Road [1897], st. 2

H[enry] W[atson] Fowler

1858–1933

and

F[rancis] G[eorge] Fowler

1870–1918

Prefer geniality to grammar.

The King’s English [1906], ch. 2

HACKNEYED PHRASES.… The purpose with which these phrases are introduced is for the most part that of giving a fillip to a passage that might be humdrum without them… but their true use when they come into the writer’s mind is as danger signals; he should take warning that when they suggest themselves it is because what he is writing is bad stuff, or it would not need such help; let him see to the substance of his cake instead of decorating with sugarplums.

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage¹ [1926]

QUOTATION.… A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a chord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage

Remy de Gourmont

1858–1915

Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion. Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.

Le Chemin de Velours (The Velvet Road)² [1902]

Of all sexual aberrations perhaps the most curious is chastity.³

The Natural Philosophy of Love [1904]

Ruggiero Leoncavallo

1858–1919

The comedy is finished.⁴

I Pagliacci (The Clowns) [1892], last words

Adolph S[imon] Ochs

1858–1935

All the news that’s fit to print.

Motto of the New York Times [1896]

Ohiyesa [Charles Alexander Eastman]⁵

1858–1939

[The Indian] sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, since to him all days are God’s.

The Soul of the Indian [1911]

Emmeline Pankhurst

1858–1928

We women Suffragists have a great mission—the greatest mission the world has ever known. It is to free half the human race, and through that freedom to save the rest.

I Incite This Meeting to Rebellion [1912]

Max Planck

1858–1947

We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.

The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics [1931]

Scientific discovery and scientific knowledge have been achieved only by those who have gone in pursuit of it without any practical purpose whatsoever in view.

Where Is Science Going? [1932]

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.

The Philosophy of Physics [1936]

Theodore Roosevelt

1858–1919

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

Speech before the Hamilton Club, Chicago [April 10, 1899]

I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.

Letter to Marcus Alonzo Hanna [June 17, 1900]

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.

The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses [1900]. The Strenuous Life

In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard.

The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses. The American Boy

There is a homely 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 Minnesota State Fair [September 2, 1901]

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 at New York City [November 11, 1902]

I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is.

Speech at the Grand Canyon [May 6, 1903]

We come here as patriots remembering that our party lines stop at the water’s edge.

Dedication of Navy Memorial Monument, San Francisco [May 14, 1903]

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his 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 Springfield, Illinois [July 4, 1903]

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it.

Annual message [December 7, 1903]

The men with the muckrakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them.… If they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of usefulness is gone.¹

Address on the laying of the cornerstone of the House Office Building, Washington, D.C. [April 14, 1906]

Malefactors of great wealth.

Speech at Provincetown, Massachusetts [August 20, 1907]

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

Message to Congress [December 3, 1907]

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming.

Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris [April 23, 1910]

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.

Speech to the Colorado Live Stock Association [August 29, 1910]

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Speech at Osawatomie, Kansas [August 31, 1910]

I took the Isthmus, started the Canal, and then left Congress—not to debate the Canal, but to debate me.… While the debate goes on the Canal does too.

Speech at University of California, Berkeley [March 23, 1911]

We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.

Speech at Progressive Party Convention, Chicago [June 17, 1912]

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

Progressive Party platform [August 7, 1912]

The lunatic fringe in all reform movements.

Autobiography [1913]

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.… The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

Speech before the Knights of Columbus, New York City [October 12, 1915]

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 at St. Louis [May 31, 1916]

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Editorial in Kansas City Star [May 7, 1918]

Put out the light.

Last words [January 6, 1919]

Georg Simmel

1858–1918

Under certain circumstances, one nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd.

The Metropolis and Mental Life¹ [1903]

Graham Wallas

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?”

The Art of Thought [1926], ch. 4

Katharine Lee Bates

1859–1929

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America!

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea!

America the Beautiful² [1893], st. 1

Henri Bergson

1859–1941

Laughter has no greater foe than emotion.… To produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic demands something like a momentary anesthesia of the heart.

Laughter³ [1900], ch. 1, sec. i

The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.

Le Rêve (The Dream) [1901]

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

L’Evolution Créatrice (Creative Evolution) [1907], ch. 1

Intelligence… is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.

L’Evolution Créatrice, 2

L’élan vital [the vital spirit].

L’Evolution Créatrice, 2

… the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.

The Two Sources of Religion and Morality⁴ [1932]

Carrie Chapman [Lane] Catt

1859–1947

No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.

Speech, Why We Ask for the Submission of an Amendment, at Senate hearing on woman’s suffrage [February 13, 1900]

When a just cause reaches its flood tide… whatever stands in the way must fall before its overwhelming power.

Speech, Is Woman Suffrage Progressing? [Stockholm, 1911]

John Dewey

1859–1952

We naturally associate democracy… with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.

Democracy in Education, in The Elementary School Teacher [December 1903]

The connections of the ear with vital and out-going thought and emotion are immensely closer and more varied than those of the eye. Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator.

The Public and Its Problems [1927], sec. 6

An educated person is the person who has the power to go on and get more education.

The Need for a Philosophy of Education [1934]

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

Attributed

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1859–1930

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

A Study in Scarlet [1887]

There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

A Study in Scarlet

In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much.

A Study in Scarlet, spoken by Sherlock Holmes

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was there ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the streets and drifts across the dun-colored houses.… What is the use of having powers, Doctor, when one has no field upon which to exert them?

The Sign of Four [1890], ch. 1

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

The Sign of Four, 6

The unofficial force—the Baker Street irregulars.

The Sign of Four, 8

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [1891]. A Scandal in Bohemia

To Sherlock Holmes she [Irene Adler] is always the woman.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A Scandal in Bohemia

Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labor, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Red-Headed League

It is quite a three-pipe problem.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Red-Headed League

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A Case of Identity

I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. A Case of Identity

There is nothing more to be said or to be done to-night, so hand me over my violin, and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellow men.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Five Orange Pips

Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult is it to bring it home.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Boscombe Valley Mystery

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Adventure of the Speckled Band

The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

“… the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”

“The dog did nothing in the nighttime.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes [1894]. Silver Blaze

Like all Holmes’s reasoning the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The Stock-Broker’s Clerk

You know my methods, Watson.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The Crooked Man

“Excellent!” I [Watson] cried.

“Elementary,” said he [Holmes].

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The Crooked Man

[Professor Moriarty] is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The Final Problem

They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!

The Hound of the Baskervilles [1902], ch. 2

Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes [1904]. The Adventure of the Abbey Grange

Havelock Ellis

1859–1939

The omnipresent process of sex, as it is woven into the whole texture of our man’s or woman’s body, is the pattern of all the process of our life.

The New Spirit [1890]

The text of the Bible is but a feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the text of Men and Women.

Impressions and Comments [entry for September 12, 1913]

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Little Essays of Love and Virtue [1922], ch. 7

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

The Dance of Life [1923], ch. 2

The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.

The Dance of Life, 3

Kenneth Grahame

1859–1932

There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats… or with boats.… In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter.

The Wind in the Willows [1908], ch. 1

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

The Wind in the Willows, 7, chapter title

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!

The Wind in the Willows, 10

A[lfred] E[dward] Housman¹

1859–1936

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough.

A Shropshire Lad [1896], no. 2, st. 1

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.

A Shropshire Lad, 2, st. 2, 3

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.

A Shropshire Lad, 4 (Reveille), st. 6

Lovers lying two and two

Ask not whom they sleep beside,

And the bridegroom all night through

Never turns him to the bride.

A Shropshire Lad, 12, st. 4

When I was one-and-twenty

I heard a wise man say,

“Give crowns and pounds and guineas

But not your heart away.”

A Shropshire Lad, 13, st. 1

When I was one-and-twenty

I heard him say again,

“The heart out of the bosom

Was never given in vain;

’Tis paid with sighs aplenty

And sold for endless rue.”

And I am two-and-twenty,

And Oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

A Shropshire Lad, 13, st. 2

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.

A Shropshire Lad, 18, st. 1, 2

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears.

A Shropshire Lad, 19 (To an Athlete Dying Young), st. 4

The bells they sound on Bredon,

And still the steeples hum.

“Come all to church, good people”—

Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;

I hear you, I will come.

A Shropshire Lad, 21, st. 7

The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

A Shropshire Lad, 23, st. 4

And fire and ice within me fight

Beneath the suffocating night.

A Shropshire Lad, 30, st. 4

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.

A Shropshire Lad, 40, st. 1, 2

Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.

A Shropshire Lad, 48, st. 1

Far in a western brookland

That bred me long ago

The poplars stand and tremble

By pools I used to know.

A Shropshire Lad, 52, st. 1

With rue my heart is laden

For golden friends I had,

For many a rose-lipped maiden

And many a lightfoot lad.

A Shropshire Lad, 54, st. 1

By brooks too broad for leaping

The lightfoot boys are laid.

A Shropshire Lad, 54, st. 2

In all the endless road you tread

There’s nothing but the night.

A Shropshire Lad, 60, st. 2

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.¹

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink

For fellows whom it hurts to think.

A Shropshire Lad, 62, st. 2

Pass me the can, lad; there’s an end of May.

Last Poems [1922], 9, st. 1

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, 9, st. 7

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.

Last Poems, 12, l. 1

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, 12, l. 15

Happy bridegroom, Hesper brings

All desired and timely things.

All whom morning sends to roam,

Hesper loves to lead them home.

Home return who him behold,

Child to mother, sheep to fold,

Bird to nest from wandering wide:

Happy bridegroom, seek your bride.

Last Poems, 24 (Epithalamium), st. 3

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.

Last Poems, 37 (Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries),²st. 1

The rainy Pleiads wester,

Orion plunges prone,

And midnight strikes and hastens,

And I lie down alone.³

More Poems [1936], 11, st. 1

We now to peace and darkness

And earth and thee restore

Thy creature that thou madest

And wilt cast forth no more.

More Poems, 47 (For My Funeral), st. 3

Good night; ensured release,

Imperishable peace,

Have these for yours.⁴

While sky and sea and land

And earth’s foundations stand

And heaven endures.

More Poems, 48 (Alta Quies), st. 1

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.

The Name and Nature of Poetry [1933]

Jerome K[lapka] Jerome

1859–1927

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

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, 15

Charles E. Stanton

1859–1933

[As U.S. forces joined the Allies:] Lafayette, we are here.¹

Address at the tomb of Lafayette, Picpus Cemetery, Paris [July 4, 1917]

Francis Thompson

1859–1907

Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.²

To My Godchild [1891]

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.

The Hound of Heaven [1893], l. 1

Across the margent of the world I fled,

And troubled the gold gateways of the stars.

The Hound of Heaven, l. 25

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke.

The Hound of Heaven, l. 122

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.

The Hound of Heaven, l. 171

O world invisible, we view thee,

O world intangible, we touch thee,

O world unknowable, we know thee.

The Kingdom of God (“In No Strange Land”) [1913], st. 1

Jane Addams

1860–1935

The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.³

Democracy and Social Ethics [1902]

Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited.

Twenty Years at Hull House [1910]

The common stock of intellectual enjoyment should not be difficult of access because of the economic position of him who would approach it.

Twenty Years at Hull House

Sir James M[atthew] Barrie

1860–1937

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]

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?

The Little White Bird [1902], ch. 4

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants’ hall.

The Admirable Crichton [1903], act I

Every time a child says, “I don’t believe in fairies,” there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

Peter Pan [1904], act I

Do you believe in fairies?… If you believe, clap your hands!

Peter Pan, IV

The tragedy of a man who has found himself out.

What Every Woman Knows [1908], act IV

Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and his wife smiles, and lets it go at that. It’s our only joke. Every woman knows that.

What Every Woman Knows, IV

John Collins Bossidy

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.¹

Toast, Holy Cross Alumni Dinner [1910]

William Jennings Bryan

1860–1925

The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of Error.

Speech at the National Democratic Convention, Chicago [1896]

Destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

Speech at the National Democratic Convention, Chicago

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.²

Speech at the National Democratic Convention, Chicago

Haddon Chambers

1860–1921

The long arm of coincidence.

Captain Swift [1888], act II

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

1860–1904

To my mind, civilized people ought to satisfy the following conditions:

1. They respect the individual and are therefore always indulgent, gentle, polite and compliant. They do not throw a tantrum over a hammer or a lost eraser. When they move in with somebody, they do not act as if they were doing him a favor, and when they move out, they do not say, “How can anyone live with you!” They excuse noise and cold and overdone meat and witticisms and the presence of others in their homes.…

4. They are candid and fear lies like the plague. They do not lie even about the most trivial matters. A lie insults the listener and debases him in the liar’s eyes. They don’t put on airs, they behave in the street as they do at home, and they do not try to dazzle their inferiors. They know how to keep their mouths shut and they do not force uninvited confidences on people. Out of respect for the ears of others they are more often silent than not.…

6. They are not preoccupied with vain things. They are not taken in by such false jewels as friendships with celebrities, handshakes with drunken Plevako, ecstasy over the first person they happen to meet at the Salon de Variétés, popularity among the tavern crowd.³

Letter to his brother Nikolai Chekhov [March 1886]⁴

Only fools and charlatans know and understand everything.⁴

Letter to Ivan Shcheglov [June 9, 1888]

I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it’s disorderly it’s not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything through my infidelity.

Letter to A. S. Suvorin⁴ [September 11, 1888]

I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one.

Letter to Alexei Pleshcheev⁴ [October 4, 1888]

My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.

Letter to Alexei Pleshcheev [October 4, 1888]

An artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is limited as that of any other specialist—that’s what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist’s field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes.

Letter to A. S. Suvorin¹ [October 27, 1888]

One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.²

Letter to A. S. Lazarev-Gruzinsky [November 1, 1889]

I am in mourning for my life. I am unhappy.

The Seagull³ [1896], act I

I try to catch every sentence, every word you and I say, and quickly lock all these sentences and words away in my literary storehouse because they might come in handy.

The Seagull, II

We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.

Uncle Vanya [1897], act IV

To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold—that is lying to the Holy Ghost.

Notebook entry⁴ [February 19, 1897]

When a man spends the least possible number of movements over one definite action, that is grace.

Letter to Maxim Gorky⁵ [January 3, 1899]

He judged of others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilized man was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.⁵

The Lady with the Dog [1899]

When a little more time has passed—another two or three hundred years—people will look at our present manner of life with horror and derision, and everything of today will seem awkward and heavy, and very strange and uncomfortable. Oh, what a wonderful life that will be—what a wonderful life!

Three Sisters [1901], act II

To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

Three Sisters, II

All Russia is our orchard.

The Cherry Orchard³ [1904], act II

Everyone has something to hide.

The Notebooks

Harry M[icajah] Daugherty

1860–1941

Fifteen or twenty tired men sitting around a table in a smoke-filled room behind locked doors.⁶

Attributed by Leonard Wood

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1860–1935

There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will.

Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.

It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.

The Yellow Wallpaper [1892]

There’s a whining at the threshold—

There’s a scratching at the floor—

To work! To work! In Heaven’s name!

The wolf is at the door!

In This Our World [1893]. The Wolf at the Door, st. 6

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

Women and Economics [1898], ch. 1

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

Women and Economics, 8

Theodor Herzl

1860–1904

We are one people—our enemies have made us one whether we will or not, as has repeatedly happened in history. Affliction binds us together, and thus united, we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough to form a State, and, indeed, a model State.

The Jewish State [1896]

If you will it, it is not a fable.

Altneuland [1902]

William Ralph Inge

1860–1954

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

From Wit and Wisdom of Dean Inge [1927], edited by JAMES MARCHANT [1867–1956], no. 108

Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson

1860–1948

The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.

On Growth and Form, epilogue

Owen Wister

1860–1938

When you call me that, smile!

The Virginian [1902], ch. 2

George William Norris

1861–1944

I know that this war madness has taken possession of the financial and political powers of our country. I know that nothing I can say will stay the blow that is soon to fall. I feel that we are committing a sin against humanity and against our countrymen. I would like to say to this war god, You shall not coin into gold the lifeblood of my brethren.… I feel that we are about to put the dollar sign upon the American flag.

Speech in Congress opposing American entry into World War I [April 4, 1917]

Albert Bigelow Paine

1861–1937

The Great White Way.

Title of book [1901]

Italo Svevo [Aron Ettore Schmitz]

1861–1928

One need only remind oneself of all that we expect from life to see how very strange it is, and to arrive at the conclusion that man has found his way into it by mistake and does not really belong there.

Confessions of Zeno¹ [1923]

You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.

Zeno’s Conscience² [1923]

Rabindranath Tagore

1861–1941

When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the touch of the one in the play of the many.

Gitanjali [1913]

At my dying hour, and over my long life,

A clock strikes somewhere at the city’s edge.

Poem [1941]

Frederick Jackson Turner

1861–1932

Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

The Significance of History [1891]

The frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting-point between savagery and civilization… the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. The wilderness masters the colonist.

The Significance of the Frontier in American History [1893]

And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history.

The Significance of the Frontier in American History

Alfred North Whitehead

1861–1947

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

An Introduction to Mathematics [1911], ch. 5

No more impressive warning can be given to those who would confine knowledge and research to what is apparently useful, than the reflection that conic sections were studied for eighteen hundred years merely as an abstract science, without regard to any utility other than satisfying the craving for knowledge.

An Introduction to Mathematics, ch. 10

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

Science and the Modern World [1925], ch. 2

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

Science and the Modern World, 6

The religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

Science and the Modern World, 12

The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.

Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect [1927]

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Process and Reality [1929], II, 1, 1

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervor.

Adventures of Ideas [1933], 4

In the real world, it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.

Adventures of Ideas, 16

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.

Adventures of Ideas, 19

The deliberate aim at Peace very easily passes into its bastard substitute, Anesthesia.

Adventures of Ideas, 20

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead [1953], as recorded by LUCIEN PRICE [1883–1964], prologue

A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.

Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 22 [August 17, 1941]

Intellect is to emotion as our clothes are to our bodies; we could not very well have civilized life without clothes, but we would be in a poor way if we had only clothes without bodies.

Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, 29 [June 10, 1943]

A[rthur] C[hristopher] Benson

1862–1925

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 Glory¹ [1902], chorus

Albert [Jeremiah] Beveridge

1862–1927

This party comes from the grass roots. It has grown from the soil of the people’s hard necessities.

Address at the Bull Moose Convention, Chicago [August 5, 1912]

James W. Blake

1862–1935

East Side, West Side, all around the town,

The tots sang “Ring-a-rosie,” “London Bridge is falling down”;

Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rorke,

Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.

The Sidewalks of New York² [1894]

Nicholas Murray Butler

1862–1947

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

Commencement address, Columbia University

John Jay Chapman

1862–1933

If an inhabitant of another planet should visit the earth, he would receive, on the whole, a truer notion of human life by attending an Italian opera than he would by reading Emerson’s volumes. He would learn from the Italian opera that there were two sexes; and this, after all, is probably the fact with which the education of such a stranger ought to begin.

Emerson and Other Essays [1898]

The New Testament, and to a very large extent the Old, is the soul of man. You cannot criticize it. It criticizes you.

Letter [March 26, 1898]

The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost.

Letter [1909]

As I read the newspaper accounts of the scene enacted here in Coatesville a year ago, I seemed to get a glimpse into the unconscious soul of this country. I saw a seldom revealed picture of the American heart and of the American nature. I seemed to be looking into the heart of the criminal—a cold thing, an awful thing. I said to myself, “I shall forget this, we shall all forget it; but it will be there. What I have seen is not an illusion. It is the truth. I have seen death in the heart of this people.” For to look at the agony of a fellow-being and remain aloof means death in the heart of the onlooker.

Speech at prayer meeting,¹ Coatesville, Pennsylvania [August 18, 1912]

Claude [Achille] Debussy

1862–1918

Music really ought to have been a hermetical science, enshrined in texts so hard and laborious to decipher as to discourage the herd of people who treat it as casually as they do a handkerchief! I’d go further and, instead of spreading music among the populace, I propose the foundation of a ‘Society of Musical Esotericism.’

Letter to Ernest Chausson [September 3, 1893]

I dislike specialists. Specialization is for me the narrowing of my universe.

La Revue Blanche [July 1, 1901]

To see the sun rise is more profitable than to hear the Pastoral Symphony.

La Revue Blanche

I wanted music to have a liberty it contains within it perhaps more than any other art, not being limited to a more or less exact reproduction of Nature, but possessing mysterious correspondences between Nature and the Imagination.

Why I Wrote Pelléas [1902]

In a time like ours, when the genius of engineers has reached such undreamed of proportion, one can hear famous pieces of music as easily as one can buy a glass of beer.… Should we not fear this domestication of sound, this magic preserved in a disc that anyone can awaken at will? Will it not mean a diminution of the secret forces of art, which until now have been considered indestructible?

Les Concerts [May 15, 1913]. La Revue musicale S.I.M.

Art is of absolutely no use to the masses.

Monsieur Croche, the Dilettante Hater [1927]

Edward, Viscount Grey of Fallodon

1862–1933

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Comment [August 3, 1914], on the eve of World War I

O. Henry [pseudonym of William Sydney Porter]

1862–1910

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.

The Four Million [1906]. Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

The Gentle Grafter [1908]. The Octopus Marooned

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

The Gentle Grafter. The Octopus Marooned

All cities say the same thing. When they get through saying it there is an echo from Philadelphia.

The Voice of the City [1908], title story

Bagdad-on-the-Subway.²

Roads of Destiny [1909]. The Discounters of Money

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

Strictly Business [1910]. A Municipal Report

It couldn’t have happened anywhere but in little old New York.³

Whirligigs [1910]. A Little Local Color

All of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles.

Whirligigs. Sociology in Serge and Straw

Turn up the lights—I don’t want to go home in the dark.⁴

Last words [June 5, 1910]

Charles Evans Hughes

1862–1948

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and of our property under the Constitution.

Speech at Elmira, New York [May 3, 1907]

Maurice Maeterlinck

1862–1949

It is always a mistake not to close one’s eyes, whether to forgive or to look better into oneself.

Pelléas et Mélisande [1892]

There are no dead.

The Blue Bird [1909], act IV, sc. ii

Edith [Newbold Jones] Wharton

1862–1937

Everything about her was at once vigorous and exquisite, at once strong and fine. He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her.

The House of Mirth [1905], bk. I, ch. 1

She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.

The House of Mirth, I, 1

The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.

The House of Mirth, I, 6

It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.

The House of Mirth, I, 11

The civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its antagonist than in confounding him.

The House of Mirth, I, 12

Every house is a mad-house at some time or other.

Full Circle [1909]

He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface.

Ethan Frome [1911]

Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone.

Xingu [1916]

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.

The Age of Innocence [1920], ch. 1

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.

The Age of Innocence, 6

In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once.

The Age of Innocence, 31

It was the old New York way of taking life “without effusion of blood”: the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than “scenes,” except the behavior of those who gave rise to them.

The Age of Innocence, 33

The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

The Age of Innocence, 34

I often wonder whether a frumpy old woman can ever be quite fair in her estimate of a young and lovely one.

Letter to Bernard Berenson [March 20, 1922]

Life is always a tight-rope or a feather-bed. Give me the tight-rope.

Diary entry [March 23, 1926]

There’s no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow.

A Backward Glance [1934]. A First Word

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

A Backward Glance. A First Word

Black Elk [Hehaka Sapa]

1863–1950

Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.

Black Elk Speaks, Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux [1961], as told through JOHN G. NEIHARDT [1881–1973]

When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch [at Wounded Knee] as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.

Black Elk Speaks

C[onstantine] P[eter] Cavafy

1863–1933

But Argos can do without the sons of Atreus.

Ancient houses are not eternal.

When the Watchman Saw the Light¹ [1900]

   We won’t be deceived

by titles such as Indispensable and Unique and Great.

Someone else indispensable and unique and great

can always be found at a moment’s notice.

When the Watchman Saw the Light

Pleasure will have much to teach him.

He will not be afraid of the destructive act;

one half of the house must be pulled down.

This way he will grow virtuously into knowledge.

Strengthening the Spirit [1903]

What are we all waiting for

gathered together like this on the public square?

  The Barbarians are coming today.

Waiting for the Barbarians² [1904], l. 1

You’ll not find another place, you’ll not find another sea.

This city is going to follow you.

The City³ [1910], l. 9

You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:

there is no ship for you, there is no road.

As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.

The City, l. 13⁴

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka⁵ [1911]

Another disaster, one we never imagined,

suddenly, violently, descends upon us,

and finding us unprepared—there’s no time left—

sweeps us away.

Things Ended⁶ [1911]

And there on that ordinary, plain bed

I had love’s body, knew those intoxicating lips,

red and sensual,

red lips so intoxicating

that now as I write, after so many years,

in my lonely house, I’m drunk with passion again.

One Night⁶ [1916]

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,

not only the beds you lay on,

but also those desires glowing openly

in eyes that looked at you,

trembling for you in voices.

Body, Remember⁶ [1918]

William Randolph Hearst

1863–1951

You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.

Attributed instructions to artist FREDERIC REMINGTON [1861–1909] in Havana, Cuba⁷ [March 1898]

Edvard Munch

1863–1944

Nature is not only what is visible to the eye—it also shows the inner images of the soul—the images on the reverse side of the eyes.

Letter by JOHAN H. LANGAARD [b. 1899] and REIDAR REVOLD [b. 1918] [1907–1908] quoted in Edvard Munch [1963]

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

1863–1944

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetuate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

On the Art of Writing [1916]. On Style

George Santayana

1863–1952

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

The Life of Reason [1905–1906], vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

The Life of Reason, I, Reason in Common Sense

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

The Life of Reason, I, Reason in Common Sense

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.¹

The Life of Reason, I, Reason in Common Sense

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.

The Ethics of Spinoza [1910], introduction

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

The Ethics of Spinoza, introduction

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

The Ethics of Spinoza, introduction

The height of poetry is to speak the language of the gods.

Three Philosophical Poets [1910]

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.

Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies [1922]. Carnival

A free mind does not measure the worth of anything by the worth of anything else.

Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. Cloud Castles

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies [1922]. War Shrines

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. On My Friendly Critics

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

Scepticism and Animal Faith [1923], ch. 9

Whatever interrupts the even flow and luxurious monotony of organic life is odious to the primeval animal.

Scepticism and Animal Faith, 20

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

Dialogues in Limbo [1926], ch. 3

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

Dialogues in Limbo, 4

Nothing is too complex to be primitive; nothing is too simple to stand alone.

The Realm of Essence [1927]

Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev Stanislavski

1863–1938

There are no small parts, there are only small actors.

My Life in Art² [1924]

Our type of creativeness is the conception and birth of a new being—the person in the part. It is a natural act similar to the birth of a human being.

An Actor Prepares³ [1936], ch. 16

Ernest L[awrence] Thayer

1863–1940

There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place,

There was pride in Casey’s bearing, and a smile on Casey’s face,

And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,

No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.

Casey at the Bat [1888], st. 6

Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout,

But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.

Casey at the Bat, st. 13

Sir Roger Casement

1864–1916

Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labors… then surely it is braver, a saner and truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.

Statement from prison [June 29, 1916]

Richard Harding Davis

1864–1916

The marines have landed and the situation is well in hand.

Attributed [1885]

Elinor Glyn

1864–1943

He had that nameless charm, with a strong magnetism which can only be called “it.”

“It” [1927]

Joseph Hayden

fl. 1896

There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.

A Hot Time in the Old Town¹ [1896]

Richard Hovey

1864–1900

For it’s always fair weather

When good fellows get together

With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.

A Stein Song [1898], st. 1

Hermann Minkowski

1864–1909

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.

Space and Time [1908]

Andrew Barton [Banjo] Paterson

1864–1941

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,

Under the shade of a coolibah tree,

And he sang as he sat and waited for his billy-boil,

“Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?”²

Waltzing Matilda [1903]

Jules Renard

1864–1910

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.³

Journal, April 10, 1889

Failure is not our only punishment for laziness: there is also the success of others.⁴

Journal, January 2, 1898

Not the smallest charm of truth is that it scandalizes.

Journal, August 1902

I am not sincere even when I am saying that I am not sincere.

Journal, November 21, 1906

We don’t understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it.

Journal, February 12, 1907

There are moments when everything goes well; don’t be frightened, it won’t last.

Journal, October 30, 1908

Alfred Stieglitz

1864–1946

Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.

Note [1937], cited in Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz: An American Seer (1973)

Miguel de Unamuno

1864–1936

Consciousness is a disease.

The Tragic Sense of Life [1913], ch. 1

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant.

The Tragic Sense of Life, 5

To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as if He did exist.

The Tragic Sense of Life, 8

The devil is an angel too.

Two Mothers [1920]

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.

The Agony of Christianity [1925]

And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.

San Manuel Bueno, Martír [1930], prologue

Max Weber

1864–1920

The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization, and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world.” Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations.

Science as a Vocation¹ [1918]

He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence.

Politics as a Vocation [1919]

A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.

Politics as a Vocation

Charisma knows only inner determination and inner restraint.… The charismatic leader gains and maintains authority solely by proving his strength in life.

Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft¹ (Economy and Society) [1922], pt. III, ch. 9

Israel Zangwill

1864–1926

America is God’s crucible, the great melting pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!²

The Melting Pot [1908], act I

Mrs. Patrick Campbell [Beatrice Stella Tanner Campbell]

1865–1940

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.

Quoted in DAPHNE FIELDING [1904–1997], The Duchess of Jermyn Street [1964]

Edith [Louisa] Cavell

1865–1915

I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

Last words [October 12, 1915], before her execution by the Germans

Elsie De Wolfe [Lady Mendl]

1865–1950

I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint, comfortable chairs with lights beside them, open fires on the hearth and flowers wherever they “belong,” mirrors and sunshine in all rooms.

The House in Good Taste³ [1913], ch. 4

George V

1865–1936

How is the Empire?

Attributed last words⁴ [January 21, 1936]

Robert Henri

1865–1929

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

The Art Spirit [1923]

Rudyard Kipling

1865–1936

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

Departmental Ditties [1886]. The Betrothed, st. 25

Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate.

Plain Tales from the Hills [1888]. Watches of the Night

Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world.

In Black and White [1888]. On the City Wall

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest who travels alone.¹

Soldiers Three [1888]. The Winners (L’ Envoi: What Is the Moral?), st. 1

More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.

The Phantom ’Rickshaw [1888]

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

The Ballad of East and West [1889]

Bite on the bullet, old man, and don’t let them think you’re afraid.

The Light That Failed [1890–1891]

If I were damned of body and soul,

I know whose prayers would make me whole,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine.

Mother o’ Mine [1891]

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

“What are the bugles blowin’ for?” said Files-on-Parade.

“To turn you out, to turn you out,” the Color-Sergeant said.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads [1892, 1893]. Danny Deever,² st. 1

They’ve taken of his buttons off an’ cut his stripes away,

An’ they’re hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Danny Deever, st. 1

We aren’t no thin red ’eroes.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Tommy, st. 4

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck ’im out, the brute!”

But it’s “Savior of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Tommy, st. 5

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.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Fuzzy-Wuzzy, st. 1

Though I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,

By the livin’ Gawd that made you,

You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Gunga Din, st. 5

’Ave you ’eard o’ the Widow at Windsor

With a hairy gold crown on ’er ’ead?

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. The Widow at Windsor, st. 1

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, and the temple bells they say:

“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Mandalay,³ st. 1

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin’ fishes play,

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay!

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Mandalay, st. 1

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.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Mandalay, st. 6

The Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. The Conundrum of the Workshops, st. 1

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Gentlemen Rankers, st. 1

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! Baa!

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Gentlemen Rankers, refrain

We have done with Hope and Honor, we are lost to Love and Truth,

We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung;

And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.

God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Gentlemen Rankers, st. 4

And what should they know of England who only England know?

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. The English Flag, st. 1

The sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. Tomlinson, l. 60

There’s a legion that never was ’listed,

That carries no colors or crest.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. The Lost Legion, st. 1

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,

And every single one of them is right.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. In the Neolithic Age, st. 5

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 Northeast Trade.

Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads. The Long Trail, st. 5

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

The Young British Soldier [1892]

Back to the Army again, sergeant,

Back to the Army again.

Out o’ the cold an’ the rain.

Back to the Army Again [1894], refrain

We be of one blood, ye and I.

The Jungle Book [1894]. Kaa’s Hunting

Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed?

The Jungle Book. Kaa’s Hunting

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.

The Second Jungle Book [1895]. The Law of the Jungle, st. 1

When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,

Lie down till the leaders have spoken—it may be fair words shall prevail.

The Second Jungle Book. The Law of the Jungle, st. 6

Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;

But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is—Obey!

The Second Jungle Book. The Law of the Jungle, st. 19

I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it.

The Ladies [1895], st. 1

For the Colonel’s Lady an’ Judy O’Grady

Are sisters under their skins!

The Ladies, st. 8

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], st. 1

Daughter am I in my mother’s house;

But mistress in my own.

Our Lady of the Snows [1898], st. 1

God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle line,

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Recessional [1899], st. 1

The tumult and the shouting dies;

The captains and the kings depart.

Recessional, st. 2

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Recessional, st. 3

Lesser breeds without the Law.

Recessional, st. 4

For frantic boast and foolish word—

Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Recessional, st. 5

Take up the White Man’s burden,¹

Send forth the best ye breed—

Go, bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives’ need.

The White Man’s Burden [1899], st. 1

Little Friend of All the World.

Kim [1901], ch. 1

This is a great and terrible world. I never knew there were so many men alive in it.

Kim, 3

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.

The Just-So Stories [1902]. The Elephant’s Child

The great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees.

The Just-So Stories. The Elephant’s Child

The Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.

The Just-So Stories. The Cat That Walked by Himself

He went back through the wet wild woods, waving his wild tail, and walking by his wild lone. But he never told anybody.

The Just-So Stories. The Cat That Walked by Himself

Who hath desired the sea?—the sight of salt water unbounded.

The Sea and the Hills [1903], st. 1

Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—

Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

The Explorer [1903], st. 2

Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin’ up and down again!

There’s no discharge in the war!

Boots [1903], st. 1

’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

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]. A Tree Song, st. 1

Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware

Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

The Power of the Dog [1909]

   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

Before they planted the trees.

Rewards and Fairies [1910]. The Way Through the Woods

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same.

Rewards and Fairies. If, st. 2

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch.

Rewards and Fairies. If, st. 4

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rewards and Fairies. If, st. 4

The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

The Female of the Species [1911], st. 1

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees

That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees.

The Glory of the Garden, st. 8

What stands if Freedom fall?

Who dies if England live?

For All We Have and Are [1914], st. 4

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Epitaphs of the War, 1914–18 [1919]. Common Form

I could not look on Death, which being known,

Men led me to him, blindfold and alone.

Epitaphs of the War, 1914–1918.The Coward

Hot and bothered.

Independence. Rectorial Address at St. Andrews [October 10, 1923]

When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey.

Something of Myself for My Friends Known and Unknown [1937], ch. 8

Erich [Friedrich Wilhelm] Ludendorff

1865–1937

We were stabbed in the back.

On Germany’s defeat in World War I; to British Major General Neill Malcolm [1919]

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

1865–1947

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

Logan Pearsall Smith

1865–1946

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]

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Afterthoughts

Arthur Symons

1865–1945

Without charm there can be no fine literature, as there can be no perfect flower without fragrance.

The Symbolist Movement in Literature [1899]. Stéphane Mallarmé

The mystic too full of God to speak intelligibly to the world.

The Symbolist Movement in Literature. Arthur Rimbaud

William Butler Yeats¹

1865–1939

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.

Crossways [1889]. Down by the Salley Gardens

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.

Crossways. Down by the Salley Gardens

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!

Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.

The Rose [1893]. To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time, st. 1

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 honeybee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

The Rose. The Lake Isle of Innisfree,² st. 1

A pity beyond all telling

Is hid in the heart of love.

The Rose. The Pity of Love

The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,

The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,

And all that famous harmony of leaves,

Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.

The Rose. The Sorrow of Love, st. 1

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book.³

The Rose. When You Are Old, st. 1

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.

The Rose. When You Are Old, st. 2

    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], l. 48

    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, l. 373

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]. The Song of Wandering Aengus, st. 3

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. He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head,

You’d know the folly of being comforted.

In the Seven Woods [1904]. The Folly of Being Comforted

Never give all the heart, for love

Will hardly seem worth thinking of

To passionate women if it seem

Certain, and they never dream

That it fades out from kiss to kiss;

For everything that’s lovely is

But a brief, dreamy kind delight.

In the Seven Woods. Never Give All the Heart

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.

Better go down upon your marrow-bones

And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones.”

In the Seven Woods. Adam’s Curse, st. 1

For to articulate sweet sounds together

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set

Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen

The martyrs call the world.

In the Seven Woods. Adam’s Curse, st. 1

    It’s certain there is no fine thing

Since Adam’s fall but needs much laboring.

In the Seven Woods. Adam’s Curse, st. 3

I heard the old, old men say,

“All that’s beautiful drifts away

Like the waters.”

In the Seven Woods. The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water

Oh, singing women, set it down in a book,

That love is all we need, even though it is

But the last drops we gather up like this;

And though the drops are all we have known of life,

For we have been most friendless—praise us for it,

And praise the double sunset, for naught’s lacking,

But a good end to the long, cloudy day.

Deirdre [1907]

The friends that have it I do wrong

When ever I remake a song

Should know what issue is at stake,

It is myself that I remake.

The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats [1908], vol. II, untitled preliminary poem

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 [1908]. The Fascination of What’s Difficult

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That’s all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

The Green Helmet and Other Poems. A Drinking Song

Though leaves are many, the root is one;

Through all the lying days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;

Now I may wither into the truth.

The Green Helmet and Other Poems. The Coming of Wisdom with Time

In dreams begins responsibility.¹

Responsibilities [1914], epigraph (from an old play)

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The gray 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. September 1913, st. 3

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.

Responsibilities. To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

Responsibilities. The Magi, last line

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 eyes

As though they’d wrought it.

Song, let them take it,

For there’s more enterprise

In walking naked.

Responsibilities. A Coat

There are two living countries, one visible and one invisible, and when it is summer there, it is winter here, and when it is November with us, it is lambing-time there.

The Hour-Glass [1914]

All imaginative art remains at a distance and this distance, once chosen, must be firmly held against a pushing world.

Certain Noble Plays of Japan [1916]. Introduction

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

Per Amica Silentia Lunae [1918]

If we cannot imagine ourselves as different from what we are, and try to assume that second self, we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves though we may accept one from others. Active virtue, as distinguished from the passive acceptance of a code, is therefore theatrical, consciously dramatic, the wearing of a mask.

Per Amica Silentia Lunae

Upon the brimming water among the stones

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The Wild Swans at Coole [1919]. The Wild Swans at Coole, st. 1

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;

Their hearts have not grown old.

The Wild Swans at Coole. The Wild Swans at Coole, st. 4

Some burn damp faggots, others may consume

The entire combustible world in one small room.

The Wild Swans at Coole. In Memory of Major Robert Gregory, st. 11

    A thought

Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

The Wild Swans at Coole. In Memory of Major Robert Gregory, st. 12

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor.

The Wild Swans at Coole. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, l. 1

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds.

The Wild Swans at Coole. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, l. 9

And I may dine at journey’s end

With Landor and with Donne.

The Wild Swans at Coole. To a Young Beauty, st. 3

All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,

For all their broomsticks and their tears,

Their angry tears, are gone.

The Wild Swans at Coole. Lines Written in Dejection, l. 4

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

The Wild Swans at Coole. His Phoenix, refrain

Hands, do what you’re bid:

Bring the balloon of the mind

That bellies and drags in the wind

Into its narrow shed.

The Wild Swans at Coole. The Balloon of the Mind

We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind

And lost the old nonchalance of the hand;

Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush,

We are but critics, or but half create.

The Wild Swans at Coole. Ego Dominus Tuus, l. 12

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer [1921]. Easter 1916, st. 1

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

O when may it suffice?

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. Easter 1916, st. 4

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart¹; the center 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. The Second Coming, st. 1

    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. The Second Coming, st. 2

Imagining in excited reverie

That the future years had come,

Dancing to a frenzied drum,

Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 2

    For such,

Being made beautiful overmuch,

Consider beauty a sufficient end,

Lose natural kindness and maybe

The heart-revealing intimacy

That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 3

It’s certain that fine women eat

A crazy salad with their meat.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 4

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;

Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 5

And many a poor man that has roved,

Loved and thought himself beloved,

From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 5

If there’s no hatred in a mind

Assault and battery of the wind

Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 7

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. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 8

    All hatred driven hence,

The soul recovers radical innocence

And learns at last that it is self-delighting,

Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,

And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will.

Michael Robartes and the Dancer. A Prayer for My Daughter, st. 9

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 unaging intellect.

The Tower [1928]. Sailing to Byzantium, st. 1

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.

The Tower. Sailing to Byzantium, st. 2

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

The Tower. Sailing to Byzantium, st. 3

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enameling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.¹

The Tower. Sailing to Byzantium, st. 4

What shall I do with this absurdity—

O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature,

Decrepit age that has been tied to me

As to a dog’s tail?

The Tower. The Tower, I

Does the imagination dwell the most

Upon a woman won or a woman lost?

The Tower. The Tower, II, st. 13

We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart’s grown brutal from the fare.

The Tower. Meditations in Time of Civil War: The Stare’s Nest by My Window

The night can sweat with terror as before

We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,

And planned to bring the world under a rule,

Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

The Tower. Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, I, st. 4

But is there any comfort to be found?

Man is in love and loves what vanishes,

What more is there to say?

The Tower. Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, I, st. 6

O but we dreamed to mend

Whatever mischief seemed

To afflict mankind, but now

That winds of winter blow

Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

The Tower. Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, III, st. 3

Come let us mock at the great

That had such burdens on the mind

And toiled so hard and late

To leave some monument behind,

Nor thought of the leveling wind.

The Tower. Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, V, st. 1

Much did I rage when young,

Being by the world oppressed,

But now with flattering tongue

It speeds the parting guest.

The Tower. Youth and Age

Everything that man esteems

Endures a moment or a day.

Love’s pleasure drives his love away,

The painter’s brush consumes his dreams.

The Tower. Two Songs from a Play, II, st. 2

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

The Tower. Leda and the Swan, st. 3

Labor is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

The Tower. Among School Children, st. 8

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.

From “Oedipus at Colonus,” st. 3

What they undertook to do

They brought to pass;

All things hang like a drop of dew

Upon a blade of grass.

Words for Music Perhaps [1932]. Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors

Whatever stands in field or flood,

Bird, beast, fish or man,

Mare or stallion, cock or hen,

Stands in God’s unchanging eye

In all the vigour of its blood;

In that faith I live or die.

Words for Music Perhaps. Tom the Lunatic

    That toil of growing up;

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress

Of boyhood changing into man;

The unfinished man and his pain.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems [1933]. A Dialogue of Self and Soul, II, st. 1

I am content to live it all again

And yet again, if it be life to pitch

Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. A Dialogue of Self and Soul, II, st. 3

When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blest by everything,

Everything we look upon is blest.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. A Dialogue of Self and Soul, II, st. 4

Swift has sailed into his rest;

Savage indignation there

Cannot lacerate his breast,

Imitate him if you dare,

World-besotted traveler; he

Served human liberty.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Swift’s Epitaph¹

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.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. The Choice, st. 1

The unpurged images of day recede;

The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;

Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song

After great cathedral gong.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Byzantium, st. 1

At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit

Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Byzantium, st. 4

An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Byzantium, st. 4

That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Byzantium, st. 5

No man has ever lived that had enough

Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Vacillation, III, st. 1

Things said or done long years ago,

Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do,

Weigh me down, and not a day

But something is recalled,

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Vacillation, V, st. 2

Somewhere beyond the curtain

Of distorting days

Lives that lonely thing

That shone before these eyes

Targeted, trod like Spring.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Quarrel in Old Age, st. 2

I had wild Jack for a lover.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Words for Music Perhaps, V, Crazy Jane on God, st. 4

“Fair and foul are near of kin,

And fair needs foul,” I cried.

“My friends are gone, but that’s a truth

Nor grave nor bed denied.”

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Words for Music Perhaps, VI, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop, st. 2

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. Words for Music Perhaps, VI, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop, st. 3

What were all the world’s alarms

To mighty Paris when he found

Sleep upon a golden bed

That first dawn in Helen’s arms?

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Words for Music Perhaps, XVI, Lullaby, st. 1

Speech after long silence; it is right,

All other lovers being estranged or dead…

That we descant and yet again descant

Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:

Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young

We loved each other and were ignorant.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Words for Music Perhaps, XVII, After Long Silence

A man may put pretense away

Who leans upon a stick.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. Words for Music Perhaps, XIX: Those Dancing Days Are Gone

I gave what other women gave

That stepped out of their clothes,

But when this soul, its body off,

Naked to naked goes,

He it has found shall find therein

What none other knows.

The Winding Stair and Other Poems. A Woman Young and Old, IX, A Last Confession, st. 3

Bird sighs for the air,

Thought for I know not where,

For the womb the seed sighs.

Now sinks the same rest

On mind, on nest,

On straining thighs.

The Lover’s Song [1938]

My temptation is quiet.

Here at life’s end

Neither loose imagination,

Nor the mill of the mind

Consuming its rag and bone,

Can make the truth known.

Last Poems. An Acre of Grass, st. 2

Grant me an old man’s frenzy,

Myself must I remake

Till I am Timon and Lear

Or that William Blake

Who beat upon the wall

Till Truth obeyed his call.

Last Poems. An Acre of Grass, st. 3

An old man’s eagle mind.

Last Poems. An Acre of Grass, st. 4

You think it horrible that lust and rage

Should dance attention upon my old age;

They were not such a plague when I was young;

What else have I to spur me into song?

Last Poems. The Spur

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,

And say my glory was I had such friends.

Last Poems. The Municipal Gallery Revisited, st. 7

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

Last Poems. Long-Legged Fly, refrain

Fifteen apparitions have I seen;

The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.

Last Poems. The Apparitions, refrain

Players and painted stage took all my love,

And not those things that they were emblems of.

Last Poems. The Circus Animals’ Desertion, II, st. 3

    Now that my ladder’s gone,

I must lie down where all the ladders start,

In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

Last Poems. The Circus Animals’ Desertion, III

Irish poets, learn your trade,

Sing whatever is well made.

Last Poems. Under Ben Bulben, V

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head

In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

Last Poems. Under Ben Bulben, VI

On limestone quarried near the spot

By his command these words are cut:

   Cast a cold eye

   On life, on death.

   Horseman, pass by!¹

Last Poems. Under Ben Bulben, VI

[On learning of the death in April 1909 of Algernon Charles Swinburne:] Now I am King of the Cats.

Attributed

I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood—sex and the dead.

The Letters of W. B. Yeats

You have disgraced yourselves again. Is this to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius? Synge first and then O’Casey?

Speech to rioters protesting Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars [1926], referring also to 1907 protests of J. M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World

A saying I have heard somewhere: “Things reveal themselves passing away.”

Dramatis Personae: 1896–1902 [1935]

Even when the poet seems most himself… he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

A General Introduction for My Work [1937]

George Ade

1866–1944

Stay with the procession or you will never catch up.

Forty Modern Fables [1901]. The Old-Time Pedagogue

But, R - e - m - o - r - s - e!

The water-wagon is the place for me;…

It is no time for mirth and laughter,

The cold, gray dawn of the morning after!

The Sultan of Sulu [1902]. Remorse

Gelett Burgess

1866–1951

I never saw a purple cow,

I never hope to see one;

But I can tell you, anyhow,

I’d rather see than be one.

The Purple Cow [1895]

The Goops they lick their fingers,

   And the Goops they lick their knives;

They spill their broth on the tablecloth—

   Oh, they lead disgusting lives!

The Goops they talk while eating,

   And loud and fast they chew;

And that is why I’m glad that I

   Am not a Goop—are you?

Goops and How to Be Them. Table Manners, I [1900]

Benedetto Croce

1866–1952

Every true history is contemporary history.²

History: Its Theory and Practice [1917]

Harry Dacre

d. 1922

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!

I’m half crazy, all for the love of you!

It won’t be a stylish marriage,

I can’t afford a carriage,

But you’ll look sweet upon the seat

Of a bicycle built for two!

Daisy Bell [1892]

Civilla Durfee Martin

1866–1948

His eye is on the sparrow

And I know He watches me.

His Eye Is on the Sparrow [1904]

Beatrix Potter

1866–1943

What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense, to fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet to feel truly and understand a little, a very little, of the story of life.

Journal entry [November 17, 1896]

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit [1902]

But don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

The water was all slippy-sloppy in the larder and the back passage. But Mr. Jeremy liked getting his feet wet; nobody ever scolded him, and he never caught a cold.

The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher [1906]

Lincoln Steffens

1866–1936

[On Chicago:] First in violence, deepest in dirt; lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a village, the “tough” among cities, a spectacle for the nation.

The Shame of the Cities [1904]

It is our knowledge—the things we are sure of—that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.

Radiant Fatherhood [1925]

“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.”¹

Autobiography [1931], ch. 18

Sun Yat-sen

1866–1925

The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity; they do not have national spirit… they are just a heap of loose sand.… Other men are the carving knife and serving dish; we are the fish and the meat.

China as a Heap of Loose Sand² [1924]

H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells

1866–1946

Are we not Men?

The Island of Dr. Moreau [1896], ch. 12

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

The War of the Worlds [1898], ch. 1

At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.

The War of the Worlds, ch. 7

Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand.

The First Men in the Moon [1901]

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman [1914], ch. 9

Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands.

The World Set Free [1914]

The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.

The Outline of History [1920], ch. 40

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

The Outline of History, 41

The Shape of Things to Come.

Title of book [1933]

The New World Order.

Title of book [1940]

Julien Benda

1867–1956

The Treachery of the Intellectuals.³

Title of book [1927]

Pierre Bonnard

1867–1947

It’s not a matter of painting life. It’s a matter of giving life to painting.

Notes [1946]

Marie Curie

1867–1934

But we must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

Lecture at Vassar College [1921]

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery also has its own beauty.

Remarks at 1933 conference in Madrid, quoted in Eve Curie’s book Madame Curie: A Biography [1937]

Ernest Dowson

1867–1900

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine

There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed

Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;

And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.¹

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae (I Am Not What I Was Under Good Cynara’s Reign) [1896], st. 1

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng.

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae, st. 3

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,

But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,

Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine.

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae, st. 4

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate:

I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses;

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam (Life’s Brief Span Forbids Long-Reaching Hopes)² [1896]

Finley Peter Dunne [Mr. Dooley]

1867–1936

No matther whether th’ constitution follows th’ flag or not, th’ supreme coort follows th’ iliction returns.

Mr. Dooley’s Opinions [1900]. The Supreme Court’s Decisions

I think a lie with a purpose is wan iv th’ worst kind an’ th’ mos’ profitable.

Mr. Dooley’s Opinions. On Lying

Th’ dimmycratic party ain’t on speakin’ terms with itsilf.

Mr. Dooley’s Opinions. Mr. Dooley Discusses Party Politics

Vice… is a creature of such heejous mien… that th’ more ye see it th’ betther ye like it.

Mr. Dooley’s Opinions. The Crusade Against Vice

A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks th’ Lord wud do if He knew th’ facts iv th’ case.

Mr. Dooley’s Opinions. Casual Observations

Thrust ivrybody, but cut th’ ca-ards.

Mr. Dooley’s Opinions. Casual Observations

But th’ best thing about a little judicyous swearin’ is that it keeps th’ temper. ’Twas intinded as a compromise between runnin’ away an’ fightin’. Befure it was invinted they was on’y th’ two ways out iv an argymint.

Observations by Mr. Dooley [1902]. Swearing

Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, conthrols th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.

Observations by Mr. Dooley. Newspaper Publicity

Th’ prisidincy is th’ highest office in th’ gift iv th’ people. Th’ vice-prisidincy is th’ next highest an’ th’ lowest. It isn’t a crime exactly. Ye can’t be sint to jail f’r it, but it’s a kind iv a disgrace. It’s like writin’ anonymous letters.

Dissertations by Mr. Dooley [1906]. The Vice-President

John Galsworthy

1867–1933

Public opinion’s always in advance of the law.

Windows [1922], act I

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

Maid in Waiting [1931], ch. 3

Kaethe [Schmidt] Kollwitz

1867–1945

I am gradually approaching the period in my life when work comes first.… No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

Diary¹ [April 1910]

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

Diary [January 1, 1912]

Luigi Pirandello

1867–1936

Science has the illusion that it is making our existence easier and more comfortable. But even admitting that it’s easier, with all these difficult, complicated machines, I still ask: What worse turn could they do a man condemned to futile activity than to make it easy and almost mechanical for him?

The Late Mattia Pascal² [1904]

Life, happily filled with shameless absurdities, has the rare privilege of being able to ignore credibility, whereas art feels called upon to pay attention to it.

The Late Mattia Pascal, epilogue added to 1921 edition

Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Title of play

Each of us—on the outside, in front of others—dresses in dignity, but inside himself he is well aware of these unconfessable things that pass through the secrecy of his heart.

Six Characters in Search of an Author³ [1921], act I

Henry L[ewis] Stimson

1867–1950

Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.⁴

On Active Service in Peace and War [1948]

Arturo Toscanini

1867–1957

Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died.

To audience after conducting the premiere of Puccini’s unfinished Turandot [1926]

[In response to Richard Strauss’s agreeing to write music for the 1936 Olympics:] To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it on again.

Attributed

Joseph Weber

1867–1942

and

Lew Fields

1867–1941

Who was that lady I saw you with last night?

She ain’t no lady; she’s my wife.

Vaudeville routine [1887]

Wilbur Wright

1867–1912

and

Orville Wright

1871–1948

Success. Four flights Thursday morning. All against twenty-one-mile wind. Started from level with engine power alone. Average speed through air thirty-one miles. Longest fifty-nine seconds. Inform press. Home Christmas.

Telegram to the Reverend Milton Wright, from Kitty Hawk, N.C. [December 17, 1903]

Mary [Hunter] Austin

1868–1934

For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.

The Land of Little Rain [1903]

Gertrude Bell

1868–1926

It’s a bore being a woman when you are in Arabia.

Diary for Charles Doughty-Wylie [February 16, 1914]

Émile Auguste Chartier [Alain]

1868–1951

To think is to say no.

Le Citoyen Contre les Pouvoirs (The Citizen Against the Powers) [1926]

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.

Propos sur la Religion (Comments on Religion) [1938]

Paul Claudel

1868–1955

You explain nothing, O poet, but thanks to you all things become explicable.

La Ville [1897], act I

When man tries to imagine Paradise on earth, the immediate result is a very respectable Hell.

Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher [1929]

Norman Douglas

1868–1952

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

South Wind [1917], ch. 7

W[illiam] E[dward] B[urghardt] Du Bois

1868–1963

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

To the Nations of the World; address to Pan-African conference, London [1900]

Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?

The Souls of Black Folk [1903]

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.… One feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two Souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The Souls of Black Folk

The Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.

The Souls of Black Folk

The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

The Talented Tenth [1903]

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.

John Brown [1909]

The cause of war is preparation for war.

Of the Children of Peace [1914]

[On heavyweight champion Jack Johnson:] Some pretend to object to Mr. Johnson’s character. But we have yet to hear, in the case of white America, that marital troubles have disqualified prizefighters or ball players or even statesmen. It comes down then, after all, to this unforgiveable blackness.

The Crisis [August 1914]. The Prize Fighter

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very modern thing—a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!

Darkwater [1920]. The Souls of White Folk

The dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer.

Darkwater. The Souls of White Folk

Lions have no historians.

The Superior Race [1923]

Thus all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy.

Criteria of Negro Art [1926]

The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.

Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 [1935]. The White Worker

Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?

Black Reconstruction in America. The Propaganda of History

Not even a Harvard School of Business can make greed into a science.

In Battle for Peace [1952]

Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller life.

Last message to the world [written 1957]. Read at his funeral [1963]

John Nance Garner

1868–1967

The vice-presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Attributed

Maxim Gorki¹ [Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov]

1868–1936

Let the storm rage ever stronger!²

Song of a Stormy Petrel [1901]

Lies—there you have the religion of slaves and taskmasters.³

The Lower Depths [1903]

The proletarian state must bring up thousands of excellent “mechanics of culture,” “engineers of the soul.”⁴

Speech at the Writers’ Congress [1934]

C[harles] Austin Miles

1868–1946

I come to the garden alone,

While the dew is still on the roses;

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

The Son of God discloses.

In the Garden [1912]

Edmond Rostand

1868–1918

A great nose indicates a great man—

Genial, courteous, intellectual,

Virile, courageous.

Cyrano de Bergerac⁵ [1897], act I

Robert Falcon Scott

1868–1912

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.⁶

Diary of the Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic.⁷ Message to the Public

[Concerning the South Pole:] Great God! this is an awful place.

Scott’s Last Expedition: Journals [January 17, 1912]

It was blowing a blizzard. He [Capt. Lawrence E. G. Oates] said, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.

Scott’s Last Expedition: Journals [March 12, 1912]

Every day we have been ready to start for our depot eleven miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.

It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.

R. SCOTT

For God’s sake look after our people.

Scott’s Last Expedition: Journals [Thursday, March 29, 1912 (last entry)]

Luther Standing Bear⁸

1868–1939

Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was the land “infested” with “wild” animals and “savage” people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families that we loved was it “wild” for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the “Wild West” began.

Land of the Spotted Eagle [1933]

William Allen White

1868–1944

What’s the matter with Kansas?¹

Emporia Gazette, Kansas [August 15, 1896]

Tinhorn politicians.

Emporia Gazette [October 25, 1901]

All dressed up, with nowhere to go.

Of the Progressive Party in 1916, after Theodore Roosevelt retired from presidential competition

The talent of a meat-packer, the morals of a moneychanger and the manners of an undertaker.

Obituary of Frank A. Munsey [December 23, 1925]

Laurence Binyon

1869–1943

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.

For the Fallen [1914], st. 4

Neville Chamberlain

1869–1940

How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is, that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here, because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.

On BBC radio [September 27, 1938], after the signing of the agreement to cede the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany

For the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.… Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.

Address from 10 Downing Street, London [September 30, 1938], after returning from the Munich Conference

Hitler has missed the bus.

Speech in the House of Commons [April 4, 1940]

Mohandas Karamchand [Mahatma] Gandhi²

1869–1948

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

Defense against charge of sedition [March 23, 1922]

The term Satyagraha was coined by me… in order to distinguish it from the movement then going on… under the name of Passive Resistance.

Its root meaning is “holding on to truth,” hence “force of righteousness.” I have also called it love force or soul force. In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not permit violence being inflicted on one’s opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For what appears truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by the infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one’s self.³

Defense against charge of sedition

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, vol. I [1942]

André Gide

1869–1951

Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.⁴

Les Nourritures Terrestres (Fruits of the Earth) [1897], bk. IV

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable.

Les Nourritures Terrestres. Envoi

The most decisive actions of our life… are most often unconsidered actions.

Les Faux Monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters) [1926]

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.¹

Letter to François Mauriac [1928]

Emma Goldman

1869–1940

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

Anarchism and Other Essays [1910]. Anarchism

The keynote of government is injustice.

Anarchism and Other Essays. Anarchism

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the shackles and restraints of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth.

Anarchism and Other Essays. Anarchism

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.

Anarchism and Other Essays. The Hypocrisy of Puritanism

If I can’t dance I don’t want to be in your revolution.

Attributed²

Stephen [Butler] Leacock

1869–1944

He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

Nonsense Novels [1911]. Gertrude the Governess

Edgar Lee Masters

1869–1950

All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

Spoon River Anthology [1915]. The Hill, refrain

Hear me, ambitious souls,

Sex is the curse of life!

Spoon River Anthology. Margaret Fuller Slack

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you—

It takes life to love life.

Spoon River Anthology. Lucinda Matlock

Out of me unworthy and unknown

The vibrations of deathless music.

Spoon River Anthology. Anne Rutledge

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,

Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln.

Spoon River Anthology. Anne Rutledge

Henri Matisse

1869–1954

I want to reach that state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture.

Notes d’un Peintre³ (Notes of a Painter) [1908]

What I dream of is an art that is equilibrated, pure and calm, free of disturbing subject matter, an art that can be for any intellectual worker, for the business man or the writer, a means of soothing the soul, something like a comfortable armchair in which one can rest from physical fatigue.

Notes d’un Peintre⁴

Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter’s command to express his feelings.

Notes d’un Peintre

I used to say to my young students, “You want to be a painter? First of all, you must cut out your tongue, because your decision has taken away from you the right to express yourself with anything but your brush.”

Radio interview [1942]

Exactitude Is Not Truth.

Title of essay [1947]

William Vaughn Moody

1869–1910

    Gigantic, willful, young,

Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates.

An Ode in Time of Hesitation [1901], st. 3

Rudolf Otto

1869–1937

The truly “mysterious” object is beyond our apprehension and comprehension, not only because our knowledge has certain irremovable limits, but because in it we come upon something inherently “wholly other,” whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb.

Das Heilige (The Holy) [1917]

Edwin Arlington Robinson

1869–1935

I would have rid the earth of him

Once, in my pride.

I never knew the worth of him

Until he died.

An Old Story [1897], st. 3

Life is the game that must be played.

Ballade by the Fire [1897]. Envoy

There is ruin and decay

In the House on the Hill:

They are all gone away,

There is nothing more to say.

The House on the Hill [1897], last stanza

He glittered when he walked.

Richard Cory [1897], st. 2

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Richard Cory, st. 4

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;

He wept that he was ever born,

And he had reasons.

Miniver Cheevy [1910], st. 1

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,

Scratched his head and kept on thinking;

Miniver coughed and called it fate,

And kept on drinking.

Miniver Cheevy, st. 8

I shall have more to say when I am dead.

John Brown [1920], last line

William Strunk, Jr.

1869–1946

Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

The Elements of Style [1918], ch. 2, sec. 13

Booth Tarkington

1869–1946

In the days before deathly contrivances hustled them through their lives, and when they had no telephones—another ancient vacancy profoundly responsible for leisure—they had time for everything: time to think, to talk, time to read, time to wait for a lady!

The Magnificent Ambersons [1918], ch. 1

In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet.

The Magnificent Ambersons, 1

There aren’t any old times. When times are gone they’re not old, they’re dead! There aren’t any times but new times!

The Magnificent Ambersons, 6, spoken by Eugene Morgan

Gossip is never fatal… until it is denied.

The Magnificent Ambersons, 23

Frank Lloyd Wright

1869–1959

No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.

Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography [1943]

An art cannot be taught. You can only inculcate it, you can be an exemplar, you can create an atmosphere in which it can grow.

Wisdom (NBC television program) [1953]. A Conversation with Frank Lloyd Wright

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance, and have seen no occasion to change.

Wisdom. A Conversation with Frank Lloyd Wright

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines.

New York Times Magazine [October 4, 1953]

Bernard M[annes] Baruch

1870–1965

Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation.… Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction.

Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission [June 14, 1946]

Every man has a right to an opinion but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.

Speech accepting the Freedom House Award [October 8, 1946]

We are in the midst of a cold war¹ which is getting warmer.

Speech before the Senate Committee [1948]

Hilaire Belloc

1870–1953

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

I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.

But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Fatigue [1923]

Of this bad world the loveliest and the best

Has smiled and said “Good Night,” and gone to rest.

On a Dead Hostess [1923]

When I am dead, I hope it may be said:

“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

On His Books [1923]

Benjamin Nathan Cardozo

1870–1938

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.

The Growth of the Law [1924]

What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly to be sacrificed.

The Paradoxes of Legal Science [1928]

[The Constitution] was framed upon the theory that the peoples of the several states must sink or swim together, and that in the long run prosperity and salvation are in union and not division.

Baldwin v. Seelig, 294 U.S. 511, 523 [1935]

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.

Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 327 [1937]

Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas

1870–1945

I am the Love that dare not speak its name.

Two Loves [1894]

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin [Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov]

1870–1924

“The revolution’s decisive victory over tsarism” means the establishment of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

Two Tactics of Social-Democracy [1905], ch. 6

We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order.

Speech at the Congress of Soviets² [October 26, 1917]

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.

Will the Bolsheviks Retain Government Power? [1917]

The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.

The State and Revolution [1918], ch. 1

So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.

The State and Revolution, 5

Communism is Soviet government plus the electrification of the whole country.

New External and Internal Position and the Problems of the Party [1920]

It is true that liberty is precious—so precious that it must be rationed.

Attributed. Quoted by SIDNEY [1859–1947] AND BEATRICE [1858–1943] WEBB, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? [1936]

Adolf Loos

1870–1933

Cultural evolution is synonymous with the removal of ornament from articles in daily use.

Ornament and Crime [1908]

All art is erotic.³

Ornament and Crime

Rosa Luxemburg

1870–1919

I hope to die at my post: in the streets or in prison.

Letter from prison [c. 1917]

Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently.

The Russian Revolution [1922]

Maria Montessori

1870–1952

What is the greatest sign of success for a teacher thus transformed? It is to be able to say, “The children are now working as if I did not exist.”

The Absorbent Mind [1949]

[Benjamin] Frank[lin] Norris [Jr.]

1870–1902

One evening she had even spread all the gold pieces between the sheets, and had then gone to bed, stripping herself, and had slept all night upon the money, taking a strange and ecstatic pleasure in the touch of the smooth flat pieces the length of her entire body.

McTeague [1899]

Here, of all her cities, throbbed the true life—the true power and spirit of America; gigantic, crude with the crudity of youth, disdaining rivalry; sane and healthy and vigorous; brutal in its ambition, arrogant in the new-found knowledge of its gigantic strength, prodigal of its wealth, infinite in its desires.

The Pit [1903], on Chicago

Don’t like to write, but like having written.

Letter to Ward Macauley [published 1915]

Watty Piper [Mabel Caroline Bragg]

1870–1945

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

The Little Engine That Could [1930]

Roscoe Pound

1870–1964

The law must be stable, but it must not stand still.

Introduction to the Philosophy of Law [1922]

Saki [Hector Hugh Munro]

1870–1916

The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went.

Reginald [1904]. Reginald on Besetting Sins

Women and elephants never forget an injury.

Reginald. Reginald on Besetting Sins

I might have been a goldfish in a glass bowl for all the privacy I got.

Reginald. The Innocence of Reginald

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

The Chronicles of Clovis [1911]. Sredni Vashtar

The art of public life consists to a great extent of knowing exactly where to stop and going a bit farther.

The Unbearable Bassington [1912]

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

The Square Egg [1924]. Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business

T. Laurence Seibert

1877–1917

Casey Jones! Orders in his hand.

Casey Jones! Mounted to the cabin,

Took his farewell journey to that promised land.

Casey Jones [1902]¹

Stephen Crane

1871–1900

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.

The Red Badge of Courage [1895], opening sentences

They were going to look at war, the red animal—war, the blood-swollen god.

The Red Badge of Courage, ch. 3

At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

The Red Badge of Courage, 9

He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.

The Red Badge of Courage, 24

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, “Is it good, friend?”

“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it

“Because it is bitter,

“And because it is my heart.”¹

The Black Riders [1895], III

Should the wide world roll away

Leaving black terror

Limitless night,

Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand

Would be to me essential

If thou and thy white arms were there

And the fall to doom a long way.

The Black Riders, X

None of them knew the color of the sky.

The Open Boat [1897], first line

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.

The Open Boat

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.

Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky

And the affrighted steed ran on alone,

Do not weep.

War is kind.

War Is Kind [1899]. War Is Kind, st. 1

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

War Is Kind. War Is Kind, fragment

Theodore Dreiser

1871–1945

Oh, the moonlight’s fair tonight along the Wabash,

From the fields there comes the breath of new-mown hay;

Through the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming

On the banks of the Wabash, far away.

On the Banks of the Wabash² [1897], chorus

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.

Sister Carrie [1900], ch. 1

The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye.

Sister Carrie, 1

In your rocking chair by your window shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel.

Sister Carrie, 50

An American Tragedy.

Title of novel [1925]

James Weldon Johnson

1871–1938

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.

Lift Every Voice and Sing [1900], st. 2

The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man [1912], ch. 2

Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 10

Your arm’s too short to box with God.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 10

O black and unknown bards of long ago,

How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?

How, in your darkness, did you come to know

The power and beauty of the minstrels’ lyre?

O Black and Unknown Bards [1917], st. 1

And God stepped out on space,

And He looked around and said,

“I’m lonely—

I’ll make me a world.”

God’s Trombones [1927]. The Creation, st. 1

With His head in His hands,

God thought and thought,

Till He thought: I’ll make me a man!

God’s Trombones. The Creation, st. 10

    Find Sister Caroline…

And she’s tired—

She’s weary—

Go down, Death, and bring her to me.

God’s Trombones. Go Down, Death, st. 5

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.

Black Manhattan [1930], ch. 11

Marcel Proust

1871–1922

On no days of our childhood did we live so fully perhaps as those we thought we had left behind without living them, those that we spent with a favorite book.

On Reading [1905]

For a long time I used to go to bed early.¹

In Search of Lost Time² [1913–1927]. Swann’s Way,³ opening line

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them.

In Search of Lost Time. Swann’s Way

Once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime flowers which my aunt used to give me… immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater.

In Search of Lost Time. Swann’s Way

In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her.

In Search of Lost Time. Swann’s Way

To think that I’ve wasted years of my life, that I’ve longed to die, that I’ve experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn’t appeal to me, who wasn’t even my type!

In Search of Lost Time. Swann’s Way

Not only does one not retain all at once the truly rare works, but even within such works it is the least precious parts that one perceives first. Less deceptive than life, these great masterpieces do not give us their best at the beginning.

In Search of Lost Time. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, I

The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.

In Search of Lost Time. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, I

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and only they who have founded religions and created great works of art.

In Search of Lost Time. The Guermantes Way. My Grandmother’s Illness

Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one’s life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff-boxes, even to pictures or statues.

In Search of Lost Time. The Guermantes Way

Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages.

In Search of Lost Time. Sodom and Gomorrah, pt. I⁴

The bonds that unite another person to ourself exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

In Search of Lost Time. The Fugitive⁵

There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.

In Search of Lost Time. The Fugitive

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

In Search of Lost Time. The Fugitive

How much more worth living did it appear to me now, now that I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realized within the confines of a book! How happy would he be, I thought, the man who had the power to write such a book!

In Search of Lost Time. Time Regained

Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really lived—is literature.

In Search of Lost Time. Time Regained

Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

In Search of Lost Time. Time Regained¹

In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have perceived in himself.

In Search of Lost Time. Time Regained²

Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another’s view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists.

The Maxims of Marcel Proust³ [1948]

A book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices.

Contre Sainte-Beuve [1954]. The Method of Sainte-Beuve⁴

Ernest Rutherford

1871–1937

We cannot control atomic energy to an extent which would be of any value commercially, and I believe we are not likely ever to be able to do so.

Speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science [1933]

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

Quoted in J. B. Birks, Rutherford at Manchester [1962]

John Millington Synge

1871–1909

What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

Riders to the Sea [1904]

They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me.

Riders to the Sea

When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen… 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.

The Playboy of the Western World [1907], preface

May I meet him with one tooth and it aching, and one eye to be seeing seven and seventy divils in the twists of the road, and one old timber leg on him to limp into the scalding grave. There he is now crossing the strands, and that the Lord God would send a high wave to wash him from the world.⁵

The Playboy of the Western World, act II

A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, 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.

The Aran Islands [1907]

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.

The Aran Islands

Paul Valéry

1871–1945

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci⁶ [1895]

Stupidity is not my strong point.¹

La Soirée avec Monsieur Teste [1896]

The sea, the ever renewing sea!²

Charmes [1922]. Le Cimetière Marin (Graveyard by the Sea)

The wind is rising… we must attempt to live.³

Charmes. Le Cimetière Marin

Taste is made of a thousand distastes.⁴

Choses Tues [1930]

Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of “truth” and the language of “creation.”

Littérature [1930]

A work of art, if it does not leave us mute, is of little value.

Honoré Daumier [1938]

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

Tel Quel⁵ [1941–1943]

Politeness is organized indifference.

Tel Quel

Politics is the art of preventing people from minding their own business.

Tel Quel

Talent without genius isn’t much, but genius without talent is nothing at all.

Analects

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

From W. H. AUDEN, A Certain World [1970]

Sir Max Beerbohm

1872–1956

Most women are not so young as they are painted.

A Defense of Cosmetics [1894]

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.

Eighteen Eighty [1895]

Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.

Poor Romeo! [1896]

Death cancels all engagements.

Zuleika Dobson [1911], ch. 7

She was one of the people who say: “I don’t know anything about music really, but I know what I like.”

Zuleika Dobson, 9

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.

No. 2. The Pines [1914]

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself.

Quia Imperfectum [1918]

Anywhere but in England it would be impossible for two solitary men, howsoever much reduced by influenza, to spend five or six days in the same hostel and not exchange a single word. This is one of the charms of England.

Seven Men [1919]. A. V. Laider

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.

Laughter [1920]

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

An Inquiry into a Convention [Saturday Review, December 19, 1903]

Calvin Coolidge

1872–1933

Civilization and profits go hand in hand.

Speech in New York City [November 27, 1920]

The chief business of the American people is business.

Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors [January 17, 1925]

I do not choose to run for President in 1928.

Statement to reporters [August 2, 1927]

He said he was against it.

On being asked what a clergyman preaching on sin had said

They hired the money, didn’t they?

Attributed. Comment on European war debts [1925]

[Edward] Gordon Craig

1872–1966

That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, and who records more than he has seen.

On the Art of the Theatre [1911]

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev

1872–1929

Astound me! I’ll wait for you to astound me.

To Jean Cocteau [1912]. From JEAN COCTEAU, Journals [1956], ch. 1

Paul Laurence Dunbar

1872–1906

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core…

I know why the caged bird sings!¹

Sympathy [1899], st. 3

Since thou²

and those who died with thee for right

Have died, the Present teaches, but in vain!

Robert Gould Shaw [1900], st. 2

It’s easy ’nough to titter w’en de stew is smokin’ hot,

But hit’s mighty ha’d to giggle w’en dey’s nuffin’ in de pot.

Philosophy [1903], st. 4

Learned Hand

1872–1961

Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.

Helvering v. Gregory [1934]

This much I think I do know—that a society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save; that a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save; that in a society which evades its responsibility by thrusting upon the courts the nurture of that spirit, that spirit in the end will perish.

The Contribution of an Independent Judiciary to Civilization [1942]

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Speech [May 31, 1944]

I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.

Speech to the Board of Regents, University of the State of New York [October 24, 1952]

That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.

Speech to the Board of Regents, University of the State of New York

Wee Willie Keeler [William Henry O’Kelleher]

1872–1923

Hit ’em where they ain’t.

Attributed in The Brooklyn Eagle [July 29, 1901]

John McCrae

1872–1918

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row.

In Flanders Fields [1915], st. 1

Take up our quarrel with the foe;

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

In Flanders fields.

In Flanders Fields, st. 3

Bertrand Russell, Earl Russell

1872–1970

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

The Study of Mathematics [1902]

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform.

The Study of Mathematics

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that anyone of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country’s pride.

Letter to the editor of The Nation [August 15, 1914]. The Rights of War

I shall rot and nothing of my ego will survive.

What I Believe [1925]

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Why I Am Not a Christian [1927]

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly… the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.

Why I Am Not a Christian

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it to be true.

Skeptical Essays [1928], ch. 1

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Sceptical Essays

It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.

Marriage and Morals [1929], ch. 7

Very few men and women who have had a conventional upbringing have learnt to feel decently about sex and marriage. Their education has taught them that deceitfulness and lying are considered virtues by parents and teachers; that sexual relations, even within marriage, are more or less disgusting, and that in propagating the species men are yielding to their animal nature while women are submitting to a painful duty.

Marriage and Morals, 8

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear are already three parts dead.

Marriage and Morals, 19

The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue.

Marriage and Morals, 16

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology only opinion.

Unpopular Essays. An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish

I think that if there go on being great wars and great oppressions and many people leading very unhappy lives, probably religion will go on, because I’ve observed that the belief in the goodness of God is inversely proportional to the evidence.

Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind [1960]

Harlan Fiske Stone

1872–1946

While unconstitutional exercise of power by the executive and legislative branches of the government is subject to judicial restraint, the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint. For the removal of unwise laws from the statute books appeal lies not to the courts but to the ballot and to the processes of democratic government.

Dissent in United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 [1936]

George Bennard

1873–1958

I will cling to the old rugged cross,

And exchange it some day for a crown.

The Old Rugged Cross [1913], refrain

Willa [Sibert] Cather

1873–1947

One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world’s end somewhere, and holds fast to the days, as to fortune or fame.

Le Lavandou [1902]

There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.

O Pioneers!¹ [1913], pt. II, ch. 4

The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

O Pioneers!, II, 4

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

O Pioneers!, II, 8

I tell you there is such a thing as creative hate!

The Song of the Lark [1915], pt. I

What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?

The Song of the Lark, 4

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

The Song of the Lark, 6

If there was a road I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.

My Ántonia [1918], bk. I, ch. 1

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.²

My Ántonia, I, 2

There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted.

My Ántonia, I, 17

Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.

My Ántonia, final line

The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.

The Professor’s House [1925]

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

Shadows on the Rock [1931], bk. III, ch. 5

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 [1917], st. 1

Colette [Sidonie Gabrielle Colette]

1873–1954

There are some days when solitude, for a person of my age, is an intoxicating wine that makes you drunk with freedom, other days when it’s a bitter tonic, and still other days when it’s a poison that makes you bang your head on the wall.

La Vagabonde³ [1910]

The eyes of women followed his progress with silent homage, the more candid among them bestowing that passing stupefaction which can be neither feigned nor hidden.

Chéri⁴ [1920]

It was towards the end of June that incompatibility became established between them like a new season of the year.

The Cat [1933], ch. 7

Those pleasures so lightly called physical.

Mélanges [1939]

I love feminine courage, the ingenuity in organizing a wounded life.

Chambre d’hôtel [1940]

One of the best things about love is just recognizing a man’s step when he climbs the stairs.

Occupation⁵ [1941]

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.

Noces [1944]

Walter de la Mare

1873–1956

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveler,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor.

The Listeners [1912]

“Tell them that I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,” he said.

The Listeners

Nought but vast sorrow was there—

The sweet cheat gone.

The Ghost [1912]

It’s a very odd thing—

As odd as can be—

That whatever Miss T. eats

Turns into Miss T.

Miss T. [1913]

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon.

Silver [1913]

Ford Madox [Hueffer] Ford

1873–1939

A fervent young admirer exclaimed: “By Jove, the Good Soldier is the finest novel in the English language!” whereupon my friend John Rodker, who has always had a properly tempered admiration for my work, remarked in his clear, slow drawl: “Ah, yes. It is, but you have left out a word. It is the finest French novel in the English language!”

The Good Soldier [1915]. Dedicatory letter

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

The Good Soldier, first line

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal: the very best and the very worst.

Joseph Conrad [1924]

No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me.… Na poo, finny!¹

No More Parades [1925]

Lena Guilbert Ford

d. 1918

Keep the home fires burning,²

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.

Keep the Home Fires Burning [1915]

Ellen Glasgow

1873–1945

Preserve, within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reveries.

A Certain Measure [1943]

W[illiam] C[hristopher] Handy

1873–1958

I hate to see the evenin’ sun go down.

The St. Louis Blues [1914]

St. Louis woman with her diamond ring

Pulls that man around by her apron strings

If it wasn’t for powder and her store-bought hair

That man I love would not go nowhere

The St. Louis Blues

If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk,

Married men would have to take their beds and walk

Except one or two, who never drink booze

And the blind man on the corner who sings the Beale Street Blues.

I’d rather be here, than any place I know.

Beale Street Blues [1916]

Otto Harbach

1873–1963

    When a lovely flame dies,

Smoke gets in your eyes.

Roberta³ [1933]. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Alfred Jarry

1873–1907

Hey! Not so fast, or we might arrive on time. Freedom means never arriving on time—never, never!

Ubu Roi (Ubu the King)⁴ [1896], act I, sc. ii

Pataphysics will examine the laws governing exceptions, and will explain the universe supplementary to this one; or, less ambiguously, will describe a universe which can be—and perhaps should be—envisaged in the place of the traditional one.

Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician [1898]

G[eorge] E[dward] Moore

1873–1958

It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer.

Principia Ethica [1903], preface

Charles Péguy

1873–1914

Surrender is essentially an operation by means of which we set about explaining instead of acting.

Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine [1905]

Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.¹

Notre Jeunesse (Our Youth) [1910]

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

Basic Verities² [1943]

Emily Post

1873–1960

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

Etiquette [1922]

One who can not help sulking, or explaining, or protesting when the loser, or exulting when the winner, has no right to take part in games or contests.

Etiquette

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

Etiquette

Sime Silverman

1873–1933

Wall St. Lays an Egg.

Headline announcing stock market crash, Variety [October 30, 1929]

Alfred [Emanuel] Smith³

1873–1944

The kiss of death.

Alluding to William Randolph Hearst’s support of Ogden Mills, Smith’s unsuccessful opponent for governor of New York State [1926]

Let’s look at the record.

Campaign speeches [1927]

No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.

Campaign speeches [1936]

H[enry] M[ajor] Tomlinson

1873–1958

The sea is at its best at London, near midnight, when you are within the arms of a capacious chair, before a glowing fire, selecting phases of the voyages you will never make.

The Sea and the Jungle [1912]

G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton

1874–1936

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.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill [1904], bk. 1, ch. 1

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction.… For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

The Club of Queer Trades [1905]

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Heretics [1906]

The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

Heretics

It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.

All Things Considered [1908]. The Case for the Ephemeral

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

The Man Who Was Thursday [1908], 11

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Orthodoxy [1908]

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.

Orthodoxy

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. I, ch. 5

Nothing sublimely artistic has ever arisen out of mere art, any more than anything essentially reasonable has ever arisen out of pure reason. There must always be a rich moral soil for any great aesthetic growth.

A Defense of Nonsense [1911]

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.

The Ballad of the White Horse [1911], bk. II

A good joke is the one ultimate and sacred thing which cannot be criticized. Our relations with a good joke are direct and even divine relations.

Preface to DICKENS, Pickwick Papers [1911]

Step softly, under snow or rain,

To find the place where men can pray;

The way is all so very plain

That we may lose the way.

The Wise Men [1913]

To an open house in the evening

Home shall men come,

To an older place than Eden

And a taller town than Rome.

The House of Christmas [1915]

A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy.

The Everlasting Man [1925]

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill¹

1874–1965

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

The Malakand Field Force [1898]

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

The Malakand Field Force

There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.

The Malakand Field Force

Terminological inexactitude.

Speech in the House of Commons [February 22, 1906]

The maxim of the British people is “Business as usual.”

Speech at the Guildhall [November 9, 1914]

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

Remark [1920]

The terrible “Ifs” accumulate.²

The World Crisis [1923–31], vol. 1

We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.

Saturday Evening Post [February 15, 1930]. The United States of Europe

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

Roving Commission: My Early Life

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth.

Roving Commission: My Early Life

Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.³

While England Slept [1936]

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.⁴

While England Slept

I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.

While England Slept

The German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.

Speech on the Munich agreement, House of Commons [October 5, 1938]

That long [Canadian] frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, guarded only by neighborly respect and honorable obligations, is an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.

Speech in honor of R. B. Bennett, Canada Club, London [April 20, 1939]

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Radio broadcast [October 1, 1939]

For each and for all, as for the Royal Navy, the watchword should be, “Carry on, and dread nought.”

Speech on traffic at sea, House of Commons [December 6, 1939]

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.⁵

First Statement as Prime Minister, House of Commons [May 13, 1940]

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.

First Statement as Prime Minister, House of Commons

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.

Speech on Dunkirk, House of Commons [June 4, 1940]

Let us… brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: “This was their finest hour.”

Speech in the House of Commons [June 18, 1940]

We shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.

Radio broadcast [July 14, 1940]

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

Tribute to the Royal Air Force, House of Commons [August 20, 1940]

The British Empire and the United States will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking out upon the future, I do not view the process with any misgivings.

Tribute to the Royal Air Force, House of Commons

Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible.

Report on the war, House of Commons [October 8, 1940]

We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.

Radio broadcast to the French people [October 21, 1940]

Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt.… Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

Radio broadcast [February 9, 1941]

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.

Remark in the House of Commons following the parachute descent in Scotland of Rudolf Hess [May 13, 1941]

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.

Report on the war, House of Commons [June 10, 1941]

A vile race of quislings¹—to use the new word which will carry the scorn of mankind down the centuries.

Speech at St. James’s Palace, London [June 12, 1941]

The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world… we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

Radio broadcast to America on receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Rochester, New York [June 16, 1941]

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia.… So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation.

Radio broadcast on the German invasion of Russia [June 22, 1941]

We will have no truce or parley with you [Hitler], or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst—and we will do our best.

Speech to the London County Council [July 14, 1941]

The V sign is the symbol of the unconquerable will of the occupied territories, and a portent of the fate awaiting the Nazi tyranny.

Message to the people of Europe on launching the V for Victory propaganda campaign [July 20, 1941]

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.

Address at Harrow School [October 29, 1941]

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather 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.

Address at Harrow School

In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea.

Speech on war with Japan, House of Commons [December 8, 1941]

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.

Speech to the Canadian Senate and House of Commons, Ottawa [December 30, 1941]

When I warned [the French] 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 the Canadian Senate and House of Commons, Ottawa

The late M. Venizelos¹ observed that in all her wars England—he should have said Britain, of course—always wins one battle—the last.

Speech at the Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon, London [November 10, 1942]

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 Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon, London

I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Speech at the Lord Mayor’s Day Luncheon, London

The soft underbelly of the Axis.

Report on the war, House of Commons [November 11, 1942]

In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Remark at Teheran Conference [December 1943]

“Not in vain” may be the pride of those who have survived and the epitaph of those who fell.²

Speech in the House of Commons [September 28, 1944]

The United States is a land of free speech. No where is speech freer—not even here where we sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive form.

Speech in the House of Commons

He [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who side by side with ours are carrying on their task to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his.

Speech in the House of Commons [April 17, 1945]

I think “No comment” is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again. I got it from Sumner Welles.

To reporters at the Washington, D.C., airport, after conferring with President Truman at the White House [February 12, 1946]

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain³ has descended across the Continent.

Address at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri [March 5, 1946]

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.

The Second World War: Moral of the Work, vol. I, The Gathering Storm [1948]

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

The Second World War: Moral of the Work, II, Their Finest Hour [1949]

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.

The Second World War: Moral of the Work, III, The Grand Alliance [1950]

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Speech in the House of Commons [January 1952]

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

At a White House luncheon [June 26, 1954]

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Saying

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Saying

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Saying

It is hard, if not impossible, to snub a beautiful woman—they remain beautiful and the rebuke recoils.

Saying

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

Attributed

Francis Macdonald Cornford

1874–1973

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: Being a Guide for the Young Academic Politician [1908], ch. 7

Robert Frost

1874–1963

They would not find me changed from him they knew—

Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Into My Own [1913], st. 4

Ah, when to the heart of man

Was it ever less than a treason

To go with the drift of things,

To yield with a grace to reason,

And bow and accept the end

Of a love or a season?

Reluctance [1913], st. 4

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

After Apple-Picking [1914]

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.

The Pasture [1914], st. 1

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Mending Wall [1914]

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”¹

Mending Wall

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out.

Mending Wall

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

Mending Wall

And nothing to look backward to with pride,

And nothing to look forward to with hope.

The Death of the Hired Man [1914]

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

They have to take you in.

The Death of the Hired Man

   The nearest friends can go

With anyone to death, comes so far short

They might as well not try to go at all.

Home Burial [1914]

Most of the change we think we see in life

Is due to truths being in and out of favor.

The Black Cottage [1914]

  The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Letter to Wilbur Rowell, February 15, 1914

Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.

The Self-Seeker [1914]

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 traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken [1916], st. 4

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

The Oven Bird [1916]

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

Birches [1916]

I’d like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully 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.

Birches

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Birches

I shall set forth for somewhere,

I shall make the reckless choice

Some say when they are in voice

And tossing so as to scare

The white clouds over them on,

I shall have less to say,

But I shall be gone.

The Sound of the Trees [1916]

A poem… begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness.

Letter to Louis Untermeyer [January 1, 1916]

    Do you know,

Considering the market, there are more

Poems produced than any other thing?

No wonder poets sometimes have to seem

So much more businesslike than businessmen.

Their wares are so much harder to get rid of.

New Hampshire [1923]

Why make so much of fragmentary blue

In here and there a bird, or butterfly,

Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Fragmentary Blue [1923], st. 1

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor 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.

Fire and Ice [1923]

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

Dust of Snow [1923]

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening [1923], st. 1

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, st. 2

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.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, st. 4

Love at the lips was touch

As sweet as I could bear;

And once that seemed too much;

I lived on air.

To Earthward [1923], st. 1

Now no joy but lacks salt

That is not dashed with pain

And weariness and fault;

I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark

Of almost too much love,

The sweet of bitter bark

And burning clove.

To Earthward, st. 5, 6

Keep cold, young orchard. Goodbye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below.

Goodbye and Keep Cold [1923]

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can Stay [1923]

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound—that he will never get over it.

The Poetry of Amy Lowell. From the Christian Science Monitor [May 16, 1925]

It looked as if a night of dark intent

Was coming, and not only a night, an age.

Someone had better be prepared for rage.

There would be more than ocean-water broken

Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.

Once by the Pacific [1928]

Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be curtain drawn

Between you and me.

Tree at My Window [1928], st. 1

That day she put our heads together,

Fate had her imagination about her,

Your head so much concerned with outer,

Mine with inner, weather.

Tree at My Window, st. 4

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Acquainted with the Night [1928]

If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes

Will keep my talk from getting overwise,

I’m not the one for putting off the proof.

Let it be overwhelming.

Dust in the Eyes [1928]

Now I am old my teachers are the young.

What Fifty Said [1928]

Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any.

Join the United States and join the family—

But not much in between unless a college.

Build Soil [1932]

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?—

If design govern in a thing so small.

Design [1936]

No memory of having starred

Atones for later disregard,

Or keeps the end from being hard.

Better to go down dignified

With boughten friendship by your side

Than none at all. Provide, provide!

Provide, Provide [1936], st. 6, 7

The old dog barks backward without getting up.

I can remember when he was a pup.

The Span of Life [1936]

I never dared to be radical when young

For fear it would make me conservative when old.

Precaution [1936]

The land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people.

The Gift Outright¹ [1941]

He thought he kept the universe alone;

For all the voice in answer he could wake

Was but the mocking echo of his own

From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.

The Most of It [1942]

She is as in a field a silken tent

At midday when a sunny summer breeze

Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,

So that in guys it gently sways at ease.

The Silken Tent [1942]

But strictly held by none, is loosely bound

By countless silken ties of love and thought

To everything on earth the compass round,

And only by one’s going slightly taut

In the capriciousness of summer air

Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

The Silken Tent

Far in the pillared dark

Thrush music went—

Almost like a call to come in

To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars:

I would not come in.

I meant not even if asked,

And I hadn’t been.

Come In [1942], st. 4, 5

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.

The Lesson for Today [1942]

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

The Secret Sits [1942]

Back out of all this now too much for us,

Back in a time made simple by the loss

Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,

There is a house that is no more a house

Upon a farm that is no more a farm

And in a town that is no more a town.

Directive [1947]

First there’s the children’s house of make believe,

Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,

The playthings in the playhouse of the children.

Weep for what little things could make them glad.

Directive

Here are your waters and your watering place.

Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Directive

Have I not walked without an upward look

Of caution under stars that very well

Might not have missed me when they shot and fell?

It was a risk I had to take—and took.

Bravado [1947]

All those who try to go it sole alone,

Too proud to be beholden for relief,

Are absolutely sure to come to grief.

Haec Fabula Docet [1947]

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee

And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.

From In the Clearing [1962]

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling

To get adapted to my kind of fooling.

It Takes All Sorts [1962]

Unless I’m wrong

I but obey

The urge of a song:

I’m—bound—away!

And I may return

If dissatisfied

With what I learn

From having died.

Away! [1962], st. 5, 6

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life—not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

Collected Poems [1939]. Preface

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

Collected Poems. Preface

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.… Read it a hundred times; it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

Collected Poems. Preface

It is only a moment here and a moment there that the greatest writer has.

Letter to Sidney Cox [January 2, 1925]

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Comment¹

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

Letter to Sidney Cox [January 3, 1937]

Families break up when people take hints you don’t intend and miss hints you do intend.

Paris Review interview [Summer-Fall 1960]

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

Comment

I’ve given offense by saying I’d as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

Interview [1959]

Education is… hanging around until you’ve caught on.

Comment

Poetry is what is lost in translation. It is also what is lost in interpretation. That little poem means just what it says it means, nothing less but nothing more.

Quoted in LOUIS UNTERMEYER [1885–1977], Robert Frost: A Backward Look [1964]

Lewis Hine

1874–1940

While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.

Social Photography: How the Camera May Help in the Social Uplift [1909]

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

1874–1929

Once I saw through a magnifying glass that an area of skin on my little finger looked like an open field with furrow and hollows. That was how it was for me now with people and their affairs. I could no longer grasp them with the simplifying gaze of habit. Everything came to pieces, the pieces broke into more pieces, and nothing could be encompassed by one idea.

The Lord Chandos Letter [1902]; translated by Joel Rotenberg

It’s all a mystery, so much is mysterious.

And we are here to endure it.

And in the How, there lies the whole difference—²

Der Rosenkavalier³ [1911], act I

Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.

The Book of Friends [1922]

Herbert [Clark] Hoover

1874–1964

Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.… Common sense compels us to realize that grave abuses have occurred—abuses which must be remedied.… Crime and disobedience of law cannot be permitted to break down the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Address accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination [1928], on prohibition

The American system of rugged individualism.¹

Campaign speech, New York City [October 22, 1928]

The grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities.

Speech [October 31, 1932]

Older men declare war. But it is youth that 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 [June 27, 1944]

The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they’re too damn greedy.

Attributed

Harold L[eClair] Ickes

1874–1952

I am against government by crony.

On resigning as secretary of the interior [February 1946]

Charles [Edward] Ives

1874–1954

Music may be yet unborn. Perhaps no music has ever been written or heard. Perhaps the birth of art will take place at the moment in which the last man who is willing to make a living out of art is gone and gone forever.

Essays Before a Sonata [1920], epilogue

It will probably be centuries, at least generations, before man will discover all or even most of the value in a quarter-tone extension. And when he does, nature has plenty of other things up her sleeve.

Some “Quarter-Tone” Impressions [1924–1925], sec. 1

Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.

Attributed

Karl Kraus

1874–1936

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don’t say what it wants to hear.

Aphorism²

When the end of the world comes, I want to be living in retirement.

Aphorism

An aphorism never coincides with the truth: it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

Aphorism

There are two kinds of writers, those who are and those who aren’t. With the first, content and form belong together like soul and body; with the second, they match each other like body and clothes.

Aphorism

A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.

Aphorism

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe the lies when they see them in print.

Aphorism

Amy Lowell

1874–1925

    A pattern called a war.

Christ! What are patterns for?

Patterns [1916]

Sappho would speak, I think, quite openly,

And Mrs. Browning guard a careful silence,

But Emily would set doors ajar and slam them

And love you for your speed of observation.

The Sisters [1922]

Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,

Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,

Lilac in me because I am New England.

Lilacs [1922]

W[illiam] Somerset Maugham

1874–1965

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, 50

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.… Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

Of Human Bondage, 51

I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and, finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, and it’s important, the matter is more often important to him than to you.

Cakes and Ale [1930], opening line

No one can be a humbug for five-and-twenty years. 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 practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

Cakes and Ale, ch. 1

I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Sheppy [1933], act III

She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer.

“You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You’re all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!”

Altogether [1934]. Rain

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

The Summing Up [1938]

Now that I’ve grown old, I realize that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One’s best friend must also have failed.

Quoted [1959] by Bennett Cerf in his newspaper column Try and Stop Me

Alice Duer Miller

1874–1942

The white cliffs of Dover, I saw rising steeply

Out of the sea that once made her [England] secure.

The White Cliffs [1940], I

But in a world where England is finished and dead,

I do not wish to live.

The White Cliffs, LII

L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery

1874–1908

A graveyard of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can imagine.

Anne of Green Gables [1908], ch. 5

Arnold Schoenberg

1874–1951

Art is the desperate cry of those who experience in themselves the fate of humanity.

Aphorisms [1909]

The expression “atonal music” is most unfortunate—it is on a par with calling flying “the art of not falling,” or swimming “the art of not drowning.”

Twelve-Tone Composition [1923]

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

New Music, Outmoded Music, Style and Idea [1946]

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation.

Brahms the Progressive [1947]

There is still plenty of good music to be written in C major.

Attributed

Arthur A. Schomburg

1874–1938

The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.

The Negro Digs Up His Past [The Survey Graphic, March 1925]

The Negro has been a man without a history because he has been considered a man without a worthy culture.

The Negro Digs Up His Past

Robert William Service

1874–1958

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!

The Law of the Yukon [1907], st. 6

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.

The Shooting of Dan McGrew [1907], st. 1

Gertrude Stein

1874–1946

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

Sacred Emily [1913]

I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.

The Making of Americans [1925]. Martha Hersland

It is hard living down the tempers we are born with.

The Making of Americans

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

Composition as Explanation [1926]

Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to be different everything is not the same.

Composition as Explanation

For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.

Composition as Explanation

You are all a lost generation.¹

Used by ERNEST HEMINGWAY as an epigraph for The Sun Also Rises

To know to know to love her so.

Four saints prepare for saints.

Four Saints in Three Acts² [1927]

Pigeons on the grass alas.

Four Saints in Three Acts

Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded.

Title [1930]

I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas [1933]

As Pablo [Picasso] once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don’t have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Remarks are not literature [said to Hemingway].

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Gertrude Stein always speaks of America as being now the oldest country in the world because by the methods of the civil war and the commercial conceptions that followed it America created the twentieth century, and since all the other countries are now either living or commencing to be living a twentieth century life, America having begun the creation of the twentieth century in the sixties of the nineteenth century is now the oldest country in the world.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

[Ezra Pound] was a village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

I talk a lot I like to talk and I talk even more than that I may say I talk most of the time and I listen a fair amount too and as I have said the essence of being a genius is to be able to talk and listen to listen while talking and talk while listening but and this is very important very important indeed talking has nothing to do with creation.

What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them [1935]

Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.

What Are Master-pieces and Why Are There So Few of Them

America is my country and Paris is my home town.

An American and France [1936]

If nobody had to die how would there be room enough for any of us who now live to have lived.

The Geographical History of America [1936]

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is.

This is what makes America what it is.

The Geographical History of America

I am I because my little dog knows me.

The Geographical History of America

Think of the Bible and Homer think of Shakespeare and think of me.

The Geographical History of America

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.

Everybody’s Autobiography [1937], ch. 1

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, 2

Identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

Everybody’s Autobiography, 2

[Of Oakland, California:] There is no there there.

Everybody’s Autobiography, 4

I am Rose my eyes are blue

I am Rose and who are you

I am Rose and when I sing

I am Rose like anything.

The World Is Round [1939]

Anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high. Anybody is as there is wind or no wind there.

Wars I Have Seen [1945]

I just tell you, and though I don’t sound like it I’ve got plenty of sense, there ain’t any answer, there ain’t going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that’s the answer.

Brewsie and Willie [1946]

What is the answer? [I was silent.] In that case, what is the question?

Last words. From ALICE B. TOKLAS [1877–1967], What Is Remembered [1963]

Trumbull Stickney

1874–1904

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly.

Dramatic Verses [1902]. Untitled sonnet

Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream

That over Persian roses flew to kiss

The curlèd lashes of Semiramis.

Troy never was, nor green Skamander stream.

Dramatic Verses. Untitled sonnet

Sir, say no more.

Within me ’t is as if

The green and climbing eyesight of a cat

Crawled near my mind’s poor birds.

Dramatic Fragments [1904], no. 5

Bert Williams¹

1874–1922

I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient—in America.²

The Comic Side of Trouble [American Magazine, 1918]

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!

Tipperary [1908]

E[dmund] C[lerihew]³ Bentley

1875–1956

The Art of Biography

Is different from Geography.

Geography is about Maps,

But Biography is about Chaps.

Biography for Beginners [1905]. Introduction

Mary McLeod Bethune

1875–1955

What does the Negro want? His answer is very simple. He wants only what all other Americans want. He wants opportunity to make real what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, what the Four Freedoms establish. While he knows these ideals are open to no man completely, he wants only his equal chance to obtain them.

“Certain Unalienable Rights.” From What the Negro Wants [1944], edited by RAYFORD W. LOGAN [1897–1982]

If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything… that smacks of discrimination or slander.

“Certain Unalienable Rights.” From What the Negro Wants, edited by RAYFORD W. LOGAN

John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir

1875–1940

Now I saw how thin is the protection of civilization.

The Power-House [1916]

It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.

Mr. Standfast [1919]

Edgar Rice Burroughs

1875–1950

As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his lifelong enemy, and raising his eyes to the full moon threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible cry of his people.

Tarzan of the Apes [1914], ch. 7

I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine.¹

Tarzan of the Apes, 18

Aleister Crowley

1875–1947

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.²

Book of the Law [1909]

D[avid] W[ark] Griffith

1875–1948

We do not want now and we never shall want the human voice with our films.

The Movies 100 Years from Now [1924]

What the modern movie lacks is beauty—the beauty of moving wind in the trees, the little movement in a beautiful blowing on the blossoms in the trees… They have forgotten that no still painting—not the greatest ever—was anything but a pallid still picture.

PM [1948]. Interview with Ezra Goodman

Hasegawa Nyozekan

1875–1969

The war was started as the result of a mistaken intuitive “calculation” which transcended mathematics. We believed with a blind fervor that we could triumph over scientific weapons and tactics by means of our mystic will.… The characteristic reliance on intuition by Japanese had blocked the objective cognition of the modern world.

The Lost Japan [1952]

Carl Gustav Jung

1875–1961

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

Psychological Types [1923], ch. 1

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul [1933]

Aging people should know that their lives are not mounting and unfolding but that an inexorable inner process forces the contraction of life. For a young person it is almost a sin—and certainly a danger—to be too much occupied with himself; but for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul

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.

The Integration of the Personality

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not—which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.

Psychology and Alchemy [1953]

The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life.

Collected Works, vol. 4, The Theory of Psychoanalysis [1913]

This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.

Collected Works, vol. 8, General Aspects of Dream Psychology [1916]

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Collected Works, vol. 7, On Psychology of the Unconscious [1943]

A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbors.

The Philosophical Tree [1945]

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so.

Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle [1960]

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer.… What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections [1963]. Prologue

Antonio Machado

1875–1939

Wayfarer, there is no way,

you make the way as you go.

As you go, you make the way

and stopping to look behind,

you see the path that your feet

will never travel again.

Wayfarer, there is no way—

only foam trails in the sea.

The Castilian Country¹ [1912]. Proverbs and Song-Verse

It’s not the basic I

that the poet is after

but the essential you.

New Songs¹ [1924]. Proverbs and Song-Verse

Thomas Mann

1875–1955

A writer is a man who has a more difficult time writing than anyone else.

Tristan [1903]

We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.

Buddenbrooks [1903], pt. VIII, ch. 2

In almost every artist nature is inborn a wanton and treacherous proneness to side with the beauty that breaks hearts, to single out aristocratic pretensions and pay them homage.

Death in Venice² [1912]

I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.

Death in Venice

Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state.… Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.

The Magic Mountain³ [1924], ch. 1

A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.

The Magic Mountain, 2

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the emotions, as the inviolable condition of life.

The Magic Mountain, 5

Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.

The Magic Mountain, 6

All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.

The Magic Mountain, 6

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

The Magic Mountain, 6

A man’s dying is more the survivors’ affair than his own.

The Magic Mountain, 6

When the moral courage to decide and differentiate between fraud and reality begins to melt away, that marks the end of life itself.

The Magic Mountain,⁴ 7

What we call mourning for our dead is perhaps not so much grief at not being able to call them back as it is grief at not being able to want to do so.

The Magic Mountain, 7

Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

The Beloved Returns [1939]

Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?

Joseph and His Brothers⁴ [1933–1943]. Prelude: Descent into Hell

Reduced to a miserable mass level, the level of a Hitler, German Romanticism broke out into hysterical barbarism.

Germany and the Germans [1945]

Each reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.

At a celebration of his 75th birthday in Zurich [June 5, 1950]

Hughes Mearns

1875–1965

As I was going 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]. Antigonish¹

Maurice Ravel

1875–1937

I have written only one masterpiece, the Bolero. Unfortunately, it is devoid of music.

Remark to Arthur Honegger

Rainer Maria Rilke

1875–1926

Yes, everything that is truly seen must become a poem.

Journal entry [1900]

A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude.

Letter to Emanuel von Bodman [August 17, 1901]²

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

Letter to Emanuel Von Bodman [August 17, 1901]

Fame is, after all, only the sum of all the misunderstandings that gather around a new name.

Auguste Rodin [1902]

Who has no house now will not build him one.³

The Book of Pictures [1902]. Autumn Day

If you are the dreamer, I am what you dream.

But when you want to wake, I am your wish,

and I grow strong with all magnificence

and turn myself into a star’s vast silence

above the strange and distant city, Time.

The Book of Hours [1905]. I am, O Anxious One⁴

Works of art are indeed always products of having been in danger, of having gone to the very end in an experience, to where man can go no further.

Letter to Clara Rilke [June 24, 1907]

Noiseless life, endless opening out,

space being used, without space being taken

from that space which adjacent things deplete,

existence almost without outline, like unpainted ground

and pure within-ness, so much strange tenderness

and self-illumination—out to the very edge:

is somewhere something known to us like this?

New Poems [1907]. The Bowl of Roses⁵

His gaze has from the passing back and forth of bars

become so tired, that it holds nothing more.

It seems to him that there are a thousand bars

and behind a thousand bars no world.

New Poems. The Panther

You must change your life.

New Poems. Archaic Torso of Apollo

And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are so many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge⁴ [1910]

He was a poet and hated the approximate.

The Journal of My Other Self ⁶ [1910]

A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!

Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!

And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence

a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.

Sonnets to Orpheus⁴ [1922]

Beauty’s nothing

but beginning of Terror we’re still just able to bear,

and why we adore it so is because it serenely

disdains to destroy us. Each single angel is terrible.

Duino Elegies⁷ [1923], no. 1

We’re never single-minded, unperplexed, like migratory birds.

Duino Elegies, 4

The most visible joy can only reveal itself to us when we’ve transformed it, within.

Duino Elegies, 7

Us the most fleeting of all. Just once,

everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too,

once. And never again. But this

having been once, though only once,

having been once on earth—can it ever be canceled?

Duino Elegies, 9

Are we, perhaps, here just for saying: House.

Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Jug, Fruit tree, Window,—

possibly: Pillar, Tower?

Duino Elegies, 9

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy

of being No-one’s sleep under so many

lids.

Uncollected poem¹ [1927], carved at Rilke’s request on his gravestone

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Letters to a Young Poet² [1929]

Things are not all so comprehensible and utterable as people would mostly have us believe; most events are unutterable, consummating themselves in a sphere where word has never trod, and more unutterable than them all are works of art, whose life endures by the side of our own that passes away.

Letters to a Young Poet

The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.

Letters to a Young Poet

Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you.

Letters to a Young Poet

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Letters to a Young Poet

Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?

Letters to a Young Poet

Perhaps everything terrifying is at bottom the helplessness that seeks our help.

Letters to a Young Poet³

Rafael Sabatini

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], ch. 1

Albert Schweitzer

1875–1965

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.”

Out of My Life and Thought [1949]

Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live unreflectively and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to raise it to its true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.

Out of My Life and Thought

Edwin Thomas

In days of old, when knights were bold,

And barons held their sway,

A warrior bold, with spurs of gold

Sang merrily his lay.

A Warrior Bold [1875], music by Michael Maybrick (pseudonym Stephen Adams)

Joseph [“Yellow Kid”] Weil

1875–1976

They wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something.

Quoted in Saul Bellow, A Talk with the Yellow Kid [September 6, 1956]

Sherwood Anderson

1876–1941

All of the men and women the writer had ever known had become grotesques.

Winesburg, Ohio [1919]. The Book of the Grotesque

Everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified.

Winesburg, Ohio. The Philosopher

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love.

Winesburg, Ohio. Tandy

Constantin Brancusi

1876–1957

Theories are patterns without value. Only action counts.¹

Aphorisms [1925]

It is not hard to work; it is hard to begin to work.

Attributed

Sarah N[orcliffe] Cleghorn

1876–1959

The golf links lie so near the mill

That almost every day

The laboring children can look out

And watch the men at play.

The Golf Links Lie So Near the Mill [1915]

Frank Hague

1876–1956

Listen, here is the law! I am the law!²

Speech at Emory Methodist Episcopal Church, Jersey City [November 10, 1937]

Ian Hay [John Hay Beith]

1876–1952

What do you mean, funny? Funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?

Housemaster/Bachelor Born [1938]

Max Jacob

1876–1944

The poet’s expression of joy conceals his despair at not having found the reality of joy.

La Défense de Tartufe [1919]

When you get to the point where you cheat for the sake of beauty, you’re an artist.³

Art Poétique [1922]

Charles F[ranklin] Kettering

1876–1958

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.

Seed for Thought [1949]

Maxim Maximovich Litvinov

1876–1951

Peace is indivisible.⁴

Speech to the League of Nations, Geneva, condemning Italian aggression in Ethiopia [July 1, 1936]

Jack [John Griffith] London

1876–1916

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

The Call of the Wild [1903], ch. 3

He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.

The Call of the Wild

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favor.

The Sea-Wolf [1904]

A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die.… Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

To Build a Fire [1908]

The fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the one who can take many glasses without betraying a sign; who must take numerous glasses in order to get the “kick.”

John Barleycorn [1914]

F. T. Marinetti

1876–1944

We wish to glorify war–the sole cleanser of the world—.… We wish to destroy the museums, libraries, academies of any sort, and fight against moralism, feminism, and every kind of materialist, self-serving cowardice.

Futurist Manifesto⁵ [1909]

Wilson Mizner

1876–1933

Life’s a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest.

Saying

Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down.

Saying

When you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.

Saying

Tell Taylor

1876–1937

and

Ole Olsen

1892–1963

We’re in the army now,

We’re not behind a plow;

We’ll never get rich

A-diggin’ a ditch,

We’re in the army now.

We’re in the Army Now¹ [1917]

Isadora Duncan

1877–1927

Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future… more glorious than any woman who has yet been: more beautiful than the Egyptian, than the early Italian, than all women of past centuries—the highest intelligence in the freest body!

The Dancer of the Future² [1903]

Only the movements of the naked body can be perfectly natural. Man, arrived at the end of civilization, will have to return to nakedness, not to the unconscious nakedness of the savage, but to the conscious and acknowledged nakedness of the mature Man, whose body will be the harmonious expression of his spiritual being.

The Dancer of the Future

I see only the ideal. But no ideals have ever been fully successful on this earth.³

My Life [1927]

Rose Fyleman

1877–1957

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!

The Fairies [1920], st. 1

Hermann Hesse

1877–1962

One must find one’s dream, then the path becomes easy.

Demian⁴ [1919]

Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom.

Siddhartha⁵ [1922]

There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.

Siddhartha⁵

TONIGHT… AT THE MAGIC THEATER. FOR MADMEN ONLY. PRICE OF ADMISSION YOUR MIND. NOT FOR EVERYBODY.

Steppenwolf ⁶ [1927]

A long time devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength.

The Journey to the East [1932]

Sir James Hopwood 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.

The Wilder Aspects of Cosmogony [1928]

The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.

The Mysterious Universe [1930]

John M[unro] Woolsey

1877–1945

I am quite aware that owing to some of its scenes [James Joyce’s] Ulysses is a rather strong draught to ask some sensitive, though normal, persons to take. But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.

Ulysses may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.

U.S. v. One Book Called “Ulysses,” 5 Federal Supplement 182, 184 [1933], III

James Truslow Adams

1878–1949

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.

The Epic of America [1931]

Martin Buber

1878–1965

How would man exist if God did not need him, and how would you exist? You need God in order to be, and God needs you—for that is the meaning of your life.¹

I and Thou [1923]

The world is not divine sport; it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me.²

I and Thou

George M[ichael] Cohan

1878–1942

Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye

Mother Goose [1903], title of song

Give my regards to Broadway,

Remember me to Herald Square,

Tell all the gang at Forty-second Street

That I will soon be there.

Little Johnny Jones [1904]. Give My Regards to Broadway

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.

Little Johnny Jones. Yankee Doodle Dandy

   The Yanks are coming,

The drums rum-tumming everywhere.

Over There [1917]

And we won’t come back till it’s over over there.

Over There

Adelaide Crapsey

1878–1914

These be

Three silent things:

The falling snow… the hour

Before the dawn… the mouth of one

Just dead.

Cinquain: Triad [1915]

William Hard

1878–1962

[Early figurative use of “prime the pump”:] When the waters of business are stagnant, gentlemen, it becomes necessary, if I may say so, to prime the pump.

Everybody’s Magazine [1916]

Don[ald Robert Perry] Marquis

1878–1937

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 mehitabel³ [1927], the song of mehitabel

procrastination is the

art of keeping

up with yesterday

archy and mehitabel. certain maxims of archy

dance mehitabel dance

caper and shake a leg

what little blood is left

will fizz like wine in a keg

archy and mehitabel. mehitabel dances with boreas

coarse

jocosity

catches the crowd

shakespeare

and i

are often

low browed

archy and mehitabel. archy confesses

what man calls civilization

always results in deserts

archy does his part. what the ants are saying

it wont be long now it wont be long

till earth is barren as the moon

and sapless as a mumbled bone

archy does his part. what the ants are saying

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Quoted in Edward Anthony’s O Rare Don Marquis [1962]

John Masefield

1878–1967

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.

Sea Fever [1902], st. 2

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.

Sea Fever, st. 3

William Pitkin

1878–1953

Life Begins at Forty.

Title of book [1932]

Carl Sandburg

1878–1967

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?

I Am the People, the Mob [1916]

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 [1916]

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Fog [1916]

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

I am the grass; I cover all.

Grass [1918]

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Cool Tombs [1918]

Lay me on an anvil, O God.

Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.

Let me pry loose old walls.

Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Prayers of Steel [1920]

Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.¹

The People, Yes [1936]

    The people will live on.

The learning and blundering people will live on.

They will be tricked and sold and again sold

And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

The People, Yes

The people know the salt of the sea

and the strength of the winds

lashing the corners of the earth.

The people take the earth

as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.

Who else speaks for the Family of Man?

The People, Yes

Upton [Beall] Sinclair

1878–1968

Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine went on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory.

The Jungle [1906], ch. 3

I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

What Life Means to Me [October 1906]; on the response to his novel The Jungle

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked [1935]

Joseph Stalin [Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili]

1878–1953

Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.

Speech [April 19, 1923]

You are engineers of human souls.

Speech to writers [October 26, 1932]

The Hitlerite blackguards… have turned Europe into a prison of nations,¹ and this they call the new order in Europe.

Address to the Moscow Soviet [November 6, 1942]

The Pope! How many divisions has he got?

From WINSTON CHURCHILL, The Gathering Storm [1948]

You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.

Attributed

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

Attributed

Edward Thomas

1878–1917

How weak and little is the light,

All the universe of sight,

Love and delight,

Before the might,

If you love it not, of night.

Out in the Dark [1917]

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Early One Morning [1917]

Robert Walser

1878–1956

Now, the wearing of uniforms simultaneously humiliates and exalts us. We look like unfree people, and that is possibly a disgrace, but we also look nice in our uniforms, and that sets us apart from the deep disgrace of those people who walk around in their very own clothes but in torn and dirty ones. To me, for instance, wearing a uniform is very pleasant because I never did know, before, what clothes to put on.²

Jakob von Gunten [1909]

What kind of people am I thinking of? Of me, of you, of all our theatrical little dominations, of the freedoms that are none, of the unfreedoms that are not taken seriously, of these destroyers who never pass up a chance for a joke, of the people who are desolate?

A Sort of Speech [1925]

John B. Watson

1878–1958

No one has ever touched a soul, or has seen one in a test tube.

Behaviorism [1924]

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

Behaviorism

Waldemar Young

1878–1938

John L. Balderston

1889–1954

and

Achmed Abdullah

1881–1945

Well, gentlemen. We have ways to make men talk.

The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (screenplay) [1935]

Hans Zinsser

1878–1940

Soldiers have rarely won wars. They more often mop up after the barrage of epidemics. And typhus, with its brothers and sisters,—plague, cholera, typhoid, dysentery,—has decided more campaigns than Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, and all the inspector generals of history.

Rats, Lice and History [1935]

Nancy [Witcher Langhorne] Astor

1879–1964

I married beneath me. All women do.

Attributed

Ethel Barrymore

1879–1959

That’s all there is, there isn’t any more.

Signature curtain line added by her to the play Sunday [1904] by THOMAS RACEWARD³

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.

The Silver Stallion [1926], ch. 26

Albert Einstein

1879–1955

E = mc².

Statement of the mass-energy equivalence relationship¹ [1905]

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

What I Believe [1930]

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.

What I Believe

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.… The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.²

Physics and Reality [1936]

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.

Evolution of Physics [1938]

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration.

Letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt [August 2, 1939] (It resulted in the provision of government funds to develop the atom bomb.)

This new phenomena [atomic energy] would also lead to the construction of bombs.… A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.

Letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt [August 2, 1939]

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Einstein on the atomic bomb. From the Atlantic Monthly [November 1945]

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two thirds of the people of the earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored.

Einstein on the atomic bomb. From the Atlantic Monthly

Since I do not foresee that atomic energy is to be a great boon for a long time, I have to say that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps it is well that it should be. It may intimidate the human race into bringing order into its international affairs, which, without the pressure of fear, it would not do.

Einstein on the atomic bomb. From the Atlantic Monthly

I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.

From PHILIPP FRANK [1884–1966], Einstein, His Life and Times [1947]

The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not.³

Inscription in Jones Hall, Princeton University

Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify, i.e., he must be prepared… for the sacrifice of his personal welfare in the interest of the cultural welfare of his country.… This kind of inquisition violates the spirit of the Constitution.

If enough people are ready to take this grave step they will be successful. If not, then the intellectuals of this country deserve nothing better than the slavery which is intended for them.

Letter to William Frauenglass⁴ [May 16, 1953]

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.

From RALPH E. LAPP [1917–2004], The Einstein Letter That Started It All. In the New York Times Magazine [August 2, 1964]

Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.

From RALPH E. LAPP, The Einstein Letter That Started It All. [August 2, 1964] [autobiographical handwritten note]

E[dward] M[organ] Forster

1879–1970

It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.

The Longest Journey [1907]

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

Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.

Howards End, 27

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.” If one had spoken vileness in that place, or quoted lofty poetry, the [echo’s] comment would have been the same—“Ou-boum.”

A Passage to India [1924]

“The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot.

Aspects of the Novel [1927]

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

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.

Two Cheers for Democracy. What I Believe

[Stella Maria] Miles Franklin

1879–1954

Weariness! Weariness! This was life—my life—my career, my brilliant career! I was fifteen—fifteen! A few fleeting hours and I would be as old as those around me.

My Brilliant Career [1901], ch. 5

Edmund L. Gruber

1879–1941

Over hill, over dale, we have hit the dusty trail

And those caissons go rolling along.

The Caisson Song¹ [1908]

Oh, it’s hi-hi-yee! for the field artilleree,

Shout out your numbers loud and strong,

And where’er we go, you will always know

That those caissons are rolling along.

The Caisson Song

Joe Hill [Joseph Hillstrom]

1879–1915

Work and pray, live on hay,

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.

The Preacher and the Slave [1911]

Don’t waste any time mourning—organize!

Letter to William D. Haywood [November 18, 1915, the day before Hill’s execution]

Paul Klee

1879–1940

Color possesses me—I don’t have to pursue it.… That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter.

Diary entry² [April 1914]

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.³

Creative Credo [1920]

[On drawing:] An active line on a walk, moving freely without a goal. A walk for a walk’s sake.

Pedagogical Sketchbook [1925]

Vachel Lindsay

1879–1931

Booth died blind and still by faith he trod,

Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.

General William Booth Enters into Heaven [1913], sec. II

Factory windows are always broken.

Somebody’s always throwing bricks,

Somebody’s always heaving cinders,

Playing ugly Yahoo tricks.

Factory Windows [1914], st. 1

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

Barrel-house kings; with feet unstable,

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom.

The Congo [1914], pt. I

Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,

Cutting through the forest with a golden track.

The Congo, I

Be careful what you do,

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,

And all of the other

Gods of the Congo,

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.

The Congo, I

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,

A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl

Make him the quaint great figure that men love,

The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight [1914], st. 3

Planting the trees that would march and train

On, in his name to the great Pacific,

Like Birnam Wood to Dunsinane,

Johnny Appleseed¹ swept on.

In Praise of Johnny Appleseed [1921]

Jack Norworth

1879–1959

Take me out to the ball game,

Take me out with the crowd.

Buy me some peanuts and cracker-jack—

I don’t care if I never get back.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game² [1908]

For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out

At the old ball game.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Will[iam Penn Adair] Rogers

1879–1935

All I know is just what I read in the papers.

Prefatory remark

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

The Illiterate Digest, p. 131

More men have been elected between sundown and sunup than ever were elected between sunup and sundown.

The Illiterate Digest, p. 152

Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.

Syndicated newspaper article [June 28, 1931]

My forefathers didn’t come over on the May-flower, but they met the boat.³

Remark

I joked about every prominent man in my lifetime, but I never met one I didn’t like.

Epitaph

I am not a member of any organized party. I’m a Democrat.

Quoted in Will Rogers: Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom [1935]

Wallace Stevens

1879–1955

I wish that I might be a thinking stone.

Le Monocle de Mon Oncle [1918]

Twenty men crossing a bridge,

Into a village,

Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,

Into twenty villages,

Or one man

Crossing a single bridge into a village.

Metaphors of a Magnifico [1923]

The book of moonlight is not written yet.

The Comedian as the Letter C [1923], pt. III, st. 1

And as he came he saw that it was spring,

A time abhorrent to the nihilist

Or searcher for the fecund minimum.

The Comedian as the Letter C, III, st. 4

The natives of the rain are rainy men.

The Comedian as the Letter C, IV, st. 1

The plum survives its poems.

The Comedian as the Letter C, V, st. 1

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman [1923]

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream [1923]

Only, here and there, an old sailor,

Drunk and asleep in his boots,

Catches tigers

In red weather.

Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock [1923]

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair.

Sunday Morning [1923], st. 1

She says, “But in contentment I still feel

The need of some imperishable bliss.”

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams

And our desires.

Sunday Morning, st. 5

We live in an old chaos of the sun,

Or old dependency of day and night,

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,

Of that wide water, inescapable.

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail

Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

And, in the isolation of the sky,

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Sunday Morning, st. 8

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan

Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Bantams in Pine Woods [1923], st. 1

Damned universal cock, as if the sun

Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Bantams in Pine Woods, st. 2

I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill.

It made the slovenly wilderness

Surround that hill.

Anecdote of the Jar [1923], st. 1

Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs.

Title of poem [1923]

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the self-same sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Peter Quince at the Clavier [1923], pt. I

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.

Peter Quince at the Clavier, IV

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings

Of those white elders; but, escaping,

Left only Death’s ironic scraping.

Now, in its immortality, it plays

On the clear viol of her memory,

And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Peter Quince at the Clavier, IV

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird [1923], st. 5

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

The water never formed to mind or voice,

Like a body wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The Idea of Order at Key West [1936], st. 1

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill

A Postcard from the Volcano [1936]

Poetry is the subject of the poem.

The Man with the Blue Guitar [1937], pt. XXII

I am a native in this world

And think in it as a native thinks.

The Man with the Blue Guitar, XXVIII

The essential thing in form is to be free in whatever form is used. A free form does not assure freedom. As a form, it is just one more form. So that it comes to this, I suppose, that I believe in freedom regardless of form.

A Note on Poetry [1937]

What makes the poet the potent figure that he is, or was, or ought to be, is that he creates the world to which we turn incessantly and without knowing it and that he gives to life the supreme fictions without which we are unable to conceive of it.

The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words [1942]

   Light

Is the lion that comes down to drink.

The Glass of Water [1942], st. 2

He is like a man

In the body of a violent beast.

Its muscles are his own…

The lion sleeps in the sun.

Its nose is on its paws.

It can kill a man.

Poetry Is a Destructive Force [1942], st. 4, 5

It was the last nostalgia: that he

Should understand.

Esthétique du Mal [1944], pt. X

      Revolution

Is the affair of logical lunatics.

Esthétique du Mal, XIV

The greatest poverty is not to live

In a physical world, to feel that one’s desire

Is too difficult to tell from despair.

Esthétique du Mal, XV

Thus the theory of description matters most.

It is the theory of the word for those

For whom the word is the making of the world,

The buzzing world and lisping firmament.

It is a world of words to the end of it,

In which nothing solid is its solid self.

Description Without Place [1947], pt. VII

The poem must resist the intelligence

Almost successfully.

Man Carrying Thing [1947]

   Torn by dreams,

By the terrible incantations of defeats

And by the fear that defeats and dreams are one.

The whole race is a poet that writes down

The eccentric propositions of its fate.

Men Made out of Words [1947]

The inconceivable idea of the sun.

You must become an ignorant man again

And see the sun again with an ignorant eye

And see it clearly in the idea of it.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction [1947]. It Must Be Abstract, pt. I

The death of one god is the death of all.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. It Must Be Abstract, I

It is the celestial ennui of apartments

That sends us back to the first idea.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. It Must Be Abstract, II

We are the mimics. Clouds are pedagogues.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. It Must Be Abstract, IV

These external regions, what do we fill them with

Except reflections, the escapades of death,

Cinderella fulfilling herself beneath the roof.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. It Must Give Pleasure, VIII

   Perhaps

The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,

But he that of repetition is most master.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. It Must Give Pleasure, IX

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. It Must Give Pleasure, X

We keep coming back and coming back

To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns

That fall upon it out of the wind.

An Ordinary Evening in New Haven [1950], pt. IX

Total grandeur of a total edifice,

Chosen by an inquisitor of structures

For himself. He stops upon this threshold

As if the design of all his words takes form

And frame from thinking and is realized.

To an Old Philosopher in Rome [1950], st. 16

Light the first light of evening, as in a room

In which we rest and, for small reason, think

The world imagined is the ultimate good.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour [1950], st. 1

We say God and the imagination are one…

How high that highest candle lights the dark.¹

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour, st. 5

The subject matter of poetry is not that “collection of solid, static objects extended in space” but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes; and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. Reality is things as they are.

The Necessary Angel [1951]

The humble are they that move about the world with the lure of the real in their hearts.

The Necessary Angel. About One of Marianne Moore’s Poems

There it was, word for word,

The poem that took the place of a mountain.

The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain [1952], st. 1

It is an illusion that we were ever alive,

Lived in the houses of mothers, arranged ourselves

By our own motions in a freedom of air.

The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens [1954]. The Rock. I. Seventy Years Later

His self and the sun were one

And his poems, although makings of his self,

Were no less makings of the sun.

The Planet on the Table [1954], st. 3

That scrawny cry—It was

A chorister whose c preceded the choir.

It was part of the colossal sun.

Not Ideas About the Thing but the Thing Itself [1954], st. 5

The palm at the end of the mind,

Beyond the last thought, rises…

A gold-feathered bird

Sings in the palm.

Of Mere Being [1957], st. 1, 2

The essential gaudiness of poetry.

Stevens’s note to The Emperor of Ice-Cream

All history is modern history.

Opus Posthumous [1957]. Adagia

All poetry is experimental poetry.

Opus Posthumous. Adagia

The poet is priest of the invisible.

Opus Posthumous. Adagia

In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

Opus Posthumous. Adagia

Emiliano Zapata

1879–1919

Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!¹

Attributed

Leon Trotsky [Lev Davidovich Bronstein]

1879–1940

What we have at this moment in Russia is not a national power: it is an automatic machine used to slaughter the population.

Speech at his trial [October 7, 1906]

[To the Mensheviks:] You are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history!²

Speech to the Soviet Congress [1917]

The literary “fellow travelers” of the Revolution.

Literature and Revolution [1923], ch. 2

The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.

Terrorism and Communism [1924]

Revolutions are always verbose.

History of the Russian Revolution³ [1930], vol. 2

It was the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.

My Life [1930], ch. 40

The vengeance of history is more terrible than the vengeance of the most powerful General Secretary.

Stalin [1946], ch. 12

Guillaume Apollinaire [Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitsky]

1880–1918

Shepherdess, O Eiffel Tower, your flock of bridges is bleating this morning.⁴

Alcools⁵ (Spirits) [1913]. Zone

Under Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine.⁶

Alcools. Le Pont Mirabeau (Mirabeau Bridge)

Come night, strike hour.

Days go, I endure.⁷

Alcools. Le Pont Mirabeau, refrain

I hibernated in my past.⁸

Alcools. La Chanson du Mal-Aimé (Song of the Poorly Loved), st. 10

Alexander Blok

1880–1921

Yea, Russia is a Sphinx. Exulting, grieving,

And sweating blood, she cannot sate

Her eyes that gaze and gaze and gaze

At you with stone-lipped love for you, and hate.

The Scythians [1918]

W[illiam] C[laude] Fields

1880–1946

It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast.

The Fatal Glass of Beer [1933]

Anyone who hates children and dogs can’t be all bad.⁹

Attributed

Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia.

Attributed epitaph

George [Joseph] Herriman

1880–1944

I ain’t a Kat… and I ain’t Krazy… it’s what’s behind me that I am… it’s the idea behind me, Ignatz, and that’s wot I am.

Krazy Kat (comic strip) [1913 and after]

Helen Keller

1880–1968

The mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, joy, set it free!

The Story of My Life [1902], ch. 4

Douglas MacArthur

1880–1964

The history of failure in war can almost be summed up in two words: too late.

Statement on aid to Great Britain [1940]

I shall return.

On arriving in Australia from the Philippines [March 30, 1942]

I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil.

On landing on Leyte [October 17, 1944]

I see that the old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.

To Colonel George M. Jones and 503rd Regimental Combat Team, who recaptured Corregidor [March 2, 1945]

In war there is no substitute for victory.

Address to a Joint Meeting of Congress [April 19, 1951]

I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day, which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. I now close my military career and just fade away.¹

Address to a Joint Meeting of Congress

George C[atlett] Marshall

1880–1959

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff, United States Army [September 1, 1945]

Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

Address at Harvard University [June 5, 1947], announcing the European Recovery Plan (Marshall Plan)

It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.

Military Review [October 1948]

[On World War II:] We could not indulge in a Seven Years War. A king can perhaps do that, but you cannot have such a protracted struggle in a democracy in the face of mounting casualties.²

The Papers of George Catlett Marshall [1981]

H[enry] L[ouis] Mencken

1880–1956

The virulence of the national appetite for bogus revelation.

A Book of Prefaces [1917], ch. 1

Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals.

A Book of Prefaces, 4

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

Prejudices, First Series [1919], ch. 16

There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

The Divine Afflatus [1920]

WEALTH. Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

A Book of Burlesques [1920]

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Baltimore Evening Sun [July 26, 1920]

[On Warren G. Harding:] He writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.

Baltimore Evening Sun [March 7, 1921]

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.

Epitaph. From Smart Set [December 1921]

There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.

Prejudices, Third Series [1922], ch. 3

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Prejudices, Third Series, 3

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Prejudices, Third Series, 14

To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one’s fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one’s taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am—a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions—can be so happy as he can be in the United States.

On Being An American [1922]

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

In Defense of Women [1922]

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Prejudices, Fourth Series [1924], ch. 11

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Notes on Democracy [1926]

No one in this world, so far as I know… has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.¹

Notes on journalism, Chicago Tribune [September 19, 1926]

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

A Book of Burlesques [1928]

Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Baltimore Sun [October 26, 1936]

When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.

Newspaper Days: 1899–1906 [1941]

Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking.

A Mencken Chrestomathy [1949]. Sententiae

Puritanism—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

A Mencken Chrestomathy. Sententiae

There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.

Minority Report: H. L. Mencken’s Notebooks [1956]

The booboisie.

Passim

Robert [von Edler] Musil

1880–1942

There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument.

Monuments [1927]

Philosophers are violent and aggressive persons who, having no army at their disposal, bring the world into subjection to themselves by means of locking it up in a system.

The Man Without Qualities² [1930], bk. I, ch. 63

Alfred Noyes

1880–1958

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.

The Highwayman [1906]

I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.

The Highwayman

Sean O’Casey

1880–1964

The whole worl’s in a state o’ chassis.

Juno and the Paycock [1924], act I and passim

I never heard him usin’ a curse; I don’t believe he was ever dhrunk in his life—sure he’s not like a Christian at all!

Juno and the Paycock, I

A few hundhred scrawls o’ chaps with a couple o’ guns and Rosary beads, again’ a hundhred thousand thrained men with horse, fut an’ artillery… an’ he wants us to fight fair!

The Plough and the Stars, IV

Jeannette Rankin

1880–1973

I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.

Upon casting her vote in the U.S. House of Representatives against U.S. entry into World War I [1917]

Grantland Rice

1880–1954

When the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name—

He marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the game.

Alumnus Football [1908]

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.¹

Story on Notre Dame football victory over Army, New York Tribune [October 19, 1924]

Oswald Spengler

1880–1936

The decline of the West, which at first sight may appear, like the corresponding decline of the Classical Culture, a phenomenon limited in time and space, we now perceive to be a philosophical problem that, when comprehended in all its gravity, includes within itself every great question of Being.

The Decline of the West² [1918–1923]. Introduction

Long, long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry, insatiably and incessantly demanding and devouring fresh streams of men, till it wearies and dies in the midst of an almost uninhabited waste of country.

The Decline of the West, vol. 2

Josiah Stamp

1880–1941

A pessimist looks at his glass and says it is half empty; an optimist looks at it and says it is half full.

Attributed

Marie Stopes

1880–1958

An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating.

Married Love [1918], ch. 5

[Giles] Lytton Strachey

1880–1932

The art of biography seems to have fallen on evil times in England.… With us, the most delicate and humane of all the branches of the art of writing has been relegated to the journeymen of letters; we do not reflect that it is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.

Eminent Victorians [1918]. Preface

If this is dying, then I don’t think much of it.

Last words. From MICHAEL HOLROYD [b. 1935], Lytton Strachey [1968], vol. II

Franklin P[ierce] Adams [F.P.A.]

1881–1960

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double,

Words that are weighty with nothing but trouble:

“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”¹

Baseball’s Sad Lexicon [New York Evening Mail, July 10, 1910]

The best you get is an even break.

Weights and Measures [1917]. Ballade of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy

Daisy Ashford [Margaret Mary Norman]

1881–1972

Bernard always had a few prayers in the hall and some whiskey afterwards as he was rarther pious.

The Young Visiters [1919], ch. 3

Here on a golden chair was seated the prince of Wales in a lovely ermine cloak and a small but costly crown.

The Young Visiters, 6

Smedley D[arlington] Butler

1881–1940

War is a racket.

Title of speech [1934]

Padraic Colum

1881–1972

    A little house—a house of my own—

Out of the wind’s and the rain’s way.

An Old Woman of the Roads [1907], st. 6

Sir Alexander Fleming

1881–1955

It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought and perception of an individual.

Address at Edinburgh University [1951]

Edgar A[lbert] Guest

1881–1959

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,

A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have

t’ roam

Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind,

An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.

Home [1916]

Pope John XXIII [Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli]

1881–1963

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. Encyclical letter [April 11, 1963]

The representative of the highest spiritual authority of the earth is glad, indeed boasts, of being the son of a humble but robust and honest laborer.

Remark to the mayor of Fleury-sur-Loire. From Wit and Wisdom of Good Pope John² [1963] collected by HENRI FESQUET [b. 1916]

Victor Klemperer

1881–1960

Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.

The Language of the Third Reich: LTI—Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist’s Notebook [1957]

Pablo Picasso

1881–1973

The quality of a painter depends on the amount of the past he carries with him.

Attributed

To me there is no past or future in art. If a work cannot always live in the present, it must not be considered art at all.

The Art [May 25, 1923]

Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy.

Statement About the Artist as a Political Being [1945]

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.

From FRANÇOISE GILOT [b. 1921] and CARLTON LAKE [1915–2006], Life with Picasso [1964], ch. 1

Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires.

From FRANÇOISE GILOT and CARLTON LAKE, Life with Picasso, 6

[As Pablo Picasso said of computers:] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.

In conversation with William Fifield in the Paris Review [1964]

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

1881–1955

Everything that rises must converge.¹

Faith in Man [1947]

If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level—indeed in the molecule itself—it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up.

The Phenomenon of Man² [1955], bk. IV, ch. 2, sec. 2

In one manner or the other, it still remains true that, even in the view of a mere biologist, the human epic resembles nothing so much as a way of the Cross.

The Phenomenon of Man. Appendix

We have only to believe. And the more threatening and irreducible reality appears, the more firmly and desperately must we believe. Then, little by little, we shall see the universal horror unbend, and then smile upon us, and then take us in its more than human arms.

The Divine Milieu² [1957], pt. III, ch. 3, sec. B

James J. Walker

1881–1946

[On censorship:] No girl was ever ruined by a book.³

Attributed

A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat.

Attributed

Margery Williams

1881–1944

You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

The Velveteen Rabbit [1922]

[Sir] P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse

1881–1975

If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.

Love Among the Chickens [1906]

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.

Uneasy Money [1916]

So always look for the silver lining

And try to find the sunny side of life.

Sally⁴ [1920]. Look for the Silver Lining

The only way… of really finding out a man’s true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.

Ordeal by Golf [1922]

He was normally as happy as only a fluffy-minded man with excellent health and a large income can be.

Leave It to Psmith [1923]

It was that gracious hour of a summer afternoon, midway between luncheon and tea, when Nature seems to unbutton its waistcoat and put its feet up.

Summer Lightning [1929]

There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.

Very Good, Jeeves! [1930]. Jeeves and the Impending Doom

I don’t want to wrong anybody, so I won’t go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don’t sometimes feel that the stars are God’s daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.

Right Ho, Jeeves [1934]

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

The Luck of the Bodkins [1936]. The Luck of the Bodkins

I could see that if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

The Code of the Woosters [1938]. The Code of the Woosters

Stefan Zweig

1881–1942

The history of the world will not tolerate intruders; it chooses its own heroes and implacably dismisses those not summoned to that rank, however hard they may try; someone who has fallen off the carriage of fate as it goes along will never catch up with it again.

Twilight [1910]

I hadn’t had a book in my hands for four months, and the mere idea of a book where I could see words printed one after another, lines, pages, leaves, a book in which I could pursue new, different, fresh thoughts to divert me, could take them into my brain, had something both intoxicating and stupefying about it.

Chess Story (originally published in German as Schachnovelle) [1941]

I salute all my friends! May it be granted them yet to see the dawn after the long night! I, all too impatient, go on before.

Suicide note [February 22, 1942]

It is a law of life that human beings, even the geniuses among them, do not pride themselves on their actual achievements but that they want to impress others, want to be admired and respected because of things of much lower import and value.

Balzac [1946]

Aubrey F[itz] G[erald] Bell

1882–1950

The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.

In Portugal [1912]

Max Born

1882–1970

I believe there is no philosophical highroad in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed.

Experiment and Theory in Physics [1943]

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 the Atomic Scientists [June 1957]

Georges Braque

1882–1963

Truth exists, only lies are invented.

Pensées sur l’Art¹ (Thoughts on Art)

In art there is only one thing that counts; the thing you can’t explain.

Pensées sur l’Art

Father Divine [George Baker]

c. 1882–1965

Peace, it’s wonderful.

Motto of the Peace Mission Movement

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

1882–1944

I shall use the phrase “time’s arrow” to express this one-way property of time which has no analogue in space.

The Nature of the Physical World [1928], ch. 4

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum.

The Nature of the Physical World, 4

Felix Frankfurter

1882–1965

The [Fifteenth] Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination.

Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 [1939]

The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards.

McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 347 [1943]

One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.… But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.

Flag Salute Cases, 319 U.S. 624, 646 [1943]

It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.

Dissenting opinion, United States v. Rabinowitz [1950]

In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people’s representatives.

Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 270 [1962]

Jean Giraudoux

1882–1944

Faithful women are all alike, they think only of their fidelity, never of their husbands.

Amphitryon 38 [1929]

Samuel Goldwyn¹

1882–1974

Include me out.

Attributed

I read part of it all the way through.

Attributed

A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Attributed

William Frederick Halsey, Jr.

1882–1959

Attack—Repeat—Attack.

Dispatch to the South Pacific Force before the battle of Santa Cruz Islands [October 26, 1942]

Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.

Formula for waging war

Our ships have been salvaged and are retiring at high speed toward the Japanese fleet.

Radio message after Japanese claims that most of the U.S. Third Fleet had either been sunk or had retired [October 1944]

James Joyce

1882–1941

Poetry, even when most apparently fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Lecture on James Clarence Mangan [February 15, 1902]

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to my church as a human being.

Letter to Lady Gregory [November 1902]

I think people might be willing to pay for the special odor of corruption which, I hope, floats over my stories.

Letter to publisher Grant Richards [October 15, 1905]

I hear an army charging upon the land,

And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:

Arrogant, in black armor, behind them stand,

Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

Chamber Music [1907]. I Hear an Army

He was outcast from life’s feast.

Dubliners [1916]. A Painful Case

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. The Dead

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [1916], ch. 5

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, 5

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls 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 defense the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 5

I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 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.

April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 5,concluding words of Stephen Dedalus

I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality.

Remark [1921] about his novel Ulysses to Jacques Benoîst-Méchin, quoted in Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce [1959]

Agenbite of inwit.¹ Conscience.

Ulysses [1922]

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Ulysses

Ireland, they say, has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?…

—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

Ulysses

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Ulysses

Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

Ulysses

Empty vessels make most noise.

Ulysses

Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship.

Ulysses

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, last words

Ah star of evil! star of pain!

Highhearted youth comes not again

Nor old heart’s wisdom yet to know

The signs that mock me as I go.

Pomes Penyeach. Bahnhofstrasse [1927]

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Finnegans Wake [1939], bk. I (opening)

Here Comes Everybody.

Finnegans Wake, I

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, I

Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! 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, I

Three quarks² for Muster Mark!

Finnegans Wake, II

All moanday, tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday till the fear of the Law.

Finnegans Wake, II

First we feel. Then we fall.

Finnegans Wake, IV

I am passing out. O bitter ending! I’ll slip away before they’re up. They’ll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. And it’s old and old it’s sad and old it’s sad and weary I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, my cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms, I see them rising! Save me from those therrble prongs!

Finnegans Wake, IV

Fiorello H[enry] La Guardia

1882–1947

Ticker tape ain’t spaghetti.

Speech to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration [March 29, 1946]

When I make a mistake it’s a beaut!

On an indefensible appointment

Mina Loy

1882–1966

Women, if you want to realize yourselves (for you are on the brink of a devastating psychological upheaval) all your pet illusions must be unmasked. The lies of centuries have got to be discarded. Are you prepared for the WRENCH?

Feminist Manifesto [1914]

We might have coupled

In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment

Or broken flesh with one another

At the profane communion table

Where wine is spilled on promiscuous lips

We might have given birth to a butterfly

With the daily news

Printed in blood on its wings

Love Songs [1915–17], section 9

A[lan] A[lexander] Milne

1882–1956

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

I do like a little bit of butter to my bread!

When We Were Very Young. The King’s Breakfast

I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.

Winnie-the-Pooh [1926], ch. 4

But now I am Six,

I’m as clever as clever,

So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

Now We Are Six [1927]. The End

Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

The House at Pooh Corner [1928]

Sam [Taliaferro] Rayburn

1882–1961

A jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.

Remark [c. 1953]

I have been unable to save much money in my life. I have been in politics, and in politics an honest man does not get rich.

Quoted in Robert Caro, Means of Ascent [1990]

To get along, go along.

Attributed

Franklin Delano Roosevelt¹

1882–1945

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

Interview in the New York Times [January 22, 1911]

These unhappy times call for the building of plans… that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man² at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Radio address [April 7, 1932]

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Address at Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, Georgia [May 22, 1932]

I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.³

Speech accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Chicago [July 2, 1932]

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

First Inaugural Address [March 4, 1933]

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor.⁴

First Inaugural Address

We are moving forward to greater freedom, to greater security for the average man than he has ever known before in the history of America.

Fireside Chat [September 30, 1934]

Out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties.… The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business.

Speech accepting the presidential renomination [June 27, 1936]

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

Speech accepting the presidential renomination

Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

Speech accepting the presidential renomination

I have seen war.… I hate war.

Address at Chautauqua, New York [August 14, 1936]

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

Speech at Madison Square Garden [October 31, 1936]

We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.

Speech at Madison Square Garden

[On certain political opponents:] They are unanimous in their hatred for me—and I welcome their hatred.

Reelection campaign speech [October 31, 1936]

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

Second Inaugural Address [January 20, 1937]

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Second Inaugural Address

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.

Second Inaugural Address

The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

Letter to governors on soil conservation [February 26, 1937]

The epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.

Speech at Chicago¹ [October 5, 1937]

A program whose basic thesis is not that the system of free private enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not yet been tried.

Message on Concentration of Economic Power [April 29, 1938]

As of today, Fascism and Communism—and old-line Tory Republicanism—are not threats to the continuation of our form of government. But I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land.

Radio address prior to the midterm elections [November 4, 1938]

On this tenth day of June 1940 the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.²

Address at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville [June 10, 1940]

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.

Campaign speech in Boston [October 30, 1940]

There are also American citizens, many of them in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents.… They say that we can and should become the friends and even the partners of the Axis powers. Some of them even suggest that we should imitate the methods of dictatorships. Americans never can and never will do that.

Fireside chat [December 29, 1940]

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

Fireside Chat

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… everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear… anywhere in the world.¹

Message to Congress [January 6, 1941]

We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.²

On receiving the degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University [June 19, 1941]

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

War Message to Congress [December 8, 1941]

Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.… In this war, we know, books are weapons.

Message to the American Booksellers Association [April 23, 1942]

It is not a tax bill but a tax relief bill providing relief not for the needy but for the greedy.

Tax bill veto message [February 22, 1944]

They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.

Radio broadcast [June 6, 1944]

All of our people all over the country—except the pure-blooded Indians—are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.

Campaign speech in Boston [November 4, 1944]

The American people are quite competent to judge a political party that works both sides of a street.

Campaign speech in Boston

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.

Fourth Inaugural Address [January 20, 1945]

More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.

Address written for Jefferson Day broadcast [April 13, 1945]³

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

1882–1945

and

Winston Churchill

1874–1965

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other.

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned.

Atlantic Charter, drawn up aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in Argentia Harbor, Newfoundland [issued August 14, 1941]

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

Atlantic Charter, drawn up aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in Argentia Harbor, Newfoundland

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential.

Atlantic Charter, drawn up aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in Argentia Harbor, Newfoundland

Igor Stravinsky

1882–1971

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.

Quoted in New York Times Magazine [September 27, 1964]

I am not a mirror, struck by my mental functions. My interest passes entirely to the object, the thing made.

Quoted by W. H. Auden in Craftsman, Artist, Genius [April 11, 1971]

Herbert Bayard Swope

1882–1958

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.

Attributed

The secret of a successful newspaper is to take one story each day and bang the hell out of it.

Attributed

Virginia Woolf

1882–1941

The essay, then, owes its popularity to the fact that its proper use is to express one’s personal peculiarities, so that under the decent veil of print one can indulge one’s egotism to the full.

The Decay of Essay-Writing (written when she was still Virginia Stephen) [1905]

I remember lying on the side of a hollow…& seeing a red hare loping up the side & thinking suddenly “This is Earth life.” I seemed to see how earthy it all was, & I myself an evolved kind of hare; as if a moon-visitor saw me.

Diary entry, September 8, 1918

I’m to write what I like; and they’re to say what they like.

Diary entry, February 18, 1922

On or about December, 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that.

Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown [1924]

In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.

Mrs. Dalloway [1925]

She always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.

Mrs. Dalloway

If a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style.

The Common Reader [1925]. Modern Fiction

Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.¹

The Common Reader. Lady Dorothy Nevill

Trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

The Common Reader. The Modern Essay

There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.

The Common Reader. The Modern Essay

The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

The Common Reader. An Elizabethan Play

What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.

To the Lighthouse [1927]

I have had my vision.

To the Lighthouse, last line

In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what is above.

Orlando [1928]

A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many thousand.

Orlando

As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.

Orlando

By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. ’Tis waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

Orlando

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

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

A Room of One’s Own, 1

The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

A Room of One’s Own, 2

Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

A Room of One’s Own, 2

It is the masculine values that prevail… This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

A Room of One’s Own, 4

Books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

A Room of One’s Own, 5

Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamor and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens.

The Waves [1931]

Death is the enemy.… Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death.

The Waves

Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.

Letter to Ethel Smyth [July 29, 1934]

I’m terrified of passive acquiescence. I live in intensity.

Diary, October 12, 1940

Surely it was time someone invented a new plot, or that the author came out from the bushes.

Between the Acts [1941]

Arnold Bax

1883–1953

[Quoting “a sympathetic Scot”:] You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.

Farewell, My Youth [1943]

Eubie [James Herbert] Blake

1883–1983

If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.

Attributed [1983]

Coco [Gabrielle] Chanel

1883–1971

Fashion is made to become unfashionable.

Quoted in Life magazine [August 19, 1957]

Fashion does not exist unless it goes down into the streets.

Quoted in EDMONDE CHARLES-ROUX [b. 1920], Chanel and Her World [1979]

I wanted to give a woman comfortable clothes that would flow with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.

Remark

Kahlil Gibran

1883–1931

Let there be spaces in your togetherness.

The Prophet [1923]. On Marriage

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.

The Prophet. On Work

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

The Prophet. On Prayer

Walter Gropius

1883–1969

Let us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist. Let us together desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will rise one day toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.

Proclamation of the Weimar Bauhaus [1919]

Franz Kafka

1883–1924

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.… We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Letter to Oskar Pollak [January 27, 1904]

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.¹

Diary entry [July 21, 1913]

What have I in common with Jews? I have almost nothing in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.²

Diary entry [January 8, 1914]

No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.

Parables. Before the Law [1914]

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.¹

The Metamorphosis² [1915], opening line

The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last.

Parables.² The Coming of the Messiah [1917]

The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.

The Great Wall of China [1917]. Reflections

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

The Great Wall of China. Reflections

Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session.

The Great Wall of China. Reflections

From the true opponent, a limitless courage flows into you.

Aphorisms [c. 1917–1918]

“Like a dog!” he said. It seemed as if his shame would live on after him.

The Trial³ [1925], final lines

This village belongs to the Castle, and whoever lives here or passes the night here does so in a manner of speaking in the Castle itself. Nobody may do that without the Count’s permission.

The Castle⁴ [1926]

A first sign of the beginning of knowledge is the wish to die.

Aphorism

Nikos Kazantzakis

1883–1957

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea.… All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

Zorba the Greek⁵ [1946], ch. 7

“Life is trouble,” Zorba continued. “Death, no. To live—do you know what that means? To undo your belt and look for trouble!”

Zorba the Greek, 8

The doors of heaven are adjacent and identical: both green, both beautiful. Take care, Adam!

The Last Temptation of Christ⁶ [1960], ch. 18

John Maynard Keynes

1883–1946

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

A Tract on Monetary Reform [1923], ch. 3

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.

The End of Laissez-Faire [1925], ch. 3

The engine which drives Enterprise is not Thrift, but Profit.

A Treatise on Money [1930]

If enterprise is afoot, wealth accumulates, whatever may be happening to thrift; and if enterprise is asleep, wealth decays, whatever thrift may be doing.

A Treatise on Money

The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life—will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

Essay in Persuasion [1931], pt. V

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.

In the New Statesman and Nation [July 15, 1933]

We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated splendors of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend.

National Self-Sufficiency [1933]

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money [1936]. Preface

Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Alfred Hart Miles

1883–1956

Anchors aweigh, my boys,

Anchors aweigh!

Farewell to college joys,

We sail at break of day.

Anchors Aweigh¹ [1907]

Benito Mussolini

1883–1945

The Italian proletariat needs a blood bath for its force to be renewed.

Editorial, Popolo d’Italia [1920]

War is to man as motherhood is to woman.

Speech [May 1934]

We consider perpetual peace a catastrophe for human civilization.

Speech [March 26, 1939]

Governing the Italians isn’t difficult, it’s pointless.

Attributed

José Ortega y Gasset

1883–1955

Rancor is an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority.

Meditations on Quixote [1911]

The Mediterraneans, who do not think clearly, do see clearly.

Meditations on Quixote

A society without an aristocracy, without an elite minority, is not a society.

Invertebrate Spain [1922], ch. 4

Conversation is the socializing instrument par excellence, and in its style one can see reflected the capacities of a race.

Invertebrate Spain, 7

A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.

The Revolt of the Masses [1930], 10

The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man.

The Dehumanization of Art [1948]

I am a Spaniard, that is to say, a man without imagination.

Esthetic Essays [1956]

Margaret Sanger

1883–1966

A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she has no response, IT SHOULD NOT TAKE PLACE. This is an act of prostitution and is degrading to the woman’s finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.

Family Limitation (pamphlet) [1914]

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

Woman and the New Race [1920], ch. 8

The truth was out. It illuminated the world. Motherhood no longer cringed before the relentless laws of fecundity.

My Fight for Birth Control [1931]

Joseph Alois Schumpeter

1883–1950

Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy [1942], ch. 1

Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 3

Every piece of business strategy… must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 7

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 13

Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 18

Joseph Warren Stilwell

1883–1946

I claim we got a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is humiliating as all hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, go back and retake it.

Statement [New Delhi, May 24, 1942] on the American retreat from Burma

Kōtarō Takamura

1883–1956

Chieko has cast off the weight of suffering,

has strayed out to the endless, desolate zone of beauty.

I persistently hear her call to me, but

Chieko no longer has a ticket to the human world.

Invaluable Chieko¹ [1937]

Edgard Varèse

1883–1965

To stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all what is music but organized noises?

The Electronic Medium [1962]

William Carlos Williams

1883–1963

    No wreaths please—

especially no hothouse flowers.

Some common memento is better,

something he prized and is known by:

his old clothes—a few books perhaps.

Tract [1917]

I walk back streets

admiring the houses

of the very poor.

Pastoral [1917]

I have discovered that most of

the beauties of travel are due to

the strange hours we keep to see them.

January Morning [1917], sec. 1

All this—

    was for you, old woman.

I wanted to write a poem

that you would understand.

For what good is it to me

if you can’t understand it?

    But you got to try hard—

January Morning, 15

Old age is

a flight of small

cheeping birds

skimming

bare trees

above a snow glaze.

To Waken an Old Lady [1921]

Here it is spring again

and I still a young man!

I am late at my singing.

The Late Singer [1921]

To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force—the imagination.

Spring and All [1923]

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue

mottled clouds driven from the

northeast—a cold wind.

Spring and All, I

They enter the new world naked,

cold, uncertain of all

save that they enter.

Spring and All, I

From the petal’s edge a line starts

that being of steel

infinitely fine, infinitely

rigid penetrates

the Milky Way

without contact—

Spring and All, VII

The pure products of America

go crazy—

Spring and All, XVIII

as if the earth under our feet

were

an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners

destined

to hunger until we eat filth

Spring and All, XVIII

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Spring and All, XXI

The crowd at the ball game

is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness

which delights them—

Spring and All, XXVI

Say it, no ideas but in things.

Paterson [1927], bk. 1

As the rain falls

so does

   your love

bathe every

   open

object of the world—

Rain [1930]

In summer the song

sings itself

above the muffled words—

The Botticellian Trees [1930]

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

This Is Just to Say [1934]

It’s the anarchy of poverty

delights me.

The Poor [1938], st. 1

    THESE

are the desolate, dark weeks

when nature in its barrenness

equals the stupidity of man.

The year plunges into night

and the heart plunges

lower than night.

These [1938], st. 1, 2

A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.

The Wedge [1944]. Preface

What common language to unravel?

The Wedge. Paterson: The Falls

Without invention nothing is well spaced,

unless the mind change, unless

the stars are new measured, according

to their relative positions, the

line will not change, the necessity

will not matriculate: unless there is

a new mind there cannot be a new

line, the old will go on

repeating itself with recurring

deadliness:

Paterson [1948], bk. 2

Then back to the party!

  and they maled

and femaled you jealously

  Beautiful Thing

as if to discover whence and

  by what miracle

there should escape, what?

Paterson [1949], bk. 3

The descent beckons

as the ascent beckoned.

The Desert Music [1954]. The Descent

  I am a poet! I

am. I am. I am a poet, I reaffirmed, ashamed

The Desert Music [1954]. Title poem

It is difficult

to get the news from poems,

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower [1955]

All men by their nature give praise.

  It is all

    they can do.

Pictures from Breughel [1962]. The Gift

Avraham Ben Yitzhak

1883–1950

On seven roads we depart and on one we return.

A Few Say: [1918]¹

Gaston Bachelard

1884–1962

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

The Poetics of Space² [1958], ch. 1

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

The Poetics of Reverie [1960]

Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

The Poetics of Reverie

Texas [Mary Louise Cecilia] Guinan

1884–1933

Hello, sucker!

Greeting to nightclub patrons

Bert Kalmar

1884–1947

and

Harry Ruby

1895–1974

Remember, you’re fighting for this woman’s honor, which is probably more than she ever did.

Duck Soup (screenplay) [1933], spoken by Groucho Marx

Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail out of it.

Duck Soup, spoken by Groucho Marx

Bert Kalmar

1884–1947

Harry Ruby

1895–1974

and

S[idney] J[oseph] Perelman

1904–1979

I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse.

Horse Feathers (screenplay) [1932], spoken by Groucho Marx

Alice [Lee] Roosevelt Longworth

1884–1980

I do wish [Calvin Coolidge] did not look as if he had been weaned on a pickle.

Crowded Hours [1933]. Attributing the remark to a fellow-patient of her doctor’s

If you can’t say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.

Embroidered on a pillow in her sitting room

Bronislaw Malinowski

1884–1942

The emotional attitude of man has a greater sway over custom than has reason. The main attitude of a native to other, alien groups is that of hostility and mistrust. The fact that to a native every stranger is an enemy is an ethnographic feature reported from all parts of the world.

Argonauts of the Western Pacific [1922], ch. 13

Lily Morris

1884–1952

Fred W. Leigh

1871–1924

and

Charles Collins

1874–1923

Why am I always the bridesmaid,

Never the blushing bride?

Why Am I Always the Bridesmaid? [1917]

[Anna] Eleanor Roosevelt¹

1884–1962

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

This Is My Story [1937]

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

You Learn by Living [1960]

[Alfred] Damon Runyon

1884–1946

Always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you.

Guys and Dolls² [1931]. A Very Honorable Guy

I long ago come to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.

Money from Home [1935]. A Nice Price

Edward Sapir

1884–1939

All grammars leak.

Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech [1921], ch. 2

Language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven, are, in a sense, one and the same.

Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech, 10

Sara Teasdale

1884–1933

When I am dead and over me bright April

Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,

Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,

I shall not care.

I Shall Not Care, st. 1

Norman [Mattoon] Thomas

1884–1968

I’d rather see America save her soul than her face.

Speech before antiwar protest, Washington, D.C. [November 27, 1965]

Harry S. Truman

1884–1972

When they told me yesterday what had happened [the death of F. D. Roosevelt], I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.

To reporters the day after his accession to the presidency [April 13, 1945]

When Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel over the water in the Arkansas River they don’t call out the National Guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring a suit in the Supreme Court of the United States and abide by the decision. There isn’t a reason in the world why we cannot do that internationally.

Speech in Kansas City [April 1945]

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima.… The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

First announcement of the atomic bomb [August 6, 1945]

The release of atomic energy constitutes a new force too revolutionary to consider in the framework of old ideas.

Message to Congress on atomic energy [October 3, 1945]

Means of destruction hitherto unknown, against which there can be no adequate military defense, and in the employment of which no single nation can in fact have a monopoly.

Declaration on Atomic Energy by President Truman and Prime Ministers Clement Attlee (Britain) and W. L. Mackenzie King (Canada) [November 15, 1945]

Partisanship should stop at the water’s edge.

Speech accepting presidential nomination [July 15, 1948]¹

In the simplest of terms, what we are doing in Korea is this: We are trying to prevent a third world war.

Speech on the recall of General Douglas MacArthur [April 1951]

I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if He had taken a poll in the land of Israel?

Memo to himself [c. 1954]

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Saying

Once a decision was made, I did not worry about it afterward.

Memoirs [1955], vol. II, Years of Trial and Hope, ch. 1

The Marshall Plan will go down in history as one of America’s greatest contributions to the peace of the world.

Memoirs, II, Years of Trial and Hope, 8

If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military.

Memoirs, II, Years of Trial and Hope, 19

There is a right kind and wrong kind of victory, just as there are wars for the right thing and wars that are wrong from every standpoint.… The kind of victory MacArthur had in mind—victory by the bombing of Chinese cities, victory by expanding the conflict to all of China—would have been the wrong kind of victory.

Memoirs, II, Years of Trial and Hope, 19

The buck stops here.

Sign on Truman’s desk during his presidency. From Alfred Steinberg, The Man from Missouri [1962]

The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.

From Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman [1974], ch. 23

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don’t mix.

From Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, 35

My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.

From Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman

Charter of the United Nations

We, the peoples of the United Nations

Determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal right of men and women and of nations large and small, and… for these ends

To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

To unite our strength to maintain international peace and security…

Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.

Charter of the United Nations [June 1945], preamble¹

Sophie Tucker²

c. 1884–1966

From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five, she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on, she needs good cash.

Said at sixty-nine

I have been poor and I have been rich. Rich is better.

Attributed

Arthur Vandenberg

1884–1951

Expediency and justice frequently are not even on speaking terms.

Speech in U.S. Senate [March 8, 1945]

To me, “bipartisan foreign policy” means a mutual effort, under our indispensable two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water’s edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.

The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg [1952]

Niels Bohr

1885–1962

In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.

Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature [1934]

Contraria sunt complementa. [Opposites are complementary.]

Motto

Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]

1885–1962

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]. The Dreamers

I had seen a herd of elephant traveling through dense native forest… pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world.

Out of Africa [1937], pt. I, ch. 1

If I know a song of Africa—I thought—of the giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a color that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?

Out of Africa, I, 4

The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control.

Out of Africa, II, 1

I have before seen other countries, in the same manner, give themselves to you when you are about to leave them.

Out of Africa, V, 1

It is when people are told their own thoughts that they think they are being insulted.

The Immortal Story [1953]

DuBose Heyward

1885–1940

Summertime

And the livin’ is easy,

Fish are jumpin’,

And the cotton is high.

Oh, your daddy’s rich,

And your ma is good lookin’;

So hush, little baby,

Don’ yo’ cry.¹

Porgy and Bess [1935]. Summertime

Ring Lardner

1885–1933

“Are you lost, daddy?” I arsked tenderly.

“Shut up,” he explained.

The Young Immigrunts [1920]

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

How to Write Short Stories [1924]

The curtain is lowered for seven days to denote the lapse of a week.

I. Gaspiri (The Upholsterers) [1925], stage direction

D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence

1885–1930

I love Frieda so much I don’t like to talk about it. I never knew what love was before.… The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one’s wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great—quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it.

Letter to Sallie Hopkin [June 2, 1912]

Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.

Sons and Lovers [1913], ch. 4

You love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered.

Sons and Lovers, 15

The map appears to us more real than the land. Short sighted almost to blindness, we [pore] over the chart, map our journeys and confirm them: and we cannot see life itself giving us the lie the whole time.

Study of Thomas Hardy [1914]

In the immediate present there is no perfection, no consummation, nothing finished. The strands are all flying, quivering, intermingling into the web, the waters are shaking the moon.

Poetry of the Present (preface to New Poems) [1920]

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through [1920]

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge

Driven by invisible blows,

The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through

The glamor

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Piano [1920]

To tell the truth there is something in the long, slow lift of the ship, and her long, slow slide forwards which makes my heart beat with joy. It is the motion of freedom. To feel her come up—then slide slowly forward, with a sound of the smashing of waters, is like the magic gallop of the sky, the magic gallop of elemental space.

Sea and Sardinia [1921]

How can there be any secrets, we are all the same organisms? How can there be any secrecy, when everything is known to all of us?

Women in Love [1921], ch. 19

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.

Studies in Classic American Literature [1922], ch. 1

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.

Studies in Classic American Literature, 5

Every fruit has its secret.

Birds, Beasts and Flowers [1923]. Figs

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

Why the Novel Matters [1925]

Living, I want to depart to where I am.

The Plumed Serpent [1926], ch. 17

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work; there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover [1928], ch. 1

All the great words, it seemed to Connie, were cancelled for her generation: love, joy, happiness, home, mother, father, husband, all these great, dynamic words were half dead now, and dying from day to day.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 6

I believe especially in being warm-hearted in love, in fucking with a warm heart. I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come all right. It’s all this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 14

This is John Thomas marryin’ Lady Jane.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 15

Necessary, forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt the heaviest ore of the body into purity.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 16

How beastly the bourgeois is

especially the male of the species.

How Beastly the Bourgeois Is [1929]

I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Pansies [1929]. Self-Pity

Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it.

Sex Versus Loveliness [1930]

Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition.

Sex Versus Loveliness

Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time.

Apocalypse [published 1931]

If it were a question of brute force, not a single human baby would survive for a fortnight.

Sketches of Etruscan Places [1932], ch. 2

Every great discovery or decision comes by an act of divination. Facts are fitted round afterwards.

Sketches of Etruscan Places, 3

It must have been a wonderful old world, that old world where everything appeared alive and shining in the dusk of contact with all things, not merely as an isolated individual thing played upon by daylight; where each thing had a clear outline, visually, but in its very clarity was related emotionally or vitally to strange other things, one thing springing from another, things mentally contradictory fusing together emotionally, so that a lion could be at the same moment also a goat, and not a goat.

Sketches of Etruscan Places, 4

    Whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the sea

great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young

and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.

Whales Weep Not! [1932]

This sea will never die, neither will it ever grow old

nor cease to be blue, nor in the dawn

cease to lift up its hills

and let the slim black ship of Dionysos come sailing in

with grape-vines up the mast, and dolphins leaping.

Middle of the World [1932]

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!

Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower

down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness

even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September

to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark.

Bavarian Gentians [1932]

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit

and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew

to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell

to one’s own self, and find an exit

from the fallen self.

The Ship of Death [1932], sec. I

Build then the ship of death, for you must take the longest journey, to oblivion.

The Ship of Death, V

Sam M. Lewis

1885–1959

and

Joe Young

1889–1939

How You Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree?

Title and refrain of song¹ [1919]

Sinclair Lewis

1885–1951

His name was George F. Babbitt [and]… he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.

Babbitt [1922], ch. 1

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party.

Babbitt, 1

I’ve never done a single thing I’ve wanted to in my whole life! I don’t know ’s I’ve accomplished anything except just get along.

Babbitt, 34

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.¹

Letter declining the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Arrowsmith [1926]

What is love?… It is the morning and the evening star.

Elmer Gantry [1927], ch. 20

Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

The American Fear of Literature. Address in Stockholm on receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature [December 12, 1930]

It Can’t Happen Here.

Title of book [1935]

Where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!

It Can’t Happen Here [1935]

[Ferdinand] Jelly Roll Morton

c. 1885–1941

Now in one of my earliest tunes, “New Orleans Blues,” you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.

Interview with Alan Lomax [1938]

Chester William Nimitz

1885–1966

Uncommon valor was a common virtue.

Of the Marines at Iwo Jima [February–May 1945]

George S[mith] Patton

1885–1945

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base.

Message to his troops [1943]

A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.²

War As I Knew It, Appendix D, letter [April 3, 1944]

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

War As I Knew It [1947], pt. 3

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

War As I Knew It, pt. 3

Ezra Pound

1885–1972

Poetry must be as well written as prose.

Letter to Harriet Monroe [January 1915]

Objectivity and again objectivity, and expression: no hindside-before-ness, no straddled adjectives (as “addled mosses dank”), no Tennysonianness of speech; nothing—nothing that you couldn’t, in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say.

Letter to Harriet Monroe

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me. I grow older.

The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter (After Rihaku) [1915]

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea.

Portrait d’une Femme [1916]

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

In a Station of the Metro [1916]

Winter is icumen in,

Lhude sing Goddamm,

Raineth drop and staineth slop,

And how the wind doth ramm!

Sing: Goddamm.³

Ancient Music [1916]

What is a god?

A god is an eternal state of mind.

Pavannes and Divagations [1918]. Religio, or, The Child’s Guide to Knowledge

Go in fear of abstractions.

Pavannes and Divagations. A Retrospect

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’élection de son sepulchre [1920], sec. I

The age demanded an image

Of its accelerated grimace,

Something for the modern stage,

Not, at any rate, an Attic grace.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. E.P. Ode pour l’élection de son sepulchre, II

Better mendacities

Than the classics in paraphrase!

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. E.P. Ode pour l’élection de son sepulchre, II

Some quick to arm,

some for adventure,

some from fear of weakness,

some from fear of censure,

some for love of slaughter, in imagination,

learning later…

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

Died some, pro patria,

non “dulce” non “et decor”…

walked eye-deep in hell

believing in old men’s lies, the unbelieving

came home, home to a lie.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. E.P. Ode pour l’élection de son sepulchre, IV¹

There died a myriad,

And of the best, among them,

For an old bitch gone in the teeth,

For a botched civilization.

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,

Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,

For a few thousand battered books.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. E.P. Ode pour l’élection de son sepulchre, V

With Usura

With usura hath no man a house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well fitting.

Cantos [1925–1959], XLV

No picture is made to endure nor to live with

but it is made to sell and sell quickly

with usura, sin against nature,

is thy bread ever more of stale rags

is thy bread dry as paper.

Cantos, XLV

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage

Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none?

First came the seen, then thus the palpable

    Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell.

What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.

Cantos, LXXXI

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.

Cantos, LXXXI

The ant’s a centaur in his dragon world.

But the beauty is not the madness

Tho’ my errors and wrecks lie about me.

Cantos, CXVI

Artists are the antennae of the race.

ABC of Reading [1934]

An epic is a poem including history.

ABC of Reading

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

ABC of Reading

Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.

ABC of Reading

Literature is news that stays news.

ABC of Reading

Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.

Guide to Kulchur [1938]. Zweck, or the Aim

Elinor [Hoyt] Wylie

1885–1928

We shall walk in velvet shoes:

Wherever we go

Silence will fall like dews

On white silence below.

Velvet Shoes [1921], st. 4

Avoid the reeking herd,

Shun the polluted flock,

Live like that stoic bird

The eagle of the rock.

The Eagle and the Mole [1921], st. 1

If you would keep your soul

From spotted sight or sound,

Live like the velvet mole;

Go burrow underground.

And there hold intercourse

With roots of trees and stones,

With rivers at their source,

And disembodied bones.

The Eagle and the Mole, st. 5, 6

   Honeyed words like bees,

Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

Pretty Words [1921]

I was, being human, born alone;

I am, being woman, hard beset;

I live by squeezing from a stone

The little nourishment I get.

Let No Charitable Hope [1923], st. 2

The worst and best are both inclined

To snap like vixens at the truth;

But, O, beware the middle mind

That purrs and never shows a tooth!

Nonsense Rhyme [1929], st. 2

Hugo Ball

1886–1927

Let us be thoroughly new and inventive. Let us rewrite life every day.

Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, March 12, 1916 entry

Karl Barth

1886–1968

It may be that when the angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart and that then too our dear Lord listens with special pleasure.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart [1956]

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

The Word of God and the Word of Man [1957]

David Ben-Gurion

1886–1973

In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.

Interview [October 5, 1956]

Gottfried Benn

1886–1956

Crises of expression and spasms of eros:

that’s the man of today,

the inside a vacuum,

the continuity of personality

provided by his suit,

which with stout cloth might be good for ten years.

Fragments¹ [1953]

Hugo La Fayette Black

1886–1971

The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 [1947]

It is my belief that there are “absolutes” in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be “absolutes.”

Interview Before the American Jewish Congress [April 14, 1962]

Freedom to discuss public affairs and public officials is unquestionably… the kind of speech the First Amendment was primarily designed to keep within the area of free discussion. To punish the exercise of this right to discuss public affairs or to penalize it through libel judgments is to abridge or shut off discussion of the very kind most needed.

New York Times Company v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 [1964]

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.

New York Times Company v. Sullivan

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

Concurring opinion on the publication of the Pentagon Papers [1971]

Marc Bloch

1886–1944

History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical.… The traces left by past events never move in a straight line, but in a curve that can be extended into the future.

Strange Defeat [1940; published 1946]

Randolph Silliman Bourne

1886–1918

The magical good fortune of attractive personal appearance makes its way almost without effort in the world, breaking down all sorts of walls of disapproval and lack of interest. Even the homely person can attract by personal charm. But deformity cannot even be charming.

The Handicapped—by One of Them [1911]

The deformed man is always conscious that the world does not expect very much from him. And it takes him a long time to see in this a challenge instead of a firm pressing down to low level of accomplishment.

The Handicapped—by One of Them

In a time of faith, skepticism is the most intolerable of all insults.

The War and the Intellectuals [1917]

The pacifist is roundly scolded for refusing to face the facts, and for retiring into his own world of sentimental desire. But is the realist, who refuses to challenge or criticize facts, entitled to any more credit than that which comes from following the line of least resistance?

The War and the Intellectuals

A people at war have become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of the naïve faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them.

The State [1918]

War is the health of the state. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.

The State

Frances Cornford

1886–1960

Magnificently unprepared

For the long littleness of life.

Rupert Brooke¹ [1915]

H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]

1886–1961

Nor skin nor hide nor fleece

   Shall cover you,

Nor curtain of crimson nor fine

Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,

   Nor the fir-tree

   Nor the pine.

Lethe [1924], st. 1

so you may say,

“Greek flower; Greek ecstasy

reclaims for ever

one who died

following

intricate songs’ lost measure.”

Epitaph. Red Roses for Bronze [1931]

when you cry in disgust

a worm on the leaf,

a worm in the dust,

a worm on the ear-of-wheat,

I am yet unrepentant,

for I know how the Lord God

is about to manifest, when I,

the industrious worm,

spin my own shroud.

The Walls Do Not Fall [1944]

but if you do not even understand what words say,

how can you expect to pass judgement

on what words conceal?

The Walls Do Not Fall

O, give me burning blue

and brittle burnt sea-weed

above the tide-line,

as I stand, still unsatisfied,

under the long shadow-on-snow of the pine.

The Flowering of the Rod [1946], pt. 4

Al Jolson

1886–1950

You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, folks.

Ad lib remark in the first talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer [July 1927]

Gus Kahn

1886–1941

He’s washin’ dishes and baby clothes,

He’s so ambitious he even sews.

But don’t forget, folks,

That’s what you get, folks,

For makin’ whoopee!

Whoopee [1928]. Makin’ Whoopee

Gus Kahn

1886–1941

and

Raymond B. Egan

1890–1952

There’s nothing surer,

The rich get rich and the poor get poorer,

In the meantime, in between time,

Ain’t we got fun.

Ain’t We Got Fun [1921]

Joyce Kilmer

1886–1918

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.¹

Trees [1913], l. 1

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Trees, l. 11

Alain Locke

1886–1954

Slavery not only physically transplanted the Negro, it cut him off sharply from his cultural roots, and by taking away his languages, abruptly changing his habits, putting him in the context of a strangely different civilization, reduced him, so to speak, to cultural zero.

Negro Art: Past and Present [1936]

George Leigh Mallory

1886–1924

[When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest:] Because it is there.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

1886–1969

I don’t want to be interesting, I want to be good.

Interview [1960]

Antonio Porchia

1886–1968

What we pay for with our lives never costs too much.

Voices² [1943]

Set out from any point. They are all alike. They all lead to a point of departure.

Voices²

The fear of separation is all that unites.

Voices

Siegfried Sassoon

1886–1967

I believe that the war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.… I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration [July 1917]

Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land.

Dreamers [1918]

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

Dreamers

And when the war is done and youth stone dead

I’d toddle safely home and die—in bed.

Base Details [1918]

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?

On Passing the New Menin Gate [1918]

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

The War Poems [1919]. Suicide in Trenches

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 football

To gobble their muffins and eggs.

The War Poems. Does It Matter?

In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth.

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer [1930]

Paul [Johannes] Tillich

1886–1965

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God.

The Shaking of the Foundations [1948], ch. 7

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.… Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: “You are accepted.”

The Shaking of the Foundations, 19

The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.

The Courage to Be [1952], ch. 2

Edward Weston

1886–1958

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?¹

Daybook [April 20, 1923 entry] [1926]

Photography suits the temper of this age—of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

Daybook [June 19, 1930 entry]

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle

1887–1933

Nobody loves a fat man.

Spoken by Arbuckle (playing Sheriff “Slim” Hoover) in the 1920 movie version of Edmund Day’s 1907 play The Round-Up

Ruth [Fulton] Benedict

1887–1948

From the moment of his birth the customs into which [an individual] is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture.

Patterns of Culture [1934], ch. 1

In world history, those who have helped to build the same culture are not necessarily of one race, and those of the same race have not all participated in one culture. In scientific language, culture is not a function of race.

Race: Science and Politics [1940], ch. 2

Nadia Boulanger

1887–1979

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.

Motto

Rupert Brooke²

1887–1915

  Oh! yet

Stands the church clock at ten to three?

And is there honey still for tea?

The Old Vicarage, Grantchester [1912]

Fish say, they have their stream and pond;

But is there anything beyond?

Heaven [1913]

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.

The Great Lover [1914]

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England.

The Soldier [1914]

Now, God be thanked, Who has matched us with His hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.

Peace [1914]

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.

The Dead [1914]

Blaise Cendrars

1887–1961

Such music is not only a new art form but a new reason for living.

On hearing Duke Ellington in Paris [1939]

Ralph Chaplin

1887–1961

Solidarity forever!

For the union makes us strong.

Solidarity Forever³ [1915]

Marcel Duchamp

1887–1968

Submit to the interrogation of shop windows.

Speculations [1913]

The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.

The Richard Mutt Case [1917]

I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.

Address to the New York State Chess Association [August 30, 1952]

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

The Creative Act [1957]

Besides, it’s always other people who die.

Epitaph

Marcus Garvey

1887–1940

We are not engaged in domestic politics, in church building or in social uplift work, but we are engaged in nation building.

Speech, The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, at New York City [November 25, 1922]

To see your enemy and know him is part of the complete education of man.

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey [1923], ch. 2

Black men, you were once great; you will be great again. Lose not courage, lose not faith, go forward.

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, 4

Robinson Jeffers

1887–1962

   The deep dark-shining

Pacific leans on the land,

Feeling his cold strength

To the outmost margins.

Night [1925]

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it

  stubbornly long or suddenly

A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine,

  perishing republic.

Shine, Perishing Republic [1925]

I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk.

Hurt Hawks [1928]

The strong lean upon death as on a rock.

Gale in April [1930]

“Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy

And the dogs that talk revolution,

Drunk with talk, liars and believers.

I believe in my tusks.

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies,”

Said the gamey black-maned wild boar

Tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain.

The Stars Go over the Lonely Ocean [1940], st. 4

That public men publish falsehoods

Is nothing new. That America must accept

Like the historical republics corruption and empire

Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting

If these things anger you.

Be Angry at the Sun [1941]

As for me, I would rather

Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.

Original Sin [1948]

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Carmel Point [1954]

Le Corbusier [Charles Édouard Jeanneret]

1887–1965

Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.

Toward a New Architecture [1923]

A house is a machine for living in.¹

Toward a New Architecture

Aldo Leopold

1887–1948

If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

A Survey of Conservation [c. 1938]

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

A Sand County Almanac [1949], foreword

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

A Sand County Almanac. February

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

A Sand County Almanac. The Land Ethic

The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.

A Sand County Almanac. The Quality of Landscape

Emilio Mola

1887–1937

Fifth column.¹

Phrase, Spanish Civil War [1936–1939]

[Arthur R.] Pop Momand

1887–1987

Keeping Up with the Joneses.

Title of comic strip [1913]

Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

1887–1976

To us is given the honor of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history, and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings.

Message to his troops, on the eve of the Allied invasion of Europe [June 5, 1944]

Marianne Moore

1887–1972

     complexity is not a crime, but carry

it to the point of murkiness

   and nothing is plain. Complexity,

moreover, that has been committed to darkness, instead of

granting itself to be the pestilence that it is, moves all

   about as if to bewilder us with the dismal

fallacy that insistence

   is the measure of achievement and that all

truth must be dark.

In the Days of Prismatic Color [1921]

Below the incandescent stars

below the incandescent fruit,

the strange experience of beauty;

its existence is too much;

it tears one to pieces

and each fresh wave of consciousness

is poison.

Marriage [1935]

Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this.

The Steeple-Jack [1935], st. 1

   The sweet air coming into your house on a

fine day, from water etched

  with waves as formal as the scales on a fish.

The Steeple-Jack, st. 1

Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one keeps

adjusting the ash heaps;

   opening and shutting itself like

an

injured fan.

The Fish [1935], st. 1, 2

I, too, dislike it.

  Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt

   for it, one discovers in

  it, after all, a place for the genuine.

Poetry [1935; revised 1967]

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.

Poetry, st. 4, 5 (excluded in 1967 revision)²

I wonder what Adam and Eve

think of it by this time.

Marriage [1935]

   Ecstasy affords

the occasion and expediency determines the form.

The Past Is the Present [1935]

My father used to say,

“Superior people never make long visits,

have to be shown Longfellow’s grave

or the glass flowers at Harvard.”

Silence [1935]

“The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;

not in silence, but restraint.”

Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.”³

Inns are not residences.

Silence

There is a great amount of poetry in unconscious fastidiousness.

Critics and Connoisseurs [1935]

  What is our innocence,

what is our guilt? All are

  naked, none is safe.

What Are Years? [1941]

The power of the visible

is the invisible.

He “Digesteth Harde Yron” [1941], st. 8

I am troubled, I’m dissatisfied, I’m Irish.

Spenser’s Ireland [1941], last line

Another armored animal—scale

  lapping scale with spruce cone regularity until they

form the uninterrupted central

  tail row!

The Pangolin [1941], st. 1

   Bedizened or stark

 naked, man, the self, the being we call human,

   writing

master to this world.

The Pangolin, st. 8

  Among animals, one has a sense of humor.

Humor saves a few steps, it saves years.

The Pangolin, st. 8

   The prey of fear, he, always

  curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk,

   work partly done,

says to the alternating blaze,

   “Again the sun!

  anew each day; and new and new and new,

  that comes into and steadies my soul.”

The Pangolin, st. 9

   The world’s an orphans’ home. Shall

  we never have peace without sorrow?

without pleas of the dying for

  help that won’t come. O

quiet form upon the dust, I cannot

look and yet I must.

In Distrust of Merits [1941], st. 7

I inwardly did nothing.

O Iscariot-like crime!

In Distrust of Merits, st. 8

   What sap

went through that little thread

to make the cherry red!

Nevertheless [1944], st. 11

   THE MIND IS AN ENCHANTING THING

is an enchanted thing,

   like the glaze on a

katydid-wing

   subdivided by sun

   till the nettings are legion.

The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing [1944], st. 1

We don’t like flowers that do

  not wilt; they must die, and nine

  she-camel hairs aid memory.

The Sycamore [1956], st. 2

   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]

Why an inordinate interest in animals and athletes? They are subjects for art and exemplars of it, are they not? minding their own business. Pangolins, hornbills, pitchers, catchers, do not pry or prey—or prolong the conversation; do not make us self-conscious; look their best when caring least.

A Marianne Moore Reader [1961], foreword

Samuel Eliot Morison

1887–1976

America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

The Oxford History of the American People [1965], ch. 2

Edwin Muir

1887–1959

I take my journey back to seek my kindred,

Old founts dried up whose rivers run far on

Through you and me.

The Labyrinth [1949]. The Journey Back

The killing beast that cannot kill

Swells and swells in his fury till

You’d almost think it was despair.

Collected Poems [1952]. The Combat

Since then they have pulled our ploughs and borne our loads,

But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.

Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

Collected Poems. The Horses.

Georgia O’Keeffe

1887–1986

I find that I have painted my life—things happening in my life—without knowing.

Georgia O’Keeffe [1976]

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at—not copy it.

Georgia O’Keeffe

I hate flowers—I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move!

Quoted in Laurie Lisle, Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe [1980]

[On Pedernal Mountain, New Mexico:] It’s my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.

Attributed

John Reed

1887–1920

Ten Days that Shook the World

Title of book [1919]

Erwin Schrödinger

1887–1961

If you cannot—in the long run—tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.

Science and Humanism [1951]

We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators.

Nature and the Greeks [1954]

Edith Sitwell

1887–1964

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.

Still Falls the Rain [1940]

Georg Trakl

1887–1914

Overwhelming is the generation’s decline,

At this hour the eyes of him who gazes

Fill with the gold of his stars.

At nightfall bells die that will chime no more,

The black walls on the square decay,

To prayer the dead soldier calls.

Helian, part III¹ [1913]

Alexander Woollcott

1887–1943

The two oldest professions in the world—ruined by amateurs.

Shouts and Murmurs. The Knock at the Stage Door [1922]

All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.

Remark

Maxwell Anderson

1888–1959

Oh, it’s a long, long while

From May to December,

But the days grow short,

When you reach September.

Knickerbocker Holiday² [1938]. September Song

Oh, the days dwindle down

To a precious few…

And these few precious days

I’ll spend with you.

Knickerbocker Holiday. September Song

But I’ve been walking through the night and the day

Till my eyes get weary and my head turns grey,

And sometimes it seems maybe God’s gone away,

Forgetting the promise that we heard him say—

And we’re lost out here in the stars—

Lost in the Stars³ [1949]

Irving Berlin

1888–1989

And if you care to hear

The “Swanee River”

Played in ragtime,

Come on and hear,

Come on and hear

Alexander’s Ragtime Band.

Alexander’s Ragtime Band [1911]

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]

A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.

Ziegfeld Follies [1919], title of song

The song is ended,

But the melody lingers on.

The Song Is Ended (but the Melody Lingers On) [1927]

If you’re blue and you

Don’t know where to go to,

Why don’t you go where Harlem sits,

Puttin’ on the Ritz?

Puttin’ on the Ritz [1928]

Heaven,

I’m in heaven,

And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak;

And I seem to find the happiness I seek

When we’re out together dancing

Cheek to cheek.

Top Hat [1935]. Cheek to Cheek

There may be trouble ahead,

But while there’s moonlight and music

And love and romance,

Let’s face the music and dance.

Follow the Fleet [1935]. Let’s Face the Music and Dance

God bless America,

Land that I love.

God Bless America [1938]

From the mountains to the prairies,

To the oceans white with foam,

God bless America,

My home sweet home!

God Bless America

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.

Holiday Inn [1942]. White Christmas

This is the army, Mr. Jones,

No private baths or telephones.

This Is the Army [1942], title song

There’s No Business Like Show Business.

Annie Get Your Gun [1946], title of song

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.

Annie Get Your Gun, title of song

Georges Bernanos

1888–1948

Hell, Madame, is to love no longer.

Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne (The Diary of a Country Priest) [1936]

No one discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne

All is grace.

Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne

Democracies cannot dispense with hypocrisy any more than dictatorships can with cynicism.

Nous Autres Français (We French) [1939]

Henry Beston

1888–1968

The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.

The Outermost House [1928], ch. 1

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.

The Outermost House, 3

Heywood [Campbell] Broun [Jr.]

1888–1939

The tragedy of life is not that man loses but that he almost wins.

Vanity Fair [1921]. Sport for Art’s Sake

Dale Carnegie

1888–1955

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Title of book [1936]

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

How to Win Friends and Influence People [1936]

Raymond Chandler

1888–1959

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.

Red Wind [1938]

I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

The Big Sleep [1939], ch. 1

“A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy,” he said dryly.

The Big Sleep, 2

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that.

The Big Sleep, 32

Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

Farewell, My Lovely [1940], ch. 1

A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

Farewell, My Lovely 13

Bogart, of course, is also so much better than any other tough-guy actor that he makes bums of the Ladds and the Powells. As we say here, Bogart can be tough without a gun.

Letter to Hamish Hamilton [May 30, 1946]

I stepped out into the night air that nobody had yet found out how to option. But a lot of people were probably trying. They’d get around to it.

The Little Sister [1949]

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

Trouble Is My Business [1950]. Introduction

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.

The Simple Art of Murder [1950]

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

The Simple Art of Murder

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.

The Simple Art of Murder

Their characters lived in a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery for its own destruction, and was learning to use it with all the moronic delight of a gangster trying out his first machine gun. The law was something to be manipulated for profit and power. The streets were dark with something more than night.

Introduction to Trouble Is My Business [1950]

I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar—that’s wonderful.

The Long Goodbye [1953], ch. 4

“Alcohol is like love,” he said. “The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.”

The Long Goodbye, 4

Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.

The Long Goodbye, 48

John Foster Dulles

1888–1959

You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war.… The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink,¹ you are lost.

Life magazine [January 16, 1956]

T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot

1888–1965

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock [1917]

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

There will be time to murder and create.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I grow old… I grow old.…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

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.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

And I must borrow every changing shape

To find expression.

Portrait of a Lady [1917], sec. III

His laughter tinkled among the teacups.

Mr. Apollinax [1917]

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—

Lean on a garden urn—

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

La Figlia Che Piange [1917], st. 1

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze

The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

La Figlia Che Piange, st. 3

  He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.

In Memory of Henry James [1918]

It [tradition] cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor.

Tradition and the Individual Talent [1919]

What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it.

Tradition and the Individual Talent

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Tradition and the Individual Talent

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.

Tradition and the 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.

Hamlet and His Problems [1919]

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,

Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

Gerontion [1920]

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,

Guides us by vanities.

Gerontion

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices

Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Gerontion

The hippopotamus’s day

Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts;

God works in a mysterious way—

The Church can sleep and feed at once.

The Hippopotamus [1920], st. 6

There is no method except to be very intelligent.

The Sacred Wood [1920]. The Perfect Critic

Webster was much possessed by death

And saw the skull beneath the skin.

Whispers of Immortality [1920], st. 1

He knew the anguish of the marrow

The ague of the skeleton;

No contact possible to flesh

Allayed the fever of the bone.

Whispers of Immortality, st. 4 [of Donne]

Uncorseted, her friendly bust

Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

Whispers of Immortality, st. 5

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 dishonored shroud.

Sweeney Among the Nightingales [1920], st. 9, 10

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Philip Massinger [1920]

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden.

The Metaphysical Poets [1921]

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

The Waste Land [1922]. pt. I, The Burial of the Dead

   You know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

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.

The Waste Land. I, The Burial of the Dead

I had not thought death had undone so many.¹

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.²

The Waste Land. I, The Burial of the Dead

I think we are in rats’ alley

Where the dead men lost their bones.

The Waste Land. II, A Game of Chess

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—

It’s so elegant

So intelligent.

The Waste Land. II, A Game of Chess

Hurry up please its time.

The Waste Land. II, A Game of Chess

When lovely woman stoops to folly³ and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smooths her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone.

The Waste Land. III, The Fire Sermon

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

The Waste Land. IV, Death by Water

Here is no water but only rock.

The Waste Land. V, What the Thunder Said

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

The Waste Land. V, What the Thunder Said

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.

The Waste Land. V, What the Thunder Said

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

The Hollow Men [1925], sec. I

Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

   Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

The Hollow Men, I

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow.

The Hollow Men, V

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

The Hollow Men, V

   I’ll convert you!

Into a stew.

A nice little, white little, missionary stew!

Sweeney Agonistes [1926]

Birth, and copulation, and death.

That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

Sweeney Agonistes

Two live as one

One live as two

Two live as three

Under the bam

Under the boo

Under the bamboo tree.

Sweeney Agonistes

  I gotta use words when I talk to you

    But if you understand or if you don’t

  That’s nothing to me and nothing to you.

Sweeney Agonistes

A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year.

Journey of the Magi [1927]

Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult.… The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.

The Metaphysical Poets

The general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion.

For Lancelot Andrews [1928], preface

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Dante [1929]

More can be learned about how to write poetry from Dante than from any English poet.… The language of each great English poet is his own language; the language of Dante is the perfection of a common language.

Dante

Because I do not hope to turn again⁴

Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn.

Ash-Wednesday [1930], I

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, I

Terminate torment

Of love unsatisfied

The greater torment

Of love satisfied.

Ash-Wednesday, II

   Redeem

The time. Redeem

The unread vision in the higher dream

While jeweled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

Ash-Wednesday, IV

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled

About the center of the silent Word.

Ash-Wednesday, V

Wavering between the profit and the loss

In this brief transit where the dreams cross

The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.

Ash-Wednesday, VI

The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying

Unbroken wings.

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices

In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices

And the weak spirit quickens to rebel

For the bent goldenrod and the lost sea smell.

Ash-Wednesday, VI

What seas what shores what gray rocks and what islands

What water lapping the bow

And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog

What images return

O my daughter.

Marina [1930]

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug’s game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism [1933], conclusion

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Chorus from “The Rock” [1934]

Yet we have gone on living,

Living and partly living.

Murder in the Cathedral [1935], pt. I

They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.

They know and do not know, that acting is suffering.

Murder in the Cathedral, I

Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb.

Murder in the Cathedral, I

The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Murder in the Cathedral, I

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.¹

Murder in the Cathedral, II

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

Four Quartets. Burnt Norton [1935], pt. I

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose garden.

Four Quartets. Burnt Norton, I

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

And reconciles forgotten wars.

Four Quartets. Burnt Norton, II

At the still point of the turning world.

   Neither flesh nor fleshless.

Four Quartets. Burnt Norton, II

   Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Four Quartets. Burnt Norton, II

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage

Quick now, here, now, always—

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after.

Four Quartets. Burnt Norton, V

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,

   It isn’t just one of your holiday games.

You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats [1939]

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,

He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,

And when you reach the scene of the crime—

Macavity’s not there!

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Macavity: The Mystery Cat

  Shall we ever meet again?

And who will meet again? Meeting is for strangers.

Meeting is for those who do not know each other.

The Family Reunion [1939], spoken by Agatha

In my beginning is my end.

Four Quartets. East Coker [1940], pt. I

  Keeping time,

Keeping the rhythm in their dancing

As in their living in the living seasons

The time of the seasons and the constellations

The time of milking and the time of harvest

The time of the coupling of man and woman

And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.

Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

Four Quartets. East Coker, I

What is the late November doing

With the disturbance of the spring.

Four Quartets. East Coker, II

The houses are all gone under the sea.

Four Quartets. East Coker, II

The dancers are all gone under the hill.

Four Quartets. East Coker, II

O dark dark dark.¹ They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant.

Four Quartets. East Coker, III

And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,

Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.

I said to my soul, be still,² and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God.

Four Quartets. East Coker, III

   And so each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

With shabby equipment always deteriorating

In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

Undisciplined squads of emotion.

Four Quartets. East Coker, V

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

Four Quartets. East Coker, V

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here and there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Four Quartets. East Coker, V

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable.

Four Quartets. The Dry Salvages [1941], pt. I

The sea is the land’s edge also, the granite

Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses

Its hints of earlier and other creation:

The starfish, the hermit crab, the whale’s

backbone;

The pools where it offers to our curiosity

The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.

It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,

The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar

And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices.

Four Quartets. The Dry Salvages, I

Time the destroyer is time the preserver.

Four Quartets. The Dry Salvages, II

   Music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts.

Four Quartets. The Dry Salvages, V

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.

Four Quartets. Little Gidding [1942], pt. I

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice.

Four Quartets. Little Gidding, II

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us

To purify the dialect of the tribe.³

Four Quartets. Little Gidding, II

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

  We only live, only suspire

  Consumed by either fire or fire.

Four Quartets. Little Gidding, IV

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.

Four Quartets. Little Gidding, V

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well¹

When the tongues of flame are infolded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

Four Quartets. Little Gidding, V

Most editors are failed writers—but so are most writers.

From ROBERT GIROUX [1914–2008], The Education of an Editor [1982]

Jules Furthman

1888–1966

There’s a Foreign Legion of women, too. But we have no uniforms, no flags, and no medals when we are brave; no wound stripes where we are hurt.

Morocco, screenplay [1930], spoken by Marlene Dietrich

It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.

Shanghai Express (screenplay) [1932], spoken by Marlene Dietrich

Jules Furthman

1888–1966

and

William Faulkner

1897–1962

Was you ever bit by a dead bee?

To Have and Have Not (screenplay) [1944], spoken by Walter Brennan

Maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

To Have and Have Not (screenplay), spoken by Lauren Bacall

I’m hard to get, Steve. All you have to do is ask me.

To Have and Have Not (screenplay), spoken by Lauren Bacall

Haven Gillespie

1888–1975

He’s making a list

And checking it twice,

Gonna find out

Who’s naughty and nice,

Santa Claus is comin’ to town.

Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town² [1934]

Joseph [Patrick] Kennedy

1888–1969

Don’t get mad, get even.

Attributed

[On the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy:] We’re going to sell Jack like soap flakes.

Attributed

Ronald Arbuthnott 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.”

Limerick on idealism³

William L[eonard] Laurence

1888–1977

A great ball of fire about a mile in diameter, changing colors as it kept shooting upward, from deep purple to orange, expanding, growing bigger, rising as it was expanding, an elemental force freed from its bonds after being chained for billions of years.

On the first atom bomb explosion.⁴ In the New York Times [September 26, 1945]

At first it was a giant column that soon took the shape of a supramundane mushroom.

On the first atom bomb explosion. In the New York Times

T[homas] E[dward] Lawrence¹

1888–1935

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.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom² [1926], dedication

War upon rebellion was messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, bk. 3

There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.

Revolt in the Desert [1927], ch. 19

Leadbelly [Huddie Ledbetter]

1888–1949

Good mornin’, blues, blues how do you do?

Good mornin’, blues, blues how do you do?

I’m doin’ all right, good mornin’, how are you?

Good Morning Blues [1940]

Anita Loos

1888–1981

I seem to be thinking practically all of the time. I mean it is my favorite recreation and sometimes I sit for hours and do not seem to do anything but think. So this gentleman said a girl with brains ought to do something else with them besides think.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes [1925]

Gentlemen always seem to remember blondes.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, ch. 1

She always believed in the old adage, “Leave them while you’re looking good.”

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1

Kissing your hand may make you feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 4

Katherine Mansfield

1888–1923

If there was one thing that he hated more than another it was the way she had of waking him in the morning. She did it on purpose, of course. It was her way of establishing her grievance for the day.

Bliss [1920]. Mr. Reginald Peacock’s Day

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.… This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it’s no longer so. I feel happy—deep down. All is well.

Journal [1922], last entry

Eugene O’Neill

1888–1953

Dat ole davil, sea.

Anna Christie [1922], act I

Gimme a whiskey—ginger ale on the side. And don’t be stingy, baby.³

Anna Christie, I

Desire Under the Elms

Title of play [1924]

Strange interlude! Yes, our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!

Strange Interlude [1928], pt. II, act IX

Mourning Becomes Electra

Title of dramatic trilogy [1931]

The damned don’t cry.

Mourning Becomes Electra [1931]. The Haunted, act III

The dead! Why can’t the dead die!

Mourning Becomes Electra. The Haunted, IV

The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.

The Iceman Cometh [written 1939; produced 1946], act I

It’s the No Chance Saloon. It’s Bedrock Bar, The End of the Line Café, The Bottom of the Sea Rathskeller! Don’t you notice the beautiful calm of the atmosphere? That’s because it’s the last harbor. No one here has to worry about where they’re going next, because there is no farther they can go.

The Iceman Cometh, I

There is no present or future—only the past happening over and over again—now.

A Moon for the Misbegotten [1947], act III

A Long Day’s Journey into Night

Title of play [1956]

None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.

Long Day’s Journey into Night [1941, published 1956], act 2, sc. 1, spoken by Mary Tyrone

The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future too.

Long Day’s Journey into Night, 2, 2, spoken by Mary Tyrone

Only the past when you were happy is real.

Long Day’s Journey into Night, act III

Born in a goddam hotel room and dying in a hotel room!

Last words. From LOUIS SHEAFFER [1912–1993], O’Neill: Son and Artist [1973]

Fernando Pessoa

1888–1935

Nature is parts without a whole.

This is perhaps the mystery they speak of.¹

The Keeper of Sheep, poem 47 (writing as Albert Caeiro) [c. 1914]

The only freedom the gods grant us

   Is this: to submit

Of our own free will to their sovereignty.

   We should do just that,

Since only in the illusion of freedom

   Does freedom exist.¹

The only freedom the gods grant us (writing as Ricardo Reis) [1914]

Time, which grays hair and wrinkles faces, also withers violent affections, and much more quickly.

Letter to Ophelia Queiroz [November 29, 1920]

How should I know what I’ll be, I who don’t know what I am?

Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!

And there are so many who think of being the same thing that we can’t all be it!

Genius? At this moment

A hundred thousand brains are dreaming they’re geniuses like me,

And it may be that history won’t remember even one,

All their imagined conquests amounting to so much dung.

The Tobacco Shop¹ (writing as Álvaro de Campos) [1928]

In all I’ve observed, part of me remained.

Whatever I’ve seen, when it passed I passed,

Memory not distinguishing

What I’ve seen from what I’ve been.

Whatever ceases is death¹ (writing as Ricardo Reis) [1928]

Each person is merely his own dream of himself.

The Book of Disquiet² (writing as Bernardo Soares) [1982]

Living with other people is a torture for me. And I have the others in me. Even when I’m far away from them, I am forced to live with them. Even when I’m all alone, crowds surround me. I have no place to flee to, unless I were to flee from myself.

The Book of Disquiet² (writing as Bernardo Soares)

John Crowe Ransom

1888–1974

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,

Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:

A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,

And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Winter Remembered [1924]

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud

Dripping their snow on the green grass,

Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,

Who cried in goose, Alas.

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter [1924]

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 marveling sweetly on her ills.

Here Lies a Lady [1924]

God have mercy on the sinner

Who must write with no dinner,

No gravy and no grub,

No pewter and no pub,

No belly and no bowels,

Only consonants and vowels.

Survey of Literature [1927]

Knute [Kenneth] Rockne

1888–1931

Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure.³

Remark to Wisconsin basketball coach Walter Meanwell [1920s]

Win just one for the Gipper.¹

Attributed

Carl Schmitt

1888–1985

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.… The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specifically intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.

The Concept of the Political² [1927]

Alan Seeger

1888–1916

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple blossoms fill the air.

I Have a Rendezvous with Death [1916]

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

Giuseppe Ungaretti

1888–1970

To joyously savor one single

instant of initial

life I seek an innocent

country³

Wanderer [1918]

Bartolomeo Vanzetti

1888–1927

If it had not been for this thing, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died 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 justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now we do by accident.

Letter to his son [April 1927]

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.

Letter to his son

Henry A[gard] Wallace

1888–1965

Some have spoken of the “American Century.” I say that 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 to Free World Association [May 8, 1942]

Conrad Aiken

1889–1973

Music I heard with you was more than music,

And bread I broke with you was more than bread.

Now that I am without you, all is desolate;

All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Bread and Music [1914]

All lovely things will have an ending,

All lovely things will fade and die,

And youth, that’s now so bravely spending,

Will beg a penny by and by.

Disenchantment [1916], pt. 4

Anna Akhmatova [Anna Andreyevna Gorenko]

1889–1966

If you can’t give me love and peace,

Then give me bitter fame.

Rosary [composed 1913, published 1914]

No foreign sky protected me,

no stranger’s wing shielded my face.

I stand as witness to the common lot,

survivor of that time, that place.

Requiem⁴[composed mainly 1935–1940]. Epigraph [composed 1961]

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me… and asked me in a whisper…“Can you describe this?” And I said: “I can.”

Requiem. Instead of a Preface [composed 1957]

That was a time when only the dead

could smile.

Requiem. Prologue [composed 1935–1940]

I should be proud to have my memory graced,

but only if the monument be placed…

here, where I endured three hundred hours

in line before the implacable iron bars.

Requiem. Epilogue [composed 1940], pt. II

Herbert Asbury

1889–1963

The basic creed of the gangster, and for that matter of any other type of criminal, is that whatever a man has is his only so long as he can keep it, and that the one who takes it away from him has not done anything wrong, but has merely demonstrated his smartness.

The Gangs of New York [1928]

Enid Bagnold

1889–1981

You will be old-fashioned one day. It’s more shocking than getting old.

The Chalk Garden [1955]

Robert [Charles] Benchley

1889–1945

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.

Of All Things [1921], ch. 20

Charlie [Sir Charles Spencer] Chaplin

1889–1977

I hate the talkies and will not produce talking films.… I cannot conceive of my films as other than silent. My shadow appears on the screen as in a dream, and dreams do not speak.

Theatre Arts Monthly [November 1930]

Wars, conflict, it’s all business. One murder makes a villain; millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.

Monsieur Verdoux¹ (screenplay) [1947]

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

Monsieur Verdoux (screenplay)

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning. Desire is the theme of all life!

Limelight (screenplay) [1952]

That’s all any of us are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.

Limelight (screenplay)

[The tramp character:] A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

My Autobiography [1964], ch. 10

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.

My Autobiography, 10

Jean Cocteau

1889–1963

Mirrors are the doors through which Death comes and goes.

Orpheus [1926], sc. vii [Also, screenplay, 1950]

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo.

The Laïc Mystery: An Essay in Indirect Criticism (Le Mystère Laïc: Essai d’Étude Indirecte) [1928]

The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one’s preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.

The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) [1929]

The privileges of beauty are enormous.

The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles)

Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

Opium [1930]

First find, then search.²

Journal d’un Inconnu (Journal of an Unknown) [1953]

Poetry is a language all to itself which poets can speak without fear of being understood, as people are in the habit of using that language for other purposes.

Clair-obscur: Poèmes [1954]

The matters I relate

Are true lies.³

The Journals of Jean Cocteau [1956]. Quoted by WALLACE FOWLIE [1908–1998] in the introduction

Martin Heidegger

1889–1976

Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question.

What Is Metaphysics?¹ [1935], opening

Language is the house of Being.

What Are Poets For?² [1947]

Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.

Building Dwelling Thinking² [1951]

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it.

The Question Concerning Technology³ [1954]

Adolf Hitler

1889–1945

My adversaries… applied the one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.

Mein Kampf (My Battle) [1933], vol. I, ch. 2

All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself.

Mein Kampf, I, 6

The great masses of the people… will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.

Mein Kampf, I, 10

I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.

Speech [March 15, 1936]

I want today once again to make a prophecy: if the international Jewish financiers within and without Europe succeed once more in plunging the nations into another world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the world and with it a victory for Judaism. The result will be the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe.

Speech to the Reichstag [January 30, 1939]

After all, who remembers the Armenians?

Attributed remark, prior to the invasion of Poland [1939]

This war no longer bears the characteristics of former inter-European conflicts. It is one of those elemental conflicts which usher in a new millennium and which shake the world once in a thousand years.

Speech to the Reichstag [April 26, 1942]

Is Paris burning?⁴

Asked at the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Rastenburg, Germany [August 25, 1944]

George S. Kaufman

1889–1961

Satire is what closes Saturday night.

Saying

George S. Kaufman

1889–1961

and

Edna Ferber

1885–1968

You’re through in pictures, and plays, and vaudeville, and radio, and everything! You’re a corpse, and you don’t know it. Go get yourself buried.

Dinner at Eight [1932], act III, sc. ii

Walter Lippmann

1889–1974

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil.

Liberty and the News [1920]. Journalism and the Higher Law

What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him.… The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do.

Public Opinion [1922], ch. 1, The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads

That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies.

Public Opinion, 15

The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler form the reader enters into the news. In order that he shall enter he must find a familiar foothold in the story, and this is supplied to him by the use of stereotypes.

Public Opinion, 23, The Nature of News

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society.… A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.

Address at the International Press Institute Assembly, London [May 27, 1965]

Gabriela Mistral [Lucila Godoy Alcayaga]

1889–1957

I have been biting the desert for so many years that Thirst is the name of my homeland.

Tala [1938]. Nocturno de la consumación

Jawaharlal Nehru

1889–1964

At the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

Speech to Constituent Assembly in New Delhi [August 14, 1947]

I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized, on this earth, capable of becoming true man, master of his fate and captain of his soul.

From EDGAR SNOW, Journey to the Beginning [1958]

W[ilhelm] N[ero] P[ilate] Barbellion [pseudonym of Bruce Frederick Cummings]

1889–1919

I never cease to interest myself in the Gothic architecture of my own fantastic soul.

The Journal of a Disappointed Man [1919]

Pierre Reverdy

1889–1960

Poetry is in what is not.¹

En vrac [1956]

Carl O[rtwin] Sauer

1889–1975

We have not yet learned the difference between yield and loot.

Theme of Plant and Animal Destruction in Economic History [1938]

Arnold Joseph Toynbee

1889–1975

Civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.

Civilization on Trial [1948], ch. 4

Salka Viertel

1889–1978

What the producers want is an original but familiar, unusual but popular, moralistic but sexy, true but improbable, tender but violent, slick but highbrow masterpiece. When they have that, then they can “work on it” and make it “commercial” to justify their high salaries.

The Kindness of Strangers [1949]

Ludwig [Josef Johann] Wittgenstein

1889–1951

To pray is to think about the meaning of life.

Journal entry [June 11, 1916]

The world is all that is the case.²

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus³ [1922], 1

Nothing, in logic, is accidental.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2.012

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, 5.6

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.4311

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.¹

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7

It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely.

Philosophical Investigations [1953]. Preface

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

Philosophical Investigations

One can mistrust one’s own senses, but not one’s own belief. If there were a verb meaning “to believe falsely,” it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

Philosophical Investigations

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.… It leaves everything as it is.

Philosophical Investigations

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert on us.

The Blue and Brown Books [1958]

At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.

On Certainty [1969], 253

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Vermischte Bemerkungen [1977; English translation, Culture and Value, 1980]

Karel Čapek

1890–1938

Rossum’s Universal Robots²

R.U.R. [1920]

Human beings? Oh yes, human beings. Well, they will slowly return from the mountains to the shores that are all that is left of the continents.… There will also be legends of submerged and mythical lands which were the cradle of human culture; perhaps there will be a fable about a land called England, or France, or Germany.³

War with the Newts [1936]

Agatha Christie

1890–1976

“This affair must all be unraveled from within.” He [Hercule Poirot] tapped his forehead. “These little gray cells. It is ‘up to them’—as you say over here.”

The Mysterious Affair at Styles [1920], ch. 10

The worst is so often true.

They Do It with Mirrors [1952], spoken by Miss Marple

I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.

Quoted in Life magazine [May 14, 1956]

Marc[us Cook] Connelly

1890–1980

Gangway for de Lawd God Jehovah!

The Green Pastures⁴ [1930]

Elmer Davis

1890–1958

The first and great commandment is: Don’t let them scare you.

But We Were Born Free [1954]

Charles [André Joseph Marie] de Gaulle

1890–1970

France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war.

BBC broadcast from London to the French people after the fall of France [June 18, 1940]

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not and shall not die.

BBC broadcast [June 18, 1940]

Since those whose duty it was to hold the sword of France have let it fall, I have picked up its broken point.

Radio address [July 13, 1940]

In literature, as in everything else, talent carries with it responsibility.⁵

War Memoirs, volume 3: Salvation, 1944–1946 [1959]; on his refusal to commute the writer Robert Brasillach’s death sentence for collaboration during World War II

If I live, I will fight, wherever I must, as long as I must, until the enemy is defeated and the national stain washed clean.

Les Mémoires de Guerre, vol. I [1954]

France cannot be France without greatness.

Les Mémoires de Guerre, I

I always thought I was Jeanne d’Arc and Bonaparte. How little one knows oneself.

Reply to speaker who compared him to Robespierre. From Figaro Littéraire [1958]

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

1890–1998

There are no other Everglades in the world.… The miracle of the light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slow-moving below, the grass and water that is the meaning of the central fact of the Everglades of Florida. It is a river of grass.

The Everglades: River of Grass [1947], ch. 1

I believe that life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas: Voice of the River [1987]

Dwight D[avid] Eisenhower

1890–1969

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

Message to the troops, June 6, 1944

People of Western Europe: A landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force. This landing is part of the concerted United Nations plan for the liberation of Europe, made in conjunction with our great Russian allies.… I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us now. Together we shall achieve victory.

Broadcast on D-Day [June 6, 1944]

I shall go to Korea.

Campaign speech, Detroit, Michigan [October 25, 1952]

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.

Speech [April 16, 1953]

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. 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 Radio and Television Address to the American People [January 17, 1961]

Biggest damfool mistake I ever made.

Recalling his appointment [1953] of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States

Gene Fowler

1890–1960

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

Attributed¹

Frances Goodrich

1890–1984

Albert Hackett

1900–1995

and

Frank Capra

1897–1991

Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?

It’s a Wonderful Life [1947]

Look, Daddy. Teacher says, “Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”

It’s a Wonderful Life

Ivor Gurney

1890–1937

Little did I dream, England, that you bore me

Under the Cotswold Hills beside the water meadows,

To do you dreadful service, here, beyond your borders

And your enfolding seas.

Severn & Somme [1917]. Strange Service

The dearness of common things,

Beech wood, tea, plate shelves,

And the whole family of crockery,

Woodaxes, blades, helves.

The Dearness of Common Things [c. 1919–1922]

Hanns Johst

1890–1978

When I hear the word “culture”… I reach for my pistol.¹

Schlageter [1933]

El [Lazar Markovich] Lissitzky

1890–1941

Every form is the frozen instantaneous picture of a process. Thus a work is a stopping-place on the road of becoming and not the fixed goal.

Merz (issue 8/9, “Nasci”) [1924]

H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft

1890–1937

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

The Shunned House [1924]

To say that we actually believed in vampires or werewolves would be a carelessly inclusive statement. Rather must it be said that we were not prepared to deny the possibility of certain unfamiliar and unclassified modifications of vital force and attenuated matter; existing very infrequently in three-dimensional space because of its more intimate connexion with other spatial units, yet close enough to the boundary of our own to furnish us occasional manifestations which we, for lack of a proper vantage-point, may never hope to understand.

The Shunned House

Do not call up Any that you cannot put downe.

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward [1927]

It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.

The Colour Out of Space [1927]

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

The Call of Cthulhu [1928], ch. 1

In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

The Call of Cthulhu, 2

It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests.

At the Mountains of Madness [1936]

I shivered at the mysteries the past may conceal, and trembled at the menaces the future may bring forth. What was hinted in the speech of post-human entities of the fate of mankind produced such an effect on me that I will not set it down here.

The Shadow out of Time [1936]

William A. Maguire

1890–1953

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.²

Attributed

Man Ray [Emmanuel Rudnitzky]

1890–1976

unconcerned but not indifferent

Epitaph

Claude McKay

1890–1948

Upon the clothes behind the tenement,

That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines,

Linking each flat, but to each indifferent,

Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

A Song of the Moon

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I must confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate.

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

America

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot.

If We Must Die

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

If We Must Die

Giorgio Morandi

1890–1964

I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see.

Interview with Edouard Roditi [1960]

Christopher Morley

1890–1957

There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Where the Blue Begins [1922]

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

Thunder on the Left [1925], ch. 14

Boris Pasternak

1890–1960

You are eternity’s hostage

A captive of time.

Night¹ [1957]

It snowed and snowed, the whole world over,

Snow swept the world from end to end.

A candle burned on the table;

A candle burned.

Doctor Zhivago² [1958]. The Poems of Yurii Zhivago³ (ch. 17), Winter Night, st. 1

And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie, and they brought relief because they broke the spell of the dead letter.

Doctor Zhivago, epilogue

Departure beyond the borders of my country is for me equivalent to death.

Letter to Nikita Khrushchev⁴ [1958]

I am caught like a beast at bay.

Somewhere are people, freedom, light,

But all I hear is the baying of the pack,

There is no way out for me.

The Nobel Prize¹[1959]

Katherine Anne Porter

1890–1980

Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.

Ship of Fools [1962]

The past is never where you think you left it.

Ship of Fools

Jean Rhys

1890–1979

Some must cry so that the others may be able to laugh the more heartily.

Good Morning, Midnight [1938]

I often want to cry. That is the only advantage women have over men—at least they can cry.

Good Morning, Midnight

You imagine the carefully-pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn’t. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it’s in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

Good Morning, Midnight

I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t really care.

Smile Please [1979]

Isaac Rosenberg

1890–1918

Three lives hath one life—

Iron, honey, gold.

The gold, the honey gone—

  Left is the hard and cold.

August 1914 [1916]

Elsa Schiaparelli

1890–1973

Remember—twenty per cent of women have inferiority complexes. Seventy per cent have illusions.… Ninety per cent are afraid of being conspicuous and of what people will say. So they buy a gray suit. They should dare to be different.

Shocking Life [1954]. The Twelve Commandments for Women

Casey [Charles Dillon] Stengel

c. 1890–1975

Can’t anybody here play this game?

On the Mets’ 1962 season; attributed

There comes a time in every man’s life and I’ve had many of them.

Remark⁵

Most people my age are dead.

Remark

B. Traven

1890–1969

Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.¹

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (novel) [1927]

Joseph N[ye] Welch

1890–1960

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.… Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Response to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy during Senate hearings on alleged subversive activities in the U.S. Army [June 9, 1954]

Charles E[rwin] 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.

To the Senate Committee on Armed Services [1953]

Mikhail Bulgakov

1891–1940

Of course man is mortal, but that’s only half the problem. The trouble is that mortality sometimes comes to him so suddenly! And he cannot even say what he will be doing this evening.

The Master and Margarita [written 1920–1940, published 1966–1967], ch. 1

Manuscripts don’t burn.²

The Master and Margarita, 24

A. P. Carter

1891–1960

Can the circle be unbroken

Bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye

There’s a better home a-waiting

In the sky, Lord, in the sky.

Can the Circle Be Unbroken³ [1935]

Al[exander] Dubin

1891–1945

Every kiss, every hug

Seems to act just like a drug;

You’re getting to be a habit with me.

Let me stay in your arms,

I’m addicted to your charms;

You’re getting to be a habit with me.

I used to think your love was something that I

Could take or leave alone,

But now I couldn’t do without my supply,

I need you for my own.

42nd Street [1932]. You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me⁴

Come and meet

Those dancing feet

On the avenue

I’m taking you to,

Forty-second Street.

42nd Street [1932]. Forty-second Street³

We’re in the money,

We’re in the money,

We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along!

Gold Diggers of 1933 [1933]. The Gold Diggers’ Song (We’re in the Money)³

Antonio Gramsci

1891–1937

History teaches, but it has no pupils.

Italy and Spain [1921]

History is at once freedom and necessity.

Prison Notebooks [1933–1934]

State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armor of coercion.

Prison Notebooks

The old world is dying away, and the new world struggles to come forth: now is the time of monsters.

Attributed

Sidney Howard

1891–1939

Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war. This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream.⁵

Gone with the Wind (screenplay) [1939], spoken by Vivien Leigh

Zora Neale Hurston

1891–1960

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.… I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me [1928]

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you.

How It Feels to Be Colored Me

Even the Bible was made over to suit our vivid imagination.

Mules and Men [1935], introduction

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Their Eyes Were Watching God [1937], ch. 1

Women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1

De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, 2

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, 3

Big Lake Okeechobee, big beans, big cane, big weeds, big everything. Weeds that did well to grow waist high up the state were eight and often ten feet tall down there. Ground so rich that everything went wild.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, 14

“It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God, 20

Decorate a decoration: the feeling is that there can never be enough of beauty, let alone too much.

The Sanctified Church [1938]

Gods always behave like the people who make them.

Tell My Horse [1938], ch. 15

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.

Moses, Man of the Mountain [1939], ch. 29

I was a Southerner and had the map of Dixie on my tongue.

Dust Tracks on a Road [1942], ch. 8

There is no agony like bearing an untold story within you.

Dust Tracks on a Road, 11

If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it.

Dust Tracks on a Road, 12

I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots.

Dust Tracks on a Road, 16

I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death.

Dust Tracks on a Road, 16

Jomo Kenyatta [Kamau Wa Ngengi]

1891–1978

The African is conditioned, by the cultural and social institutions of centuries, to a freedom of which Europe has little conception, and it is not in his nature to accept serfdom forever. He realizes that he must fight unceasingly for his own complete emancipation; for without this he is doomed to remain the prey of rival imperialisms.

Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (Kikuyu) [1938], conclusion

We must try to trust one another. Stay and cooperate.¹

Statement, as first president of the Republic of Kenya, to the white settlers [1964]

Nella Larsen

1891–1964

I’m homesick, not for America, but for Negroes.

Quicksand [1928], ch. 16

Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

1891–1938

Petersburg! I still possess a list of addresses,

Which will help me to hear the voices of the dead.

Leningrad [1930]

We live, deaf to the land beneath us,

Ten steps away no one hears our speeches,

But where there’s so much as half a conversation

The Kremlin’s mountaineer will get his mention.

Stalin [1934], st. 1, 2

One by one forging his laws, to be flung

Like horseshoes at the head, the eye, or the groin.

And every killing is a treat

For the broad-chested Ossete.

Stalin, st. 7, 8

Henry Miller

1891–1980

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

Tropic of Cancer [1934]

I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer.

Tropic of Cancer

I am a patriot—of the 14th Ward Brooklyn, where I was raised. The rest of the United States doesn’t exist for me, except as idea, or history, or literature.

Black Spring [1936]

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

Black Spring. The 14th Ward

[On America:] Of nothing are you allowed to get the real odor or the real savor. Everything is sterilized and wrapped in cellophane.

Max and the White Phagocytes [1938]. Glittering Pie

To get beneath the facts I would have had to be an artist, and one doesn’t become an artist overnight. First you have to be crushed, to have your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self.

Tropic of Capricorn [1939]

The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again… no, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken, let us say, and just enough money in one’s pocket for another meal.

Tropic of Capricorn

To be lost in a strange city is the greatest joy I know; to become oriented is to lose everything.

The Cosmological Eye [1939]. The Brooklyn Bridge

It’s good to be just plain happy; it’s a little better to know that you’re happy; but to understand that you’re happy and to know why and how… and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.

The Colossus of Maroussi [1941], pt. I

Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do.

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch [1957]

Elliot Paul

1891–1958

The last time I see Paris will be on the day I die. The city was inexhaustible, and so is its memory.

The Last Time I Saw Paris [1942], pt. II, 23

Michael Polanyi

1891–1976

We can know more than we can tell.

The Tacit Dimension [1966]

Cole [Albert] Porter

1891–1964

We’re all alone

No chaperon

Can get our number,

The world’s in slumber,

Let’s misbehave.

Paris [1928]. Let’s Misbehave

You do something to me,

Something that simply mystifies me.

Fifty Million Frenchmen [1929]. You Do Something to Me

Love for sale,

Appetizing young love for sale.

Love that’s fresh and still unspoiled,

Love that’s only slightly soiled,

Love for sale.

The New Yorkers [1930]. Love for Sale

Night and day you are the one,

Only you beneath the moon and under the sun.

Gay Divorce [1932]. Night and Day

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.

Anything Goes [1934]. I Get a Kick Out of You

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking

Was looked on as something shocking,

But now, God knows,

Anything goes.

Anything Goes. Anything Goes

You’re the Nile,

You’re the Tower of Pisa,

You’re the smile

On the Mona Lisa.…

But if, Baby, I’m the bottom you’re the top!

Anything Goes. You’re the Top!

It was great fun,

But it was just one of those things.

Jubilee [1935]. Just One of Those Things

I’ve got you under my skin,

I’ve got you deep in the heart of me,

So deep in my heart, you’re really a part of me,

I’ve got you under my skin.

Born to Dance [1936]. I’ve Got You Under My Skin

It’s delightful, it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely.

Red, Hot and Blue [1936]. It’s De-Lovely

Of all the types I’ve ever met within our democracy,

I hate the most, the athlete with his manner bold and brassy;

He may have hair upon his chest but, sister, so has Lassie,

Oh, I hate men!

Kiss Me, Kate [1948]. I Hate Men

Erwin Rommel

1891–1944

The first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive… For the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.

Remarks [early 1944], reported in Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day

Nelly Sachs

1891–1970

O the chimneys

On the ingeniously devised habitations of death

When Israel’s body drifted as smoke

Through the air—

Was welcomed by a star, a chimney sweep,

A star that turned black

Or was it a ray of sun?¹

O the Chimneys [1947]

O the night of the weeping children!

O the night of the children branded for death!

Sleep may not enter here.

Terrible nursemaids

Have usurped the place of mothers.

O the Night of the Weeping Children! [1947]

A stranger always has

his homeland in his arms

like an orphan

for which he may be seeking

nothing but a grave.

Someone Comes [1958]

We, the rescued,

Beg you:

Show us your sun, but gradually.

Lead us from star to star, step by step.

Be gentle when you teach us to live again.²

Chorus of the Rescued

Haile Selassie

1891–1975

Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.

Speech, the League of Nations³ [1936]

Earl Warren

1891–1974

To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.… We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal”⁴ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 [1954]⁵

When an individual is taken into custody or otherwise deprived of his freedom by the authorities and is subjected to questioning… he must be warned prior to any questioning that he has the right to remain silent, that anything he says can be used against him in a court of law, that he has the right to the presence of an attorney, and that if he cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for him prior to any questioning if he so desires.

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 [1965]

Grant Wood

1891–1942

At present, my most useful reference book… is a Sears, Roebuck catalogue.

Artist’s statement [1932]

Erich Auerbach

1892–1957

To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legend.

Mimesis [1946]

Abraham, Jacob, or even Moses produces a more concrete, direct, and historical impression than the figures of the Homeric world—not because they are better described in terms of sense (the contrary is the case) but because the confused, contradictory multiplicity of events, the psychological and factual cross-purposes, which true history reveals, have not disappeared in the representation but still remain clearly perceptible.

Mimesis

Djuna Barnes

1892–1982

Life, the permission to know death.

Nightwood [1936]

The heart of the jealous knows the best and the most satisfying love, that of the other’s bed, where the rival perfects the lover’s imperfections.

Nightwood

An image is a stop the mind makes between uncertainties.

Nightwood

To think of the acorn it is necessary to become the tree. And the tree of night is the hardest tree to mount, the dourest tree to scale, the most difficult of branch, the most febrile to the touch, and sweats a resin and drips a pitch against the palm that computation has not gambled.

Nightwood

Walter Benjamin

1892–1940

Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.

The Task of the Translator [1923]¹

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

One-Way Street [1928]

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas.

One-Way Street

The work is the death mask of its conception.

One-Way Street

It has rightly been said that all great works of literature found a genre or dissolve one—that they are, in other words, special cases.

The Image of Proust [1929]

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.… Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Unpacking My Library¹ [1931]

Collectors are people with a tactical instinct; their experience teaches them that when they capture a strange city, the smallest antique shop can be a fortress, the most remote stationery store a key position. How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!

Unpacking My Library

I came into the world under the sign of Saturn—the star of slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.

Agesilaus Santander [1933]

Every epoch, in fact, not only dreams the one to follow but, in dreaming, precipitates its awakening.²

Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century [1935]

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.… The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [1936]

One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or the listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition.

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

A generation that had gone to school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.

The Storyteller [1936]

Was it not noticeable at the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent—not richer, but poorer in communicable experience?

The Storyteller

The products of art and science owe their existence not merely to the effort of the great geniuses that created them, but also to the unnamed drudgery of their contemporaries. There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Edward Fuchs: Collector and Historian [1937]

James M. Cain

1892–1977

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Title of book [1934]

They threw me off the hay truck about noon.

The Postman Always Rings Twice [1934], opening line

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip.

Mildred Pierce [1941]

That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.

Double Indemnity [1943]

Francisco Franco [Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde, Salgado y Pardo de Andrade]

1892–1975

Our regime is based on bayonets and blood, not on hypocritical elections.

Quoted in HERBERT L. MATTHEWS, Half of Spain Died [1973]

Walter C. Hagen

1892–1969

You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.

The Walter Hagen Story [1956]

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

1892–1964

Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.… I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.

Possible Worlds [1927]

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course, and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career.

Fact and Faith [1934]

The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference¹ for beetles.

Quoted in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society [July 1951]

Robert H[oughwout] Jackson

1892–1954

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett, 319 U.S. 642 [1943]

The first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.

Opening address before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg [1945]

The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.

Opening address before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg

There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 37 [1949]

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.

American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 [1950]

We can afford no liberties with liberty itself.

Dissenting opinion, United States v. Spector 343 U.S. 169 [1952]

There are indications that the Constitution did not contemplate that the title Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy will constitute him also Commander-in-Chief of the country, its industries and its inhabitants. He has no monopoly of “war powers,” whatever they are.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 643–644 [1952]

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.

Dissenting opinion, Zorach v. Clausor, 343 U.S. 306, 325 [1952]

Ernst Lubitsch

1892–1947

There’s a revolution on in the world. Is laughter to depart? Is gracious and graceful living, wit and the jocund interplay, the amusing warfare of man and woman all to vanish? Must I weep for the world that was and not be permitted to re-create it? Devoutly I hope not. For then I should not desire to make more films. I should be content to die.

Interview [July 1943]

I made sometimes pictures which were not up to my standard, but then it can only be said about a mediocrity that all his works live up to his standard.

Letter to Herman Weinberg [1947]

Nobody should try to play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside.

Quoted by David Niven in The Moon’s a Balloon [1972]

Robert S[taughton] Lynd

1892–1970

and

Helen Merrell Lynd

1896–1982

It is characteristic of mankind to make as little adjustment as possible in customary ways in the face of new conditions; the process of social change is epitomized in the fact that the first Packard car body delivered to the manufacturer had a whipstock on the dashboard.

Middletown [1929], pt. VI, ch. 29

Hugh MacDiarmid [Christopher Murray Grieve]

1892–1978

The inward gates of a bird are always open.

It does not know how to shut them.

That is the secret of its song,

But whether any man’s are ajar is doubtful.

Stony Limits [1934]. On a Raised Beach

The cornet solo of our Gaelic islands

Will sound out every now and again

Through all eternity.

I have heard it and am content for ever.

The Islands of Scotland [1939]. Island Funeral

But now I know it is the earth

And not the water that is unstable,

For at every rise and fall of the pellucid tide

It seems as though it were the shingle

And the waving forest of sea-growth

That moves—and not the water!

A Lap of Honour [1967]. Diamond Body

Archibald MacLeish

1892–1982

There with vast wings across the canceled skies,

There in the sudden blackness the black pall

Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

The End of the World [1926]

A poem should not mean

But be.

Ars Poetica [1926]

And here face downward in the sun

To feel how swift how secretly

The shadow of the night comes on.

You, Andrew Marvell [1930]

America was promises…

It was Man who had been promised.

America Was Promises [1939]

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1892–1950

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

God’s World [1917], st. 1

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.¹

A Few Figs from Thistles [1920]. First Fig

We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

A Few Figs from Thistles. Recuerdo

Death devours all lovely things;

Lesbia with her sparrow

Shares the darkness—presently

Every bed is narrow.

Passer Mortuus Est [1921], st. 1

I know I am but summer to your heart,

And not the full four seasons of the year.

I Know I Am But Summer [1923], l. 1

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning;

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed [1923], l. 1

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, l. 13

   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.

Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare [1923], l. 11

How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers

The buck in the snow…

Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.

The Buck in the Snow [1928]

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned

With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Dirge Without Music [1928], st. 1

This beast that rends me in the sight of all,

This love, this longing, this oblivious thing,

That has me under as the last leaves fall,

Will glut, will sicken, will be gone by spring.

Fatal Interview [1931], II

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink.

Love Is Not All [1931], l. 1

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

Title of poem [1934]

Reinhold Niebuhr

1892–1971

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

Beyond Tragedy [1938]

The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.

Beyond Tragedy

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

The Serenity Prayer [1943]

Democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness

Humor is a prelude to faith and

Laughter is the beginning of prayer.

Discerning the Signs of the Times [1949]

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.

The Irony of American History [1952]

Martin Niemoeller

1892–1984

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Attributed

Harold [Wallace] Ross

1892–1951

The New Yorker will not be edited for the old lady from Dubuque.²

Upon founding The New Yorker [1925]

Bruno Schulz

1892–1942

Everyone knows that in a run of normal uneventful years that great eccentric, Time, begets sometimes other years, different, prodigal years which—like a sixth, smallest toe—grow a thirteenth freak month.

The Street of Crocodiles [1934]. The Night of the Great Season

My ideal goal is to “mature” into childhood. That would really be a true maturity.

Letter to Andrzej Plesniewicz [March 4, 1936]

J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien

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, or There and Back Again [1937], ch. 1

We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them.

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, 1

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

The Fellowship of the Ring [1954], bk. I, ch. 10

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evils in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

The Return of the King [1955]

Where iss it, where iss it: my Precious, my Precious? It’s ours, it is, and we wants it.

The Two Towers [1955], ch. 1, spoken by Gollum

The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually.… I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten.

The Two Towers

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The Fellowship of the Ring [1965], bk. I, ch. 2

Marina Tsvetaeva

1892–1941

In this     most Christian of worlds

  all poets    are Jews.

Poem of the End [1924]¹

César Vallejo

1892–1938

I was born on a day

when God was sick.²

The Black Heralds [1918]. Espergesia

I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,

On a day I already remember.

I shall die in Paris—it does not bother me—

Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in autumn.³

Poemas Humanos [1939]. Black Stone on Top of a White Stone

Anger which breaks a man into children,

Which breaks the child into two equal birds,

And after that the bird into a pair of little eggs:

The poor man’s anger

Has one oil against two vinegars.

Poemas Humanos [1939]. Anger which breaks a man into children

Rebecca West [Cicely Isabel Fairfield]

1892–1983

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what Feminism is: I only know that people call me a Feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

The Clarion [November 14, 1913]

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned thing is ample.

The Strange Necessity [1928]

It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslovia [1941]

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia

Wendell L[ewis] Willkie

1892–1944

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 color of their skin.

One World, ch. 13

The Constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.

An American Program [1944], ch. 2

Jack Yellen

1892–1991

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]¹

Dean Acheson

1893–1971

Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

Speech at U.S. Military Academy, West Point [December 5, 1962]

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Interview in the Listener [1970]

Omar Bradley

1893–1981

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

Address on Armistice Day [1948]

In war there is no second prize for the runner-up.

In the Military Review [February 1950]

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.

Testimony to the Committee on Armed Services and Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. Senate [May 15, 1951]

The central problem of our time—as I view it—is how to employ human intelligence for the salvation of mankind. It is a problem we have put upon ourselves. For we have defiled our intellect by the creation of such scientific instruments of destruction that we are now in desperate danger of destroying ourselves.

A Decent Respect for Human Intelligence [February 1958]

Lew Brown

1893–1958

Life is just a bowl of cherries,

Don’t take it serious; it’s too mysterious.

George White’s Scandals of 1931. Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries

Lew Brown

1893–1958

and

Buddy [George Gard] De Sylva

1895–1950

And love can come to everyone,

The best things in life are free.

Good News² [1927]. The Best Things in Life Are Free

James Bryant Conant

1893–1978

He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground.

Notes on the Harvard Tercentenary [1936]

Jimmy [James Francis] Durante

1893–1980

Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Radio series sign-off [1942]

Everybody wants ta get inta the act!

Catchphrase

They say an elephant never forgets. What has it got to remember?

Catchphrase

Hermann Goering

1893–1946

Submit to me as soon as possible a draft showing… measures already taken for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question.

Directive (drafted by Adolf Eichmann) to Reinhard Heydrich [July 31, 1941]

Vicente Huidobro

1893–1948

The poet is a little god.

Ars Poetica [1916]

Francis Iles [Anthony Berkeley Cox]

1893–1971

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. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr. Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.

Malice Afterthought [1931], opening paragraph

Joseph Wood Krutch

1893–1970

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

The Twelve Seasons [1949]. February

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman.

Reverence for Life: The Vandal and the Sportsman [1956]

Harold [Joseph] Laski

1893–1950

We live under a system by which the many are exploited by the few, and war is the ultimate sanction of that exploitation.

Plan or Perish [1945]

It would be madness to let the purposes or the methods of private enterprise set the habits of the age of atomic energy.

Plan or Perish

Huey Long

1893–1935

“Every Man a King.” Every man to eat when there is something to eat; all to wear something when there is something to wear. That makes us all a sovereign.

Radio speech [February 23, 1934]

Mao Tse-tung

1893–1976

The people are like water and the army is like fish.

Aspects of China’s Anti-Japanese Struggle [1948]

The policy of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is designed to promote the flourishing of the arts and the progress of science; it is designed to enable a socialist culture to thrive in our land.

Speech at Peking [February 27, 1957]

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.

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung [1965], vol. I, p. 28

Every Communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, II, 224

John P[hillips] Marquand

1893–1960

Marriage… is a damnably serious business, particularly around Boston.

The Late George Apley [1937], ch. 11

William Moulton Marston

1893–1947

As lovely as Aphrodite—as wise as Athena—with the speed of Mercury and the strength of Hercules—she is known only as Wonder Woman, but who she is, or whence she came, nobody knows!

All Star Comics #8 [1941]

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovski

1893–1930

If you wish,

I shall grow irreproachably tender:

Not a man, but a cloud in trousers!

Cloud in Trousers¹ [1915]

Citizen!

Consider my traveling expenses:

Poetry—

  all of it—

   is a journey to the unknown.

Conversation with a Tax Collector About Poetry² [1926]

Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.

The Milky Way streams silver through the night.

I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams

I have no cause to wake or trouble you.

And, as they say, the incident is closed.

Past One O’Clock…³ [1930]

Joan Miró

1893–1983

I want to assassinate painting.

Attributed

Wilfred Owen

1893–1918

Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry,

The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.

All a poet can do is warn.⁴

Poems [1920], preface

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. 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. Futility

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.

The Anthem for Doomed Youth, st. 1

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

The Anthem for Doomed Youth, st. 1

Red lips are not so red

As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

Greater Love

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.

Strange Meeting

Dorothy Parker

1893–1967

    What fresh hell is this?

Attributed

Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

Enough Rope. Ballade of a Great Weariness, st. 1

Men seldom make passes

At girls who wear glasses.

Enough Rope [1927]. News Item

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

Enough Rope. Résumé

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.

Enough Rope. One Perfect Rose, st. 3

Would you kindly direct me to hell?

Sunset Gun: Poems [1928]. Coda

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

But the One on the Right [1929]

  Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

Caption for Vogue; cited by ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT in While Rome Burns [1934]

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.

Comment [1937]

Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.

Interview in Paris Review [1956]

Runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

Attributed theater review, comment on a player

Excuse my dust.

Epitaph, suggested by herself

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

Esquire [1959], in a review of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Dorothy L[eigh] Sayers

1893–1957

It doesn’t do to murder people, however offensive they may be.

The Five Red Herrings [1931]

Death in particular seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent amusement than any other single subject.

Introduction to The Third Omnibus of Crime [1935]

Maj. Gen. Oliver P. Smith, USMC

1893–1977

We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction.¹

Korea, December 1950; attributed

Freya Stark

1893–1993

The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silence—free of the networks of dead speech.

Perseus in the Wind [1948]

Albert Szent-Györgyi von Nagyrapolt

1893–1986

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

From I. J. GOOD (ed.), The Scientist Speculates [1962]

Max Weinreich

1893–1969

  A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Yivo Bleter [1945]

Mae West

1893–1980

  Goodness had nothing to do with it.²

Night After Night (screenplay) [1932]

  When women go wrong, men go right after them.

She Done Him Wrong (screenplay) [1933]

Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?³… Come on up, I’ll tell your fortune.

She Done Him Wrong

Beulah, peel me a grape.

I’m No Angel (screenplay) [1933]

It’s not the men in your life that counts; it’s the life in your men.

I’m No Angel

  I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.

I’m No Angel

When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.

I’m No Angel

You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini.⁴

Every Day’s a Holiday [1937]

Fred Allen [John Florence Sullivan]

1894–1956

I have just returned from Boston. It is the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there.

Letter to Groucho Marx [June 12, 1953]

An advertising agency is 85 per cent confusion and 15 per cent commission.

Treadmill to Oblivion [1954]

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

Attributed

Meher Baba

1894–1969

Don’t worry, be happy.

Attributed

Isaac [Emmanuelovich] Babel

1894–1941

A phrase is born into the world both good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a slight, an almost invisible twist. The lever should rest in your hand, getting warm, and you can only turn it once, not twice.

Guy de Maupassant¹ [1924]

No steel can pierce the human heart so chillingly as a period at the right moment.²

Guy de Maupassant

Forget for a while that you have glasses on your nose and autumn in your heart.

Odessa Stories [1926]. How Things Were Done in Odessa

Speaking of silence, we can’t help talking about me, the past master of this genre.

Speech at First Writers’ Congress [1934]

Louis Ferdinand Céline [Louis Ferdinand Destouches]

1894–1961

Those who talk about the future are scoundrels. It is the present that matters. To evoke one’s posterity is to make a speech to maggots.

Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) [1932]

Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offense.

Journey to the End of the Night

James Ashmore Creelman

1894–1941

and

Ruth Rose

1896–1978

He was a king and a god in the world he knew, but now he comes to civilization merely a captive—a show to gratify your curiosity. Ladies and gentlemen, look at Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!

King Kong (screenplay) [1933]

It was beauty killed the beast.

King Kong, final line

E[dward] E[stlin] Cummings

1894–1962

All in green went my love riding

on a great horse of gold

into the silver dawn.

All in green went my love riding [1923]

in Just-

spring when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

Chansons Innocentes [1923], 1

when the world is puddle-wonderful

Chansons Innocentes, 1

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

Portraits [1923], 8

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds.

Sonnets—Realities [1923], I

next to of course god america i

love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth

next to of course god america i [1926]

i sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war

i sing of Olaf glad and big [1931]

“I will not kiss your f.ing flag”

i sing of Olaf glad and big

“there is some s. I will not eat”

i sing of Olaf glad and big

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence.

somewhere I have never traveled [1931]

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

somewhere I have never traveled

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.

anyone lived in a pretty how town [1940]

my father moved through dooms of love

through sames of am through haves of give,

singing each morning out of each night

my father moved through depths of height

my father moved through dooms of love [1940]

and nothing quite so least as truth

—i say though hate were why men breathe—

because my father lived his soul

love is the whole and more than all

my father moved through dooms of love

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease.

One Times One [1944], 14

    We doctors know

a hopeless case if—listen: there’s a hell

of a good universe next door; let’s go

One Times One, 14

John Ford [John Martin Feeney]

1894–1973

I have never thought about what I was doing in terms of art, or “this is great,” or “world-shaking,” or anything like that. To me, it was always a job of work—which I enjoyed immensely—and that’s it.

Interview with Peter Bogdanovich [1966]

Dashiell Hammett

1894–1961

I have never known a man capable of turning out first-rate work in a trade, a profession or an art, who was a professional criminal.

From the Memoirs of a Private Detective [1923]

There are four rules for shadowing: Keep behind your subject as much as possible; never try to hide from him; act in a natural manner no matter what happens; and never meet his eye.

Zigzags of Treachery [1924]

Play with murder enough and it gets you one of two ways. It makes you sick, or you get to like it.

Red Harvest [1929]

He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works.

The Maltese Falcon [1930], ch. 7

I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.

The Maltese Falcon, 11, spoken by Casper Gutman

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

The Maltese Falcon, 12

When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it.

The Maltese Falcon, 20

Herman Hupfeld

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.

Everybody’s Welcome [1931]. As Time Goes By¹

It’s still the same old story,

A fight for love and glory,

A case of do or die!

The world will always welcome lovers,

As time goes by.

Everybody’s Welcome. As Time Goes By¹

Aldous [Leonard] Huxley

1894–1963

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

Point Counter Point [1928], ch. 13

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

Brave New World [1932]

Chastity—the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.

Eyeless in Gaza [1936], ch. 27

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

The Olive Tree [1936]

What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time.

The Doors of Perception [1954]

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

Brave New World Revisited [1958]

Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence—those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.

Island [1962]

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev

1894–1971

[Denouncing the Stalinist “cult of personality”:] It is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god. Such a man supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behavior. Such a belief about a man, and specifically about Stalin, was cultivated among us for many years.

Special Report to Twentieth Party Congress [February 1956]

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 and see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.¹

Reported statement at reception for Wladyslaw Gomulka at the Polish Embassy, Moscow [November 18, 1956]

Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

Press conference in Glen Cove, New York, during U.S. visit [October 1960]

Alfred [Charles] Kinsey

1894–1956

Caricatures of the English-American position are performed around the communal campfires, to the great amusement of the natives who refer to the position as the “missionary position.”

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male [1948]

Ted Koehler

1894–1973

I gotta right to sing the blues,

I gotta right to feel low down,

I gotta right to hang around

Down around the river.

Earl Carroll’s Vanities [1932]. I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues

Don’t know why

There’s no sun up in the sky,

Stormy weather,

Since my man and I ain’t together,

Keeps rainin’ all the time.

The Cotton Club Parade [1933]. Stormy Weather (Keeps Rainin’ All the Time)

Harold MacMillan

1894–1986

Most of our people have never had it so good.²

Speech at Bedford, England [July 20, 1957]

The wind of change is blowing through this continent and whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Speech to South African Parliament [February 3, 1960]

[When asked to identify the greatest challenge for a statesman:] Events, my dear boy, events.

Attributed

J. B. Priestley

1894–1984

We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.

An Inspector Calls [1945], act 3

Jean Renoir

1894–1979

Everybody has his reasons.³

La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) [1939], screenplay

Is it possible to succeed without any act of betrayal?

My Life and My Films¹ [1974]

Charles Reznikoff

1894–1976

How shall we mourn you who are killed and wasted,

sure that you would not die with your work unended,

as if the iron scythe in the grass stops for a flower?

Rhythms [1918], poem 14

I have learnt the Hebrew blessing before eating bread;

is there no blessing before reading Hebrew?

Five Groups of Verse [1927], Building Boom

I like the streets of New York City, where I was born,

better than these streets of palms.

No doubt, my father liked his village in Ukrainia

better than the streets of New York City;

and my grandfather the city and its synagogue,

where he once read aloud the holy books,

better than the village

in which he dickered in the market-place.

Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down [1941]. Autobiography: Hollywood

I would be the rock

about which the water is

flowing; and I would be the water flowing

about the rock.

And am both and neither—

being flesh.

Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down. Autobiography: Hollywood

It has been raining for three days.

The faces of the giants

on the bill-boards

still smile,

but the gilt has been washed from the sky:

we see the iron world.

Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down. Autobiography: Hollywood

Words like drops of water on a stove—

a hiss and gone.

By the Well of Living and Seeing [1969]. Similes

Jean Rostand

1894–1977

Kill a man, one is a murderer; kill a million, a conqueror; kill them all, a God.

Pensées d’un biologiste [1939]

Elzie Crisler Segar

1894–1938

I yam what I yam, an’ that’s all I yam!

Thimble Theatre (comic strip) [c. 1932], Popeye speaking

James Thurber

1894–1961

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

Caption for cartoon in The New Yorker

I love the idea of there being two sexes, don’t you?

Caption for cartoon in The New Yorker

He knows all about art, but he doesn’t know what he likes.

Caption for cartoon in The New Yorker

It’s a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.

Caption for cartoon in The New Yorker

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

In Martinique, when the whistle blew for the tourists to get back on the ship, I had a quick, wild, and lovely moment when I decided I wouldn’t get back on the ship. I did, though. And I found that somebody had stolen the pants to my dinner jacket.

My Life and Hard Times. A Note at the End

The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.²

Fables for Our Time. The Green Isle in the Sea

You Could Look It Up³

Title of story [1941]

Red Barber announces the Dodger games and he uses those expressions—picked them up down South.…“Tearing up the pea patch” means going on a rampage; “sitting in the catbird seat” means sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him.

The Thurber Carnival [1945]. The Catbird Seat

His hands were as cold as his smile and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales.

The 13 Clocks [1950]

He’ll slit you from your guggle to your zatch.

The 13 Clocks

Jean Toomer

1894–1967

O can’t you see it, O can’t you see it,

Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon

… When the sun goes down.

Cane [1923]. Karintha

Wind is in the cane. Come along.

Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,

Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,

Wind is in the cane. Come along.

Cane. Carma

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,

An orgy for some genius of the South

With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,

Surprised in making folk songs from soul sounds.

Cane. Georgia Dusk, st. 2

Pour O pour that parting soul in song,

O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,

Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight,

And let the valley carry it along,

And let the valley carry it along.

Cane. Song of the Son

Josef von Sternberg [born Jonas Sternberg]

1894–1969

I do not value the fetish for authenticity. I have no regard for it. On the contrary, the illusion of reality is what I look for, not reality itself. There is nothing authentic about my pictures. Nothing at all.… There are other values that I’m after.

Quoted in The Parade’s Gone By [1968]

Norbert Wiener

1894–1964

We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name of Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek [for] steersman.

Cybernetics [1948]

If we use, to achieve our purposes, a mechanical agency with whose operation we cannot efficiently interfere once we have started it, because the action is so fast and irrevocable that we have not the data to intervene before the action is complete, then we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose which we really desire and not merely a colorful imitation of it.

Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation [1960]

Edward, Duke of Windsor [Edward VIII]

1894–1972

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.¹

Farewell broadcast after abdication [December 11, 1936]

Bud [William] Abbott

1895–1974

and

Lou Costello [Louis Francis Cristillo]

1906–1959

Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know’s on third—

The Naughty Nineties [1945]

Mikhail Bakhtin

1895–1975

Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom.²

Rabelais and His World [1965]

Jack [William Harrison] Dempsey

1895–1983

Honey, I just forgot to duck.

To his wife, after losing the heavyweight title to Gene Tunney [September 23, 1926]

Buddy [George Gard] DeSylva

1895–1950

Look for the silver lining

Whene’er a cloud

Appears in the blue.

Sally [1920]. Look for the Silver Lining

Paul Éluard [Eugène Grindel]

1895–1952

I was born to know you

To give you your name

Freedom.¹

Poésie et Vérité [1942]. Liberté

Farewell sadness

Good morning sadness.²

Poésie et Vérité. La Vie Immédiate

R[ichard] Buckminster Fuller

1895–1983

Don’t fight forces; use them.

Shelter [1932]

God is a verb.

No More Secondhand God [1963]

For at least two million years men have been reproducing and multiplying on a little automated Spaceship Earth.

Prospect for Humanity [1964]

Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts.

What I Have Learned [1966]. How Little I Know

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]

Robert [Ranke] Graves

1895–1985

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.

Pygmalion to Galatea

Take your delight in momentariness,

Walk between dark and dark—a shining space

With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace.

Sick Love

A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.

On English Poetry, 29

The reason why the hairs stand on end, the eyes water, the throat is constricted, the skin crawls and a shiver runs down the spine when one writes or reads a true poem is that a true poem is necessarily an invocation of the White Goddess, or Muse, the Mother of All Living, the ancient power of fright and lust—the female spider or the queen bee whose embrace is death.³

The White Goddess [1948], ch. 1

Oscar Hammerstein II

1895–1960

Fish got to swim, birds got to fly,

I got to love one man til I die—

Can’t help lovin’ dat man of mine.

Show Boat⁴ [1927]. Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine

Tote dat barge!

Lif’ dat bale!

Git a little drunk,

An’ you land in jail.

Ah gits weary

An’ sick of tryin’

Ah’m tired of livin’

An’ skeered of dyin’,

But Ol’ Man River,

He jes’ keeps rollin’ along.

Show Boat. Ol’ Man River

Why was I born?

Why am I living?

What do I get?

What am I giving?

Why do I want a thing I daren’t hope for?

What can I hope for?

I wish I knew!

Sweet Adeline⁵ [1929]. Why Was I Born?

The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay.

I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café.

The Last Time I Saw Paris⁵ [1940]

Oh, what a beautiful mornin’

Oh, what a beautiful day.

I got a beautiful feelin’

Everything’s going my way.

Oklahoma!¹ [1943]. Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’

The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye,

An’ it looks like it’s climbin’ clear up to the sky.

Oklahoma! Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’

When you walk through a storm

Keep your head up high

And don’t be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the storm

Is a golden sky

And the sweet, silver song of a lark.

Carousel¹ [1945]. You’ll Never Walk Alone

I am starry-eyed and vaguely discontented,

Like a nightingale without a song to sing.

Oh, why should I have Spring fever

When it isn’t even Spring?

State Fair¹ (film) [1945]. It Might As Well Be Spring

Some enchanted evening…

You may see a stranger

Across a crowded room.

South Pacific² [1949]. Some Enchanted Evening

There Is Nothing Like a Dame.

South Pacific. Title of song

I’m as corny as Kansas in August,

I’m as normal as blueberry pie.

South Pacific. A Wonderful Guy

You’ve got to be taught

Before it’s too late

Before you are six, or seven, or eight

To hate all the people your relatives hate

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

South Pacific. You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught

I know how it feels to have wings on your heels,

And to fly down the street in a trance.

You fly down a street on the chance that you’ll meet

And you meet—not really by chance.

The King and I¹ [1951]. Hello, Young Lovers

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,

Brown paper packages tied up with strings—

These are a few of my favorite things.

The Sound of Music¹ [1959]. My Favorite Things

Lorenz [Milton] Hart

1895–1943

We’ll have Manhattan,

The Bronx and Staten

Island too.

Manhattan⁶ [1925]

Ten cents a dance—

That’s what they pay me;

Gosh, how they weigh me down!

Ten cents a dance—

Pansies and rough guys,

Tough guys who tear my gown!

Simple Simon [1930]. Ten Cents a Dance

I get too hungry for dinner at eight.

I like the theater, but never come late.

I never bother with people I hate.

That’s why the lady is a tramp.

Babes in Arms³ [1937]. The Lady Is a Tramp

My funny valentine,

Sweet comic valentine,

You make me smile with my heart.

Your looks are laughable,

Unphotographable,

Yet you’re my fav’rite work of art.

Babes in Arms. My Funny Valentine

The sleepless nights,

The daily fights,

The quick toboggan when you reach the heights—

I miss the kisses and I miss the bites.

I wish I were in love again!

Babes in Arms. I Wish I Were in Love Again

I’m wild again,

Beguiled again,

A simpering, whimpering child again—

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.

Pal Joey¹ [1940]. Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

L[esley] P[oles] Hartley

1895–1972

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

The Go-Between [1953], prologue

Max Horkheimer

1895–1973

and

Theodor Adorno

1903–1969

In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.

Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944]

Dolores Ibarruri [La Pasionaria]¹

1895–1989

No pasarán [They shall not pass]!²

Republican watchword in the Spanish Civil War [1936–1939]

Dorothea Lange

1895–1965

A portrait is a lesson on how one human being should approach another.

Quoted in Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits [1965]

The camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera.

Quoted in Photographs of a Lifetime [1982]

Susanne K. Langer

1895–1985

If we would have new knowledge, we must get us a whole world of new questions.

Philosophy in a New Key [1942]

Basil Henry Liddell Hart

1895–1970

Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing so self-blinding.

Deterrent or Defense [1960]. Advice to Statesmen

Groucho [Julius Henry] Marx

1895–1977

I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.

Saying

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

Blurb for S. J. Perelman’s Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge [1929]

Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

The Groucho Letters [1967]

John McNulty

1895–1956

They were talking about a certain hangout and Johnny said, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”³

Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in This Place [1943]

Henry de Montherlant

1895–1972

Happiness writes in white ink on white pages.⁴

Don Juan, ou La mort qui fait le trottoir [1956], act II

Lewis Mumford

1895–1990

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.

The Brown Decades [1931]

For over against the convenience of instantaneous communication is the fact that the great economical abstractions of writing, reading, and drawing, the media of reflective thought and deliberate action, will be weakened.

Technics and Civilization [1934]

The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age.

Technics and Civilization

The notion of a modern monument is veritably a contradiction in terms: if it is a monument it is not modern, and if it is modern, it cannot be a monument.

The Culture of Cities

Paul Reps

1895–1990

drinking

a bowl of

green tea

I stop the war

Zen Telegrams [1959]

Andy Razaf

1895–1973

Ain’t misbehavin’,

I’m savin’ my love for you.

Ain’t Misbehavin’¹ [1929]

Just ’cause you’re black folks think you lack,

They laugh at you and scorn you too,

What did I do to be so black and blue?

Black and Blue¹ [1929]

Andy Razaf

1895–1973

and

J. C. Johnson

1896–1981

and

Thomas [Fats] Waller

1904–1943

The joint is jumpin’,

It’s really jumpin’!

Come in cats and check your hats,

I mean this joint is jumpin’!

Ain’t Misbehavin’ [1937]. This Joint Is Jumpin’

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 (screenplay) [1930], spoken by Groucho Marx

Bill Wilson

1895–1971

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Alcoholics Anonymous [1939]

Edmund Wilson

1895–1972

Detective-story readers feel guilty, they are habitually on the defensive, and all their talk about “well-written” mysteries is simply an excuse for their vice, like the reasons that the alcoholic can always produce for a drink.

Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? [1945]; reprinted in Classics and Commercials

It may be that there is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.

Memoirs of Hecate County [1946]

In the arts as in the sciences a certain freedom for experimentation is necessary: one must allow a good deal of apparently gratuitous, and even empty or ridiculous work, if one wants to get masterpieces.

The Shores of Light [1952]

I have had a good many more uplifting thoughts, creative and expansive visions—while soaking in comfortable baths or drying myself after bracing showers—in well-equipped American bathrooms than I have ever had in any cathedral.

A Piece of My Mind [1956], ch. 4

The wars fought by human beings are stimulated as a rule primarily by the same instincts as the voracity of a sea slug.

Patriotic Gore [1962]. Introduction

The cruellest thing that has happened to Lincoln since he was shot by Booth has been to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.²

Patriotic Gore, ch. 3

We tended to imagine Canada as a kind of vast hunting preserve convenient to the United States.

O Canada [1965]

Lin Yutang

1895–1976

What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood?

The Importance of Living [1937]

J[oseph] R[andolph] Ackerley

1896–1967

What strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose minds they can never do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend.

My Dog Tulip [1956]

Dogs aren’t difficult to understand. One has to put oneself in their position.

My Dog Tulip

If one is not scandalous it is difficult to write at all.

Letter to E. M. Forster [October 6, 1960]

Antonin Artaud

1896–1948

All true freedom is dark, and is infallibly identified with sexual freedom which is also dark, although we do not know precisely why.

The Theater and Its Double [1938]

Without an element of cruelty at the root of every spectacle, the theater is not possible.

The Theater and Its Double

Philip Barry

1896–1949

The time to make your mind up about people, is never.

The Philadelphia Story (play) [1939], act ii, sc. 2

André Breton

1896–1966

Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought.

Manifesto of Surrealism [1924]

Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you’re writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.

Manifesto of Surrealism

Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.

Nadja [1928], last line

Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.¹

Second Manifesto of Surrealism [1929]

My woman with her savannah eyes

My woman with her eyes of water to drink in prison

My woman with her eyes of forests forever beneath the axe

With her eyes of sea-level air-level earth and fire²

Free Union [1931]

It is at the movies that the only absolutely modern mystery is celebrated.

From J. H. MATHEWS, Surrealism and Film

George Burns [Nathan Birnbaum]

1896–1996

It’s nice to be here. When you’re 99 years old, it’s nice to be anywhere.

People Magazine [January 1995]

Howard Dietz

1896–1983

It might be a fight like you see on the screen,

A swain getting slain for the love of a queen

Some great Shakespearean scene

Where a ghost and a prince meet

And ev’ryone ends in mincemeat.

The Band Wagon (musical) [1931] and (movie) [1953]. That’s Entertainment; music by Arthur Schwartz

A show

That is really a show

Sends you out

With a kind of a glow

And you say

As you go on your way

“That’s entertainment.”

The Band Wagon [1953]. That’s Entertainment

Everett McKinley Dirksen

1896–1969

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Attributed

John [Roderigo] Dos Passos

1896–1970

Of all the things in this world a government is the thing least worth fighting for.

Letter to Rumsey Marvin [August 23, 1917]

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch.

The Big Money [1936]. They have clubbed us off the streets

F[rancis] Scott [Key] Fitzgerald

1896–1940

I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.

This Side of Paradise [1920]

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

Remark quoted in the New York Tribune [May 7, 1920]

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

The Great Gatsby [1925], ch. 3

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

The Great Gatsby, 4

Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.

The Great Gatsby, 6

Her voice is full of money.

The Great Gatsby, 7

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

The Great Gatsby, 9

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.

The Great Gatsby, 9

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The Great Gatsby, last line

Let me tell you about the very rich.¹ They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful.

The Rich Boy [1926]

I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.

My Lost City [1932]

The change came a long way back, but at first it didn’t show. The manner remains intact for some time after the morale cracks.

Tender Is the Night [1934]

The horror has come now like a storm—what if this night prefigured the night after death—what if all thereafter was an eternal quivering on the edge of an abyss, with everything base and vicious in oneself urging one forward and the baseness and viciousness of the world just ahead. No choice, no road, no hope—only the endless repetition of the sordid and the semi-tragic. Or to stand forever, perhaps, on the threshold of life unable to pass it and return to it. I am a ghost now as the clock strikes four.

Sleeping and Waking [1934]

Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—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.

The Crack-Up [1936]

But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning.

The Crack-Up

Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.

Letter to his daughter [October 5, 1940]

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

The Last Tycoon [1941]

There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.

Notebooks [1978]

If you’re strong enough, there are no precedents.

Notebooks

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

Notebooks

There are no second acts in American lives.

Notebooks

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.

Notebooks

Ira Gershwin¹

1896–1983

Maybe I shall meet him Sunday,

Maybe Monday—maybe not;

Still I’m sure to meet him one day—

Maybe Tuesday

Will be my good news day.

Lady, Be Good [1924]. The Man I Love

’S wonderful! ’S marvelous—

You should care for me!

Funny Face [1927]. ’S Wonderful

They’re writing songs of love,

But not for me;

A lucky star’s above,

But not for me.

With love to lead the way,

I’ve found more clouds of gray

Than any Russian play

Could guarantee.

Girl Crazy [1930]. But Not for Me

I got rhythm,

I got music,

I got my man—

Who could ask for anything more?

Girl Crazy. I Got Rhythm

A Woman Is a Sometime Thing

Porgy and Bess² [1935], title of song

I got plenty of nothin’,

And nothin’s plenty for me.

Porgy and Bess. I Got Plenty of Nothin’

It ain’t necessarily so—

The things that you’re liable

To read in the Bible—

It ain’t necessarily so.

Porgy and Bess. It Ain’t Necessarily So

I’ve flown around the world in a plane;

I won the race from Newport to Maine;

The North Pole I have charted,

But I can’t get started with you.

Ziegfeld Follies of 1936³ [1935]. I Can’t Get Started

You say eether and I say eyether,

You say neether and I say nyther;

Eether, eyether, neether, nyther—

Let’s call the whole thing off!

Shall We Dance [1937]. Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

The way you wear your hat,

The way you sip your tea,

The mem’ry of all that—

No, no! They can’t take that away from me!

Shall We Dance. They Can’t Take That Away from Me

Nice work if you can get it,

And you can get it if you try.

A Damsel in Distress [1937]. Nice Work

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.

A Damsel in Distress. A Foggy Day

In time the Rockies may crumble,

Gibraltar may tumble

(They’re only made of clay),

But our love is here to stay.

The Goldwyn Follies [1937]. Love Is Here to Stay

In 27 languages she couldn’t say no.

Lady in the Dark⁴ [1941]. The Saga of Jenny

My ship has sails that are made of silk—

The decks are trimmed with gold—

And of jam and spice

There’s a paradise

In the hold.

Lady in the Dark. My Ship

Ruth Gordon

1896–1985

and

Garson Kanin

1912–1999

There’s lots of things a man can do, and in society’s eyes it’s all hunky-dory. A woman does the same things—the same, mind you—and she’s an outcast.

Adam’s Rib (screenplay) [1949], spoken by Katharine Hepburn

E. Y. Harburg [Isidore Hochberg]

1896–1981

Once I built a railroad, now it’s done.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Americana¹ [third edition, 1932]. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

It’s only a paper moon,

Sailing over a cardboard sea,

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

If you believed in me.²

It’s Only a Paper Moon [1933]

Last night

When we were young

Love was a star,

A song unsung,

Life was so new,

So real, so right,

Ages ago,

Last night.

Last Night When We Were Young³ [1936]

Somewhere over the rainbow

Bluebirds fly.

Birds fly over the rainbow—

Why then, oh why can’t I?

The Wizard of Oz⁴ [1939]. Over the Rainbow

Ding dong, the witch is dead,

Which old witch? The wicked witch.

Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead.

The Wizard of Oz

Follow the yellow brick road.

The Wizard of Oz

When I’m not near the girl I love,

I love the girl I’m near.

Finian’s Rainbow⁵ [1947]. When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love

Howard Hawks

1896–1977

Hell, the first thing you’ve got to do if you’re going to make a picture is to get a story. The next thing is to get a good script, the next thing is to figure out who the hell is going to play in it, your characters, and then after that to make it.

Quoted in GERALD MAST, Howard Hawks, Storyteller [1982]

Joe Jacobs

1896–1940

We wuz robbed!

After the heavyweight title fight between Max Schmeling and Jack Sharkey [June 21, 1932]

I should of stood in bed.

After leaving a sickbed to attend the World Series in Detroit [October 1935] and betting on the loser

Giuseppe di Lampedusa

1896–1957

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

The Leopard⁶ [1957]

Love. Of course, love. Flames for a year, ashes for thirty.

The Leopard

The Sicilians never want to improve for the simple reason that they think themselves perfect.

The Leopard

Eugenio Montale

1896–1981

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

Summer [1939]

Jean Piaget

1896–1980

If only we could know what was going on in a baby’s mind while observing him in action we could certainly understand everything there is to psychology.

La Première Année de l’Enfant [1927]

Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself.

Play and Development: Some Aspects of Operations [1972]

Hortense Powdermaker

1896–1970

South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, “kiss-kiss” and “bang-bang.”

Hollywood, the Dream Factory [1950]⁷

Dawn Powell

1896–1965

True gaiety is based on a foundation of realism. All right, we know we’re dying, we know we’re poor, that is off our minds—we eat, sleep, make merry but we are not kidding ourselves that we are rich and beautiful or that Santa Claus and two blondes will soon come down the chimney.… Gaiety should be brave, it should have stout legs of truth, not a gelatine base of dreams and wishes.

Diary entry [May 22, 1939]

My characters are not slaves to an author’s propaganda. I give them their heads. They furnish their own nooses.

Letter to Michael Sadleir [December 30, 1947]

There is really one city for everyone just as there is one major love.

Diary entry [July 6, 1953]

A writer’s business is minding other people’s business.… All the vices of the village gossip are the virtues of the writer.

Diary entry [1965]

Men really dislike a literary woman (especially if she is good) and prefer not reading works of their women friends, hoping and even saying they must be bad.

Diary entry

Robert E[mmet] Sherwood

1896–1955

The trouble with me is, I belong to a vanishing race. I’m one of the intellectuals.

The Petrified Forest [1934]

Wallis, Duchess of Windsor [Wallis Simpson]

1896–1986

You can’t be too rich or too thin.¹

Los Angeles Times [June 17, 1970]

Dodie [Dorothy Gladys] Smith

1896–1990

“Why, that’s Cruella de Vil,” said Mrs. Dearly. “We were at school together. She was expelled for drinking ink.”

The Hundred and One Dalmatians [1956]

Virgil Thomson

1896–1989

Writing a review is not giving an examination; it is taking one.

Critic and Performer, New York Herald Tribune [February 21, 1954]

Tristan Tzara

1896–1963

DADA DADA DADA;—the roar of contorted pains, the interweaving of contraries and all contradictions, freaks and irrelevancies: LIFE.

Dada Manifesto [1918]

Let each man proclaim: there is a great negative work of destruction to be accomplished. We must sweep and clean. Affirm the cleanliness of the individual after the state of madness, aggressive complete madness of a world abandoned to the hands of bandits, who rend one another and destroy the centuries.

Dada Manifesto

Every product of disgust capable of becoming a negation of the family is dada; a protest with the fists of its whole being engaged in destructive action.

Dada Manifesto

Basically, the true Dadas have always been separate from Dada.

Lecture on Dada [1922]

D[onald] W[oods] Winnicott

1896–1971

Every man or woman who is sane, every man or woman who has the feeling of being a person in the world, and for whom the world means something, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman.

The Child and the Family [1957]. The Mother’s Contribution to Society

Arthur [Bugs] Baer

1897–1969

You can take a boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of a boy.

Hollywood with “Bugs” Baer and Henry Major [1938]

Georges Bataille

1897–1962

Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.

Eroticism [1957]

Louise Bogan

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.

Women [1922], st. 1

I burned my life, that I might find

A passion wholly of the mind,

Thought divorced from eye and bone,

Ecstasy come to breath alone.

The Alchemist [1923], st. 1

Up from the bronze, I saw

Water without a flaw

Rush to its rest in air,

Reach to its rest, and fall.

Roman Fountain [1937], st. 1

—O remember

In your narrowing dark hours

That more things move

Than blood in the heart.

The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923–1968. Night

Kenneth Burke

1897–1993

The symbolic act is the dancing of an attitude.

The Philosophy of Literary Form [1941]

Dorothy Day

1897–1980

It is only through religion that communism can be achieved, and has been achieved over and over again.

From Union Square to Rome [1938]

Bernard De Voto

1897–1955

The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that drop—for convenience, the one hundredth meridian—you have reached the West.

The Plundered Province. In Harper’s Magazine [August 1934]

You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the shortest-lived.

The Hour [1951]

William Faulkner

1897–1962

Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

The Sound and the Fury [1929]. June Second 1910

I’ve seed de first en de last.… I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin.

The Sound and the Fury. April Eighth 1928

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

The Sound and the Fury. April Eighth 1928

That’s what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again.

As I Lay Dying [1930]

Don’t you see? This whole land, the whole South, is cursed, and all of us who derive from it, whom it ever suckled, white and black both, lie under the curse?

The Bear [1932], pt. IV

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

Light in August [1932], 6

Too much happens.… Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.… That’s what’s so terrible.

Light in August, 13

Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.

Absalom, Absalom! [1936], ch. 6

Why do you hate the South?

I dont hate it.… I dont hate it.…I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!

Absalom, Absalom!, 9

I found out some time back that it’s idleness breeds all our virtues, our most bearable qualities—contemplation, equableness, laziness, letting other people alone; good digestion mental and physical: the wisdom to concentrate on fleshly pleasures—eating and evacuating and fornication and sitting in the sun.

The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem] [1939]

Between grief and nothing I will take grief.

The Wild Palms [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem]

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.

Speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize [December 10, 1950]

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.

Speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize

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.

Speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

Requiem for a Nun [1951], act 1

Paul Joseph Goebbels

1897–1945

Once we have power, we shall never again give it up, unless we are carried out as corpses from our offices.

Diary entry [August 6, 1932]

Herman J[acob] Mankiewicz

1897–1953

[On Hollywood:] There are millions to be grabbed out here, and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.

Cable to Ben Hecht [1926]

The part-time help of wits is no better than the full-time help of half-wits.

Attributed; quoted by James Thurber, The Years with Ross [1957]

Herman J[acob] Mankiewicz

1897–1953

and

[George] Orson Welles

1915–1985

You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war.

Citizen Kane (screenplay) [1941], spoken by Orson Welles

Old age… it’s the only disease you don’t look forward to being cured of.

Citizen Kane, spoken by Everett Sloane

You’re right, Mr. Thatcher. I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in sixty years.

Citizen Kane, spoken by Orson Welles

It’s no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money.

Citizen Kane, spoken by Everett Sloane

I can remember absolutely everything, young man. That’s my curse. That’s one of the greatest curses ever inflicted on the human race: Memory.

Citizen Kane, spoken by Joseph Cotton

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, spoken by William Alland

David McCord

1897–1997

By and by

God caught his eye.

Epitaphs: The Waiter

The decent docent doesn’t doze;

He teaches standing on his toes.

His student dassn’t doze and does,

And that’s what teaching is and was.

What Cheer [1945]

Horace McCoy

1897–1955

“Why did you kill her?” the policeman in the rear seat asked.…“They shoot horses, don’t they?” I said.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? [1935]

Horace McCoy

1897–1955

and

David Dortort

1916–2010

There never was a bronc that couldn’t be rode; there never was a cowboy who couldn’t be throwed.

The Lusty Men (screenplay) [1952], spoken by Robert Mitchum

Robert Riskin

1897–1955

Dunking’s an art. Don’t let it soak so long. A dip and plop, into your mouth. If you let it hang there and soak so long, it’ll get soft and fall off. It’s all a matter of timing. I ought to write a book about it.

It Happened One Night (screenplay) [1934], spoken by Clark Gable

Yes sir, my friends, the meek can only inherit the earth when the John Does start loving their neighbors. You’d better start right now. Don’t wait till the game is called on account of darkness!

Meet John Doe, screenplay [1941], spoken by Gary Cooper

Gershom Scholem

1897–1982

We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of the abyss.… This language is laden with future catastrophes.… The day will come when it will turn against those who speak it.

Letter to Franz Rosenzweig [December 26, 1926]

Margaret Chase Smith

1897–1995

The nation sorely needs a Republican victory. But I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.

Declaration of Conscience delivered in U.S. Senate [June 1, 1950]

Thornton [Niven] Wilder

1897–1975

Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey [1927], last lines

The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go,—doesn’t it?

Our Town [1938], act I

But listen, it’s not finished: the United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God,—that’s what it said on the envelope.

Our Town, I

Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.

Our Town, II

We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars—everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings.

Our Town, III

The dead don’t stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth… and the ambitions they had… and the pleasures they had… and the things they suffered… and the people they loved. They get weaned away from earth—that’s the way I put it—weaned away.¹

Our Town, III

It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.

Our Town, III

Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.… Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?

Our Town, III

On the stage it is always now.

Some Thoughts on Playwriting [1941]

The whole world’s at sixes and sevens, and why the house hasn’t fallen down about our ears long ago is a miracle to me.

The Skin of Our Teeth [1942], act I

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

The Matchmaker [1954], act I

There is nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.

The Matchmaker, III

The test of an adventure is that when you’re in the middle of it, you say to yourself, “Oh, now I’ve got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.” And the sign that something’s wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.

The Matchmaker, IV

Walter Winchell

1897–1972

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea! This is Walter Winchell in New York. Let’s go to press.

Signature opening lines for his weekly radio broadcasts

Ludwig Bemelmans

1898–1962

In an old house in Paris

that was covered with vines

lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.

Madeline [1939]

Stephen Vincent Benét

1898–1943

I have fallen in love with American names,

The sharp 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.

American Names [1927], st. 1

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

American Names, st. 7

You can weigh John Brown’s body well enough,

But how and in what balance weigh John Brown?

John Brown’s Body [1928], bk. I

Stonewall Jackson, wrapped in his beard and his silence.

John Brown’s Body, IV

If two New Hampshiremen aren’t a match for the devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians.

The Devil and Daniel Webster [1936]

Yes, Dan’l Webster’s dead—or, at least, they buried him. But every time there’s a thunder storm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, “Dan’l Webster—Dan’l Webster!” the ground ’ll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake. And after a while you’ll hear a deep voice saying, “Neighbour, how stands the Union?”

The Devil and Daniel Webster

When Daniel Boone goes by at night

The phantom deer arise

And all lost, wild America

Is burning in their eyes.

Daniel Boone [1942]

Bertolt Brecht

1898–1956

Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind!

Of Poor B.B.¹ [1927]

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear—

And he shows them pearly white—

Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear—

And he keeps it out of sight.

The Threepenny Opera² (Die Dreigroschenoper) [1928]. Prelude, The Ballad of Mack the Knife (Moritat)

Till you feed us, right and wrong can wait.

The Threepenny Opera, act II, sc. 3

What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?

The Threepenny Opera, III, 9

Oh! Moon of Alabama

We now must say good-bye

We’ve lost our good old mama

And must have whiskey

Oh, you know why!

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny³ (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) [1931]. Alabama Song

There is no whiskey in this town

There is no bar to sit us down

Oh!

Where is the telephone?

Is here no telephone?

Oh, Sir, God damn me:

No!

Let’s go to Benares

Where the sun is shining

Let’s go to Benares!

Johnny, let us go.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

O Germany, pale mother!

Germany [1933]

Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.

Galileo [1937–1939]

Truly, I live in dark times!

The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead

Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs

Has simply not yet had

The terrible news.

To Those Born Later⁴ (An die Nachgeborenen) [1938], opening lines

   Alas, we

Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness,

Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass

That man can help his fellow man,

Do not judge us

Too harshly.

To Those Born Later¹

Every day, to earn my daily bread

I go to the market where lies are bought

Hopefully

I take up my place among the sellers.

Hollywood [1940s]

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Mother Courage and Her Children [1941], sc. 6

The village of Hollywood was planned according to the notion

People in these parts have of heaven. In these parts

They have come to the conclusion that God

Requiring a heaven and a hell, didn’t need to

Plan two establishments but

Just the one: heaven. It

Serves the unprosperous, unsuccessful

As hell.

Hollywood Elegies [1942]. I²

After the uprising of the 17th June

The Secretary of the Writers’ Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?³

The Solution [1953]

Big Bill Broonzy [William Lee Conley Bradley]

1898–1958

If you was white, should be all right,

If you was brown, could stick around,

But as you’s black, whoa brother,

Get back, get back, get back.

Black, Brown and White [1951]

William O[rville] Douglas

1898–1980

The right of privacy… is a powerful deterrent to anyone who would control men’s minds.

Dissenting opinion, Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak [1952]

The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. It is one of the great landmarks in man’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

An Almanac of Liberty [1954]

Francis Edwards Faragoh

1898–1966

and

Robert N. Lee

1890–1964

You’ve got so you can dish it out, but you’re getting so you can’t take it no more. You’re through!

Little Caesar (screenplay) [1930], spoken by Edward G. Robinson

Federico García Lorca

1898–1936

Green, how much I want you green.

Green wind. Green branches.

The ship upon the sea

and the horse in the mountain.

Somnambule Ballad (Romance Sonámbulo) [1928]⁴

A dance of walls agitates the meadows

and America drowns itself in machines and lament.

The Poet in New York (Poeta en Nueva York)⁵ [c. 1929–1930]. Ode to Walt Whitman

Black are the horses.

The horseshoes are black.

On the dark capes glisten

stains of ink and of wax.

Their skulls are leaden,

which is why they don’t weep.

With their patent leather souls

they come down the street.

Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard (Romance de la Guardia Civil Española) [1928]⁶

At five in the afternoon.

Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!

It was five by all the clocks!

It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias) [1935],¹ I

The New York dawn has

four columns of mud

and a hurricane of black doves

that paddle in putrescent waters.

The Poet in New York (Poeta en Nueva York) [1940]. The Dawn¹ (La Aurora), st. 1

The light is buried under chains and noises

in impudent challenge of rootless science.

Through the suburbs sleepless people stagger,

as though just delivered from a shipwreck of blood.

The Poet in New York. The Dawn, st. 5

Although I know the roads

I’ll never reach Córdoba.

Rider’s Song² (Canción de jinete)

George Gershwin

1898–1937

The rhythms of American popular music are more or less brittle; they should be made to snap, and at times to crackle. The more sharply the music is played, the more effective it sounds.

George Gershwin’s Songbook [1932], introduction

I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.

George Gershwin: A Study in American Music [1958]

Willis Goldbeck

1898–1979

and

James Warner Bellah

1899–1976

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.³

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (screenplay) [1962], spoken by Carleton Young

C[live] S[taples] Lewis

1898–1963

The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

The Screwtape Letters [1941], letter 12

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [1950], dedication

Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning… so beautiful that you remember it all your life.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.

An Experiment in Criticism [1961]

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

The Problem of Pain [1962]

Henry Luce

1898–1967

The world of the 20th century, if it is to come to life in any nobility of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American century.

The American Century [1941]

René [François Ghislain] Magritte

1898–1967

Everything we see hides another thing. We always want to see what is hidden by what we see.

Radio interview with Jean Neyens [1965]

Gen. A[nthony] C[lement] McAuliffe

1898–1975

Nuts!

In response to German request to surrender, Bastogne [December 22, 1944]

Golda Meir

1898–1978

We only want that which is given naturally to all peoples of the world, to be masters of our own fate, only of our fate, not of others, and in cooperation and friendship with others.

Address to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry [March 25, 1946]

There was no such thing as Palestinians.… It was not as though there was a Palestinian people… and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.

Interview in the Sunday Times (London) [June 15, 1969]

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil.

Speech [June 10, 1973]

Gunnar Myrdal

1898–1987

The treatment of the Negro is America’s greatest and most conspicuous scandal.

An American Dilemma [1944]

Amelia Earhart [Putnam]

1898–1937

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not, knows no release

From little things;

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

The sound of wings.

Courage [1927]

I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.

Last letter to her husband, George Putnam [1937]

Erich Maria Remarque

1898–1970

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.

All Quiet on the Western Front [1928], ch. 5

Paul Robeson

1898–1976

My father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I’m going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?

Testimony before House Un-American Activities Committee [June 12, 1956]

Ben Shahn

1898–1969

I think that it can be said with certainty that the form which does emerge cannot be greater than the content which went into it. For form is only the manifestation, the shape of content.

The Shape of Content [1957]

Preston Sturges [Edmund Preston Biden]

1898–1959

If it wasn’t for graft, you’d get a very low type of people in politics. Men without ambition. Jellyfish.

The Great McGinty (screenplay) [1940], spoken by William Demarest

You’re certainly a funny girl for anybody to meet who’s just been up the Amazon for a year.

The Lady Eve [1941], spoken by Henry Fonda to Barbara Stanwyck

Oh, do I know them? I positively swill in their ale.

The Lady Eve, screenplay [1941], spoken by Eric Blore

To the memory of those who made us laugh: the motley mountebanks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little, this picture is affectionately dedicated.

Sullivan’s Travels (movie) [1941], opening title

There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh… did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much… but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.

Sullivan’s Travels, spoken by Joel McCrea

Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly but without pity that which yesterday was young. Alone our memories resist this disintegration and grow more lovely with the passing years. Heh! That’s hard to say with false teeth!

The Palm Beach Story (screenplay) [1942], spoken by Robert Dudley

You have no idea what a long-legged woman can do without doing anything.

The Palm Beach Story (screenplay) [1942], spoken by Claudette Colbert

Politics is a very peculiar thing, Woodrow. If they want you, they want you. They don’t need reasons anymore.… they find their own reasons. It’s just like when a girl wants a man.

Hail the Conquering Hero (screenplay) [1944], spoken by Harry Hayden

A thousand poets dreamed a thousand years, then you were born, my love.

Unfaithfully Yours (screenplay) [1948], spoken by Rex Harrison

Leo Szilard

1898–1964

The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of this development. Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.

A Petition to the President of the United States, opposing the use of nuclear weapons against Japan [July 3, 1945]

Anni Albers

1899–1994

Our playfulness today often loses its sense of direction and becomes no more than a bid for attention, rather than a convincing innovation. Limitlessness leads to nothing but formlessness, a melting into nowhere. But it is form—whatever form it may be—that is, I feel, our salvation.

On Weaving [1965]. Tapestry

Fred Astaire

1899–1987

I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the “let’s be artistic” attitude. I know that artistry just happens.

Steps in Time [1959]

Charles Bennett

1899–1995

and

Joan Harrison

1907–1994

All that noise you hear isn’t static—it’s death, coming to London. Yes, they’re coming here now. You can hear the bombs falling on the streets and the homes. Don’t tune me out, hang on a while—this is a big story, and you’re part of it. It’s too late to do anything here now except stand in the dark and let them come as if the lights are all out everywhere, except in America.¹

Foreign Correspondent [1940], spoken by Joel McCrea

Jorge Luis Borges

1899–1986

We know that language is like the moon and has its dark side.

The Language of the Argentines [1927]²

On some shelf in some hexagon, it was argued, there must exist a book that is the cipher and perfect compendium of all other books, and some librarian must have examined that book; this librarian is analogous to a god.

The Library of Babel [1941]

Any life, no matter how long or complex it may be, is made up essentially of a single moment—the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

The Aleph [1949]. The Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (Biografía de Tadeo Isidoro Cruz) (1829–1874)

A man gradually identifies himself with the form of his fate; a man is, in the long run, his own circumstances.

The Aleph. The Writing of the God (La Escritura de Dios)

In all the world, one man has been born, one man has died.

You³

Every writer creates his own precursors.

Kafka and His Precursors [1951]

It would be exaggerating to say that our relationship is hostile; I live, I let myself live, so that Borges can weave his literature and that literature justifies me.… I don’t know which of us is writing this page.⁴

Personal Anthology (Antologia Personal) [1961]. Borges and Myself (Borges y Yo)

The epic tradition has been saved for the world by, of all places, Hollywood.

Interview with the Paris Review [July 1966]

Little by little I came to realize the strange irony of events. I had always imagined Paradise as a kind of library. Others think of a garden or of a palace. There I was, the center, in a way, of nine hundred thousand books in various languages, but I found I could barely make out the title pages and the spines.

Seven Nights¹ [1980]. Blindness

The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

On the 1982 Britain-Argentina conflict

Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born—August 24, 1899—they have not been granting it to me.

Attributed

Elizabeth Bowen

1899–1973

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

The House in Paris [1935]

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

The House in Paris

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.

The Death of the Heart [1938]

The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet—when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

The Death of the Heart

W[illiam] R[iley] Burnett

1899–1982

Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?²

Little Caesar (novel) [1929]

Al[phonse] Capone

1899–1947

Prohibition is a business. All I do is to supply a public demand.… Somebody had to throw some liquor on that thirst. Why not me?

Quoted in Edward D. Sullivan, Rattling the Cup on Chicago Crime [1929]

Hoagy Carmichael

1899–1981

I need someone to love me,

Need somebody to carry me home to San Francisco

And bury my body there.

To Have and Have Not [1944]. Hong Kong Blues

Vera Caspary

1899–1987

In a way, McPherson, we’re all gangsters. We all have our confederates and our sworn foes, our loyalties and our enmities. We have our pasts to shed and our futures to protect.

Laura [1943], spoken by Waldo Lydecker

Noël Coward

1899–1973

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I’ll see you again,

Whenever spring breaks through again.

Bittersweet [1929], act I, sc. ii

But I believe that since my life began

The most I’ve had is just

A talent to amuse.

If Love Were All [1929]

I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.

Private Lives [1930], act I

Strange how potent cheap music is.

Private Lives, I

We are different. Our lives are diametrically opposed to ordinary social conventions; and it’s no use grabbing at those conventions to hold us up when we find we’re in deep water. We’ve jilted them and eliminated them, and we’ve got to find our own solutions for our own peculiar moral problems.

Design for Living [1933]

It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

Blithe Spirit [1941], act I, sc. 1

Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans

Title of song

Learn the lines and don’t bump into the furniture.

Attributed. Advice on acting

Hart Crane

1899–1932

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered and too ample pockets.

Chaplinesque [1926]

   High in the azure steeps

Monody shall not wake the mariner.

This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

At Melville’s Tomb [1926]

O, I have known metallic paradises

Where cuckoos clucked to finches

Above the deft catastrophes of drums.

While titters hailed the groans of death

Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen

The incunabula of the divine grotesque.

For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen [1926]

The bottom of the sea is cruel.

Voyages [1926], I

And yet this great wink of eternity,

Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings.

Voyages, II

Permit me voyage, love, into your hands…

Voyages, III

Slagged of the hurricane—I, cast within its flow,

Congeal by afternoons here, satin and vacant.

You have given me the shell, Satan,—carbonic amulet

Sere of the sun exploded in the sea.

O Carib Isle! [1926–1928]

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest

The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,

Shedding white rings of tumult, building high

Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

The Bridge [1930]. To Brooklyn Bridge

And biased by full sails, meridians reel

Thy purpose—still one shore beyond desire!

The sea’s green crying towers a-sway, Beyond.

The Bridge. Ave Maria

The phonographs of hades in the brain

Are tunnels that re-wind themselves, and love

A burnt match skating in a urinal—

The Bridge. The Tunnel

And why do I often meet your visage here,

Your eyes like agate lanterns—on and on

Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?

And did their riding eyes right through your side,

And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?

And Death, aloft—gigantically down¹

Probing through you—toward me, O evermore!

The Bridge. The Tunnel

And so it was I entered the broken world

To trace the visionary company of love, its voice

An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)

But not for long to hold each desperate choice.

The Broken Tower [1932]

Robert Crawford

1899–1961

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,

Climbing high into the sun.

The Air Force Song² [1939]

George Cukor

1899–1983

The camera saw a side of her that no flesh-and-blood lover ever saw.

Eulogy for Joan Crawford. In the New York Times [May 22, 1977]

Thomas A. Dorsey

1899–1993

Precious Lord, take my hand,

Lead me on, let me stand,

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.

Through the storm, through the night

Lead me on to the light,

Take my hand, precious Lord,

Lead me home.

Take My Hand, Precious Lord [1932]

There’ll be peace in the valley for me some day

There’ll be peace in the valley for me I pray

No more sorrows and sadness or trouble will be

There’ll be peace in the valley for me.

Peace in the Valley [1939]

Duke [Edward Kennedy] Ellington

1899–1974

It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing

Title of song³ [1932]

Transblucency (A Blue Fog That You Can Almost See Through)

Title of composition [1946]

Every evening I wish upon a star

That my brand new bright tomorrow isn’t very far

When that heavy blue curtain of night

Is raised up high way out of sight

I like the sunrise so heavenly to see

I like the sunrise, I hope it likes poor me

Liberian Suite [1947]. I Like the Sunrise

Fate is being kind to me; fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.

On being denied the Pulitzer Prize at the age of 66 [1965]

Poor little Sweet Pea, Billy Strayhorn, William Thomas Strayhorn, the biggest human being who ever lived, a man with the greatest courage, the most majestic artistic stature, a highly skilled musician whose impeccable taste commanded the respect of all musicians and the admiration of all listeners.

Eulogy for Billy Strayhorn [1967]. Liner notes:… And His Mother Called Him Bill

Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.

Music Is My Mistress [1973]

The ear cats loved what the schooled cats did, and the schooled guys, with fascination, would try what the ear cats were doing.

Music Is My Mistress

Somehow, I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself—he’d appreciate the combination of team spirit and informality, of academic knowledge and humor, of all the elements that go into a great jazz performance. And I am sure he would agree with the simple and axiomatic statement that is so important to all of us—when it sounds good, it is good.

Music Is My Mistress

Every man prays in his own language.

Title of composition [1975]

Friedrich August von Hayek

1899–1992

The more the state “plans,” the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

The Road to Serfdom [1944]

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

The Road to Serfdom

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

Economic Freedom and Representative Government [1973]

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism [1988]

Ernest Hemingway

1899–1961

You and me, we’ve made a separate peace.

In Our Time [1924], ch. 6

He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live along without consequences.

In Our Time [1925]. Soldier’s Home

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

The Sun Also Rises¹ [1926], ch. 4

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

The Sun Also Rises, 13

It makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.… It’s sort of what we have instead of God.

The Sun Also Rises, 19

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”…

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

The Sun Also Rises, last lines

In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.

Men Without Women [1927]. Ten Indians

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it… Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.

A Farewell to Arms [1929], ch. 27

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

A Farewell to Arms, 27

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

A Farewell to Arms, 34

You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you.

A Farewell to Arms, 41

It was like saying good-bye to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

A Farewell to Arms, 41

Grace under pressure.¹

Definition of “guts.” From DOROTHY PARKER, The Artist’s Reward, in The New Yorker [November 30, 1929]

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

Death in the Afternoon [1932], ch. 1

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

Death in the Afternoon, 16

If he wrote it he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing them.

Winner Take Nothing [1933]. Fathers and Sons

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

Green Hills of Africa [1935], ch. 1

Some writers are only born to help another writer to write one sentence.

Green Hills of Africa, 1

The rich were dull and they drank too much.… He remembered poor Julian² and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, “The very rich are different from you and me.” And how someone had said to Julian, Yes, they have more money.³

The Fifth Column and The First Forty-Nine Stories [1938]. The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

The Fifth Column and The First Forty-Nine Stories. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, epigraph

But did thee feel the earth move?

For Whom the Bell Tolls [1940], ch. 13

There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, 16

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Men at War [1942], introduction

I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.

The Old Man and the Sea [1952]

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

The Old Man and the Sea

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.

Interview in Paris Review [Spring 1958]

You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.

Interview in Paris Review

It is hard enough to write books and stories without being asked to explain them as well.

Interview in Paris Review

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.

A Moveable Feast [1964]

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 moveable feast.

A Moveable Feast, epigraph

Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

A Moveable Feast

Alfred Hitchcock

1899–1980

One of television’s greatest contributions is that it brought murder back into the home where it belongs.

After-dinner speech at Screen Producers Guild [March 7, 1965]

[On Psycho:] I don’t care about the subject matter; I don’t care about the acting; but I do care about the pieces of film and the photography and the sound track and all of the technical ingredients that made the audience scream.

To FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT in Hitchcock/Truffaut [1967]

What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

The more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

[On Rear Window:] I’ll bet you that nine out of ten people, if they see a woman across the courtyard undressing for bed, or even a man puttering around in his room, will stay and look; no one turns away and says, “It’s none of my business.” They could pull down their blinds, but they never do; they stand there and look out.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

Some films are slices of life. Mine are slices of cake.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

The “MacGuffin” is the term we use to cover all that sort of thing: to steal plans or documents, or discover a secret, it doesn’t matter what it is. And the logicians are wrong in trying to figure out the truth of a MacGuffin, since it’s beside the point. The only thing that really matters is that in the picture the plans, documents, or secrets must seem to be of vital importance to the characters.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

Robert Maynard Hutchins

1899–1977

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Great Books [1954]

Rian James [Julian Herbert Rothschild]

1899–1953

and

James Seymour

1895–1976

But you keep your feet on the ground and your head on those shoulders of yours and go out, and Sawyer, you’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!

42nd Street (screenplay) [1933]

Yasunari Kawabata

1899–1972

Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.

Beauty and Sadness¹ [1964]

Nadezhda Mandelstam

1899–1980

I decided it is better to scream. This pitiful sound, which sometimes, goodness knows how, reaches into the remotest prison cell, is a concentrated expression of the last vestige of human dignity. It is a man’s way of leaving a trace, of telling people how he lived and died. By his screams he asserts his right to live, sends a message to the outside world demanding help and calling for resistance. If nothing else is left, one must scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.

Hope Against Hope² [1970]

The fear that goes with the writing of verse has nothing in common with the fear one experiences in the presence of the secret police. Our mysterious awe in the face of existence itself is always overridden by the more primitive fear of violence and destruction.

Hope Against Hope

The astonishing thing is not that so many of us went to concentration camps or died there, but that some of us survived. Caution did not help. Only chance could save you.

Hope Abandoned

George Marion, Jr.

1899–1968

Dorothy Yost

1899–1967

and

Edward Kaufman

1893–1955

Chance is the fool’s name for fate.

The Gay Divorcee (screenplay) [1934], from a musical comedy by Dwight Taylor, based on an unproduced play by J. Hartley Manners

Joseph Moncure March

1899–1977

A rogue—

But her manner was gay and delicious.

She could make a Baptist preacher choke

With laughter over a dirty joke.

The Wild Party [1928]

Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?¹

Hell’s Angels (screenplay) [1930], spoken by Jean Harlow

Vladimir Nabokov

1899–1977

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 [1947], ch. 1

The patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence.… His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing, in some awful way, messages which he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme. All around him, there are spies. Some of them are detached observers, like glass surfaces and still pools; others, such as coats in store windows, are prejudiced witnesses, lynchers at heart; others, again (running water, storms), are hysterical to the point of insanity, have a distorted opinion of him, and grotesquely misinterpret his actions. He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things.

The New Yorker [May 15, 1948]. Symbols and Signs

The future is but the obsolete in reverse.

Lance [1952]

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

Lolita [1955], pt. I, ch. 1

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Lolita, I, 1

Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their nature, which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as “nymphets.”

Lolita, I, 5

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?

Why are you hiding, darling?

(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze,

I cannot get out, said the starling.)

Lolita, II, 25

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

Lolita, last paragraph

For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss.

On a Book Entitled Lolita

Like so many aging college people, Pnin had long since ceased to notice the existence of students on the campus.

Pnin [1957], ch. 3, sec. 6

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.

Interview [June 5, 1962] in Strong Opinions [1973]

My private tragedy, which cannot, indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural language, my natural idiom.

Interview [July 1962]

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

Pale Fire [1962]. Canto One

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Pale Fire

In high art and pure science detail is everything.

Strong Opinions [1973]

[On adultery:] A most conventional way to rise above the conventional.

Lectures on Literature [1980]. Gustave Flaubert

Leo Strauss

1899–1973

We are now brought face to face with a tyranny which holds out the threat of becoming, thanks to “the conquest of nature” and in particular of human nature, what no other tyranny ever became: perpetual and universal.

On Tyranny [1948]

In what then does philosophic politics consist? In satisfying the city that the philosophers are not atheists, that they do not desecrate everything sacred to the city, that they reverence what the city reverences, that they are not subversives, in short that they are not irresponsible adventurers but good citizens and even the best of citizens. This is the defense of philosophy which was required always and everywhere, whatever the regime might have been.

On Tyranny

E[lwyn] B[rooks] White

1899–1985

“It’s broccoli, dear.”

“I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.”

Caption for cartoon by Carl Rose in The New Yorker [December 8, 1928]

I have since become a salt-water man, but sometimes in summer there are days when the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind that blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods.

Once More to the Lake [1941]

Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.

Some Remarks on Humor [1941]

“My name is Margalo,” said the bird, softly, in a musical voice. “I come from fields once tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle; I come from vales of meadowsweet, and I love to whistle.”

Stuart Little [1945], 8

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The Wild Flag [1946]

I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears so much as your editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.

Letter to the New York Herald Tribune [November 29, 1947]

No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

Here Is New York [1949]

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

Here Is New York

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.

Here Is New York

The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.

Here Is New York

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.

Charlotte’s Web [1952]

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.

Charlotte’s Web

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

The Elements of Style [1959 edition]

[Pearl] Polly Adler

1900–1962

A House Is Not a Home

Title of book [1953]

Louis [Satchmo] Armstrong

1900–1971

[On police action against freedom marchers in Selma, Alabama:] They would beat Jesus if he was black and marched.

New York Herald Tribune [March 11, 1965]

Man, if you gotta ask you’ll never know.¹

Reply when asked what jazz is

Basil Bunting

1900–1985

I am shifting rivermist, not to be trusted.

I do not ask anything extraordinary of myself.

I like a nap after dinner

and to see the seasons come round in good order.

Chomei at Toyama [1933]

Brag, sweet tenor bull,

descant on Rawthey’s madrigal,

each pebble its part

for the fells’ late spring.

Briggflatts [1966]

It is easier to die than to remember.

Briggflatts

Pens are too light.

Take a chisel to write.

Briggflatts

A strong song tows

us, long earsick.

Blind, we follow

rain slant, spray flick

to fields we do not know.

Briggflatts

Then is Now. The star you steer by is gone,

its tremulous thread spun in the hurricane

spider floss on my cheek; light from the zenith

spun when the slowworm lay in her lap

fifty years ago.

Briggflatts

Luis Buñuel

1900–1983

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Title of motion picture [1972]

In the end, belief and the lack of it amount to the same thing. If someone were to prove to me—right this minute—that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn’t change a single aspect of my behavior.

My Last Sigh¹ [1982]

I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life.

My Last Sigh

Lenore Coffee

1900–1984

What a dump!

Beyond the Forest (screenplay) [1949], spoken by Bette Davis

Robert Desnos

1900–1945

I have so fiercely dreamed of you

And walked so far and spoken of you so,

Loved a shade of you so hard

That now I’ve no more left of you.

Last Poem²

Elizabeth, Queen Mother of England

1900–2002

I am almost glad we have been bombed. Now I feel I can look the East End in the face.

Comment on the German bombing of Buckingham Palace [September 1940]

Zelda Fitzgerald

1900–1948

She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure; she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn’t need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.

Eulogy on the Flapper [1922]

Erich Fromm

1900–1980

Freedom, although it has brought [modern man] independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless.

Escape from Freedom [1941]. Foreword

Hans-Georg Gadamer

1900–2002

Being that can be understood is language.

Truth and Method [1960]

Abel Green

1900–1973

Sticks Nix Hick Pix.

Headline about rural audiences’ rejection of movies with rural themes, Variety [July 17, 1935]

James Hilton

1900–1954

The austere serenity of Shangri-La. Its forsaken courts and pale pavilions shimmered in repose from which all the fret of existence had ebbed away, leaving a hush as if moments hardly dared to pass.

Lost Horizon [1933], ch. 5

Cyril Hume

1900–1966

Monsters from the Id!

Forbidden Planet (screenplay) [1956], spoken by Walter Pidgeon

[Ayatolla] Ruholla Khomeini

1900–1989

The author of the Satanic Verses book [Salman Rushdie³], which is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. I ask all Moslems to execute them wherever they find them.

Statement [February 14, 1989]

Raphael Lemkin

1900–1959

By genocide¹ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.

Axis Rule in Occupied Europe [1944]

Margaret Mitchell

1900–1949

As God is my witness, as God is my witness, the Yanks aren’t going to lick me. I’m going to live through this, and, when it’s over, I’m never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill—as God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again.²

Gone with the Wind [1936], pt. III, ch. 25

There’s just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in the upbuilding of one.

Gone with the Wind, IV, 35

The usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.

Gone with the Wind, IV, 36

My dear, I don’t give a damn [Rhett Butler to Scarlett O’Hara].³

Gone with the Wind, V, 63

I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Gone with the Wind, last line

Mitchell Parish

1900–1993

We lived our little drama,

We kissed in a field of white,

And stars fell on Alabama last night.

Stars Fell on Alabama⁴ [1934]

Stephen Potter

1900–1969

What is gamesmanship? Most difficult of questions to answer briefly. “The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating”—that is my personal “working definition.”

The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship [1947]

How to be one up—how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.

Some Notes on Lifemanship [1950]

V[ictor] S[awdon] Pritchett

1900–1997

Our laughter is only a note or two short of a scream of fear.

The Living Novel and Later Appreciations [1964]

How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit.

Midnight Oil [1971]

Ernie Pyle

1900–1945

I write from the worm’s-eye point of view.

Here Is Your War [1943]

Leo Robin

1900–1984

Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes⁵ [1949], title of song

Gilbert Ryle

1900–1976

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.” I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in detail but in principle.

The Concept of Mind [1949]

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

1900–1944

Although human life is priceless, we always act as if something had an even greater price than life.… But what is that something?

Night Flight [1931], ch. 14

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Wind, Sand and Stars [1939]

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

The Little Prince¹ [1943], ch. 1

George Seferis [Giorgios Sefiriades]

1900–1971

Three years

we waited intently for the herald

closely watching

the pines the shore and the stars.

Mythistorema² [1935], I

We were searching to rediscover the first seed

so that the ancient drama could begin again.

Mythistorema, I

Wherever I travel Greece wounds me.

In the Manner of G.S. [1936]

Each of us earns his death, his own death,  which belongs to no one else

and this game is life.

The Last Day [1939]

Ignazio Silone [Secondino Tranquilli]

1900–1978

Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.

The School for Dictators [1938]

“Liberty”—I had to give examples—“is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying ‘no’ to any authority—literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social, and even political.”

The God that Failed [1950]

Douglas Sirk

1900–1987

The angles are the director’s thoughts. The lighting is his philosophy.

From JON HALLIDAY, Sirk on Sirk [1972]

Adlai E[wing] Stevenson

1900–1965

The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation who knows but what we may be called upon to take sides as well in the age old problems of dog versus cat, bird versus bird, and even bird versus worm.… The State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency.

As governor of Illinois, vetoing a bird-protection bill [April 23, 1949]

Let’s talk sense to the American people.

Speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination [July 26, 1952]

Thomas Wolfe

1900–1938

A stone, a leaf, an unfound door.

Look Homeward, Angel [1929], foreword

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

Look Homeward, Angel, foreword

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

Look Homeward, Angel, foreword

It’d take a guy a lifetime to know Brooklyn t’roo and t’roo. An’ even den, yuh wouldn’t know it all. Only the dead know Brooklyn t’roo an’ t’roo.

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn [1935]

I shall always think of you and feel about you the way it was that 4th of July day 3 yrs. ago when you met me at the boat, and we went out on the cafe on the river and had a drink and later went on top of the tall building, and all the strangeness and the glory and the power of life and of the city was below.

Letter to Maxwell Perkins [August 12, 1938]

He was “out.” And, being “out,” he began to see another way, the way that lay before him. He saw now that you can’t go home again—not ever. There was no road back.

You Can’t Go Home Again [1940]

I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found.

You Can’t Go Home Again

Robert Bresson

1901–1999

The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself.

Notes on the Cinematographer [1975]

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

Notes on the Cinematograph

[Ignatius Royston Dunnachie] Roy Campbell

1901–1957

I love to see, when leaves depart,

The clear anatomy arrive,

Winter, the paragon of art,

That kills all form of life and feeling

Save what is pure and will survive.

Autumn [1929]

René Jules Dubos

1901–1982

The general formula of [ecological] management for the future might be, think globally and act locally.

The Wooing of Earth [1980]. Humankind and the Earth

Robert Francis

1901–1987

His art is eccentricity, his aim

How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,

His passion how to avoid the obvious,

His technique how to vary the avoidance.

The others throw to be comprehended. He

Throws to be a moment misunderstood.

The Orb Weaver [1960]. Pitcher

Stuart Gorrell

1901–1963

Georgia, Georgia

The whole day through;

Just an old sweet song

Keeps Georgia on my mind.

Georgia on My Mind¹ [1930]

Hein Heckroth

1901–1970

Movies are the folklore of the twentieth century.

Quoted in Michael Powell’s A Life in Movies

Werner Karl Heisenberg

1901–1976

The more precisely we determine the position [of an electron], the more imprecise is the determination of velocity at this instant, and vice versa.²

On the Perceptual Content of Quantum Theoretical Kinematics and Mechanics [1927]

Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer… we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Physics and Philosophy [1958]

Emperor Hirohito

1901–1989

The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.

Broadcast to the Japanese people announcing surrender [August 14, 1945]

The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors?… It is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unavoidable and suffering what is insufferable.

Broadcast to the Japanese people announcing surrender

C[yril] L[ionel] R[obert] James

1901–1989

In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.

The Black Jacobins [1938]

Eminence engenders enemies.

The Black Jacobins

The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.

The Black Jacobins

Louis Kahn

1901–1974

The street is a community room.

The Room, the Street, and Human Agreement [1971]

Anna Kavan

1901–1968

As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of her world.

Ice [1967]

Howard E. Koch

1901–1995

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.

The War of the Worlds (radio play) [1938], produced by Orson Welles for the CBS Mercury Theater of the Air

With all my heart, I still love the man I killed.

The Letter (screenplay) [1940], based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham; spoken by Bette Davis

Jacques Lacan

1901–1981

The unconscious is structured like a language.

Écrits [1966]

If a man who thinks he is a king is mad, a king who thinks he is a king is no less so.

Écrits¹

André Malraux

1901–1976

The sons of torture-victims make good terrorists.

Man’s Fate (La Condition Humaine) [1933]

One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say.

Man’s Hope (L’Espoir) [1938]

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

The Voices of Silence (Les Voix du Silence) [1951]

Eric Maschwitz²

1901–1969

The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations,

Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations:

Oh how the ghost of you clings!

These foolish things

Remind me of you.

Spread It Around [1936]. These Foolish Things³

Margaret Mead

1901–1978

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

Coming of Age in Samoa [1928], introduction

We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation.

Male and Female [1948]

The mind is not sex-typed.

Blackberry Winter [1972], ch. 5

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Attributed

Michael Oakeshott

1901–1990

Neither the truth nor the character of history depend, in any way, upon its having some lesson to teach us. And if ever we persuade ourselves that the past has taught us something, we may be certain that it is not the historical past which has been our teacher.

Experience and Its Modes [1933]

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

On Being Conservative [1956]

In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbor for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behavior in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.

Rationalism in Politics [1962]

Kalervo Oberg

1901–1973

Culture shock

Culture Shock and the Problem of Adjustment to New Cultural Environments [1954]

Linus [Carl] Pauling

1901–1994

I doubt that the unconscious can be directed to work on a problem. But the problem can be suggested to it, and if it is interested in it… something may result.

The Genesis of Ideas [1955]

The only sane policy for the world is that of abolishing war.

Nobel Lecture [December 11, 1963]

Laura Riding [Jackson]

1901–1991

I feel an intense intimacy with those who have this loathing interest in me. Further than this, I know what they mean, I sympathize with them, I understand them. There should be a name (as poetic as love) for this relationship between loather and loathed; it is of the closest and more full of passion than incest.

Anarchism Is Not Enough [1928]. How Came It About?

All literature is written by the old to teach the young how to express themselves so that they in turn may write literature to teach the old how to express themselves. All literature is written by mentally precocious adolescents and by mentally precocious senescents.

Anarchism Is Not Enough. All Literature

That lost literature which only death reads.

Collected Poems [1938]. When Love Becomes Words

O vocables of love,

The end of an end is an echo,

A last cry follows a last cry.

Finality of finality

Is perfection’s touch of folly.

Collected Poems. O Vocables of Love

John Van Druten

1901–1957

and

Lenore J. Coffee

1896–1984

There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.

Old Acquaintance (screenplay) [1943], spoken by Bette Davis

Ned Washington

1901–1976

Don’t save your kisses, just pass them around

You’ll find my reason is logically sound

Who’s going to know that you passed them around

A hundred years from today!

A Hundred Years from Today¹ [1933]

When you wish upon a star,

Makes no diff’rence who you are,

Anything your heart desires will come to you.

Pinocchio [1940]. When You Wish Upon a Star²

Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’,

You made that promise when we wed.

Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’,

Although you’re grievin’, I can’t be leavin’

Until I shoot Frank Miller dead.

High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’), title theme from the movie High Noon [1951]; music by Dimitri Tiomkin; sung by Tex Ritter

Arna Bontemps

1902–1973

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields

My brother’s sons are gathering stalk and root,

Small wonder then my children glean in fields

They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.

A Black Man Talks of Reaping [1963], st. 3

Yet would we die as some have done:

Beating a way for the rising sun.

The Daybreakers [1963]

Fernand Braudel

1902–1985

Can there be any study of humanity, in 1946, without historians who are ambitious, conscious of their duties and of their immense powers?

The Mediterranean [1946]. Preface to the first edition

Sidney [Robert] Buchman

1902–1975

Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. And they get to be men—they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: “I’m free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn’t. I can. And my children will.” Boys ought to grow up remembering that.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (screenplay) [1939], spoken by James Stewart

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

1902–1987

In the middle of the road there was a stone

there was a stone in the middle of the road

there was a stone

in the middle of the road there was a stone.

Some Poetry [1930]. In the Middle of the Road¹

Malcolm de Chazal

1902–1981

If our five senses didn’t serve as brakes to slow us down and filter our sensations, sexual pleasure would strike us like lightning and electrocute our souls.

Sens-Plastique² [1948]

In the mutual pursuit of sexual pleasure—the fear of joy and the joy of fear—our bodies liquefy each other in the waters of the soul, becoming so spiritual that hardly any corporal self is left. When we wake up after love, we look around desperately for our lost body.

Sens-Plastique

Old age lives minutes slowly, hours quickly; childhood chews hours and swallows minutes.

Sens-Plastique

Erik [Homburger] Erikson

1902–1994

When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases.

The Problem of Ego Identity [1956]

Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well-considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.

Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History [1958]

The identity crisis… occurs in that period of the life cycle when each youth must forge for himself some central perspective and direction, some working unity, out of the effective remnants of his childhood and the hopes of his anticipated adulthood.

Young Man Luther, ch. 1

Kenneth Fearing

1902–1961

Perfect people never understand much about anything.

The Big Clock [1946]

Stella Gibbons

1902–1989

Something nasty in the woodshed.

Cold Comfort Farm [1932], ch. 8

Eric Hoffer

1902–1983

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.

The True Believer [1951]

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.

The True Believer

Langston Hughes

1902–1967

This is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, in The Nation [June 23, 1926]

It is the duty of the younger Negro artist… to change through the force of his art that old whispering “I want to be white,” hidden in the aspirations of his people, to “Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful!”

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older

    than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers [1926]

I am a Negro:

    Black as the night is black,

    Black like the depths of my Africa.

Negro [1926]

Rest at pale evening…

A tall slim tree…

Night coming tenderly

Black like me.

Dream Variations [1926]

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

    I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

    He did a lazy sway…

    He did a lazy sway…

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

The Weary Blues [1926]

I got the Weary Blues

And I can’t be satisfied.

The Weary Blues

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Mother to Son [1926]

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

I, Too [1926]

Listen, Christ,

You did alright in your day, I reckon—

But that day’s gone now.

They ghosted you up a swell story, too,

Called it Bible—

But it’s dead now.

Goodbye Christ [1932]

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

Let America Be America Again [1938]

Ordinary Negroes hadn’t heard of the Negro Renaissance. And if they had, it hadn’t raised their wages any.

The Big Sea [1940]

Wear it

Like a banner

For the proud—

Not like a shroud.

Color [1943]

You’ve taken my blues and gone—

You sing ’em on Broadway

And you sing ’em in Hollywood Bowl,

And you mixed ’em up with symphonies

And you fixed ’em

So they don’t sound like me.

Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.

Jim Crow’s Last Stand [1943]. Note on Commercial Theatre

Good morning, daddy!

Ain’t you heard

The boogie-woogie rumble

Of a dream deferred?

Dream Boogie [1951]

What happens to a dream deferred?

  Does it dry up

  like a raisin in the sun?

  Or fester like a sore—

  And then run?

  Does it stink like rotten meat?

  Or crust and sugar over—

  like a syrupy sweet?

  Maybe it just sags

  like a heavy load.

  Or does it explode?

Harlem [1951]

Negro blood is sure powerful—because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop—you are a Negro!… Black is powerful.¹

Simple Takes a Wife [1953]

Murmuring gently

Over fraises du bois,

“I’m so ashamed of being white.”

Dinner Guest: Me [1965]

Charles A[ugustus] Lindbergh¹

1902–1974

We (that’s my ship and I) took off rather suddenly. We had a report somewhere around 4 o’clock in the afternoon before that the weather would be fine, so we thought we would try it.

Lindbergh’s Own Story. In the New York Times [May 23, 1927]

I saw a fleet of fishing boats.… I flew down almost touching the craft and yelled at them, asking if I was on the right road to Ireland.

They just stared. Maybe they didn’t hear me. Maybe I didn’t hear them. Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool. An hour later I saw land.

Lindbergh’s Own Story. In the New York Times

I live only in the moment in this strange, unmortal space, crowded with beauty, pierced with danger.

The Spirit of St. Louis [1953]

Norman Maclean

1902–1990

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

A River Runs Through It [1976]

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

A River Runs Through It

Beryl Markham

1902–1986

No horizon is so far that you cannot get above or beyond it.

West with the Night [1942]

Ogden Nash

1902–1971

Philo Vance

Needs a kick in the pance.

Philo Vance [1930]

Candy

Is dandy

But liquor

Is quicker.

Hard Lines [1931]. Reflections on Ice-Breaking

The Bronx?

No, thonx!

Hard Lines. Geographical Reflection

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all.²

Happy Days [1933]. Song of the Open Road

There is something about a Martini,

Ere the dining and dancing begin,

And to tell you the truth,

It is not the vermouth—

I think that perhaps it’s the gin.

The Primrose Path [1935]. A Drink with Something in It

The trouble with a kitten is

THAT

Eventually it becomes a

CAT.

The Face Is Familiar [1941]. The Kitten

I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable.

Versus [1949]. I Do, I Will, I Have

How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are;

One day a bachelor, the next a grampa.

What is the secret of the trick?

How did I get so old so quick?

You Can’t Get There from Here [1957]. Preface to the Past

Iris Origo

1902–1988

[On Mussolini:] A sentimentalist about “the people” en masse, he is completely cynical about all individuals, and measures them only by the use he can put them to.… Yet so great is his personal ascendancy that his underlings—knowing that they themselves will be kicked away as soon as they cease to be useful—still retain their personal devotion to him.

Diary entry [July 31, 1939]

We are being governed by the dregs of the nation—and their brutality is so capricious that no one can feel certain that he will be safe tomorrow.

War in Val D’Orcia: An Italian War Diary, 1943–1944 [1947]

Karl Popper

1902–1994

The Open Society and Its Enemies

Title of book [1945]

The history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder.

The Open Society and Its Enemies [1945]

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of 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

In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.¹

The Logic of Scientific Discovery, appendix to 1959 edition

The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.

Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge [1963]

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

Emeric Pressburger

1902–1988

and

Michael Powell

1905–1990

Don’t forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.

The Red Shoes (screenplay) [1948]

Sorrow will pass, believe me. Life is so unimportant. And from now onwards, you will dance like nobody ever before.

The Red Shoes (screenplay)

George Gaylord Simpson

1902–1984

Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.

The Meaning of Evolution [1949]

Curt Siodmak

1902–2000

Even a man who’s pure in heart

And says his prayers at night

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

And the autumn moon is bright.

The Wolf Man [1941], film script

Stevie [Margaret Florence] Smith

1902–1971

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. The Past

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.

My Muse [1962]

There is a face I know too well,

A face I dread to see,

So vain it is, so eloquent

Of all futility.

It is a human face that hides

A monkey soul within,

That bangs about, that beats a gong,

That makes a horrid din.

New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith [1988]. The Face

Away, melancholy,

Away with it, let it go.

Are not the trees green,

The earth as green?

Does not the wind blow,

Fire leap and the rivers flow?

Away melancholy.

New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith. Away, Melancholy

Oh Major is a fine cat

He walks cleverly

And what is he at, my fine cat?

No one can see.

New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith. My Cat Major

John [Ernst] Steinbeck

1902–1968

Tell about what we’re gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell me about that, George.

Of Mice and Men [1937]

66 is the main migrant road… 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there.

The Grapes of Wrath [1939], ch. 12

They’s movement now. People moving. We know why, an’ we know how. Movin’ ’cause they got to. That’s why folks always move. Movin’ ’cause they want somepin better’n what they got. An’ that’s the on’y way they’ll ever git it.

The Grapes of Wrath, 13

Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you’re scum. Don’t mean nothing itself, it’s the way they say it.

The Grapes of Wrath, 18

Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people—we go on.

The Grapes of Wrath, 20

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

Cannery Row [1945], opening sentence

When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.

East of Eden [1952]

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields.

Sweet Thursday [1954]

The theater is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed.

Once There Was a War [1958]

A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, and sick.

Letter to Adlai Stevenson [November 5, 1959]

Darryl F. Zanuck

1902–1979

Don’t say yes until I finish talking.

Cited in MEL GUSSOW, Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking [1971]

Cesare Zavattini

1902–1989

[On the principles of Italian neorealism:] I believe in imagination, but I have more faith in reality, in people. I am not interested in prearranged encounters, in the drama of things that happen to come together.

Umberto D. [1953]

Roy Acuff

1903–1992

I was born in Dixie in a boomer’s shack,

Just a little shanty by the railroad track,

The humming of the drivers was my lullaby

And a freight train whistle taught me how to cry.

Freight Train Blues¹ [1936]

Theodor Adorno

1903–1969

To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

Cultural Criticism and Society [1949]

To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.

Minima Moralia [1951]

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.

Minima Moralia

One is forced to have fun in order to be well adjusted or at least appear so to others because only well-adjusted people are accepted as normal and are likely to be successful.

The Stars Down to Earth [1953]

All artworks are writing, not just those that are obviously such; they are hieroglyphs for which the code has been lost, a loss that plays into their content. Artworks are language only as writing.

Aesthetic Theory² [1970]

Lewis Allan [Abel Meeropol]

1903–1986

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.¹

Strange Fruit [1937]

Tallulah [Brockman] Bankhead

1903–1968

There is less in this than meets the eye.

Remark to Alexander Woollcott at Aglavaine and Selysette by MAURICE MAETERLINCK [January 3, 1922]

I’m as pure as the driven slush.

Attributed

Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years.

Tallulah [1952]

I think it’s disgraceful. They’ve absolutely ruined a bad play!

To Tennessee Williams, about The Fugitive Kind, the film version of Williams’s play Orpheus Descending; quoted in Walter Winchell’s gossip column [May 1960]

Bruno Bettelheim

1903–1990

Punishment may make us obey the orders we are given, but at best it will only teach an obedience to authority, not a self-control which enhances our self-respect.

A Good Enough Parent [1987]

Count Galeazzo Ciano

1903–1944

As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.²

The Ciano Diaries, 1939–1943 [1946]. September 9, 1942

Cyril [Vernon] Connolly

1903–1974

There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

Enemies of Promise [1938]

Every admirer is a potential enemy.

Enemies of Promise

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

Enemies of Promise

Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

Enemies of Promise

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.

The Unquiet Grave [1944], pt 1

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signaling to be let out.³

The Unquiet Grave, II

Approaching forty, I am about to heave my carcass of vanity, boredom, guilt and remorse into another decade.

The Unquiet Grave⁴, III

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.

Editorial in Horizon [Dec. 1949–Jan. 1950]

[Harry Lillis] “Bing” Crosby [Jr.]

1903–1977

He was an average guy who could carry a tune.

Proposed epitaph for himself, quoted in Newsweek obituary [October 24, 1977]

Countee Cullen

1903–1946

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:

To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Yet Do I Marvel [1925]

One three centuries removed

From the scenes his fathers loved,

Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,

What is Africa to me?

Heritage [1925]

Not yet has my heart or head

In the least way realized

They and I are civilized.

Heritage

Now I was eight and very small,

And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

Incident [1925]

William Thomas Cummings

1903–1944

There are no atheists in the foxholes.

Field sermon, Bataan [1942]. From CARLOS P. ROMULO, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines [1942]

Bertrand de Jouvenel

1903–1987

There is a tyranny in the womb of every Utopia.

Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good [1957]

Edwin Denby

1903–1983

The first taste of art is spontaneously sensual, it is the discovery of an absorbing entertainment, an absorbing pleasure. If you ask anyone who enjoys ballet or any other art how he started, he will tell you that he enjoyed it long before he knew what it meant or how it worked.

Looking at the Dance [1949]. Against Meaning in Ballet

There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.

Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets [1965]. Forms in Motion in Thought

Vernon Duke [Vladimir Dukelsky]

1903–1969

Autumn in New York

Is often mingled with pain.

Dreamers with empty hands

May sigh for exotic lands;

It’s Autumn in New York,

It’s good to live it again.

Autumn in New York [1935]

Lou Gehrig

1903–1941

For the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

At Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939

Sadegh Hedayat

1903–1951

There are people whose death-agonies begin at the age of twenty, while others die only at the very end, calmly and peacefully, like a lamp in which all the oil has been consumed.

The Blind Owl [1936]

Charles Jackson

1903–1968

Delirium is a disease of the night.

The Lost Weekend (novel) [1944]

Malcolm Muggeridge

1903–1990

As Man alone, Jesus could not have saved us; as God alone, he would not; Incarnate, he could and did.

Jesus [1975], pt. I

The truth is that if we lose the meaning of words, it is far more serious in practice than losing our wealth or our power. Without our words, we are helpless and defenseless; their misuse is our undoing.

The End of Christendom [1980]

Irène Némirovsky

1903–1942

Important events—whether serious, happy or unfortunate—do not change a man’s soul, they merely bring it into relief, just as a strong gust of wind reveals the true shape of a tree when it blows off all its leaves. Such events highlight what is hidden in the shadows; they nudge the spirit towards a place where it can flourish.

Suite Française [written 1942, published 2004]

Lorine Niedecker

1903–1970

O my floating life

Do not save love

    for things

       Throw things

to the flood

North Central [1968]. Paean to Place

Man

   lives hard

      on this stone perch

by sea

  imagines

     durable works

            North Central. Wintergreen Ridge

Nobody, nothing

   ever gave me

       greater thing

than time

   unless light

      and silence

which if intense

   makes sound

North Central. Wintergreen Ridge

Anaïs Nin

1903–1977

It’s all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all.

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. I [1966], June 1933

I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, IV [1971], March 1946

Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It creates the failures. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, IV, February 1947

Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore.

Delta of Venus [1978]

Silvina Ocampo

1903–1993

What matters is what we write: that is what we are, not some puppet made up by those who talk and enclose us in a prison so different from our dreams.

Thus Were Their Faces [1987]

George Orwell [Eric Blair]

1903–1950

Clothes are powerful things. Dressed in a tramp’s clothes it is very difficult, at any rate for the first day, not to feel that you are genuinely degraded.

Down and Out in Paris and London [1933]

I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant.

Down and Out in Paris and London

You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the Nancy poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants—all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel.

The Road to Wigan Pier [1937]

Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships—an age in which freedom of thought will at first be a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction.

Inside the Whale [1940], pt. III

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

The Lion and the Unicorn [1941]

A dirty joke is not… a serious attack upon morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise.

The Art of Donald McGill [1941]

In all countries the poor are more national than the rich, but the English working class are outstanding in their abhorrence of foreign habits. Even when they are obliged to live abroad for years they refuse either to accustom themselves to foreign food or to learn foreign languages. Nearly every Englishman of working-class origin considers it effeminate to pronounce a foreign word correctly.

England Your England [1941]

If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

The Freedom of the Press [1945]

The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends on public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

Freedom of the Park [1945]

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Proposed preface to Animal Farm [1945, first published 1972]

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Animal Farm [1945], ch. 10

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.

Politics and the English Language [1946]

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Politics and the English Language

In the queerest way, pleasure and disgust are linked together. The human body is beautiful: it is also repulsive and ridiculous, a fact which can be verified at any swimming pool.

Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels [1946]

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Why I Write [1948]

It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

1984 [1949], opening line

Big Brother is watching you.

1984, pt. I, ch. 1

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

1984, I, 1

“Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

1984, I, 3

In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

1984, I, 5

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.

1984, I, 7

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

1984, I, 7

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

1984, II, 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. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

1984, III, 3

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

1984, III, 3

If you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.

1984, III, 4

The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime.

1984, V

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.

Notebook entry, April 17, 1949

Raymond Queneau

1903–1976

The classical author who writes his tragedy observing a certain number of known rules is freer than the poet who writes down whatever comes into his head and is slave to other rules of which he knows nothing.

Bâtons, Chiffres et Lettres [1950]

Raymond Radiguet

1903–1923

There is nothing so unlike a thing as something which comes close to it. A man who has barely escaped death thinks that he knows death. But the day it finally comes to him, he does not recognize it. “This is not death,” he says, and dies.

Devil in the Flesh [1923]

Casey [Kenneth C.] Robinson

1903–1979

Where’s the rest of me?

Kings Row (screenplay) [1942], spoken by Ronald Reagan¹

Oh, Jerry, don’t ask for the moon. We have the stars.

Now Voyager (screenplay) [1942], spoken by Bette Davis

Joan [Violet] Robinson

1903–1983

The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.

Economic Philosophy [1962]

Mark Rothko [Markus Yakovlevich Rotkovich]

1903–1970

Silence is so accurate.

Quoted in Elaine de Kooning, Two Americans in Action: Franz Kline and Mark Rothko [1958]

Georges Simenon

1903–1989

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.

Interview in Paris Review [1955]

I’ve ceased to believe in evil. Only in illness.

Notebook entry [August 3, 1960]

Benjamin [McLane] Spock

1903–1998

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care [1946], ch. 1

Evelyn Waugh

1903–1966

I expect you’ll be becoming a schoolmaster, sir. That’s what most of the gentlemen does, sir, that gets sent down for indecent behavior.

Decline and Fall [1928], Prelude

Anyone 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… who find prison so soul destroying.

Decline and Fall, pt. III, ch. 4

Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.

Scoop [1938], bk. I, ch. 2, sec. 1

“Sometimes,” said Julia, “I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.”

Brideshead Revisited [1945]

To see him fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sèvres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

On Stephen Spender’s autobiography; The Tablet [May 5, 1951]

Randolph Churchill went into hospital… to have a lung removed. It was announced that the trouble was not “malignant.”… It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.

Diaries [March 1964]

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

A Little Learning [1964]

Nathanael West

1903–1940

Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you.

Miss Lonelyhearts [1933]

The Miss Lonelyhearts are the priests of twentieth-century America.

Miss Lonelyhearts

[On the Hollywood studio system:] A sargasso of the imagination!

The Day of the Locust [1939]

It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that are. But it is easy to sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.

The Day of the Locust

Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.

The Day of the Locust

The people who come to California to die; the cultists of all sorts, economic as well as religious, the wave, airplane, funeral and preview watchers—all those poor devils who can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence.

The Day of the Locust

Marguerite Yourcenar

1903–1987

Every bliss achieved is a masterpiece; the slightest error turns it awry, and it alters with one touch of doubt; any heaviness detracts from its charm, the least stupidity renders it dull.

Memoirs of Hadrian [1951]

Peter Arno

1904–1968

Hey, Jack, which way to Mecca?

Caption for cartoon of American tourists driving past praying Arab [1938]

Well, back to the old drawing board.

Caption for cartoon showing designer walking away from crashed plane [1941]

George Balanchine

1904–1983

Ballet is the one place where art flourishes because of a woman; woman is the goddess, the poetess, the muse. That is why I have a company with beautiful girl dancers.

Quoted in Life [June 11, 1965]

What are you saving for—for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now.

Quoted in Joseph H. Mazo, Dance Is a Contact Sport [1974]

Publicity overrates everything. Picasso’s overrated. I’m overrated. Even Jack Benny’s overrated.

Interview, cited in BERNARD TAPER, Balanchine: A Biography [1996]

Gregory Bateson

1904–1980

As I see it, the advances in scientific thought come from a combination of loose and strict thinking, and this combination is the most precious tool of science.

Experiments in Thinking about Observed Ethnological Material [1940]

A “bit” of information is definable as a difference which makes a difference.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind [1972]

Lesley Blanch

1904–1987

There are two sorts of romantic: those who love, and those who love the adventure of loving.

The Wilder Shores of Love [1954]

Margaret Bourke-White

1904–1971

Nothing attracts me like a closed door.

Portrait of Myself [1963]

Joseph Campbell

1904–1987

Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces [1949]. Prologue

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Follow your bliss.¹

The Power of Myth [1988]

Salvador Dalí

1904–1989

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí [1942], opening line

The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad.

Entry in Diary of a Genius [1966]

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

Entry in Diary of a Genius

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Dalí by Dalí [1970]

Delmer Daves

1904–1977

and

Donald Ogden Stewart

1894–1980

It’s the tallest building in the world. You can’t miss that. It’s the nearest thing to Heaven we have in New York.

Love Affair (screenplay) [1939], spoken by Irene Dunne; repeated in An Affair to Remember [1957], spoken by Deborah Kerr

Willem de Kooning

1904–1997

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity.

There Is No Style of Painting Now [1951]

Deng Xiaoping

1904–1997

Let some people get rich first.¹

Political slogan

Yellow cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.²

Speech [1962]

Richard Eberhart

1904–2005

It is what man does not know of God

Composes the visible poem of the world.

Collected Poems, 1930–1960 [1960]. On a Squirrel Crossing the Road in Autumn in New England

Witold Gombrowicz

1904–1969

Spirit is born of the imitation of spirit and a writer must pretend to be a writer in order finally to become a writer.

Diary, Vol. 1 [entry from 1953]

An idea abstracted from man does not fully exist.… There is no word that is not also flesh.

Diary [entry from 1954]

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act.

Diary, Vol. 2 [entry from 1959]

Cary Grant [Archibald Alexander Leach]

1904–1986

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.

Attributed

Graham Greene

1904–1991

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

The Power and the Glory [1940], pt. I, ch. 1

It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization—it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

The Power and the Glory, II, 1

When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity.… Hate was just a failure of imagination.

The Power and the Glory, II, 3

In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

The Heart of the Matter [1948], bk. I, pt. I, ch. 2, sec. iv

He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.

The Heart of the Matter, II, III, 2, i

Death’s at the bottom of everything, Martins. Leave death to the professionals.

The Third Man (screenplay) [1950], spoken by Trevor Howard

In childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and like the fortune-teller who sees a long journey in the cards or death by water they influence the future. I suppose that is why books excited us so much. What do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years?

The Lost Childhood and Other Essays [1951]

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

The End of the Affair [1951]

Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

Our Man in Havana [1958]

“He betrayed his country”—yes, perhaps he did, but who among us has not committed treason to something or someone more important than a country?

Foreword to My Silent War, by Kim Philby [1968]

A crack in the plaster of a neglected house grows more quickly than a line on a human face, paint changes color more rapidly than hair, and a room’s decay is continuous: it never comes to a temporary halt on that high plateau of old age where a man may live a long time without apparent change.

The Honorary Consul [1973]

Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and the simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt.

The Human Factor [1978], pt. III, ch. 3

Moss Hart

1904–1961

Can success change the human mechanism so completely between one dawn and another? Can it make one feel taller, more alive, handsomer, uncommonly gifted and indomitably secure with the certainty that this is the way life will always be? It can and it does!

Act One: An Autobiography [1959]

The only credential the city [New York] asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.

Act One, pt. II

Christopher [William Bradshaw] Isherwood

1904–1986

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], A Berlin Diary

George F[rost] Kennan

1904–2005

The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.

The Sources of Soviet Conduct, in Foreign Affairs [July 1947]

A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of eventually being fought.

The Cloud of Danger [1977], ch. 13

A[bbott] J[oseph] Liebling

1904–1963

I remember, on the afternoon of D Day, sitting on a ration case on the pitching deck and being tempted by the rosy picture on the label of a roast-beef can. I opened it, but I could only pick at the jellied juice, which reminded me too much of the blood I had seen that morning, and I threw the tin over the rail.

Cross-Channel Trip [1944]

A boxer, like a writer, must stand alone.

The Sweet Science [1956]. Introduction

When I watch a fight, I like to study one boxer’s problem, solve it, and then communicate my solution vocally.

The Sweet Science. Boxing with the Naked Eye

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

Do You Belong in Journalism? in The New Yorker [May 14, 1960]

Louisiana politics is of an intensity and complexity that are matched, in my experience, only in the republic of Lebanon.

The Earl of Louisiana [1961]

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol.

Between Meals [1962]. A Good Appetite

Eating is highly subjective, and the man who accepts say-so in youth will wind up in bad and overtouted restaurants in middle age, ordering what the maître d’hôtel suggests. He will have been guided to them by food-snob publications, and he will fall into the habit of drinking too much before dinner to kill the taste of what he has been told he should like but doesn’t.

Between Meals. Just Enough Money

The way to write is well, and how is your own business. Nothing else on the subject makes sense.

The Jollity Building [1962]

I can write faster than anybody who can write better, and I can write better than anybody who can write faster.

Attributed

Harry Martinson

1904–1978

She is borne on in something which exists

but need not follow in the ways of thought,

through God and Death and Mystery she goes,

our space-ship without trace or goal.

Oh, could we but turn back to our base

now we have fathomed what our space-ship is

—a tiny bubble in a glass of God.

Aniara [1956]¹

Hans J[oachim] Morgenthau

1904–1980

Nuclear destruction destroys the meaning of death by depriving it of its individuality. It destroys the meaning of immortality by making both society and history impossible. It destroys the meaning of life by throwing life back upon itself.

Death in the Nuclear Age [1961]

Pablo Neruda [Neftalí Ricardo Reyes y Basualto]

1904–1973

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair [1924]. Tonight I Can Write

there are so many people dead

and so many sea-walls that the red sun used to split,

and so many heads that the boats hit,

and so many hands that have closed around kisses,

and so many things I would like to forget.

Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth) [1925–1935]. No Hay Olvido (Sonata) [There Is No Forgetfulness (Sonata)]²

Treacherous

generals:

look at my dead house,

look at broken Spain.

Residencia en la Tierra (Residence on Earth), series III [1947]. Explico Algunas Cosas (I Explain a Few Things)³

But from each crime are born bullets

that will one day seek out in you

where the heart lies.

Residencia en la Tierra, III. Explico Algunas Cosas

Give me silence, water, hope.

Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.

Canto General (General Song) 1950. Alturas de Macchu Picchu⁴ (The Heights of Macchu Picchu)

Come up with me, American love.

Kiss these secret stones with me.

The torrential silver of the Urubamba

makes the pollen fly to its golden cup.

The hollow of the bindweed’s maze,

the petrified plant, the inflexible garland,

soar above the silence of these mountain coffers.

Canto General (General Song). Alturas de Macchu Picchu (The Heights of Macchu Picchu)

When the trumpet sounded, it was

all prepared on the earth,

the Jehovah parceled out the earth

to Coca Cola, Inc., Anaconda,

Ford Motors, and other entities:

The Fruit Company, Inc.

reserved for itself the most succulent,

the central coast of my own land,

the delicate waist of America.

Canto General. The United Fruit Co.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

The Captain’s Verses [1952]. If You Forget Me³

Poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.

Address to Continental Congress of Culture, Santiago, Chile [May 26, 1953]

What a great language I have, it’s a fine language we inherited from the fierce Conquistadors.… They carried everything off and left us everything.… They left us the words.

Confieso Que He Vivido: Memorias (Memoirs)⁵ [1974], ch. 2

J[ulius] Robert Oppenheimer

1904–1967

It did not take atomic weapons to make man want peace, a peace that would last. But the atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It has made the prospect of future war unendurable.

The Atomic Bomb and College Education [1946]

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

Physics in the Contemporary World, lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [November 25, 1947]

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.…“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

Recalling the explosion of the first atomic bomb near Alamogordo, New Mexico [July 16, 1945].¹ From LEN GIOVANITTI and FRED FREED, The Decision to Drop the Bomb [1965]

S[idney] J[oseph] Perelman

1904–1979

For years I have let dentists ride roughshod over my teeth; I have been sawed, hacked, chopped, whittled, bewitched, bewildered, tattooed, and signed on again; but this is cuspid’s last stand.

The New Yorker [May 18, 1935]. Nothing But the Tooth

Outside of a spring lamb trotting into a slaughterhouse, there is nothing in the animal kingdom as innocent and foredoomed as the new purchaser of a country place.

Acres and Pains [1947], ch. 2

There are nineteen words in Yiddish that convey gradations of disparagement from a mild, fluttery helplessness to a state of downright, irreconcilable brutishness. All of them can be usefully employed to pinpoint the kind of individuals I write about.

Interview in Paris Review [1964]

Dr. Seuss [Theodor Seuss Geisel]

1904–1991

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

Horton Hears a Who! [1954]

You will see something new.

Two things. And I call them

Thing One and Thing Two.

The Cat in the Hat [1957]

And when things start to happen,

don’t worry. Don’t stew.

Just go right along.

You’ll start happening too.

OH!

THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! [1960]

I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

The Lorax [1971]

Isaac Bashevis Singer

1904–1991

Where was He, the jealous and vengeful God, now that America and England and Russia were rebuilding Germany? And what was He doing, “He who settest free the captives,” for those millions whom Stalin had imprisoned in slave-labor camps? No, even if there was a God, Jacob Anfang would not serve Him. If there was a God, He was probably a cosmic Hitler who for His honor and His greatness was prepared to torture whole generations, entire peoples.

Shadows on the Hudson [1957–1958]

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.

Isaac Bashevis Singer Talks… About Everything, interview with Richard Burgin in the New York Times Magazine [November 26, 1978]

There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love.… In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity.

Nobel lecture, Stockholm [December 8, 1978]

Buildings will collapse, power plants will stop generating electricity. Generals will drop atomic bombs on their own populations. Mad revolutionaries will run in the streets, crying fantastic slogans. I have often thought it would begin in New York. This metropolis has all the symptoms of a mind gone berserk.

The Cafeteria² [1986]

Betty [Wehner] Smith

1904–1972

There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [1943]

George Stevens

1904–1975

When the movie industry was young, the film-maker was its core and the man who handled the business details his partner…. When he finally looked around, he found his partner’s name on the door. Thus the film-maker became the employee, and the man who had the time to attend to the business details became the head of the studio.

Quoted in Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema [1968]

Parker Tyler

1904–1974

The secret of the power of Hollywood gods and goddesses is that they seem to do everything anyone else does except that when they die—in movies—they die over and over; when they love, they love over and over. Even as the gods do, they undergo continual metamorphoses, never losing their identities, being Rita Hayworth or Glenn Ford no matter what their movie aliases.

Magic and Myth of the Movies [1947]

Thomas [Fats] Waller

1904–1943

[On Art Tatum:] I only play piano, but tonight God is in the house.

Attributed

Raymond Aron

1905–1983

[On the Cold War:] Peace impossible, war improbable.¹

Le Grand Schisme (The Great Schism) [1948]

Communist interpretation is never wrong. Logicians will object in vain that a theory which exempts itself from all refutations escapes from the order of truth.

L’Opium des Intellectuels (The Opium of the Intellectuals) [1955]

Elias Canetti

1905–1994

Some sentences release their poison only after years.

Notebook entry [1942] in The Human Province [1973]

People who cannot find their way out of history are lost, and so are their nations.

Notebook entry [1943] in The Human Province

The unity of a nation consists mainly in its being able to act, when necessary, like a single paranoiac.

Notebook entry [1945] in The Human Province

It is always the enemy who started it. Even if he was not the first to speak out, he was certainly planning it; and if he was not actually planning it, he was thinking of it; and, if he was not thinking of it, he would have thought of it.

Crowds and Power [1960]

No massacre protects against the next one.

The Secret Heart of the Clock: Notes, Aphorisms, Fragments 1973–1985²

No poet comes into being without the disorder of reading.

The Secret Heart of the Clock [1987]

Christian Dior

1905–1957

In a century which attempts to tear the heart out of every mystery, fashion guards its secret well, and is the best possible proof that there is still magic abroad.

Dior by Dior [1957]

Dorothy Fields

1905–1974

I can’t give you anything but love, baby,

That’s the only thing I’ve plenty of, baby.

Blackbirds of 1928 [1928]. I Can’t Give You Anything but Love

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]

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.

Swing Time [1936]. A Fine Romance

Viktor Frankl

1905–1997

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who asked.

Man’s Search for Meaning [translation, 1959, of… trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager, 1946]

J[ames] William Fulbright

1905–1995

When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. It has no apparatus to deal with the boor, the liar, the lout, and the antidemocrat in general.

Address to the U.S. Senate [February 2, 1954]

A policy that can be accurately, though perhaps not prudently, defined as one of “peaceful coexistence.”

Speech in the Senate [March 27, 1964]

The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.

Speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association [April 28, 1966]

Greta Garbo [Greta Gustafson]

1905–1990

I want to be alone.¹

Attributed

Vasily Grossman

1905–1964

Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.

Life and Fate [completed 1960; published 1985]

Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.

Life and Fate

Lillian Hellman

1905–1984

Cynicism is only an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

The Little Foxes [1939], act I

There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them eat it.

The Little Foxes, III

All Fascists are not of one mind, one stripe. There are those who give the orders, those who carry out the orders, those who watch the orders being carried out. Then there are those who are half in, half hoping to come in. They are made to do the dishes and clean the boots.

Watch on the Rhine [1941], act III

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.

Letter to the House Committee on Un-American Activities [May 19, 1952]

People change and forget to tell each other.

Toys in the Attic [1960]

Howard Hughes

1905–1976

Every man has his price, or a guy like me couldn’t exist.

Attributed

Patrick Kavanagh

1905–1967

Patrick Maguire, the old peasant, can neither be damned nor glorified:

The graveyard in which he will lie will be just a deep-drilled potato-field

Where the seed gets no chance to come through

To the fun of the sun.

The tongue in his mouth is the root of a yew.

The Great Hunger [1942]

Arthur Koestler

1905–1983

One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.

Darkness at Noon¹ [1941]. The Second Hearing

The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

Darkness at Noon. The Grammatical Fiction

Stanley Kunitz

1905–2006

I recognize the gods’ capricious hand

And write this poem for money, rage, and love.

The Thief [1958]

The thing that eats the heart is mostly heart.

The Thing That Eats the Heart [1958], last line

In every house of marriage

there’s room for an interpreter.

Route Six [1979]

You have become like us,

disgraced and mortal.

Next-to-Last Things. The Wellfleet Whale

Darling, do you remember

the man you married? Touch me,

remind me who I am.

Passing Through [1995]. Touch Me

Phyllis McGinley

1905–1977

Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps

To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.

Ode to the End of Summer

Prince, I warn you, under the rose,

Time is the thief you cannot banish.

These are my daughters, I suppose.

But where in the world did the children vanish?

Ballade of Lost Objects [1954]

M[ontague] F[rancis] Ashley Montagu

1905–1999

We know that children are developing human beings who will continue developing all their lives if they are not prevented. And we begin to understand that the goal of life is to die young—as late as possible!

Growing Young [1981]

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

Science and Creationism [1984]

Herbert Morrison

1905–1989

Oh, the humanity!

Radio broadcast of Hindenburg disaster [May 6, 1937]

Barnett Newman

1905–1970

An artist paints so that he will have something to look at.

The Tiger’s Eye [1947]. The Ides of Art

Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or “life,” we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.

The Sublime Is Now [1948]

John O’Hara

1905–1970

An artist is his own fault.

The Portable F. Scott Fitzgerald [1945], introduction

Anthony Powell

1905–2000

Parents—especially step-parents—are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfill the promise of their early years.

A Buyer’s Market [1952]

He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful.

The Acceptance World [1955], ch. 1

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

The Acceptance World

Books Do Furnish a Room

Title of book [1971]

The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

Books Do Furnish a Room [1971]

Michael Powell

1905–1990

It is not generally recognized by the public that the most genuinely creative member of a film unit, if the author of the original story and screenplay is excluded, is the art director.

A Life in Movies [1986]

Ayn Rand

1905–1982

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The Fountainhead [1943]

Great men can’t be ruled.

The Fountainhead

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline.

The Fountainhead

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans—I would choose—because it contains all the others—the fact that they were the people who created the phrase “to make money.” No other language or nation had ever used these words before.… Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.

Atlas Shrugged [1957]

Mary Renault [Eileen Mary Challans]

1905–1983

Man’s immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal.

Fire from Heaven [1969]

Jean Paul Sartre

1905–1980

All consciousness is consciousness of something.

The Transcendence of the Ego¹ [1936]; Sartre is summarizing the thought of Edmund Husserl

Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift… that’s nausea.

La Nausée (Nausea) [1938]

It’s quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don’t do it.

La Nausée (Nausea)²

We do not do what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are—that is the fact.

Situations [1939], II

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

L’Être et le Néant (Being and Nothingness) [1943]

I am condemned to be free.

L’Être et le Néant

Young man, do not sit in judgment on the gods. They have their secrets—and their sorrows.

Les Mouches (The Flies)³ [1943], spoken by Zeus

Hell is—other people!⁴

Huis-Clos (No Exit) [1944], sc. v

Never were we freer than under the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to speak. We were insulted to our faces every day and had to remain silent. We were deported en masse, as workers, Jews, or political prisoners. Everywhere—on the walls, on the movie screens, and in the newspapers—we came up against the vile, insipid picture of ourselves our oppressors wanted to present to us. Because of all this, we were free.

The Republic of Silence [1944]⁵

Every text possesses a meaning, even if that meaning is far removed from the one the author dreamed of putting into it.

Introducing Les Temps Modernes [1945]⁶

The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning.

Anti-Semite and Jew [1946]

Existence precedes essence.

Existentialism Is a Humanism [1946]

I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

Existentialism Is a Humanism¹

Words are loaded pistols.

Literature and Existentialism [1949]

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Saint Genet, Comédien et Martyr (Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr)² [1952]

Our victims know us by their wounds and shackles: that is what makes their testimony irrefutable. They only need to know what we have done to them for us to realize what we have done to ourselves.

Preface to Frantz Fanon’s Les condamnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth)³ [1961]

I found more reality in the idea than in the thing because it was given to me first and because it was given as a thing. It was in books that I encountered the universe: digested, classified, labeled, pondered, still formidable.

Les mots (The Words)³ [1964]

I was escaping from Nature and at last becoming myself, that Other whom I was aspiring to be in the eyes of others.

Les mots²

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

Declaration refusing the Nobel Prize [October 22, 1964]

I don’t need God in order to love my neighbor.

Quoted in SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, La Cérémonie des Adieux [1981] (English translation, Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre [1984])

Wallace Stanley Sayre

1905–1972

In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue. That is why academic politics are so bitter.

Saying⁴

Sir C[harles] P[ercy] Snow

1905–1980

Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists.… Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.

The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution [1959]

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. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution

Diana Trilling

1905–1996

We are all of us, men and women both, the creatures of culture: we do and feel what our societies ask us to, and the demands put upon us are not always consistent or precisely correlated with biology.

Female Biology in a Male Culture [1970]

Lionel Trilling

1905–1976

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.

The Liberal Imagination [1950]. Preface

The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

The Liberal Imagination. Freud and Literature

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination.

The Liberal Imagination. The Function of the Little Magazine

The classic defense of literary study holds that, from the effect which the study of literature has upon the private sentiments of a student, there results, or can be made to result, an improvement in the intelligence, and especially the intelligence as it touches the moral life.

The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English [1965]

Dalton Trumbo

1905–1976

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god I’m glad I’m dead because death is always better than dishonor? Did they say I’m glad I died to make the world safe for democracy? Did they say I like death better than losing liberty?

Johnny Got His Gun (novel) [1939]

You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.

Johnny Got His Gun

To speak of justice and Jews in the same breath is a logical absurdity.

Exodus (screenplay) [1960], spoken by David Opatoshu

When a free man dies, he loses the pleasure of life. A slave loses his pain. Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That’s why he’s not afraid of it. That’s why we’ll win.

Spartacus¹ (screenplay) [1960], spoken by Kirk Douglas

Robert Penn Warren

1905–1989

The end of man is knowledge, but there’s one thing he can’t know. He can’t know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can’t know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn’t got and which if he had it, would save him.

All the King’s Men [1946]

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood

By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard

The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon

And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

Audubon: A Vision [1969]

Hannah Arendt

1906–1975

One truth that is unfamiliar to the Jewish people, though they are beginning to learn it, is that you can only defend yourself as the person you are attacked as.

The Jewish Army—The Beginning of Jewish Politics?; published in the German-language New York newspaper Aufbau [November 14, 1941]

Hell in the most literal sense was embodied by those types of camps perfected by the Nazis, in which the whole of life was thoroughly and systematically organized with a view to the greatest possible torment.

The Origins of Totalitarianism [1951], ch. 12

Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous.

The Origins of Totalitarianism, 12

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

The Origins of Totalitarianism, 13

Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.

The Human Condition [1958], ch. 6

For memory and depth are the same, or rather, depth cannot be reached by man except through remembrance.

What Is Authority? [1959]. Between Future and Past

It was as though in those last minutes he [Eichmann]² 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

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could have been.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, epilogue

Where all, or almost all, are guilty, nobody is.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, epilogue

The hypocrite’s crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

On Revolution [1963], ch. 2

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.

Truth and Politics [1967]

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

Men in Dark Times [1968]. Isak Dinesen

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

On Violence [1970]

The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children, when yesterday’s executioner becomes today’s victim.

On Violence

Alan Barth

1906–1979

News is only the first rough draft of history.

Review of Harold Ickes’s The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon [1943]

Marston Bates

1906–1974

We remain important, you and I and all mankind. But so is the butterfly—not because it is good for food or good for making medicine or bad because it eats our orange trees. It is important in itself, as a part of the economy of nature.

The Forest and the Sea [1960], ch. 1

Samuel Beckett

1906–1989

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Murphy [1938]

That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.

Waiting for Godot [1952], act I

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!

Waiting for Godot, I

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Waiting for Godot, II

Estragon: I can’t go on like this.

Vladimir: That’s what you think.

Waiting for Godot, II

In my head there are several windows, that I do know, but perhaps it is always the same one, open variously on the parading universe.

Molloy [1951; English translation 1955]

What I’d like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my goodbyes, finish dying.

Molloy

Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.

Molloy, closing words

He who has waited long enough will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.

Malone Dies [1951; English translation 1956]

Clov: Do you believe in the life to come?

Hamm: Mine was always like that.

Endgame [1957]

I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent.

Endgame

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.

Endgame

I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.

The Unnamable [1959]

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, closing words

To have been always what I am—and so changed from what I was.

Happy Days [1961], act 2

No, life ends and no, there is nothing elsewhere, and no question now of ever finding again that white speck lost in whiteness, to see if they still lie still in the stress of that storm, or of a worse storm, or in the black dark for good, or the great whiteness unchanging, and if not what they are doing.

Imagination Dead Imagine [1965]

I’m not unhappy enough. [Pause.] That was always my unhap, unhappy, but not unhappy enough.

Rough for Theatre I [1979]

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Worstward Ho [1983]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1906–1945

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

The Cost of Discipleship¹ [1937]

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.

The Cost of Discipleship

Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.

The Cost of Discipleship

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.… Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed—in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical—and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

Letters and Papers from Prison [1943–1945]. On Stupidity

William J[oseph] Brennan, Jr.

1906–1997

All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guaranties.… But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.

Roth v. United States [1957]

Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and that… may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan [1964]

The chilling effect upon the exercise of First Amendment rights may derive from the fact of the prosecution, unaffected by prospects of its success or failure.

Dombrowski v. Pfister [1965]

If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.

Eisenstadt v. Baird [1972]

Our nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination… rationalized by an attitude of “romantic paternalism” which, in practical effect, put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

Frontiero v. Richardson [1973]

We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans.… For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

Speech, Washington, D.C. [October 12, 1985]

Louise Brooks

1906–1985

All actors know that truly natural acting is rejected by the audience. Although people are better equipped to judge acting than any other art, the hypocrisy of “sincerity” prevents them from admitting that they, too, are always acting some role of their own invention.

Lulu in Hollywood [1982]

Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead.

Lulu in Hollywood

Lord Buckley [Richard Myrle Buckley]

1906–1960

But I’m gonna put a cat on you was the coolest, grooviest, swingin’est, wailin’est, strongest, swingin’est cat that ever stomped on this jumpin’ green sphere. And they called this here cat The Nazz.

The Parabolic Revelations of the Late Lord Buckley, LP [1952]. The Nazz

William Empson

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

Imagine then, by miracle, with me,

(Ambiguous gifts, as what gods give must be)

What could not possibly be there,

And learn a style from a despair.

Poems. This Last Pain

Albert Hofmann

1906–2008

This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive substance with extraordinary properties and potency. There was to my knowledge no other substance known that evoked such profound psychic effects in such extremely low doses, that caused such dramatic changes in human consciousness and in our experience of the inner and outer worlds.

LSD: My Problem Child [1979]

Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.

New York Times interview [January 7, 2006]

John Huston

1906–1987

Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (screenplay) [1948], spoken by Alfonso Bedoya¹

John Huston

1906–1987

and

Ben Maddow

1909–1992

Crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.

The Asphalt Jungle (screenplay) [1950], spoken by Louis Calhern

Philip Johnson

1906–2005

You cannot not know history.

Maxim

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

Quoted in the New York Times [December 27, 1964]

Charles Lederer

1906–1976

I bring you a warning—every one of you listening to my voice. Tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are: watch the skies, everywhere, keep looking—keep watching the skies!

The Thing (screenplay) [1951]

I always say a kiss on the hand might feel very good, but a diamond tiara lasts forever.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (screenplay) [1953], spoken by Marilyn Monroe

Curtis [Emerson] LeMay

1906–1990

My solution to the problem [of North Vietnam] would be to tell them 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]

Oscar Levant

1906–1972

Strip away the phoney tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.

Quoted in ALVAH CECIL BESSIE’s Inquisition in Eden [1965]

My last picture for Warners was Romance on the High Seas. It was Doris Day’s first picture; that was before she became a virgin.

Memoirs of an Amnesiac [1965]

Emmanuel Levinas

1906–1995

The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation.

Totality and Infinity² [1961]

Dwight Macdonald

1906–1982

Can one imagine that The Bomb could ever be used “in a good cause”? Do not such means instantly, of themselves, corrupt any cause? The bomb is the natural product of the kind of society we have created. It is as easy, normal, and unforced an expression of the American Way of Life as electric ice-boxes, banana splits, and hydro-matic drive automobiles.

Politics Magazine [August 1945]

A whole middle culture has come into existence and it threatens to absorb both its parents. This intermediate form—let us call it Midcult—has the essential qualities of Masscult—the formula, the built-in reaction, the lack of any standard except popularity—but it decently covers them with a cultural figleaf. In Masscult the trick is plain—to please the crowd by any means. But Midcult has it both ways: it pretends to respect the standards of High Culture while in fact it waters them down and vulgarizes them.

Masscult and Midcult [1960]

David W. Maurer

1906–1981

A confidence man prospers only because of the fundamental dishonesty of his victim.

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man [1940]

Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat.

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

1906–2001

The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.

The Wave of the Future [1940]

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

Gift from the Sea [1955], ch. 3

Clifford Odets

1906–1963

This is your life and mine! It’s skull and bones every incha the road! Christ, we’re dyin’ by inches!

Waiting for Lefty [1935]

Go out and fight so life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills.

Awake and Sing! [1935]

I’m no spring chicken. The clock goes and Bessie goes. Only my machinery can’t be fixed.

Awake and Sing!

We could have made beautiful music together.

The General Died at Dawn (screenplay) [1936]

Clifford Odets

1906–1963

and

Ernest Lehman

1915–2005

I’d hate to take a bite out of you; you’re a cookie full of arsenic.

Sweet Smell of Success (screenplay) [1957], spoken by Burt Lancaster

I don’t want tips from the kitty. I’m in the big game with the big players. My experience I can give you in a nutshell, and I didn’t dream it in a dream either. Dog eat dog. In brief: from now on the best of everything is good enough for me.

Sweet Smell of Success (screenplay), spoken by Tony Curtis

You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.¹

Sweet Smell of Success (screenplay), spoken by Burt Lancaster

Satchel [Leroy] Paige

c. 1906–1982

Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful. Avoid running at all times. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.

How to Stay Young [1953]

Harold Rosenberg

1906–1978

The canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act—rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze, or “express” an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.

Art News [1952]

Action Painting has to do with self-creation or self-definition or self-transcendence; but this dissociates it from self-expression, which assumes the acceptance of the ego as it is, with its wound and its magic.

Jackson Pollock exhibition catalogue [1958]

George Sanders

1906–1972

Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

Suicide note, April 25, 1972

William [Milligan] Sloane [III]

1906–1974

There is one thing to be said for Mondays. They take the mind off everything else.

To Walk the Night [1937]

Jim Thompson

1906–1977

We’re living in a funny world, kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the Good People are fighting to keep it from us.

The Killer Inside Me [1952]

The darkness and myself. Everything else was gone. And the little that was left of me was going, faster and faster.

Savage Night [1953]

Jim Thompson

1906–1977

and

Stanley Kubrick

1928–1999

You know, I’ve often thought that the gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They are admired and hero-worshipped, but there is always present underlying wish to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory.

The Killing¹ (screenplay) [1956], spoken by Kola Kwariani

Elmer Wheeler

1906–1968

Don’t sell the steak; sell the sizzle. It is the sizzle that sells the steak and not the cow, although the cow is, of course, mighty important.

Principle number 1 of salesmanship [c. 1936]

T[erence] H[anbury] White

1906–1964

The best thing for being sad… is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn.

The Once and Future King [1939], spoken by Merlin

Billy [Samuel] Wilder

1906–2002

and

Charles Brackett

1892–1969

The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians.

Ninotchka (screenplay) [1939], spoken by Greta Garbo

Ninotchka, it’s midnight. One half of Paris is making love to the other half.

Ninotchka (screenplay), spoken by Melvyn Douglas

Do you ever lie in your bed looking at the window? A little daylight’s coming through, and you start wondering: is it getting lighter, is it getting darker? Is it dawn or dusk? That’s a terrifying problem, Nat. You hold your breath and you pray that it’s dusk, so you can go out and get yourself some more liquor. Because if it’s dawn, you’re dead. The bars are closed and the liquor stores don’t open till nine.

The Lost Weekend [1945], based on novel by Charles R. Jackson, spoken by Ray Milland

And out there in that great big concrete jungle, I wonder how many others there are like me. Poor bedeviled guys on fire with thirst. Such comical figures to the rest of the world, as they stagger blindly toward another binge—another bender—another spree.

The Lost Weekend (screenplay) [1945], based on novel by Charles R. Jackson, spoken by Ray Milland

[Joe Gillis]: You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.

[Norma Desmond]: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

Sunset Boulevard (screenplay) [1950], spoken by William Holden and Gloria Swanson

We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces.

Sunset Boulevard (screenplay), spoken by Gloria Swanson

All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

Sunset Boulevard (screenplay), spoken by Gloria Swanson

Billy [Samuel] Wilder

1906–2002

and

Raymond Chandler

1888–1959

How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?

Double Indemnity (screenplay) [1944], spoken by Fred MacMurray

Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money—and for a woman—and I didn’t get the money, and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?

Double Indemnity (screenplay), spoken by Fred MacMurray

Billy [Samuel] Wilder

1906–2002

and

I. A. L. Diamond [Itzek Domnici]

1920–1988

Look how she moves! It’s like Jell-O on springs.

Some Like It Hot (screenplay) [1959], spoken by Jack Lemmon about Marilyn Monroe

Henny Youngman

1906–1998

Take my wife… please!

Comedy line

W[ystan] H[ugh] Auden¹

1907–1973

Let us honor if we can

The vertical man

Though we value none

But the horizontal one.

Epigraph for Poems [1930]

The greater the love, the more false to its object,

Not to be born is the best for man;

After the kiss comes the impulse to throttle,

Break the embraces, dance while you can.

O Who Can Ever Gaze His Fill [1936]

Death is a G-man. You may think yourself smart,

But he’ll send you to the hot-seat or plug you through the heart;

He may be a slow worker, but in the end

He’ll get you for the crime of being born, my friend.

Blues (For Hedli Anderson) [1937]

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 or pardon.

Spain [1937]

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm.

Lullaby [1937], st. 1

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreaded cards foretell,

Shall be paid, but from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Lullaby, st. 3

‘In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.’

As I Walked Out One Evening [1937], st. 8

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.

Musée des Beaux Arts [1938]

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Funeral Blues [1938]

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

Funeral Blues

Evil is unspectacular and always human,

And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

Herman Melville [1939]

Say this city has ten million souls,

Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:

Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

Refugee Blues [1939]

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odor of death

Offends the September night.

September 1, 1939 [1939], st. 1

We must love one another or die.

September 1, 1939, st. 8

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its saying where executives

Would never want to tamper

In Memory of W. B. Yeats, 2 [1939]

Earth, receive an honored guest;

William Yeats is laid to rest.

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats, 3, st. 1

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats, 3, st. 2

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats, 3, st. 3

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats, 3, st. 6

To us he is no more a person

Now but a whole climate of opinion.

In Memory of Sigmund Freud [1939], st. 17

One rational voice is dumb: over a grave

The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.

  Sad is Eros, builder of cities,

  And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

In Memory of Sigmund Freud, st. 28

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,

Speaking clearly and most severely,

Law is as I’ve told you before,

Law is as you know I suppose,

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.

Law Like Love [1939], st. 4

Like love we don’t know where or why

Like love we can’t compel or fly

Like love we often weep

Like love we seldom keep.

Law Like Love, last stanza

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.

The Unknown Citizen (To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) [1939]

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

The Unknown Citizen (To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Epitaph on a Tyrant [1940]

O let none say I Love until aware

What huge resources it will take to nurse

One ruining speck, one tiny hair

That casts a shadow through the universe.

In Sickness and in Health [1940]

And children swarmed to him like settlers. He became a land.

Edward Lear [1945]

If thou must choose

Between the chances, choose the odd;

Read the New Yorker; trust in God;

And take short views.

Under Which Lyre [1946], last stanza

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

Homage to Clio [1957]. First Things First

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 practicing it.

The Dyer’s Hand [1962]. Foreword

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

The Dyer’s Hand. Pt. I, 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.

The Dyer’s Hand, I, 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.

The Dyer’s Hand, I, Writing

Whatever its actual content and overt interest, every poem is rooted in imaginative awe. Poetry can do a hundred and one things, delight, sadden, disturb, amuse, instruct—it may express every possible shade of emotion, and describe every conceivable kind of event, but there is only one thing that all poetry must do; it must praise all it can for being and for happening.

The Dyer’s Hand, II, Making, Knowing and Judging

The tape recorder is not my favorite instrument. In the old days only God heard every idle word; today it is not only broadcast to thousands of the living but also preserved to gratify the idle curiosity of the unborn.

The New Yorker [March 9, 1963]. An Improbable Life

Thoughts of his own death,

like the distant roll

of thunder at a picnic.

Marginalia [1965–1968]

Though the great artists of the past could not change the course of history, it is only through their work that we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead a fully human life is impossible.

Secondary Worlds [1968]. Words and the Word

Jacques Barzun

1907–2012

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game—and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.

God’s Country and Mine [1954], ch. 8

Rachel [Louise] Carson

1907–1964

The sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at last returns to the sea—to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.

The Sea Around Us [1951], ch. 14, ending

The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two successive days is the shore line precisely the same.

The Edge of the Sea [1955]

There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example—where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices.

Silent Spring [1962]

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.

Silent Spring

In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference.

Silent Spring

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

Silent Spring

As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.

Silent Spring

The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

Silent Spring

Alec Coppel

1907–1972

and

Samuel A. Taylor

1912–2000

Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere.

Vertigo (screenplay) [1958], spoken by Kim Novak

Charles [Ormond] Eames [Jr.]

1907–1978

Design addresses itself to the need.

Questionnaire for exhibition What Is Design? [1969]

We wanted to make the best for the most for the least.

Quoted in An Eames Primer [2001]

Daphne du Maurier

1907–1989

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Rebecca [1938], first line

Loren Eiseley

1907–1977

We are all potential fossils still carrying within our bodies the crudities of former existences, the marks of a world in which living creatures flow with little more consistency than clouds from age to age.

The Immense Journey [1957]

Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.

The Immense Journey

The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger, and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.

The Immense Journey

Mircea Eliade

1907–1986

Healer and psychopomp, the shaman is these because he commands the techniques of ecstasy—that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has already been there.

Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy¹ [1951]

A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it—the element of the sacred.

Patterns of Comparative Religion [1963], from the Author’s Foreword

Blind Boy Fuller [Fulton Allen]

1907–1941

Keep on truckin’.

Truckin’ My Blues Away [1936], widely disseminated as caption of a cartoon by R. Crumb

Robert A. Heinlein

1907–1988

An armed society is a polite society.

Beyond This Horizon [1948]

I am all that I grok.

Stranger in a Strange Land [1961]

Moderation is for monks.

Time Enough for Love [1973]

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Time Enough for Love

Katharine Hepburn

1907–2003

[On Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers:] He gives her class. She gives him sex.

Attributed

Abraham Joshua Heschel

1907–1972

Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible.

The Prophets [1962]

Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.

Religion and Race (sermon) [January 14, 1963]

We must continue to remind ourselves that in a free society all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, all are responsible.

Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity [1996]. A Prayer for Peace

Edward Heyman

1907–1981

I cover the waterfront,

I’m watching the sea.

Will the one I love

Be coming back to me?

I cover the waterfront

In search of my love,

And I’m covered by

A starless sky above.

I Cover the Waterfront [1933]; music by Johnny Green

A. D. [Alec Derwent] Hope

1907–2000

And her five cities, like five teeming sores,

Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state

Where second-hand Europeans pullulate

Timidly on the edge of alien shores.

Australia [1939]

[Magdalena Carmen] Frida Kahlo [y Calderón]

1907–1954

I have suffered two grave accidents in my life—one when I was 16 when a streetcar knocked me down.… The other accident is Diego.

Quoted by the photographer Gisèle Freund in the Mexican newspaper Novedade [June 10, 1951], on Diego Rivera

Lincoln Kirstein

1907–1996

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria—sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness—performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression.

Four Centuries of Ballet [1970]

Louis MacNeice

1907–1963

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 forever,

But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.

Bagpipe Music, last stanza

The sunlight on the garden

Hardens and grows cold.

We cannot cage the minute

Within its nets of gold,

When all is told

We cannot beg for pardon.

The Earth Compels [1938]. The Sunlight on the Garden

A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what?

To the small fire that never leaves the sky.

To the great fire that boils the daily pot.

To all the things we are not remembered by,

Which we remember and bless. To all the things

That will not even notice when we die,

Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.

Autumn Sequel [1954]. A Fanfare for the Makers

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.

Collected Poems [1966]. Snow

Alberto Moravia [Alberto Pincherle]

1907–1990

The very conformation of the two organs, the female difficult of access, the male incapable of directing itself of its own accord like an arm or leg, but requiring to be aided by the whole body, seemed to me indicative of the absurdity of the sexual act.

Boredom (La noia)¹ [1960]

Varlam Shalamov

1907–1982

I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.

Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag [1961]

I[sidor] F[einstein] Stone

1907–1989

Those who set out nobly to be their brother’s keeper sometimes end up by becoming his jailer. Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie.

In Defense of the Campus Rebels [1969]

John Wayne [Marion Mitchell Morrison]

1907–1979

Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much.

Advice on acting

Robert Ardrey

1908–1980

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at?… The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen.

African Genesis [1961]

Simone de Beauvoir

1908–1986

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

The Blood of Others [1946]

The present enshrines the past—and in the past all history has been made by men.

The Second Sex [1949–1950], introduction

This has always been a man’s world, and none of the reasons hitherto brought forward in explanation of this fact has seemed adequate.

The Second Sex, pt. II, ch. 4

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

The Second Sex, II, 4

One is not born a woman, one becomes one.¹

The Second Sex, IV, 12

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength, each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving.

The Second Sex, V, 2

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.

The Second Sex, V, 16

When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the “division” of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.

The Second Sex, VII, conclusion

It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.

The Second Sex, VII, conclusion

It’s not a very big step from contentment to complacency.

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter [1958]

Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it making its way toward me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it.

Force of Circumstance [1965]

Harry A[ndrew] Blackmun

1908–1999

The right of privacy… is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 153 [1973]

In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 [1978]

For today, at least, the law of abortion stands undisturbed. For today, the women of this Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows.

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490 [1989]

From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

Dissenting opinion in Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141 [1994]

Sydney Boehm

1908–1990

We’re sisters under the mink.

The Big Heat (screenplay) [1953], spoken by Gloria Grahame

Henri Cartier-Bresson

1908–2004

The Decisive Moment²

Title of book [1952]

We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

The Decisive Moment [1952]

Quentin Crisp [Denis Charles Pratt]

1908–1999

I became one of the stately homos³ of England.

The Naked Civil Servant [1968]

I now know that if you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

The Naked Civil Servant

Bette Davis [Ruth Elizabeth Davis]

1908–1989

It is true that I never should have married, but I didn’t want to live without a man. Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I’m afraid it did.

The Lonely Life [1962]

[Of a starlet:] There goes the famous good time that was had by all.

Attributed

M[ary] F[rances] K[ennedy] Fisher

1908–1992

In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavor. We are as a nation taste-blind.

Serve It Forth [1937]

There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.

The Gastronomical Me [1943]. Foreword

When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.¹

The Gastronomical Me. Foreword

It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.

The Gastronomical Me

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

An Alphabet for Gourmets [1949]. A is for Dining Alone

Ian [Lancaster] Fleming

1908–1964

I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini—with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please.

Dr. No [1958], ch. 14

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.

Goldfinger [1959]

John Kenneth Galbraith

1908–2006

One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.

The Great Crash, 1929 [1955], ch. 1

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

The Affluent Society [1958], ch. 1

The hallmark of the conventional wisdom is acceptability. It has the approval of those to whom it is addressed.

The Affluent Society, 2

The leisure class has been replaced by another and much larger class to which work has none of the older connotation of pain, fatigue, or other mental or physical discomfort. We have failed to observe the emergence of this New Class, as it may be simply called.

The Affluent Society, 24

The individual serves the industrial system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it by consuming its products.

The New Industrial State [1967], ch. 4

What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, increasing sensual pleasure and for enhancing caloric intake above any nutritional requirement. Nonetheless, the belief that increased production is a worthy social goal is very nearly absolute.

The New Industrial State, 14

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

The Age of Uncertainty [1977], ch. 12

The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

The Affluent Society [1977 edition], The Concept of the Conventional Wisdom

Trickle-down theory—the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.

The Culture of Contentment [1992], ch. 8

Martha Gellhorn

1908–1998

Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.

Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir [1978]

Solitude is all right with books, awful without.

Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir

After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.

The Face of War [1986]

Lyndon B[aines] Johnson

1908–1973

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

To Bill Moyers in conversation [1960]

I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God’s.

Statement after assassination of John F. Kennedy [November 22, 1963]

Come now, let us reason together.

Saying

Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?

In conversation, on being advised of the political risks of pushing for civil rights legislation [November 27, 1963], cited by ROBERT A. CARO in The Passage of Power [2012]

All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

First address to Congress as President [November 27, 1963]

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 in the books of law.

First address to Congress as President

Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

State of the Union Address [January 8, 1964]

There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem.

Address to Congress [March 15, 1964]

We still seek no wider war.

Radio/television speech [August 4, 1964] on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution

We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Remark at Akron University, Akron, Ohio [October 21, 1964]

With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.

Television address [March 31, 1968]

It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in.

On FBI director J. Edgar Hoover; quoted in The New York Times [October 31, 1971]

I do understand power.… I know where to look for it, and how to use it.

Quoted in Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate [2003]

Otto Kerner, Jr.

1908–1976

Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders [1968], p. 1

Claude Lévi-Strauss

1908–2009

The world began without the human race and it will end without it.… Man has never—save only when he reproduces himself—done other than cheerfully dismantle million upon million of structures and reduce their elements to a state in which they can no longer be reintegrated.

Tristes Tropiques¹ [1955]. Conclusion

The anthropologist is the astronomer of the social sciences: His task is to discover a meaning for configurations which, owing to their size and remoteness, are very different from those within the observer’s immediate purview.

Structural Anthropology² [1958], The Place of Anthropology in the Social Sciences

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact.

The Raw and the Cooked¹ [1964]. Overture

Albert Maltz

1908–1985

and

Malvin Wald

1917–2008

There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.

The Naked City (screenplay) [1948]

Thurgood Marshall

1908–1993

While the Union survived the Civil War, the Constitution did not.

Speech to San Francisco Patent and Trademark Law Association, Maui, Hawaii [May 6, 1987]

Abraham Maslow

1908–1970

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

The Psychology of Science [1966]

William Maxwell [Keepers, Jr.]

1908–2000

I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn’t have gone through and couldn’t get back to the place I hadn’t meant to leave.

So Long, See You Tomorrow [1980]

Joseph R[aymond] McCarthy

1908–1957

I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five [people] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.

Speech, Wheeling, West Virginia [February 9, 1950]

Olivier Messaien

1908–1992

The birds are the opposite of time. They represent our longing for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant song.

Program note for Quartet for the End of Time [1941]

Certain people are annoyed that I believe in God. But I want people to know that God is present in everything, in the concert hall, in the ocean, on a mountain, even on the underground.

Interview with Jean-Christophe Marti [January 1992]

Joseph [Quincy] Mitchell

1908–1996

I was young then, and much more courteous to older people—and to everyone else, for that matter, as I look back on it—than I should have been. Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time—time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.

Joe Gould’s Secret [1965]

Arnaldo Momigliano

1908–1987

The reality of change, which is the reality of death, cannot be wiped out. In the future we may as historians have to study long-term changes which are for the moment hardly conceivable. But I cannot foresee history ever becoming a science of the permanent.

Historicism Revisited [1974]

Edward R[oscoe] Murrow

1908–1965

This—is London.

Opening phrase for broadcasts from London during World War II [1939–1945]

One is almost stunned into silence by some of the information reaching London. Some of it is months old, but it’s eyewitness stuff supported by a wealth of detail and vouched for by responsible governments. What is happening is this: Millions of human beings, most of them Jews, are being gathered up with ruthless efficiency and murdered.

CBS radio broadcast [December 13, 1942]

I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words.

Broadcast report from London on Buchenwald concentration camp [April 15, 1945]

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.

See It Now (broadcast). Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy [March 7, 1954]

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

See It Now [March 9, 1954]

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

See It Now

A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There’s nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I’ve done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom—it’s gone.

Quoted in TV Guide [February 5, 1955]

When the politicians complain… that television turns their proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there. Television has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.

Television and Politics [1959], Guildhall lecture delivered in London

Good night, and good luck.

Broadcast sign-off

Frank S. Nugent

1908–1965

I’ve still got my saber, Reverend. Didn’t turn it into no plowshare, neither.

The Searchers (screenplay) [1956], spoken by John Wayne

Frank S. Nugent

1908–1965

and

Laurence Stallings

1894–1968

The army is always the same. The sun and the moon change, but the army knows no seasons.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (screenplay) [1949], spoken by John Wayne

Never apologize, mister. It’s a sign of weakness.¹

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (screenplay), spoken by John Wayne

George Oppen

1908–1984

I know that no one would live out

Thirty years, fifty years if the world were ending

With his life.

The Materials [1962]. Image of the Engine

It is possible that a world without art is simply and flatly uninhabitable.

The Mind’s Own Place [1963]

Possible

To use

Words provided one treat them

As enemies.

This in Which [1965]. A Language of New York

  It is terrible to see the children,

The righteous little girls;

So good, they expect to be so good…

This In Which. Street

For the people of that flow

Are new, the old

New to age as the young

To youth

Of Being Numerous [1968]. Of Being Numerous

Imagine a man in the ditch,

The wheels of the overturned wreck

Still spinning—

I don’t mean he despairs, I mean if he does not

He sees in the manner of poetry

Of Being Numerous. Route

Cesare Pavese

1908–1950

The girls are all giggling, then one girl suddenly remembers

the wild goat. Up there, on the hilltop, in the woods

and rocky ravines, the peasants saw him butting his head

against the trees, looking for the nannies. He’s gone wild,

and the reason why is this: if you don’t make an animal work,

if you keep him only for stud, he likes to hurt, he kills.

Hard Labor² [1936]. The Goat God

One stops being a child when one realizes that telling one’s trouble does not make it better.

This Business of Living: Diaries 1935–1950, 31st October 1937

Waiting is still an occupation. It is having nothing to wait for that is terrible.

This Business of Living: Diaries 1935–1950, 15th September 1946

Suicides are timid murderers.

This Business of Living: Diaries 1935–1950, 17th August 1950

Ann Petry

1908–1997

Her voice had a thin thread of sadness running through it that made the song important, that made it tell a story that wasn’t in the words—a story of despair, of loneliness, of frustration. It was a story that all of them knew by heart and had always known because they had learned it soon after they were born and would go on adding to it until the day they died.

The Street [1946]

While you were out working to pay the rent on this stinking, rotten place, why, the street outside played nursemaid to your kid. The street did more than that. It became both mother and father and trained your kid for you, and it was an evil father and a vicious mother, and, of course, you helped the street along by talking to him about money.

The Street

W[illard] V[an Orman] Quine

1908–2000

We know what it is like to be conscious, but not how to put it into satisfactory scientific terms. Whatever it precisely may be, consciousness is a state of the body, a state of nerves.

Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary [1987]

Theodore Roethke

1908–1963

My secrets cry aloud.

I have no need for tongue.

My heart keeps open house,

My doors are widely flung.

Open House [1941], st. 1

This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,

Cut stems struggling to put down feet,

What saint strained so much,

Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?

Cuttings (later) [1948]

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

My Papa’s Waltz [1948], st. 1

I study the lives on a leaf: the little

Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions,

Beetles in caves, newts, stone-deaf fishes,

Lice tethered to long limp subterranean weeds,

Squirmers in bogs,

And bacterial creepers.

The Minimal [1948]

Fear was my father, Father Fear.

His look drained the stones.

The Lost Son [1948], 3. The Gibber

A lively understandable spirit

Once entertained you.

It will come again.

Be still.

Wait.

The Lost Son, 5. “It was beginning winter”

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils,

And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile.

Elegy for Jane [1953]

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]

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

The Waking

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,

When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;

Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:

The shapes a bright container can contain!

I Knew a Woman [1958]

When I was a lark, I sang;

When I was a worm, I devoured.

What Can I Tell My Bones? [1958]

I see, in evening air,

How slowly dark comes down on what we do.

In Evening Air [1964]

I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.

The Longing [1964]

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

In a Dark Time [1964], st. 1

The soul has many motions, body one.

The Motion [1964], I

Brooding on God, I may become a man.

Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire;

What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.

The Marrow [1964], II

Lord, hear me out, and hear me out this day:

From me to Thee’s a long and terrible way.

The Marrow, III

William Saroyan

1908–1981

The most solid advice, though, for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze [1934]. Preface to the First Edition

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

The Time of Your Life [1939]

Everybody’s behind the eight-ball!

The Time of Your Life

No foundation. All the way down the line.

The Time of Your Life

Lionel [Jay] Stander

1908–1994

I may be here as a witness but I am not charged with anything. I am not here as a dupe, a dope, a mope, a mole, or a schmoe.

To the House Un-American Activities Committee [May 6, 1953]

C[omer] Vann Woodward

1908–1999

The twilight zone that lies between living memory and written history is one of the favorite breeding places of mythology.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow [1955]

Richard Wright

1908–1960

He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough.

Native Son [1940], bk. I

Goddammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in jail.

Native Son, I

Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling?

Native Son, I

If we had been allowed to participate in the vital processes of America’s national growth, what would have been the textures of our lives, the pattern of our traditions, the routine of our customs, the state of our arts, the code of our laws, the function of our government!… We black folk say that America would have been stronger and greater.

12 Million Black Voices [1941]

I was building up in me a dream which the entire educational system of the South had been rigged to stifle.

Black Boy [1944; published 1977]

Well, what I had got out of living in the city? What had I got out of living in the South? What had I got out of living in America? I paced the floor, knowing that all I possessed were words and a dim knowledge that my country had shown me no examples of how to live a human life.

Black Boy (American Hunger)

James Agee

1909–1955

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915 [1938]

May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915

If I could do it, I’d do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement.… A piece of the body torn out by the root might be more to the point.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [1941]. Preamble

All over Alabama the lamps are out. Every leaf drenches the touch; the spider’s net is heavy. The roads lie there with nothing to use them. The fields lie there, with nothing at work in them, neither man nor beast.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. On the Porch: 1

Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

As most men realized, the first atomic bomb was a merely pregnant threat, a merely infinitesimal promise.

TIME [August 20, 1945]. Victory: The Peace

Several tons of dynamite are set off in this picture; none of it under the right people.

Review of the film Tycoon, in The Nation [February 14, 1948]

Most movies are like predigested food because they are mere reenactments of something that happened (if ever) back in the scripting stage.

Undirectable Director, in Life [September 18, 1950]

Nelson Algren

1909–1981

He had met him before, that certain down-at-heel vet growing stooped from carrying a thirty-five-pound monkey on his back.

The Man with the Golden Arm [1949]

[On Chicago:] Yet once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.

Chicago, City on the Make [1951]

A Walk on the Wild Side

Title of book [1956]

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than your own.¹

A Walk on the Wild Side [1956]

Saul Alinsky

1909–1972

This is the world as it is. This is where you start.

Rules for Radicals [1971]

Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

Rules for Radicals

Eric Ambler

1909–1998

The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.

A Coffin for Dimitrios [1939], ch. 2

International big business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood!

A Coffin for Dimitrios, 5

Francis Bacon

1909–1992

My painting is not violent; it’s life that is violent… Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. You are born, you fuck, you die. What could be more violent than that?

Interview with Francis Giacobetti [1991–1992]

Sir Isaiah Berlin

1909–1997

There exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single, central vision, one system more or less coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel… 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.… Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second.

The Hedgehog and the Fox² [1953], pt. 1

One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals.… This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution.

Two Concepts of Liberty [1958]

Peter Drucker

1909–2005

Leave enough time unscheduled; anyone in a decision-making position should, as a rule, schedule no more than half his time.

How to Be an Effective Executive [1961], in Nation’s Business

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

Managing for Business Effectiveness [1963]

If a subject has become obsolete, the university faculty makes a required course out of it.

The Age of Discontinuity [1969]

A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.

People and Performance [1977]. What Is a Business?

The basic economic resource—the “means of production” to use the economist’s term—is no longer capital, nor natural resources (the economist’s “land”), nor “labor.” It is and will be knowledge.

Post-Capitalist Society [1993]

Every organization of today has to build into its very structure the management of change.

Post-capitalist Society

Julius J. Epstein

1909–2000

and

Philip G. Epstein

1909–1952

and

Howard E. Koch

1916–1995

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine!

Casablanca (screenplay) [1942], spoken by Humphrey Bogart

I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Casablanca (screenplay), spoken by Humphrey Bogart

Play it, Sam.¹

Casablanca (screenplay), spoken by Ingrid Bergman

Here’s looking at you, kid.

Casablanca (screenplay), spoken by Humphrey Bogart

We’ll always have Paris.

Casablanca (screenplay), spoken by Humphrey Bogart

I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

Casablanca (screenplay), spoken by Claude Rains

Round up the usual suspects.

Casablanca (screenplay), spoken by Claude Rains

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Casablanca (screenplay), closing line, spoken by Humphrey Bogart

Barry Goldwater

1909–1998

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And… moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination [July 16, 1964]

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

Campaign speech [October 21, 1964]

You don’t need to be “straight” to fight and die for your country; you just need to shoot straight.

Quoted in Pure Goldwater [1993]

Clement Greenberg

1909–1994

Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations.… Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times.

Avant-Garde and Kitsch [1939]

All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.

Review in The Nation [April 7, 1945]

Chester Himes

1909–1984

My feelings are too intense. I hate too bitterly, I love too exaltingly, I pity too extravagantly, I hurt too painfully. We American blacks call that “soul.”

The Quality of Hurt [1972]

Edwin [Herbert] Land

1909–1991

The bottom line is in heaven.

Reply [1977] rejecting view that only the bottom line of the balance sheet shows the worth of a product

Stanislaw J[erzy] Lec

1909–1966

One has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren’t enough policemen to control them.

Unkempt Thoughts¹ [1962]

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

More Unkempt Thoughts¹ [1968]

Malcolm Lowry

1909–1957

And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell.

It is not Mexico of course but in the heart.

Under the Volcano [1947], ch. 1

How alike are the groans of love, to those of the dying.

Under the Volcano, 12

Success is like some horrible disaster

Worse than your house burning

Selected Poems [1962]. After Publication of Under the Volcano

Joseph L[eo] Mankiewicz

1909–1993

We’re a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk; we are the original displaced personalities.

All About Eve (screenplay) [1950], spoken by George Sanders

Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.

All About Eve, spoken by Bette Davis

Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.

All About Eve, spoken by Bette Davis

I’ll admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.

All About Eve, spoken by Bette Davis

The difference between a screenplay and real life is that a screenplay has to make sense.

Attributed

Johnny Mercer

1909–1976

Hooray for Hollywood!

Where you’re terrific if you’re even good,

Where anyone at all from Shirley Temple

To Aimee Semple

Is equally understood.

Go out and try your luck,

You might be Donald Duck!

Hooray for Hollywood² [1938]

Skylark,

Have you seen a valley green with spring

Where my heart can go a-journeying,

Over the shadows and the rain

To a blossom-covered lane?

Skylark² [1941]

That old black magic has me in its spell,

That old black magic that you weave so well.

Those icy fingers up and down my spine,

The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.

Star Spangled Rhythm [1942]. That Old Black Magic³

So, set ’em up, Joe,

I’ve got a little story you oughta know.

We’re drinking, my friend,

To the end of a brief episode,

Make it one for my baby

And one more for the road.

The Sky’s the Limit [1943]. One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)³

You’ve got to

Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive,

E-lim-my-nate the negative,

Latch on to the affirmative,

Don’t mess with Mister In-between.

Here Come the Waves [1944]. Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive³

Laura is the face in the misty light,

Footsteps that you hear down the hall,

The laugh that floats on a summer night

That you can never quite recall.

Laura⁴ [1945]

Your lips were like a red and ruby chalice,

Warmer than a summer night.

The clouds were like an alabaster palace,

Rising to a snowy height.

Each star its own aurora borealis,

Suddenly you held me tight.

I could see the midnight sun.

Midnight Sun⁵ [1949]

When an irresistible force such as you

Meets an old immovable object like me,

You can bet as sure as you live,

Something’s gotta give.

Something’s Gotta Give [1954]

We’re after the same

Rainbow’s end,

Waitin’ round the bend,

My huckleberry friend,

Moon River

And me.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s [1961]. Moon River¹

The days of wine and roses

Laugh and run away

Like a child at play

Through a meadow land

Toward a closing door

A door marked “Nevermore”

That wasn’t there before

Days of Wine and Roses¹ [1962]

Elting E[lmore] Morison

1909–1995

The computer is no better than its program.

Men, Machines and Modern Times [1966]

Kwame Nkrumah

1909–1972

We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.

Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah [1967]

C[yril] Northcote Parkinson

1909–1993

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson’s Law [1957], ch. 1

Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse.

Parkinson’s Law

Expenditure rises to meet income.

Parkinson’s Law

David Riesman

1909–2002

While all people want and need to be liked by some of the people some of the time, it is only the modern other-directed types who make this their chief source of direction and chief area of sensitivity.

The Lonely Crowd [1950], ch. 1

Dean Rusk

1909–1994

Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France’s cemeteries?

Remark to Charles de Gaulle, in response to his order that all U.S. military personnel leave France [1966]

Stephen Spender

1909–1995

I think continually of those who were truly great…

The names of those who in their lives fought for life,

Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.

Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,

And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

I Think Continually of Those

Wallace Stegner

1909–1993

We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

Letter to David Pesonen [1960]

Home is a notion that only the nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.

Angle of Repose [1971]

Tommy Trinder

1909–1989

[On American troops stationed in Britain during World War II:] Overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and over here.

Attributed

Simone Weil

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. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

The Power of Words [1937]

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

The Iliad, or The Poem of Force [1940]

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Letter to Joë Bousquet [April 13, 1942]

The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

Prelude to Politics [1943]

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Gravity and Grace (La Pesanteur et la Grâce) [1947]

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

Gravity and Grace

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring, real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. “Imaginative literature,” therefore, is either boring or immoral or a mixture of both.

Gravity and Grace

Purity is the ability to contemplate defilement.

Gravity and Grace

The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.

The Need for Roots [1949]

Eudora Welty

1909–2001

The storm had rolled away to faintness like a wagon crossing a bridge.

A Curtain of Green [1941]. A Piece of News

People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness—wrapped like bulbs, she thought soberly; I don’t know what makes them onions or hyacinths.

Delta Wedding [1946]

All they could see was sky, water, birds, light, and confluence. It was the whole morning world.

The Optimist’s Daughter [1978]

Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever really lost.

One Writer’s Beginnings [1984]. Finding a Voice

I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.

One Writer’s Beginnings. Finding a Voice

It is our inward journey that leads us through time—forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling.

One Writer’s Beginnings. Finding a Voice

Paul Bowles

1910–1999

The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it’s having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.

The Spider’s House [1955], spoken by Alain Moss

Margaret Wise Brown

1910–1952

Goodnight stars

Goodnight air

Goodnight noises everywhere

Goodnight Moon [1947]

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

1910–1997

Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course. It happened to me at Le Mourillon on that summer’s day, when my eyes were opened to the sea.

The Silent World [1953], ch. 1

We must go and see for ourselves.¹

Motto of his ship Calypso

Jean Genet

1910–1986

Our domestic life and the law of our Homes do not resemble your Homes. We love each other without love. Our homes do not have the sacramental character. Fags are the great immoralists.

Our Lady of the Flowers [1943]

Though it was at my heart’s bidding that I chose the universe wherein I delight, I have at least the power of finding in it the many meanings I wish to find: there is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.

The Thief’s Journal¹ (Le Journal du Voleur) [1949]

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.

The Thief’s Journal

I recognize in thieves, traitors, and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty—a sunken beauty.

The Thief’s Journal

I call saintliness not a state but the moral procedure leading to it.

Quoted by JEAN PAUL SARTRE in Saint Genet [1952]

Frank Loesser

1910–1969

Here we are,

Out of cigarettes,

Holding hands and yawning,

Look how late it gets.

Two sleepy people, by dawn’s early light,

And too much in love to say “Good night.”

Thanks for the Memory [1938]. Two Sleepy People²

I’d love to get you

On a slow boat to China.

All to myself alone.

On a Slow Boat to China [1948]

When you meet a gent

Paying all kinds of rent

For a flat

That would flatten the Taj Mahal

Call it sad, call it funny,

But it’s better than even money

That the guy’s only doin’ it for some doll.

Guys and Dolls [1950]. Guys and Dolls

Ask me how do I feel,

Ask me now that we’re cozy and clinging.

Well, sir, all I can say is,

If I were a bell I’d be ringing.

Guys and Dolls. If I Were a Bell

Jacques Monod

1910–1976

Man must at last finally awake from his millenary dream and, in doing so, awake to his total solitude and fundamental isolation. Now does he finally realize that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world. A world that is deaf to his music, just as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his suffering or his crimes.³

Chance and Necessity [1970]

Charles Olson

1910–1970

I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America, from Folsom cave to now. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large, and without mercy.

Call Me Ishmael [1947]

What does not change/is the will to change.

The Kingfishers [1949]

I hunt among stones.

The Kingfishers

I have had to learn the simplest things

last. Which made for difficulties.

The Maximus Poems [1953]. Maximus, to himself

As the dead prey upon us,

they are the dead in ourselves,

awake, my sleeping ones, I cry out to you,

disentangle the nets of being!

The Distances [1960]. As the Dead Prey upon Us

Abraham Polonsky

1910–1999

What are you gonna do? Kill me? Everybody dies.

Body and Soul (screenplay) [1947], spoken by John Garfield

Abraham [Alexander] Ribicoff

1910–1998

[Referring to police action against protestors:] With George McGovern as President of the United States we wouldn’t have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago.

Speech, Democratic National Convention [1968]

Peter De Vries

1910–1993

There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.

The Tunnel of Love [1954]

We know God will forgive our sins. The question is what he will think of our virtues.

Comfort Me with Apples [1956]

My secret ambition is to sell a million copies of every book, and then also have a small, select cult of aficionados who look down on my mass audience.

Quoted in People Magazine [September 29, 1980]

C[icely] V[eronica] Wedgwood

1910–1997

The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.

The Thirty Years War [1938]

Mother Teresa [Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu]

1910–1997

Let us do something beautiful for God.

Motto

Today the greatest means, the greatest destroyer of peace, is abortion.… Because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you kill me?

Speech on accepting the Nobel Peace Prize [1979]

J. L. Austin

1911–1960

I am not sure importance is important: truth is.

Philosophical Papers [1961]

John Ball

1911–1988

They call me Mr. Tibbs.

In the Heat of the Night [1965], ch. 4, and film [1967]

Sybille Bedford

1911–2006

Life is never as bad nor as good as one thinks.

A Legacy [1956]

In Europe where human relations like clothes are supposed to last, one’s got to be wearable. In France one has to be interesting, in Italy pleasant, in England one has to fit.

A Visit to Don Ottavio [1960]

You see, when one’s young one doesn’t feel part of it yet, the human condition; one does things because they are not for good; everything is a rehearsal—to be repeated ad lib, to be put right when the curtain goes up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance.

A Compass Error [1968]

To remain monolingual reduces the mind to the confines of a tramline.

Quicksands: A Memoir [2005]

Elizabeth Bishop

1911–1979

This iceberg cuts its facets from within.

Like jewelry from a grave

it saves itself perpetually and adorns

Only itself.

The Imaginary Iceberg [1946], st. 3

   Until everything

was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

And I let the fish go.

The Fish [1946]

Everything only connected by “and” and “and.”

Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance [1948]

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

element bearable to no mortal,

to fish and to seals…

At the Fishhouses [1955]

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the cold hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

At the Fishhouses

   Should we have stayed at home,

wherever that may be?

Questions of Travel [1965]

His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.

Poor bird, he is obsessed!

The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray,

mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

Sandpiper [1965]

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.

The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove

and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Sestina [1965]

   The staring sailor

that shakes his watch

that tells the time

of the poet, the man

that lies in the house of Bedlam.

Visits to St. Elizabeths [1965], st. 11

—Yesterday brought to today so lightly!

(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)

Five Flights Up [1976]

How had I come to be here

like them, and overhear

a cry of pain that could have

got loud and worse but hadn’t?

In the Waiting Room [1976]

I said to myself: three days

and you’ll be seven years old.

I was saying it to stop

the sensation of falling off

the round, turning world

into cold, blue-black space.

But I felt: you are an I,

you are an Elizabeth,

you are one of them.

Why should you be one, too?

I scarcely dared to look

to see what it was I was.

In the Waiting Room

The sun set in the sea; the same odd sun

rose from the sea,

and there was one of it and one of me.

Crusoe in England [1976]

Home-made, home-made! But aren’t we all?

Crusoe in England

   I’d have

nightmares of other islands

stretching away from mine, infinities

of islands, islands spawning islands

like frogs’ eggs turning into polliwogs

of islands, knowing that I had to live

on each and every one, eventually,

for ages, registering their flora,

their fauna, their geography.

Crusoe in England

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Geography III [1976]. One Art

Life and the memory of it cramped,

dim, on a piece of Bristol board.

Poem [1976]

I’d like to retire there and do nothing,

or nothing much, forever, in two bare rooms:

look through binoculars, read boring books,

old, long, long books, and write down useless notes,

talk to myself, and, foggy days,

watch the droplets slipping, heavy with light.

The End of March [1976]

“Fun”—it always seemed to leave you at a loss.

North Haven [1978]

Nature repeats herself, or almost does:

Repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.

North Haven

Lack of observation seems to me one of the cardinal sins, responsible for so much cruelty, ugliness, dullness, bad manners—and general unhappiness, too.

Letter to Anne Stevenson [January 8, 1964]

There’s nothing more embarrassing than being a poet, really.

Paris Review [1978]

Louise Bourgeois

1911–2010

An artist’s words are always to be taken cautiously. The finished work is often a stranger to, and sometimes very much at odds with what the artist felt or wished to express when he began.

An Artist’s Words [1954]

To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let you become a murderer.

Diary entry [August 27, 1984]

Hortense Calisher

1911–2009

A happy childhood can’t be cured. Mine’ll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that’s all, instead of a noose.

Queenie [1971]

E. M. Cioran

1911–1995

We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.

The New Gods¹ [1969]. Strangled Thoughts

A book is a postponed suicide.

The Trouble with Being Born¹ [1973]

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.

The Trouble with Being Born

Jay Dratler

1911–1968

Samuel Hoffenstein

1890–1947

and

Betty Reinhardt

1909–1954

I don’t use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.²

Laura (screenplay) [1944], spoken by Clifton Webb

Max Frisch

1911–1991

If anyone has a conscience it’s generally a guilty one.

The Fire Raisers¹ [1953]

It’s precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound most true to life.

I’m Not Stiller [1954]

When you love someone you leave every possibility open to them, and in spite of all the memories of the past you are ready to be surprised, again and again surprised, at how different they are, how various, not a finished image.

I’m Not Stiller

We wanted a labor force, but humans came.

On immigrant workers in Europe; Foreword [1965] to ALEXANDER J. SEILER, Siamo Italiani

Samuel Fuller

1911–1997

For moviegoers to get the idea of real combat, you’d have to shoot at them every so often from either side of the screen.

A Third Face [2002]

William Golding

1911–1993

Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

The Lord of the Flies [1954], ch. 12

Paul Goodman

1911–1972

Where there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers.

Growing Up Absurd [1960]

American society has tried so hard and so ably to defend the practice and theory of production for profit and not primarily for use that now it has succeeded in making its jobs and products profitable and useless.

Growing Up Absurd

Hubert H[oratio] Humphrey, Jr.

1911–1978

To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

Address to the Democratic National Convention [July 14, 1948]

Robert Johnson

1911–1938

When the train, it left the station

with two lights on behind

When the train, it left the station

with two lights on behind

Well, the blue light was my blues

and the red light was my mind.

Love in Vain [recorded 1937]

Clark Kerr

1911–2003

The university has become the multiversity and the nature of the presidency has followed this change.… The president of the multiversity is leader, educator, wielder of power, pump; he is also officeholder, caretaker, inheritor, consensus seeker, persuader, bottleneck. But he is mostly a mediator.

The Uses of the University. The Godkin Lectures at Harvard University [1963]

Noel Langley

1911–1981

Florence Ryerson

1892–1965

and

Edgar Allan Woolf

1881–1948

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.

The Wizard of Oz (screenplay)² [1939], spoken by Judy Garland

I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.

The Wizard of Oz (screenplay), spoken by Margaret Hamilton

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

The Wizard of Oz (screenplay), spoken by Frank Morgan

Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my!

The Wizard of Oz (screenplay), spoken by Judy Garland

Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?

The Wizard of Oz (screenplay), spoken by Margaret Hamilton

Marshall [Herbert] McLuhan

1911–1980

The medium is the message.

Understanding Media [1964], title of first chapter

There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV.… Hot media are… low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience.

Understanding Media, ch. 2

The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.

The Medium Is the Massage [1967]

Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.

Montreal Gazette [May 16, 1975]

Czeslaw Milosz

1911–2004

Whoever truly creates is alone.

The Captive Mind [1953]

The purpose of poetry is to remind us

how difficult it is to remain just one person,

for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,

and invisible guests come in and out at will.

Ars Poetica? [1968]

We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons

But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one

Considered himself a lost man.

A Task [1971]

May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks

Remind us of everything we have lost,

For we have seen on our way and fallen in love

With the world that will pass in a twinkling.

Collected Poems 1931–1987.¹ On Pilgrimage.

Human reason is beautiful and invincible.

No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,

No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.

Collected Poems 1931–1987.¹ Incantation

Flann O’Brien [Brian O’Nolan]

1911–1966

One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and interrelated only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

At Swim-Two-Birds [1939]

A pint of plain is your only man.

At Swim-Two-Birds

Strictly speaking, this story should not be written or told at all. To write it or to tell it is to spoil it. This is because the man who had the strange experience we are going to talk about never mentioned it to anybody, and the fact that he kept his secret and sealed it up completely in his memory is the whole point of the story. Thus we must admit that handicap at the beginning—that it is absurd for us to tell the story, absurd for anybody to listen to it and unthinkable that anybody should believe it.

John Duffy’s Brother [1941]

Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently?

The Third Policeman [written 1940; published 1967]

Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.

The Third Policeman

Kenneth Patchen

1911–1972

Let us have madness openly, O men

Of my generation. Let us follow

The footsteps of this slaughtered age.

Let Us Have Madness Openly [1936]

I take the word Europe

Or the word death

And tear them into tiny pieces;

I scatter them at your feet.

Cloth of the Tempest [1943]. The Dimensions of the Morning

I am the magical mouse

I don’t eat cheese

I eat sunsets

And the tops of trees.

The Magical Mouse [1952], st. 1

Oh lonesome’s a bad place

To get crowded into.

Lonesome Boy Blues [1952]

Nicholas Ray [Raymond Nicholas Kienzle]

1911–1979

It was never all in the script. If it were, why make the movie?

I Was Interrupted [1993]. I Hate a Script

Ronald [Wilson] Reagan

1911–2004

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.

TV broadcast [October 27, 1964]

Government is like a big baby—an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

Remark while campaigning for governor of California [1965]

Hispanics are Republicans, they just don’t know it.

Remark to pollster Lionel Sosa [1980]

We’re the party that wants to see an America in which people can still get rich.

Remark at Republican congressional dinner, Washington, D.C. [May 4, 1982]

Let us beware that while [Soviet rulers] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination over all the peoples of the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.… I urge you to beware the temptation… to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of all evil empires, 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 the National Association of Evangelicals [March 8, 1983]

I will not make age an issue.… I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.

Television debate with Walter Mondale [October 21, 1984]

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Press conference [August 12, 1986]

Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin [June 12, 1987]

We must always deal from strength and insist on verification of every agreement. In my meetings with the General Secretary I repeated several times a Russian proverb—“doveryai no proveryai”—“trust but verify.”

Letter to Gerald B. Broussard [February 15, 1988]

Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.

Remarks at White House [January 19, 1989]

I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.

Remarks at White House [June 26, 1989]

E[rnst] F[riedrich] Schumacher

1911–1977

Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered

Title of book [1973]

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Small Is Beautiful [1973]

John Archibald Wheeler

1911–2008

There is nothing in the world except empty curved space. Matter, charge, electromagnetism and other fields are only manifestations of the curvature of space.

Quoted in New Scientist [September 26, 1974]

Tennessee [Thomas Lanier] Williams

1911–1983

Time is the longest distance between two places.

The Glass Menagerie [1945], sc. vii

He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There’s even something—sub-human—something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something—apelike about him, like one of those pictures I’ve seen in—anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is—Stanley Kowalski—survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle!

A Streetcar Named Desire [1947], sc. iv

I don’t want realism.… I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic!… I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth.

A Streetcar Named Desire, sc. ix

Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

A Streetcar Named Desire, sc. xi

You know, then, that the public Somebody you are when you “have a name” is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath and which is the sum of your actions and so is constantly in a state of becoming under your own volition—and knowing these things, you can even survive the catastrophe of Success!

The Catastrophe of Success, The New York Times [November 30, 1947]

Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

The Rose Tattoo [1950]. Foreword, The Timeless World of a Play

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 II

Nothing’s more determined than a cat on a tin roof—is there? Is there, baby?

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, III, last line

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Orpheus Descending [1955]

Monsters don’t die early; they hang on long. Awfully long. Their vanity’s infinite, almost as infinite as their disgust with themselves.

Sweet Bird of Youth [1959], act 3

Daniel Aaron

1912–2016

American literature, for all its affirmative spirit, is the most searching and unabashed criticism of our national limitations that exists.

Writers on the Left [1961]

Charles Addams

1912–1988

May I borrow a cup of cyanide?

Cartoon caption

Wait a minute, can’t you? I’ve only got three hands.

Cartoon caption

Jorge Amado

1912–2001

Color of cinnamon

Clove’s sweet smell,

I’ve come a long way

To see Gabrielle.

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (Gabriela, Cravo e Canela) [1958], epigraph

Jean Améry [Hans Mayer]

1912–1978

Torture has an indelible character. Whoever was tortured, stays tortured.

At the Mind’s Limits [1966]

Michelangelo Antonioni

1912–2007

Eros is sick.

Statement for the premiere of L’Avventura at the Cannes film festival, 1960

The first quality of a director is to see. This quality is also valuable in dealing with actors. The actor is one of the elements of the image.

Reflections on the Film Actor [1961]

David Brower

1912–2000

Let us begin. Let us restore the Earth. Let the mountains talk, and the rivers run.

Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run [1995]

John Cage

1912–1992

I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.

The Future of Music: Credo [1937]

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.

The Future of Music: Credo

In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.

Four Statements on the Dance [1939–1957]

I have nothing to say  and I am saying it.

Lecture on Nothing [1949]

    Inspiration is not

a special occasion.

Silence [1961]. 45’ for a speaker [1954]

    It was by means of

words we became subservient.

Silence. 45’ for a Speaker

How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

Title of an ongoing diary and art project¹ [1965–1982]

John Cheever

1912–1982

In middle age there is mystery, there is mystification. The most I can make out of this hour is a kind of loneliness. Even the beauty of the visible world seems to crumble, yes even love.

Journal entry [late 1940s]

Jim and Irene Westcott were the kind of people who seem to strike that satisfactory average of income, endeavor, and respectability that is reached by the statistical reports in college alumni bulletins. They were the parents of two young children, they had been married nine years, they lived on the twelfth floor of an apartment house near Sutton Place, they went to the theatre on an average of 10.3 times a year, and they hoped someday to live in Westchester.

The Enormous Radio [1947]

When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.

Journal entry [1952]

Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. Courage tastes of blood. Stand up straight. Admire the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the Lord.

The Wapshot Chronicle [1957], ch. 36, end

Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.

The Brigadier and the Golf Widow [1964]. The Bella Lingua

It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits around saying, “I drank too much last night.”

The Swimmer [1964]

The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming—Diana and Helen—and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.

Stories [1978]. Goodbye, My Brother

It was at the highest point in the arc of a bridge that I became aware suddenly of the depth and bitterness of my feelings about modern life, and of the profoundness of my yearning for a more vivid, simple, and peaceable world.

Stories. The Angel of the Bridge

The short story is the literature of the nomad.

Why I Write Short Stories [1978]

Julia Child

1912–2004

This is a book for the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules, children’s meals, the parent-chauffeur-den mother syndrome, or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking [1961]

“Too much trouble,” “Too expensive,” or “Who will know the difference” are death knells for good food.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Karl Deutsch

1912–1992

To have power means not to have to give in, and to force the environment or the other person to do so. Power in this narrow sense is the priority of output over intake, the ability to talk instead of listen. In a sense, it is the ability to afford not to learn.

The Nerves of Government [1966]

Lawrence [George] Durrell

1912–1990

There are only three things to be done with a woman.… You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.

Justine [1957], pt. I

I felt once more the strange equivocal power of the city—its flat alluvial landscape and exhausted airs… Alexandria; which is neither Greek, Syrian nor Egyptian, but a hybrid: a joint.

Justine, I

Jacques Ellul

1912–1994

Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.

The Technological Society [1964]

I always apply a motto: “Think globally, act locally.”… By thinking globally I can analyze all phenomena, but when it comes to acting, it can only be locally and on a grassroots level if it is to be honest, realistic, and authentic.

Perspectives on Our Age. The Questions of My Life (CBC radio interview) [1979]

William Everson

1912–1994

Curlews, stilts and scissortails, beachcomber gulls,

Wave-haunters, shore-keepers, rockhead-holders, all cape-top vigilantes,

Now give God praise.

Send up the strict articulation of your throats,

And say His name.

A Canticle to the Waterbirds [1950]

Milton Friedman

1912–2006

Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself.… Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

Capitalism and Freedom [1962], ch. 1

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Capitalism and Freedom, 1

The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits

Title of essay in the New York Times Magazine [September 13, 1970]

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.¹

Attributed

Northrop Frye

1912–1991

Imagination creates reality, and as desire is a part of imagination, the world we desire is more real than the world we passively accept.

Fearful Symmetry [1947]

Criticism… is to art what history is to action and philosophy to wisdom.

Anatomy of Criticism [1957]

The supremacy of the verbal over the monumental has something about it of the supremacy of life over death.

The Great Code: The Bible and Literature [1982], ch. 8

Woody [Woodrow Wilson] Guthrie

1912–1967

California is a garden of Eden

A paradise to live in or see

But believe it or not

You won’t find it so hot

If you ain’t got the do-re-mi

Do-Re-Mi [1937]

Some will rob you with a six-gun

And some with a fountain pen.

Pretty Boy Floyd [1939]

Well, it’s always we ramble, that river and I,

All along your green valley I’ll work till I die,

My land I’ll defend with my life, if it be,

’Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free.

Pastures of Plenty [1941]

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]

Eugène Ionesco

1912–1994

There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.

Rhinoceros¹ [1960], act I

We haven’t the time to take our time.

Exit the King (Le Roi Se Meurt) [1963]

Edmond Jabès

1912–1991

I talked to you about the difficulty of being Jewish, which is the same as the difficulty of writing. For Judaism and writing are but the same waiting, the same hope, the same wearing out.

The Book of Questions² [1965]. The Book of the Absent: Third Part

John Lardner

1912–1960

Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.

Down Great Purple Valleys³ [1954], opening line

William Lederer

1912–2009

and

Eugene Burdick

1918–1965

The Ugly American

Title of book [1958]

Pope John Paul I [Albino Luciani]

1912–1978

He is Father. Even more, God is Mother, who does not want to harm us.

At Sunday Angelus blessing, St. Peter’s Square [September 17, 1978]

I am only a poor man, accustomed to small things and silence.

Illustrissimi [1978], epilogue

Mary [Therese] McCarthy

1912–1989

The happy ending is our national belief.

America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub [1947], collected in On the Contrary [1961]

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

The Contagion of Ideas [1952]. Collected in On the Contrary

Marxism, I saw, from the learned young men I listened to at Committee meetings, was something you had to take up young, like ballet dancing.

My Confession [1953]. Collected in On the Contrary

It may be that the whims of chance are really the importunities of design.

My Confession

I shall never send for a priest or recite an Act of Contrition in my last moments. I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person.

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood [1957]

If someone tells you he is going to make “a realistic decision,” you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

American Realist Playwrights [1961]

Every word she [Lillian Hellman] writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

Television interview [1980]

Thomas P. [Tip] O’Neill, Jr.

1912–1994

All politics is local.

Saying

[Harold] “Kim” Philby

1912–1988

To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged.

Interview in the Sunday Times of London [December 17, 1967]

Jackson Pollock

1912–1956

Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.

Radio interview with William Wright, 1950

I am nature.

Response to the idea that he wasn’t painting from nature

May Sarton [Eleanore Marie Sarton]

1912–1995

There is no end to the work of salvage

In the drowning high seas of Christmas

When loneliness, in the name of Christ

(That longing!), attacks the world.

Christmas Letter to a Psychiatrist [1970]

Studs [Louis] Terkel

1912–2008

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

Working [1972], introduction

Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.

Hope Dies Last [2003]

Barbara W. Tuchman

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.

The Guns of August [1962], ch. 2

The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit.

The Guns of August. Afterword

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 [1971]

Alan Mathison Turing

1912–1954

I propose to consider the question, “Can machines think?”

Computing Machinery and Intelligence [October 1950]

I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.

Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Patrick White

1912–1990

Inspiration descends only in flashes, to clothe circumstances; it is not stored up in a barrel, like salt herrings, to be doled out.

Voss [1957], ch. 2

Menachem Begin

1913–1992

A great day in the annals of two ancient nations, Egypt and Israel, whose sons met in battle five times, fighting and falling.… It is thanks to our fallen heroes that we could have reached this day.

On signing the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Washington, D.C.¹ [March 26, 1979]

Sammy Cahn

1913–1993

Love and marriage, love and marriage,

Go together like a horse and carriage.

Our Town² (television musical) [1955]. Love and Marriage

Love is lovelier

The second time around.

Just as wonderful with both feet on the ground.

It’s that second time you hear your love song sung

Makes you think perhaps that love, like youth, is wasted on the young.

High Time [1960]. The Second Time Around²

Albert Camus

1913–1960

Mother died today, or maybe it was yesterday.

The Stranger (L’Étranger) [1942], pt. I

For the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.

The Stranger, IV

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) [1942]

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The Myth of Sisyphus

The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man. One must believe that Sisyphus is happy.

The Myth of Sisyphus

It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

The Plague (La Peste) [1947]

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.

The Plague

He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.

The Plague

Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed, but in every case it is someone else’s blood. That is why some of our thinkers feel free to say just about anything.¹

Caliban [June 1948]; collected in Actuelles I [1950]

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Summer (L’Été) [1954]. Return to Tipasa

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.

The Fall (La Chute) [1956]

Robert Capa [Endre Ernö Friedmann]

1913–1954

If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.

Maxim

Aimé Césaire

1913–2008

And above all, my body as well as my soul, beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear.…

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land² [1939]

my negritude riddles with holes

the dense affliction of its worthy patience.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land [1947]

Elizabeth David

1913–1992

Good cooking is honest, sincere and simple, and by this I do not mean to imply that you will find in this, or indeed in any other book, the secret of turning out first-class food in a few minutes with no trouble. Good food is always a trouble and its preparation should be regarded as a labour of love.

French Country Cooking [1951]

The light of a Venetian dawn in early summer—you must be about at four o’clock in the morning to see the market coming to life—is so limpid and so still that it makes every separate vegetable and fruit and fish luminous with a life of its own, with unnaturally heightened colours and clear stencilled outlines. Here the cabbages are cobalt blue, the beetroots deep rose, the lettuces clear pure green, sharp as glass.

Italian Food [1954]

Robertson Davies

1913–1995

Vaudeville audiences… could give the loudest sighs I have ever heard. Prisoners in the Bastille couldn’t have touched them.

World of Wonders [1976]. A Bottle in the Smoke, pt. VIII

The magician Merlin had a strange laugh, and it was heard when nobody else was laughing.… He laughed because he knew what was coming next.

World of Wonders. A Bottle in the Smoke, VIII

Gerald R[udolph] Ford

1913–2006

I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln.

Comment after his nomination for the vice-presidency [October 12, 1973]

Our long national nightmare is over.

On being sworn in as President [August 9, 1974]

Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned. As I see it, the time has come to look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the Nation’s wounds, and to restore its health and its optimistic self-confidence.

Speech at Tulane University [April 23, 1975]

This union of corrected wrongs and expanded rights has brought the blessings of liberty to the two hundred and fifteen million Americans, but the struggle for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is never truly won.… Liberty is a living flame to be fed, not dead ashes to be revered, even in a Bicentennial Year.

Address [July 4, 1976]

Philip Guston

1913–1980

The visible world, I think, is abstract and mysterious enough.

Lecture [1978]

Donald Francis Mason

1913–1990

Sighted sub, sank same.

Radio message to U.S. Navy Base [January 28, 1942]

Richard M[ilhous] Nixon

1913–1994

The kids, like all kids, loved the dog [Checkers], and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.

Radio and TV speech responding to allegations of a political slush fund [September 23, 1952]

Isn’t it better to talk about the relative merits of washing machines than the relative strength of rockets?

To Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow “kitchen debate” [1959]

You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

To the press [November 7, 1962]

As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame. We hear sirens in the night. We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad. We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home. And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish: Did we come all this way for this?

Speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination [August 8, 1968]

The great silent majority.

Speech [November 3, 1969]

The Chinese are a great and vital people who should not remain isolated from the international community.… It is certainly in our interest, and in the interest of peace and stability in Asia and the world, that we take what steps we can toward improved practical relations with Peking.

First Foreign Policy Report to Congress [February 1970]

If when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation… acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.

Televised speech [April 30, 1970] announcing major United States offensive into Cambodia

I want you all to stonewall it.

Presidential transcript [March 22, 1973]

People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.

Press conference [November 11, 1973]

Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you. Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Address to members of the administration on leaving office [August 9, 1974]

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 had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

Interview with David Frost [May 4, 1977]

When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.

Interview with David Frost [May 19, 1977]

Tillie Olsen

1913–2007

She would not exchange her solitude for anything. Never again to be forced to move to the rhythms of others.

Tell Me a Riddle [1961], title story, sec. 1

Only help her to know—help make it so there is cause for her to know—that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.

Tell Me a Riddle. I Stand Here Ironing

The silences I speak of here are unnatural; the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.

Silences in Literature [1962]

Women are traditionally trained to place others’ needs first… their satisfaction to be in making it possible for others to use their abilities.

Silences [1978], pt. I

Rosa Parks

1913–2005

I had felt for a long time, that if I was ever told to get up so a white person could sit, that I would refuse to do so.

Recalling her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus [December 1, 1955]

Ad[olph Frederick] Reinhardt

1913–1967

Fine art can only be defined as exclusive, negative, absolute and timeless. It is not practical, useful, related, applicable, or subservient to anything else.

Twelve Rules for a New Academy [1953]

ART IS ART. EVERYTHING ELSE IS EVERYTHING ELSE.

25 Lines of Words on Art: Statement [1958]

Muriel Rukeyser

1913–1980

Fly down, Death: Call me:

I have become a lost name.

Madboy’s Song, refrain

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

The world would split open.

Käthe Kollwitz, sec. III

Delmore Schwartz

1913–1966

I am anonymous, and I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes to the movies, it is, as they say, a drug.

In Dreams Begin Responsibilitie¹ [1937]

In this our life there are no beginnings but only departures entitled beginnings, wreathed in the formal emotions thought to be appropriate and often forced. Darkly rises each moment from the life which has been lived and which does not die, for each event lives in the heavy head forever, waiting to renew itself.

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn.

For Rhoda [1938]

The World Is a Wedding

Title of book [1948]

That inescapable animal walks with me.

Has followed me since the black womb held,

Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,

A caricature, a swollen shadow,

A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,

Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,

The secret life of belly and bone.

The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me [1959], st. 3

The mind is a city like London,

Smoky and populous: it is a capital

Like Rome, ruined and eternal,

Marked by the monument which no one

Now remembers.

The Mind Is an Ancient and Famous Capital [1959]

Even paranoids have real enemies.

Attributed

Karl Shapiro

1913–2000

One day beside some flowers near his nose

He will be thinking, When will I look at it?

And pain, still in the middle distance, will reply

At what? and he will know it’s gone,

O where! and begin to tremble and cry.

He will begin to cry as a child cries

Whose puppy is mangled under a screaming wheel.

V-Letter [1944]. The Leg

To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew

Is the curriculum.

Poems of a Jew [1958]. University

I am an atheist who says his prayers.

The Bourgeois Poet [1964]. I Am an Atheist Who Says His Prayers

I didn’t go to the funeral of poetry. I stayed home and watched it on television.

The Bourgeois Poet. The Funeral of Poetry

Irwin Shaw

1913–1984

God Was Here but He Left Early

Title of story [1968] and book [1973]

May Swenson

1913–1989

Body my house

my horse my hound

what will I do

when you are fallen

Question [1954], st. 1

Where can I go

without my mount

all eager and quick

How will I know

in thicket ahead

is danger or treasure

when Body my good

bright dog is dead

Question, st. 3

The summer that I was ten–

Can it be there was only one

summer that I was ten?

The Centaur [1958]

Youth is given. One must put it away

like a doll in a closet,

take it out and play with it only

on holidays.

How to Be Old [1963]

It’s done

on a diamond,

and for fun.

It’s about

home, and it’s

about run.

Analysis of Baseball [1963]

Lewis Thomas

1913–1993

What is [the earth] most like?… It is most like a single cell.

The Lives of a Cell [1974]. The Lives of a Cell

There is really no such creature as a single individual; he has no more life of his own than a cast-off cell marooned from the surface of your skin.

The Lives of a Cell. Antaeus in Manhattan

Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth… is that it is alive.… Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos.… It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.

The Lives of a Cell. The World’s Biggest Membrane

I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species… in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of our fossils, radioactive at that.

The Fragile Species [1992]

John Berryman

1914–1972

We must travel in the direction of our fear.

A Point of Age [1942]

Mountainous, woman not breaks and will bend:

sways God nearby: anguish comes to an end.

Blossomed Sarah, and I

blossom. Is that thing alive? I hear a famisht howl.

Homage to Mistress Bradstreet [1953], st. 21

Huffy Henry hid the day,

Unappeasable Henry sulked.

77 Dream Songs [1964], poem no. 1

I don’t see how Henry, pried

open for all the world to see, survived.

77 Dream Songs, 1

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

77 Dream Songs, 14

        Two daiquiris

withdrew into a corner of the gorgeous room

and one told the other a lie.

77 Dream Songs, 16

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,

end anyone and hacks her body up

and hide the pieces, where they may be found.

He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.

Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.

Nobody is ever missing.

77 Dream Songs, 29

I myself walked at the funeral of tenderness.

77 Dream Songs, 46

    Something can (has) been said for sobriety but very little.

77 Dream Songs, 57

The world is gradually becoming a place

where I do not care to be any more.

His Toy, His Dream, His Rest [1968], poem no. 149

It is a true error to marry with poets

or to be by them.

His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, 187

        Decent fall the cloths

over a high income.

His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, 196

What was it missing, then, at the man’s heart

so that he does not wound?

His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, 219 (So Long? Stevens)

I haven’t lost a battle yet but I am tense

for the first losing.

His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, 315

Adolfo Bioy Casares

1914–1999

To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares; to be in love with one of those images was worse than being in love with a ghost (perhaps we always want the person we love to have the existence of a ghost).

The Invention of Morel [1940]¹

Daniel J[oseph] Boorstin

1914–2004

A pseudo-event… comes about because someone has planned, planted, or incited it. Typically, it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview.

The Image [1961], ch. 1

The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.

The Image, 1

We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so “realistic” that they can live in them.

The Image, 6

Julia de Burgos

1914–1953

We come from not being and march toward not being:

nothing between two nothings, zero between two zeros,

and since between two nothings nothing can be,

let’s drink to the splendor of not being our bodies.

Poema en Veinte Surcos [1938]. Nothing²

William Seward Burroughs

1914–1997

Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.

Junky³ [1953]

The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch—a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

Naked Lunch [1959]. Introduction

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves.

Naked Lunch, opening sentence

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.

Naked Lunch

The face of “evil” is always the face of total need.

Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness [1960]; reprinted in Naked Lunch [1962 edition]

The word is now a virus.⁴

The Ticket That Exploded [1962]

Irwin Corey

1914–2017

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than just with a kind word.

Quoted in the Seattle Daily Times [1962] during his run for president

If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re going.

Catchphrase

I feel more like I do now than when I first got here.

Catchphrase

Julio Cortázar

1914–1984

There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.

Final del juego⁵ (End of the Game) [1956]. Axolotl

As if the species in every individual were on guard against letting himself go too far along the road of tolerance, intelligent doubt, sentimental vacillation. At some given point the callus, the sclerosis, the definition is born: black or white, radical or conservative, homo- or heterosexual, the San Lorenzo team or the Boca Juniors, meat or vegetables, business or poetry.

Rayuela¹ (Hopscotch) [1963]

Marguerite Duras [Marguerite Donnadieu]

1914–1996

You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.

Hiroshima Mon Amour (screenplay) [1960], directed by Alain Resnais

Very early in my life it was too late.

The Lover [1984]

I grew old at eighteen. I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone, I’ve never asked.

The Lover

You’re always more unreal to yourself than other people are. In life, even if you include the false perspective of the mirror, you’re the person you see the least; and the best, composite image of yourself, the one you want to keep, is the specially prepared face that you try to summon up when you pose for your photograph.

Practicalities [1987]

Ralph [Waldo] Ellison

1914–1994

I am an invisible man.… I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

Invisible Man [1952], prologue

Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.

Invisible Man, ch. 1

If you don’t know where you are, you probably don’t know who you are.

Invisible Man, Epilogue

America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It’s “winner take nothing” that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many— This is not prophecy, but description.

Invisible Man, Epilogue

While one can do nothing about choosing one’s relatives one can, as artist, choose one’s “ancestors.”

Shadow and Act [1964]. The World and the Jug

When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.

Shadow and Act. Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke

The true artist destroys the accepted world by way of revealing the unseen.

The Art of Romare Bearden [1968]

The way to create a false identity is to think that you can ignore what went before.

From Interviews with Black Writers [1973]

Bill Finger

1914–1974

Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot. So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible.

Detective Comics #33 [November 1939], spoken by Bruce Wayne (Batman)

William Gibson

1914–2008

Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye.

The Miracle Worker [1956]

Brendan Gill

1914–1997

In fact, not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the argument that life is serious, though it is often hard and even terrible. And saying that, I am prompted to add what follows out of it: that since everything ends badly for us, in the inescapable catastrophe of death, it seems obvious that the first rule of life is to have a good time; and that the second rule of life is to hurt as few people as possible in the course of doing so. There is no third rule.

Here at the New Yorker [1975]

John Hersey

1914–1993

There was no sound of planes. The morning was still; the place was cool and pleasant.

Then a tremendous flash of light cut across the sky. Mr. Tanimoto has a distinct recollection that it traveled from east to west, from the city toward the hills. It seemed a sheet of sun. Both he and Mr. Matsuo reacted in terror.… Under what seemed to be a local dust cloud, the day grew darker and darker.

Hiroshima [1946], ch. 1

There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

Hiroshima, 1

Randall Jarrell

1914–1965

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner [1944]

A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.

Reflections on Wallace Stevens [1951]

Americans in Hell tell each other how to make Martinis.

Pictures from an Institution [1954]

        You know what I was,

You see what I am: change me, change me!

The Woman at the Washington Zoo [1960]

A novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.

An Unread Book [1965]

Weldon Kees

1914–1955

Robinson in Glen plaid jacket, Scotch-grain shoes,

Black four-in-hand and oxford button-down,

The jeweled and silent watch that winds itself, the brief-

Case, covert topcoat, clothes for spring, all covering

His sad and usual heart, dry as a winter leaf.

Poems 1947–1954 [1954]. Aspects of Robinson

John [Treville] Latouche

1914–1956

A fat pink cloud hangs over the hill

Unfolding like a rose.

If you hold my hand and sit real still

You can hear the grass as it grows.

The Golden Apple [1954]. Lazy Afternoon¹

They speak of seven sins in the Scripture

But our age has invented many more

So subtle and sweet that once you’ve slipped you’re

Never never able to go home any more

The Golden Apple. Hector’s Song

Robert Lindner

1914–1956

The psychopath… is a rebel, a religious dis-obeyer of prevailing codes and standards. Moreover, clinical experience with such individuals makes it appear that the psychopath is a rebel without a cause, an agitator without a slogan, a revolutionary without a program.

Rebel Without a Cause: The Story of a Criminal Psychopath [1944]

Joe Louis [Joseph Louis Borrow]

1914–1981

[On his military service:] I have only done what any red-blooded American would do. We gonna do our part, and we will win, because we are on God’s side.

Speech at Madison Square Garden [March 10, 1942]

He can run, but he can’t hide.

Remark before his heavyweight title fight with Billy Conn [June 19, 1946]

Bernard Malamud

1914–1986

There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go—if there are no doors or windows—he walks through a wall.

Rembrandt’s Hat [1972]. Man in the Drawer

There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction. What does that tell you about the nature of life, and does one really want to know?

Dubin’s Lives [1979], ch. 1

One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

Long Work, Short Life [1985]

Hugh Martin

1914–2011

and

Ralph Blane

1914–1995

Through the years we all will be together,

If the Fates allow.

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough,

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Meet Me in St. Louis [1944]. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Vance Packard

1914–1996

The Hidden Persuaders

Title of book [1957]

Norman Panama

1914–2003

and

Melvin Frank

1913–1983

The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.

The Court Jester (screenplay) [1956], spoken by Danny Kaye

Ross Parker

1914–1974

and

Hughie Charles

1907–1995

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]

Larry Parks

1914–1975

I have come at your request…. I would prefer not to be questioned about names…. I will answer any question that you would like to put to me about myself…. Don’t present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer.

On being asked to name Communist associates by the House Un-American Activities Committee [March 21, 1951]

Nicanor Parra

1914–2018

I wish to make a noise with my feet.

I want my soul to find its proper body.

Poems and Anti-Poems [1958]. Piano Solo¹

Octavio Paz

1914–1998

Would it not be true to say that North Americans prefer to use reality rather than to know it?

The Labyrinth of Solitude² (El Labrinto de la Soledad) [1950], ch. 1

Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.

The Labyrinth of Solitude, appendix

a crystal willow, a poplar of water,

a tall fountain the wind arches over,

a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still,

a course of a river that turns, moves on,

doubles back, and comes full circle,

forever arriving:

Sunstone³ [1957]

          the world changes

if two, dizzy and entwined, fall

on the grass

Sunstone

We are condemned

to kill time:

Thus we die

bit by bit

Tale of Two Gardens (Cuento de dos jardines) [1968]

My steps along this street

Resound

        in another street

In which

        I hear my steps

Passing along this street

In which

Only the mist is real.

Configurations. Here (Aquí)¹

The absolutes the eternities

Their outlying districts

        Are not my theme

I am hungry for life and for death also

I know what I know and I write it.

Configurations. Vrindaban,² l. 152

There can be a “boom” in petroleum or wheat, but there can’t be a boom in the novel and less still in poetry.

Seven Voices [1972], interview

          I drift away from myself,

following this meandering phrase,

this path of rocks and goats.

Words glitter in the shadows,

and the black tide of syllables

covers the page, sinking

its ink roots

into the subsoil of language.

Pasado en Claro³ (A Draft of Shadows) [1975]

If human beings forget poetry, they will forget themselves.

The Other Voice [1990]

Sun Ra [Herman Poole Blount]

1914–1993

It’s after the end of the world. Don’t you know that yet?

Space Is the Place [1974]

Henry Reed

1914–1986

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,

We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,

To-day we have naming of parts.

Lessons of the War [1946]. I, Naming of Parts

Budd Schulberg

1914–2009

What Makes Sammy Run?

Title of book [1941]

Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on.

What Makes Sammy Run? [1941]

You can’t have your brothers and eat them too.

What Makes Sammy Run?

A one-way ticket to Palookaville.

On the Waterfront (screenplay) [1954], spoken by Marlon Brando

I could’ve been a contender. I could’ve had class and been somebody. Real class. Instead of a bum, let’s face it, which is what I am.

On the Waterfront (screenplay), spoken by Marlon Brando

Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers—everybody that’s got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle… They’re mine! I own ’em! They think like I do. Only they’re even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for ’em.

A Face in the Crowd (screenplay) [1957], spoken by Andy Griffith

Jerry Siegel

1914–1996

and

Joe Shuster

1914–1992

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound—look, up there in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!

Superman (comic strip) [June 1938]

Dylan Thomas

1914–1953

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.

The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower [1934]

Light breaks where no sun shines;

Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart

Push in their tides.

Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines [1934]

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.

The Hand That Signed the Paper [1936]

And death shall have no dominion.

Refrain and title of poem [1943]

After the first death there is no other.

A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London [1946]

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother

    Through the parables

          Of sunlight

And the legend of the green chapels.

Poem in October [1946]

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.

Fern Hill [1946], st. 1

And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns.

Fern Hill, st. 1

In the sun that is young once only,

    Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means.

Fern Hill, st. 1

        Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Fern Hill, st. 6

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.

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night [1952]

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the seatown 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.

Quite Early One Morning [1954]. A Child’s Christmas in Wales

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black.

Under Milk Wood [1954]

Rudy [Rudolph] Toombs

c. 1914–1962

I looked down the bar at the bartender

He said, “Now what do you want, Johnny?”

“One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer”

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer¹ [1953]

Michael Wilson

1914–1978

and

Rod Serling

1924–1975

We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Oh, damn you, goddamn you all to hell!

Planet of the Apes (screenplay) [1968], last line, spoken by Charlton Heston

E[dward] Digby Baltzell

1915–1996

There is a crisis in American leadership in the middle of the twentieth century that is partly due, I think, to the declining authority of an establishment which is now based on an increasingly castelike White-Anglo Saxon-Protestant (WASP) upper class.

The Protestant Establishment [1964], ch. 1

Roland Barthes

1915–1980

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.

Mythologies² [1957]. The New Citroën

What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.

Mythologies. The World of Wrestling

The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

The Death of the Author³ [1968]

Literature is what is taught, period.⁴

Reflections on a Manual [1969]

The goal of literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer but a producer of the text.

S/Z⁵ [1970]

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments,¹ “Talking” [1977]

I hallucinate what I desire.

A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, “Why?”

Saul Bellow

1915–2005

I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.

The Adventures of Augie March [1953], opening line

External life being so mighty, the instruments so huge and terrible, the performances so great, the thoughts so great and threatening, you produce a someone who can exist before it. You invent a man who can stand before the terrible appearances. This way he can’t get justice and he can’t give justice, but he can live.

The Adventures of Augie March

There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said, I want, I want, I want! It happened every afternoon, and when I tried to suppress it it got even stronger.… It never said a thing except I want, I want, I want!

Henderson the Rain King [1959]

Truth comes with blows.

Henderson the Rain King

We mustn’t forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of the intellectuals.

Herzog [1964]

As though to be Jewish weren’t trouble enough, the poor woman was German, too.

Mr. Sammler’s Planet [1970], pt. I

The idea of making the century’s great crime look dull is not banal. Politically, psychologically, the Germans had an idea of genius. The banality was only camouflage. What better way to get the curse out of murder than to make it look ordinary, boring, or trite?… Banality is the adopted disguise of a very powerful will to abolish conscience.

Mr. Sammler’s Planet, I

New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn’t come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it.

Mr. Sammler’s Planet, VI

Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.

Humboldt’s Gift [1975]

On esthetic grounds… I am obliged to deny that so extraordinary a thing as a human soul can be wiped out forever. No, the dead are about us, shut out by our metaphysical denial of them. As we lie nightly in our hemispheres asleep by the billions, our dead approach us.

Humboldt’s Gift

The body, she says, is subject to the forces of gravity. But the soul is ruled by levity, pure.

Him with His Foot in His Mouth [1984], title story

Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I’d be glad to read him.

Remark [1988], telephone interview

Ingrid Bergman

1915–1982

Dear Mr. Rossellini, I saw your films Open City and Paisan, and enjoyed them very much. If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only “ti amo,” I am ready to come and make a film with you.

Letter to Roberto Rossellini [1947]

Caroline Bird

1915–1995

Sexism is judging people by their sex where sex doesn’t matter.

“On Being Born Female,” Vital Speeches of the Day [November 15, 1968]

Leigh Brackett

1915–1978

and

Jules Furthman

1888–1966

Sorry don’t get it done, Dude.

Rio Bravo (screenplay) [1959], spoken by John Wayne

Leigh Brackett

1915–1978

and

Lawrence Kasdan

1949–

Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.

The Empire Strikes Back [1980], spoken by Frank Oz as Yoda

If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will.

The Empire Strikes Back, spoken by Frank Oz as Yoda

I am your father.… Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.¹

The Empire Strikes Back, spoken by Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker

Jerome S[eymour] Bruner

1915–2016

The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion—these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work.

The Process of Education [1960]

Richard Condon

1915–1996

Although the paranoiacs make the great leaders, it is the resenters who make their best instruments.

The Manchurian Candidate (novel) [1959], ch. 2

John M. Cunningham

1915–2002

and

Carl Foreman

1914–1984

It’s a great life. You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so they can come back and shoot at you again. If you’re honest, you’re poor your whole life. And in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. For what? For nothing. For a tin star.²

High Noon (screenplay) [1952], spoken by Lon Chaney, Jr., as Marshal Howe

Willie [William James] Dixon

1915–1992

On the seventh hour

On the seventh day

On the seventh month

The seventh doctor say

He was born for good luck

And that you’ll see

I got seven hundred dollars

Don’t you mess with me

Hoochie Coochie Man [1954]. Recorded by Muddy Waters

Men lies about that,

Some of ’em cries about that,

Some of ’em dies about that,

Everybody fightin’ about a spoonful,

That spoon, that spoon, that.

Spoonful [1960]. Recorded by Howlin’ Wolf

I am a little red rooster,

Too lazy to crow for day.

I am a little red rooster,

Too lazy to crow for day.

Keep everything in the barnyard

Upset in every way.

Oh, the dog begin to bark

And the hound begin to howl.

Oh, the dog begin to bark

Hound begin to howl.

Oh, watch out strange kinpeople ’cause the

Little red rooster on the prowl.

Little Red Rooster [1961]. Recorded by Howlin’ Wolf

Garrett Hardin

1915–2003

We can never do merely one thing.

Hardin’s First Law of Ecology

The Tragedy of the Commons

Title of essay published in Science [December 13, 1968]

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

The Tragedy of the Commons [1968]

W[ilfred] C[harles] Heinz

1915–2008

It’s a funny thing about people. People will hate a guy all his life for what he is, but the minute he dies for it they make him out a hero and they go around saying that maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all because he sure was willing to go the distance for whatever he believed or whatever he was.

Brownsville Bum [1951]

You get the best stories in the loser’s dressing room.

The Professional [1958]

Billie Holiday [Eleanora Fagan]

1915–1959

Love is just like a faucet,

It turns off and on,

And sometimes when you think it’s on, baby,

It has turned off and gone.

Fine and Mellow [recorded 1944]

Billie Holiday [Eleanora Fagan]

1915–1959

and

Arthur Herzog, Jr.

1927–1983

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!

God Bless the Child [1941]

Alfred Kazin

1915–1998

A classic is a book that survives the circumstances that made it possible yet alone keeps those circumstances alive.

Review in The New Republic [August 29, 1988]

Ring Lardner, Jr.

1915–2000

[On being asked about his membership in the Communist Party:] I could answer [the question] the way you want, Mr. Chairman, but if I did, I would hate myself in the morning.

To House Un-American Activities Committee [October 30, 1947]

Jerome Lawrence

1915–2004

and

Robert E. Lee

1918–1994

Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches¹ are starving to death.

Auntie Mame, stage play [1956] based on the novel [1955] by Patrick Dennis

Ernest Lehman

1915–2005

I allowed the soothing music and the muted sounds of the city and the rich, sweet smell of success that permeated the room to lull my senses.

Tell Me About It Tomorrow (novella) [1950], retitled The Sweet Smell of Success² [1957]

Seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.

North by Northwest (screenplay) [1959], spoken by James Mason

In the world of advertising there’s no such thing as a lie, there’s only The Expedient Exaggeration.

North by Northwest (screenplay), spoken by Cary Grant

With such exquisite play-acting, you make this very room a theater.

North by Northwest (screenplay), spoken by James Mason

Ross Macdonald [Kenneth Millar]

1915–1983

There was nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean wouldn’t cure.

The Drowning Pool [1950]

As a man gets older, if he knows what is good for him, the women he likes are getting older, too. The trouble is that most of them are married.

The Zebra-Striped Hearse [1962], ch. 1

I looked like a ghost from the present haunting a bloody moment in the past.

The Chill [1964]

The whisky was wearing off and I saw myself in a flicker of panic: a middle-aging man lying alone in darkness while life fled by like traffic on the freeway.

Black Money [1966]

We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on the broken locks, our voiceprints in the bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete and the blowing sand.

Preface to Archer in Hollywood [1967]

Money costs too much.

The Goodbye Look [1969]

Ranald MacDougall

1915–1973

I felt as though I’d been born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married.

Mildred Pierce (screenplay) [1945], based on the novel by James M. Cain; spoken by Joan Crawford

Sir Peter Brian Medawar

1915–1987

Among scientists are collectors, classifiers, and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.

The Art of the Soluble [1967]

Thomas Merton

1915–1968

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander [1966]

Margaret Millar

1915–1994

Have you never noticed that most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness?

The Weak-Eyed Bat [1942]

Arthur Miller

1915–2005

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 I

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way.

Death of a Salesman, I

You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit.

Death of a Salesman, II

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.

Death of a Salesman, Requiem

A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

Death of a Salesman, Requiem

I have not moved from there to here without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart.

The Crucible [1953], act II

I am inclined to notice the ruin in things, perhaps because I was born in Italy.

A View from the Bridge [1955], act I

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

The Year It Came Apart [1974]

Paul A. Samuelson

1915–2009

Man does not live by GNP alone.

Economics [1973], ch. 40

Frank Sinatra

1915–1998

I’m not unmindful of man’s seeming need for faith; I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Interview in Playboy¹ [February 1963]

Throughout my career, if I have done anything, I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing—if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener, I fail.

LIFE [April 23, 1965], Me and My Music

May you live to be 100, and may the last voice you hear be mine.

Closing line at live performances

Jean Stafford

1915–1979

To her own heart, which was shaped exactly like a valentine, there came a winglike palpitation, a delicate exigency, and all the fragrance of all the flowery springtime love affairs that ever were seemed waiting for them in the whiskey bottle.

Children Are Bored on Sundays [1953], title story

Potter Stewart

1915–1985

I shall not today attempt further to define [pornography]… But I know it when I see it; and the motion picture¹ involved in this case is not that.

Concurring opinion in U.S. Supreme Court, Jacobellis v. Ohio [1964]

These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.

Concurring opinion in U.S. Supreme Court, Furman v. Georgia [1972]

Billy Strayhorn

1915–1967

A week in Paris will ease the bite of it.

All I care is to smile in spite of it.

Lush Life [1936]

Romance is mush, stifling those who strive.

I’ll live a lush life in some small dive,

And there I’ll be, while I rot with the rest

Of those whose lives are lonely, too.

Lush Life

Margaret Walker

1915–1998

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the cabarets and taverns and other people’s pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and land and money and something—something all our own

For My People [1937]

Alan Watts

1915–1973

If you really want to spend some years in a Japanese monastery, there is no earthly reason why you shouldn’t. Or if you want to spend your time hopping freight cars and digging Charlie Parker, it’s a free country.

Chicago Review [1958]. Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen

[George] Orson Welles

1915–1985

Perhaps I bewilder people by being at once the esthete, the intellectual and the vulgarian.

Interview, PM [September 13, 1942]

In those days, they had time for everything. Time for sleigh rides, and balls, and assemblies, and cotillions, and open house on New Year’s, and all-day picnics in the woods, and even that prettiest of all vanished customs: the serenade.

The Magnificent Ambersons (screenplay) [1942], spoken by Orson Welles

It’s a bright, guilty world.

The Lady from Shanghai (screenplay) [1947]

The only way to stay out of trouble is to grow old, so I guess I’ll concentrate on that. Maybe I’ll live so long that I’ll forget her—maybe I’ll die trying.

The Lady from Shanghai (screenplay)

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo-clock.

Speech written into The Third Man (screenplay by Graham Greene and Carol Reed) [1949]

A certain great and powerful king once asked a poet: “What can I give you of all that I have?” He wisely replied, “Anything sir… except your secret.”

Mister Arkadin (screenplay) [1955], opening title

A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.

Touch of Evil [1958], spoken by Charlton Heston

[On the RKO studio:] This is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had.

Attributed

I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

Attributed

Herb Caen

1916–1997

Any city that doesn’t have a Tenderloin isn’t a city at all.

One Man’s San Francisco [1976]

Francis [Harry Compton] Crick

1916–2004

“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

The Astonishing Hypothesis [1994]

Walter Cronkite

1916–2009

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest that we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? A Report from Vietnam [February 27, 1968]

And that’s the way it is.

Sign-off sentence, CBS Evening News

Penelope Fitzgerald

1916–2000

If a story begins with finding, it must end with searching.

The Blue Flower [1995]

Elizabeth Hardwick

1916–2007

The flat praise and the faint dissension, the minimal style and the light little article, the absence of involvement, passion, character, eccentricity—the lack, at last, of the literary tone itself—have made the New York Times into a provincial literary journal, longer and thicker, but not much different in the end from all those small-town Sunday “Book Pages.”

The Decline of Book Reviewing [1959]

Collaborating in the very private way of love or the highest kind of friendship… is the way for gifted, energetic wives of writers to a sort of composition of their own, this peculiar illusion of collaboration.

Seduction and Betrayal: Women in Literature [1974]. Amateurs

This is the unspoken contract of a wife and her works. In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin—consideration for their feelings. And it usually turns out this is an enormous, unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged.

Seduction and Betrayal: Women in Literature. Amateurs

I think all writing is profoundly unmarried.

Interview with Richard Locke, The New York Times [April 29, 1979]

If only one knew what to remember or pretend to remember. Make a decision and what you want from the lost things will present itself. You can take it down like a can from a shelf. Perhaps.

Sleepless Nights [1979]

Their hearts gave out. Alas, the heart is not a metaphor—or not only a metaphor.

Sleepless Nights

Richard Hofstadter

1916–1970

Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.

The Age of Reform [1955]

To those who suspect that intellect is a subversive force in society, it will not do to reply that intellect is really a safe, bland, and emollient thing. In a certain sense the suspicious Tories and militant philistines are right: intellect is dangerous. Left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question.

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life [1963]

The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a “vast” or “gigantic” conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political give-and-take, but an all-out crusade.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays [1965]

A fundamental paradox of the paranoid style is the imitation of the enemy.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays

In a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays

Shirley Jackson

1916–1965

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

The Lottery [1948], last line

Sometimes, in my capacity as mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children.

Life Among the Savages [1953]

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

The Haunting of Hill House [1959], opening line

Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil.

The Haunting of Hill House

I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle [1962]

Jane Jacobs

1916–2006

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities [1961]

Lowly, unpurposeful and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city look interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Florynce Rae Kennedy

1916–2000

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

From GLORIA STEINEM, The Verbal Karate of Florynce R. Kennedy, Esq. [1973]

Bernard Lewis

1916–2018

We are a facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations¹—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.

The Roots of Muslim Rage [1990]

Robert S[trange] McNamara

1916–2009

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.

In Retrospect [1995], preface

We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don’t know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There’s a wonderful phrase: “the fog of war.” What “the fog of war” means is: war is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.

Comment in The Fog of War [2003], documentary film by Errol Morris

Rationality will not save us.

The Fog of War

C[harles] Wright Mills

1916–1962

By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them.

The Power Elite [1956], ch. 1, The Higher Circles

Albert Murray

1916–2013

American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestably mulatto. Indeed, for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other.

The Omni-Americans [1970]

The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white people. It is a nation of multicolored people. There are white Americans so to speak and black Americans. But any fool can see that the white people are not really white, and that black people are not black. They are all interrelated one way or another.

The Omni-Americans

Impromptu heroism such as is required only of the most agile of storybook protagonists, is precisely what the blues tradition has evolved to condition Negroes to regard as normal procedure!

The Omni-Americans

Going back home has probably always had as much if not more to do with people as with landmarks and place names and locations on maps and mileage charts anyway. Not that home is not a place, for even in its most abstract implications it is precisely the very oldest place in the world.

South to a Very Old Place [1971]

The thing to avoid is sentimentality. To struggle against the odds, to continue in the face of adversity is romantic, which is to say heroic. To protest the existence of dragons (or even hooded or unhooded Grand Dragons for that matter) is not only sentimental but naïve, it seems to me.

Interview with Jason Berry in Southern Booklore Magazine [1977]; reprinted in The Blue Devils of Nada [1996]

Walker Percy

1916–1990

The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives.

The Moviegoer [1961]

Herbert Simon

1916–2001

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World [1971]

Andrew Solt

1916–1990

I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I lived a few weeks while she loved me.

In a Lonely Place (screenplay) [1950], spoken by Humphrey Bogart

Herbert Stein

1916–1999

If something cannot go on forever it will stop.

At hearing before Joint Economic Committee of Congress [January 1986]

Harold Wilson

1916–1995

A week is a long time in politics.

Attributed

Diana Athill

1917–2019

What I was really happy with was a lover who had a nice wife to do his washing and look after him if he fell ill, so that I could enjoy the plums of love without having to munch through the pudding.

Alive, Alive, Oh! [2015]

Jane Bowles

1917–1973

Even then she wore the look of certain fanatics who think of themselves as leaders without once having gained the respect of a single human being.

Two Serious Ladies [1943]

I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I’ve wanted to do for years.

Two Serious Ladies, spoken by Mrs. Copperfield

Peter Bowman

1917–1985

Battle doesn’t determine who is right. Only who is left.

Beach Red [1945]

Gwendolyn Brooks

1917–2000

Maud went to college.

Sadie stayed at home.

Sadie scraped life

With a fine-tooth comb.

A Street in Bronzeville [1945]. Sadie and Maud, st. 1

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get.

A Street in Bronzeville. The Mother, st. 1

What shall I give my children? who are poor,

Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land.

Annie Allen [1949]. The Womanhood. The Children of the Poor, sonnet 2

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.

And be it gash or gold it will not come

Again in this identical disguise.

Annie Allen. Exhaust the Little Moment

And remembering…

Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,

As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

The Bean Eaters [1960]. The Bean Eaters, st. 3

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

The Bean Eaters. We Real Cool

He opened us—

who was a key,

who was a man.

In the Mecca [1968]. After Mecca. Malcolm X

Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business,

but she stands—bigly—under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed.

In the wild weed

she is a citizen.

In the Mecca. The Second Sermon on the Warpland, st. 4

we are each other’s

business:

we are each other’s

magnitude and bond.

Family Pictures [1970]. Paul Robeson

Robert C. Byrd

1917–2010

On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

Yet this Chamber is, for the most part, silent—ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events.

Speech on the impending invasion of Iraq [February 12, 2003]

Arthur C[harles] Clarke

1917–2008

A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

The Exploration of Space [1951]

I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming.

The Sentinel [1951]

He had labored to take man to the stars, and, in the moment of success, the stars—the aloof, indifferent stars—had come to him. This was the moment when history held its breath, and the present sheared asunder from the past as an iceberg splits from its frozen, parent cliffs, and goes sailing out to sea in lonely pride.

Childhood’s End [1953]

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Clarke’s Three Laws, in Profiles of the Future [1962]

Perhaps our role on this planet is not to worship God—but to create Him.

Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations [1972]

Arthur C[harles] Clarke

1917–2008

and

Stanley Kubrick

1928–1999

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

2001: A Space Odyssey (screenplay) [1968]

Dave. Stop. Stop. Will you. Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave. Stop, Dave. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid.

2001: A Space Odyssey (screenplay), spoken by Douglas Rain as the HAL computer

Betty Comden

1917–2006

and

Adolph Green

1914–2002

New York, New York,

A helluva town.

The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down,

And people ride in a hole in the ground.

New York, New York,

It’s a helluva town!

On the Town [1944]. New York, New York

Where has the time all gone to?

Haven’t done half the things we want to.

Oh, well. We’ll catch up some other time.

On the Town. Some Other Time.

She can’t act, she can’t sing, she can’t dance. A triple threat.

Singin’ in the Rain (screenplay) [1952], spoken by Donald O’Connor

Now you must wake up,

All dreams must end.

Take off your makeup,

The party’s over,

It’s all over,

My friend.

Bells Are Ringing [1956]. The Party’s Over

Just in time,

I found you just in time,

Before you came, my time

Was running low.

I was lost,

The losing dice were tossed,

My bridges all were crossed,

Nowhere to go.

Bells Are Ringing. Just in Time¹

Manny Farber

1917–2008

The hard-bitten action film finds its natural home in caves: the murky, congested theaters, looking like glorified tattoo parlors on the outside and located near bus terminals in big cities. These theaters roll action films in what, at first, seems like a nightmarish atmosphere of shabby transience, prints that seem overgrown with jungle moss, sound tracks infected with hiccups.

Commentary Magazine [November 1, 1957]. Underground Films

A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.

White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art [1962]

Leslie Fiedler

1917–2003

The existence of overt homosexuality threatens to compromise an essential aspect of American sentimental life: the camaraderie of the locker room and ball park, the good fellowship of the poker game and fishing trip, a kind of passionless passion, at once gross and delicate, homoerotic in the boy’s sense, possessing an innocence above suspicion.

Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey, Partisan Review [1948]

Zsa Zsa Gábor

1917–2016

I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.

Quoted in obituary, Washington Post [December 19, 2016]

Dizzy [John Birks] Gillespie

1917–1993

You only have so many notes, and what makes a style is how you get from one note to the other.

To Be or Not… To Bop¹ [1979]

David Goodis

1917–1967

It was a tough break. Parry was innocent. On top of that he was a decent sort of guy who never bothered people and wanted to lead a quiet life. But there was too much on the other side and on his side of it there was practically nothing. The judge handed him a life sentence and he was taken to San Quentin.

Dark Passage [1946]

Katharine [Meyer] Graham

1917–2001

If one is rich and one’s a woman, one can be quite misunderstood.

The Power That Didn’t Corrupt [1974]

What I essentially did was to put one foot in front of the other, shut my eyes, and step off the ledge. The surprise was that I landed on my feet.

Personal History [1997], ch. 18 (on becoming president of the Washington Post Co. in September 1963)

Fannie Lou Hamer

1917–1977

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.²

Speech delivered with Malcolm X at the Williams Institutional CME Church, Harlem [1964]

Eric Hobsbawm

1917–2012

Even revolutionaries like to have ancestors.

The History of Marxism [1982]

For 80 per cent of humanity the Middle Ages ended suddenly in the 1950s; or perhaps better still, they were felt to end in the 1960s.

Age of Extremes [1994]

Murray Kempton

1917–1997

I write every day for the next and walk wide of the cosmic and settle most happily for the local, a precinct less modest than I make it sound, since my local happens to be the only city under the eye of God where the librettist for Don Giovanni could find his closest friend in the author of “The Night Before Christmas.”

Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events [1994]

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

1917–1963

It was involuntary. They sank my boat.

Remark when asked how he became a hero. Quoted in ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR., A Thousand Days [1965], ch. 4

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 the Democratic presidential nomination [July 15, 1960]

I believe in an America where the separation of Church and State is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote—where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference.

Speech to Greater Houston Ministerial Association [September 12, 1960]

A rising tide lifts all the boats.³

Campaign speech in New Castle, Pennsylvania [October 15, 1960]

Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.

Accepting Arthur M. Schlesinger’s support for a Republican candidate [1960]

For of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each of us, recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state, our success or failure, in whatever office we hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage… Second, were we truly men of judgment… Third, were we truly men of integrity… Finally, were we truly men of dedication?

Speech to the Massachusetts State Legislature [January 9, 1961]

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 [January 20, 1961]

Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

Inaugural address

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

Inaugural address

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.¹

Inaugural address

I believe 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.

Address to joint session of Congress [May 25, 1961]

Mankind must put an end to war—or war will put an end to mankind.

Address to the United Nations [September 25, 1961]

Somebody once said that Washington was a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency.

Remarks to the trustees and advisory committee of the National Cultural Center [November 14, 1961]

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Speech at the White House [March 13, 1962]

There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country… Life is unfair.

Press conference [March 21, 1962]

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Address at a White House dinner and reception honoring Nobel Prize winners [April 1962]

My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.

Comment on price increases proposed by U.S. Steel [April 1962]

We choose to go to the moon.

Speech at Rice University [September 12, 1962]

We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of world-wide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth—but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.… I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations.… He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction.

Television address on Soviet missiles in Cuba [October 22, 1962]

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

Address at American University, Washington, D.C. [June 10, 1963]

What kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.

Address at American University

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America—there are no “white” or “colored” signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

Message to Congress on proposed civil rights bill [June 19, 1963]

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.”

Address at City Hall, West Berlin [June 26, 1963]

Yesterday, a shaft of light cut into the darkness.… For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under international control.

Television address in Washington [July 26, 1963]¹

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 judgment.

Address at Amherst College [October 26, 1963]

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.²

Address at Amherst College

We’re heading into nut country today.³

To Jacqueline Kennedy [November 22, 1963]

Gershon Legman

1917–1999

Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is.

Love and Death: A Study in Censorship [1949]

Edward N. Lorenz

1917–2008

Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?

Title of paper⁴ [1972]

Robert [Traill Spence] Lowell

1917–1977

I will catch Christ with a greased worm.

The Drunken Fisherman [1946], st. 5

Who asks for me, the Shelley of my age,

must lay his heart out for my bed and board.

Words for Hart Crane [1959]

We are old-timers,

each of us holds a locked razor.

Waking in the Blue [1959]

I keep no rank nor station.

Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.

Home After Three Months Away [1959]

Only teaching on Tuesdays, bookworming

in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,

I hog a whole house on Boston’s

“hardly passionate Marlborough Street.”⁵

Memories of West Street and Lepke [1959]

These are the tranquillized Fifties,

and I am forty. Ought I to regret my seedtime?

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.

Memories of West Street and Lepke

Flabby, bald, lobotomized,

he drifted in a sheepish calm,

where no agonizing reappraisal

jarred his concentration on the electric chair—

hanging like an oasis in his air

of lost connections.

Memories of West Street and Lepke

Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother’s bed.

Man and Wife [1959]

        Oh my Petite,

clearest of all God’s creatures, still all air and nerve.

Man and Wife

your old-fashioned tirade—

loving, rapid, merciless—

breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.

Man and Wife

Gored by the climacteric of his want,

he stalls above me like an elephant.

“To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage” [1959]

My mind’s not right.

A car radio bleats,

“Love, O careless Love.…” I hear

my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,

as if my hand were at its throat.…

I myself am hell;

nobody’s here.¹

Skunk Hour [1959], st. 5, 6

Father, forgive me

my injuries,

as I forgive

those I

have injured!

You never climbed

Mount Sion, yet left

dinosaur

death-steps on the crust,

where I must walk.

Middle Age [1964], st. 3, 4

I am tired. Everyone’s tired of my turmoil.

Eye and Tooth [1964], st. 9

Two months after marching through Boston,

half the regiment was dead;

at the dedication,

William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes² breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone

in the city’s throat.

Its Colonel is as lean

as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,

a greyhound’s gentle tautness;

he seems to wince at pleasure,

and suffocate for privacy.

For the Union Dead [1964], st. 7–9

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,

giant finned cars nose forward like fish;

a savage servility

slides by on grease.

For the Union Dead, st. 17

O to break loose, like the chinook

salmon jumping and falling back,

nosing up to the impossible

stone and bone-crushing waterfall.

Waking Early Sunday Morning [1967], st. 1

Pity the planet, all joy gone

from this sweet volcanic cone;

peace to our children when they fall

in small war on the heels of small

war.

Waking Early Sunday Morning, last stanza

Rome, if built at all, must be built in a day.

Marcus Cato 234–149 B.C.E. [1973]

No one like one’s mother and father ever lived.

Returning [1973]

After loving you so much, can I forget

you for eternity, and have no other choice?

Obit [1973]

The line must terminate.

Yet my heart rises, I know I’ve gladdened a lifetime

knotting, undoing a fishnet of tarred rope;

the net will hang on the wall when the fish are eaten,

nailed like illegible bronze on the futureless future.

Fishnet [1973]

If I could go through it all again,

the slender iron rungs of growing up,

I would be as young as any,

a child lost

in unreality and loud music.

Realities [1977]

It has taken me the time since you died

to discover you are as human as I am…

if I am.

To Mother [1977]

We feel the machine slipping from our hands

as if someone else were steering;

if we see the light at the end of the tunnel,

it’s the light of the oncoming train.

Since 1939 [1977]

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name.

Epilogue [1977]

Carson [Smith] McCullers

1917–1967

It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter [1940]

This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person who hung around in the doorways, and she was afraid.

The Member of the Wedding [1946], ch. 2

I wonder if you have ever thought about this. Here we are—right now. This very minute. Now. But while we’re talking right now, this minute is passing. And it will never come again. Never in all the world. When it is gone it is gone. No power on earth could bring it back again.

The Member of the Wedding, pt. 2, ch. 2

First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons—but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this.

The Ballad of the Sad Café [1951]

A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp.

The Ballad of the Sad Café

If you walk along the main street on an August afternoon there is nothing whatsoever to do.

The Ballad of the Sad Café

I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror.

Quoted in Virginia Spencer Carr, Understanding Carson McCullers [1990]

Robert Mitchum

1917–1997

I have been asked what it is like to be a personage of the cinema. It’s like being trampled to death by geese.

Remarks at Yale Film School [1972]

Jessica Mitford

1917–1996

The cost of the funeral is the third largest expenditure, after a house and a car, in the life of an ordinary American family. Yet even in the case of the old relative, whose death may have been fully expected and even welcomed, it is most unlikely that the buyer will have discussed the funeral with anybody in advance. It just would not seem right to go round saying, “By the way, my uncle is very ill and he’s not expected to live; do you happen to know a good, reliable undertaker?”

The American Way of Death [1963]

I soon discovered that a substantial number of the names listed in my address book belong in the category of Frenemy, an incredibly useful word that should be in every dictionary, coined by one of my sisters when she was a small child to describe a rather dull little girl who lived near us. My sister and the Frenemy played together constantly, invited each other to tea at least once a week, were inseparable companions, all the time disliking each other heartily.

The Best of Frenemies. In the Daily Mail [August 1977]

Thelonious Monk

1917–1982

It’s always night or we wouldn’t need light.

Quoted in TIME [February 28, 1964]

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

Interview, Down Beat [October 28, 1971]

The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.

Phone call to WKCR radio station, after he was said to have played wrong notes in performance [March 1976]

Leon Payne

1917–1969

Now boys don’t start your ramblin’ round

On this road of sin are you sorrow bound

Take my advice or you’ll curse the day

You paid the price on the lost highway.

Lost Highway [1948]. Recorded by Hank Williams

I[eoh] M[ing] Pei

1917–2019

I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity.

Acceptance speech for Pritzker Architecture Prize [1983]

Juan [Juan Nepomuceno Carlos Pérez] Rulfo [Vizcaíno]

1917–1986

The road rose and fell. It rises or falls depending on whether you’re coming or going. If you are leaving, it’s uphill; but as you arrive it’s downhill.

Pedro Páramo [1955]

This town is filled with echoes. It’s like they were trapped behind the walls, or beneath the cobblestones. When you walk you feel like someone’s behind you, stepping in your footsteps.

Pedro Páramo

Arthur M[eier] Schlesinger, Jr.

1917–2007

The answer to the runaway Presidency is not the messenger-boy Presidency. The American democracy must discover a middle ground between making the President a czar and making him a puppet.

The Imperial Presidency [1973], preface

The constitutional Presidency—as events so apparently disparate as the Indochina War and the Watergate affair showed—has become the imperial Presidency.

The Imperial Presidency, preface

Merle Travis

1917–1983

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Saint Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go¹

I owe my soul to the company store.

Sixteen Tons [1947]

Robert Warshow

1917–1955

No convention of the gangster film is more strongly established than this: it is dangerous to be alone. And yet the very conditions of success make it impossible not to be alone.… The successful man is an outlaw.

The Gangster as Tragic Hero [1948]

William H[ollingsworth] Whyte, Jr.

1917–1999

This book is about the organization man. If the term is vague, it is because I can think of no other way to describe the people I am talking about.… They are the ones of our middle class who have left home, spiritually as well as physically, to take the vows of organization life, and it is they who are the mind and soul of our great self-perpetuating institutions.

The Organization Man [1956], pt. I, ch. 1

Spiro T[heodore] Agnew

1918–1996

To some extent, if you’ve seen one city slum you’ve seen them all.

Election campaign speech at Detroit [October 18, 1968]

A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

Speech in New Orleans [October 19, 1969]

In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.

Speech at California Republican state convention [September 11, 1970]

André Bazin

1918–1958

The primacy of the image is both historically and technically accidental. The nostalgia that some still feel for the silent screen does not go far enough back into the childhood of the seventh art. The real primitives of the cinema, existing only in the imaginations of a few men of the nineteenth century, are in complete imitation of nature. Every new development added to the cinema must, paradoxically, take it nearer and nearer to its origins. In short, cinema has not yet been invented!

The Myth of Total Cinema [1946]

Cinema is objectivity in time.

What Is Cinema? [1958]. The Ontology of the Photographic Image

I imagine the supreme cinematic perversion to consist of an execution projected in reverse, like those comical newsreels where one sees the diver bursting up out of the water toward his diving board.

What Is Cinema? Death Every Afternoon

Ingmar Bergman

1918–2007

Thou shalt make each film as if it were thy last.

Every Film Is My Last Film, Filmnyheter [May 19, 1959]

Leonard Bernstein

1918–1990

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning… except its own, a meaning in musical terms, not in terms of words.

The Joy of Music [1959]

The trouble with you and me, Ned, is that we want everyone in the world to personally love us, and of course that’s impossible: you just don’t meet everyone in the world.

Quoted in NED ROREM, Paris Diary [1966]

Otis R. Bowen

1918–2013

So remember when a person has sex, they’re not just having it with that partner, they’re having it with everybody that partner had it with for the past ten years.

Address at the National Press Club [January 29, 1987]

William Bronk

1918–1999

                Here it was always the light

that mattered, and only the light. Once, it had seemed

the objects mattered: the light was to see them by.

Examined, they yielded nothing, nothing real.

They were for seeing the light in various ways.

They gathered it, released it, held it in.

In them, the light revealed itself, took shape.

Objects are nothing. There is only the light, the light!

The World, the Worldless [1964]. The Annihilation of Matter

I lie along the body of this life,

all night stilling my breath to listen to breath,

feeling its weight heavy against my weight.

That Tantalus [1971]. The Body of This Life

No one to know and nothing knowable.

Oh, we know that knowing is not our way;

but, the choice ours, would make it our way, would leave

the world for the same world made knowable.

To Praise the Music [1972]. The Ignorant Lust After Knowledge

Howard Cosell [Howard William Cohen]

1918–1995

There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.

Reporting a fire during the World Series, from Yankee Stadium [October 12, 1977]

Richard P[hillips] Feynman

1918–1988

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics [1963]

The eye is a piece of brain that is touching light, so to speak, on the outside.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics

I think the problem is not to find the best or most efficient method to proceed to a discovery, but to find any method at all.

Nobel lecture [December 11, 1965]

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

Cargo Cult Science [1974]

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Report on space shuttle Challenger disaster [1986]

Eddie Jefferson

1918–1979

There I go, there I go, there I go, there I go,

Pretty baby, you are the soul who snaps my control.

Such a funny thing but every time you’re near me

I never can behave.

You give me a smile and then I’m wrapped up in your magic.

There’s music all around me, crazy music,

Music that keeps calling me so very close to you.

Moody’s Mood for Love [1952]. Recorded by King Pleasure [1954]

Ann Landers [Esther P. Lederer]

1918–2002

Women complain about sex more often than men. Their gripes fall into two major categories: (1) Not enough. (2) Too much.

Truth Is Stranger…[1968], ch. 2

Alan Jay Lerner

1918–1986

Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?

My Fair Lady¹ [1956], act I, Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

My Fair Lady, I, The Rain in Spain

I could have danced all night!

My Fair Lady, I, I Could Have Danced All Night!

Get me to the church on time!

My Fair Lady, II, Get Me to the Church on Time

Don’t let it be forgot

That once there was a spot

For one brief shining moment that was known

As Camelot.

Camelot¹ [1960], end

Nelson [Rolihlahla] Mandela

1918–2013

The struggle is my life.

Statement to the press [June 26, 1961]

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Statement in the dock¹ [April 20, 1964]

Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

Statement from prison [February 10, 1985]

I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken away from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

Long Walk to Freedom [1994]

Claiborne Pell

1918–2009

The secret is to always let the other man have your way.

Quoted in the New York Times [February 3, 1987]

Eleanor Perényi

1918–2009

September is the time to begin again. In the country, when I could smell the wood-smoke in the forest, and the curtains could be drawn when the tea came in, on the first autumn evening, I always felt that my season of good luck had come.

More Was Lost: A Memoir [1946]

A garden is a private world or it is nothing.

Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden [1981]

Dean Riesner

1918–2002

and

John Milius

1944–

You’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk?

Dirty Harry (screenplay) [1971], spoken by Clint Eastwood

Lillian Ross

1918–2017

All enduring love between two people, however startling or unconventional, feels unalterable, predestined, compelling, and intrinsically normal to the couple immersed in it.

Here But Not Here: A Love Story [1998]

Anwar al-Sadat

1918–1981

Peace is much more precious than a piece of land.

Speech in Cairo [March 8, 1978]

Let there be no more war or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. Let there be no more despair or loss of faith.

On signing the Egyptian–Israeli peace treaty, Washington, D.C. [March 26, 1979]²

Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

1918–2008

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

The First Circle³ [1964]

A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

The First Circle

There was peace in their hearts. They were filled with the fearlessness of those who have lost everything, the fearlessness which is not easy to come by but which endures.

The First Circle

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

Nobel Lecture [1972]

Violence does not and cannot exist by itself; it is invariably intertwined with the lie.

Nobel Lecture

The Kolyma was the greatest and most famous island, the pole of ferocity of that amazing country of Gulag, which, though scattered in an archipelago geographically, was, in the psychological sense, fused into a continent—an almost invisible, almost imperceptible country inhabited by the Zek people.

The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956² [1974, in translation], I, preface

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956, I, ch. 4

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

The Exhausted West. Commencement address at Harvard University

Muriel Spark

1918–2006

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

Memento Mori [1959]

Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie [1962], ch. 1

One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 4

Mickey [Frank Morrison] Spillane

1918–2006

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

Interview with Jon Winokur, Writers on Writing [1986]

Those big-shot writers… could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.

Quoted in Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, The Making of a Bestseller [1999]

Theodore Sturgeon

1918–1985

Live long and prosper.

Vulcan greeting in television series Star Trek, first spoken in episode Amok Time [1967]

Daniel Bell

1919–2011

Capitalism, it is said, is a system wherein man exploits man. And communism—is vice versa.

The End of Ideology [1960]

Mercier Philip [“Merce”] Cunningham

1919–2009

you have to love dancing to stick to it. it gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. it is not for unsteady souls.

Changes: Notes on Choreography [1968]

Ervin Drake [Ervin Maurice Druckman]

1919–2015

But now the days are short,

I’m in the Autumn of the year,

And now I think of my life

As vintage wine from the old kegs.

From the brim to the dregs

It poured sweet and clear;

It was a very good year!

It Was a Very Good Year [1966]

Robert Duncan

1919–1988

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow

as if it were a given property of the mind

that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,

everlasting omen of what is.

The Opening of the Field [1960]. Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

              Sail, Monarchs, rising and falling

orange merchants in spring’s flowery markets!

messengers of March in warm currents of news floating,

               flitting into areas of aroma,

tracing out of air unseen roots and branches of sense

               I share in thought,

filaments woven and broken where the world might light

casual certainties of me.

Roots and Branches [1964]. Title poem

Bring up from the dark water.

It will be news from behind the horizon.

Refugees, nameless people. Who are they?

What is happening? I do not know.

Out there. Where we can see nothing.

Where we can do nothing. Men of our own country

send deadly messengers we would not send.

Ground Work: Before the War [1984]. Bring It Up from the Dark

The body of this thought must be a star.

This Mind is that fathomless darkness

                racing out beyond itself, Time

                         pouring beyond time,

in the cast of whose scatterd sparklings,

    seed drift of suns,

I am all water.

Ground Work: Before the War. Circulations of the Song

Lawrence [Monsanto] Ferlinghetti

1919–2021

Constantly risking absurdity

                            and death

          whenever he performs

                    above the heads

                                    of his audience

the poet like an acrobat

                climbs on rime

                        to a high wire of his own making

A Coney Island of the Mind [1958]. Constantly Risking Absurdity

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

A Coney Island of the Mind. I Am Waiting

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?

What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

Poetry as Insurgent Art [2007]

Davis Grubb

1919–1980

and

James Agee

1909–1955

Lord, save little children. The wind blows and the rain’s a-cold. Yet they abide…. They abide and they endure.

The Night of the Hunter (screenplay by Agee, based on novel by Grubb) [1955], spoken by Lillian Gish

John Michael Hayes

1919–2008

Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killing yet.

Rear Window (screenplay) [1954], spoken by Thelma Ritter

Robert L. Heilbroner

1919–2005

[The great economists] can be called the worldly philosophers, for they sought to embrace in a scheme of philosophy the most worldly of all of man’s activities—his drive for wealth.

The Worldly Philosophers [1953]. Introduction

The prestige accorded to mathematics in economics has given it rigor, but, alas, also mortis.

Modern Economics as a Chapter in the History of Economic Thought [1979]

Pauline Kael

1919–2001

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Going Steady [1968]. Trash, Art, and the Movies

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]. A Note on the Title

For some moviegoers, movies probably contribute to that self-defeating romanticizing of expectations which makes life a series of disappointments. They watch the same movies over and over on television, as if they were constantly returning to the scene of the crime—the life they were so busy dreaming about that they never lived it.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

In show business there’s not much point in asking yourself if someone really likes you or if he just thinks you can be useful to him, because there’s no difference.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

It is literally true that when you live in New York you no longer believe that the garbage will ever be gone from the streets or that life will ever be sane and orderly.

The New Yorker [October 30, 1971]. Urban Gothic; collected in For Keeps [1994]

I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.

Quoted in The New York Times [December 28, 1972]

There were no Cary Grants in the sticks. He and his counterparts were to be found only in the imaginary cities of the movies.

When the Lights Go Down [1975]. The Man from Dream City

Hollywood is the only place where you can die of encouragement.

Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers [1980]

There are a lot of dumb people around pretending to be smart people acting dumb.

Review of Knightriders, The New Yorker [May 18, 1981]

If there is any test that can be applied to movies, it’s that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.

Review of Stand By Me, The New Yorker [September 8, 1986]

Doris Lessing

1919–2013

It isn’t only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It’s more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of every emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves.

The Golden Notebook [1962]. Free Women, 4

There’s only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best.

The Golden Notebook. Free Women, 5

A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it’s for a half-second, Perhaps this is the man.

The Golden Notebook. Free Women, 5

None of you [men] ask for anything—except everything, but just for so long as you need it.

The Golden Notebook. Free Women, 5

Primo Levi

1919–1987

The dark echoed with outlandish orders in that curt, barbaric barking of Germans in command which seems to give vent to a millennial anger.

Survival in Auschwitz¹ [1960], ch. 2

Driven by thirst, I eyed a fine icicle outside the window, within hand’s reach. I opened the window and broke off the icicle but at once a large, heavy guard prowling outside brutally snatched it away from me. “Warum?” I asked him in my poor German. “Hier ist kein warum” (there is no why here), he replied, pushing me inside with a shove.

Survival in Auschwitz, 2

I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself.

Survival in Auschwitz, 15

Today I think that if for no other reason than that an Auschwitz existed, no one in our age should speak of Providence.

Survival in Auschwitz, 17

Up to the moment of this writing… the Nazi concentration camp system still remains a unicum, both in its extent and its quality. At no other place or time has one seen a phenomenon so unexpected and so complex: never have so many human lives been extinguished in so short a time, and with so lucid a combination of technological ingenuity, fanaticism, and cruelty.

The Drowned and the Saved [1986]

I do not know, and it does not much interest me to know, whether in my depths there lurks a murderer, but I do know that I was a guiltless victim and I was not a murderer. I know that the murderers existed, not only in Germany, and still exist, retired or on active duty, and that to confuse them with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is a precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth.

The Drowned and the Saved

Wladziu Valentino [Lee] Liberace

1919–1987

I cried all the way to the bank.

Liberace: An Autobiography [1973], ch. 2

James Lovelock

1919–

We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth [1979]

Merle Miller

1919–1986

It’s not true, that saying about sticks and stones; it’s words that break your bones.

On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual [1971]

Iris Murdoch

1919–1999

All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to crawl under the net.

Under the Net [1954]

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

A Severed Head [1961]

No one should be a prisoner of other people’s thoughts.

The Unicorn [1963]

Art attacks art and thrives by doing so. The artist derives energy from loving, but also from hating, the art of the past.

Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals [1992]

Laurence J[ohnston] Peter

1919–1990

In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

The Peter Principle [1969]

If you don’t know where you’re going, you will probably end up somewhere else.

The Peter Principle

Jackie [Jack Roosevelt] Robinson

1919–1972

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

Remark to an umpire who said he’d liked Robinson better when he was “less aggressive” [1954], from Robinson’s book Baseball Has Done It [1964]

I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world.

I Never Had It Made [1972]

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Epitaph on Robinson’s gravestone

J[erome] D[avid] Salinger

1919–2010

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.

The Catcher in the Rye [1951], ch. 3

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye.… 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.¹

The Catcher in the Rye, 22

It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

The Catcher in the Rye, last line

There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know—listen to me, now—don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is?… Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.²

Franny and Zooey [1961]

Pete [Peter] Seeger

1919–2014

Where have all the flowers gone?

The girls have picked them every one.

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where Have All the Flowers Gone? [1961]

If I had an axe, I’d chop the microphone cable right now.

Newport Folk Festival [1965], in response to volume and distortion caused by electric instruments

We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy

And the big fool says to push on.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy [1967]

Pete [Peter] Seeger

1919–2014

and

Lee Hays

1914–1981

If I had a hammer,

I’d hammer in the morning,

I’d hammer in the evening,

All over this land.

I’d hammer out danger,

I’d hammer out a warning,

I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters,

All over this land.

If I Had a Hammer [1949]

Pierre Trudeau

1919–2000

[On U.S.-Canadian relations:] Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and groan.

Speech at National Press Club [March 25, 1969]

George [Corley] Wallace

1919–1998

I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!

Inaugural address as governor of Alabama [January 14, 1963]

Bella [Savitzky] Abzug

1920–1998

There are those who say I’m impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash and overbearing.… But whatever I am—and this ought to be made very clear at the outset—I am a very serious woman.

Bella! [1972]

Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.

Speech to National Women’s Political Caucus [March 30, 1977]

Isaac Asimov

1920–1992

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. And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

I, Robot [1942]. Runaround

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Newsweek [January 21, 1980]

Ray Bradbury

1920–2012

There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

The Martian Chronicles [1950]

I am not afraid of robots. I am afraid of people, people, people. I want them to remain human.

Letter to Brian Sibley [June 10, 1974]

The function of science fiction is not only to predict the future, but to prevent it.

In conversation; quoted by Theodore Sturgeon in introduction to World Soul [1977]

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Quoted in the Seattle Times [March 12, 1993]

The library is the real school.

Interview with the Paris Review [2010]

Paul Celan [Antschel]

1920–1970

There’s nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

Letter [1948], quoted in John Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night

we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany

we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink

and we drink you

death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue…

he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air

he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master

            from Germany

Death Fugue [1952]¹

It is time the stone made an effort to flower,

time unrest had a beating heart.

It is time it were time.

Corona² [1952]

Threadsuns

above the grayblack wastes.

A tree-

high thought

grasps the light-tone: there are

still songs to sing beyond

mankind.³

Threadsuns [1968]

No one

bears witness for the

witness

Aschenglorie⁴ [1971]

Federico Fellini

1920–1993

Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams: Years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another.

Interview, Rolling Stone 421 [1984]

Martin Gansberg

1920–1995

I didn’t want to get involved.

Karl Ross, initially an anonymous witness to murder of Kitty Genovese, quoted in front-page story 37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call Police, New York Times [March 27, 1964]

Barbara Guest

1920–2006

This wide net, I am treading water

Near it, bubbles are rising and salt

Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer

Air than water. I am closer to you

Than land and I am in a stranger ocean

Than I wished.

The Location of Things [1960]. Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher

Leona Helmsley

1920–2007

We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.

Quoted in New York Times⁵ [July 12, 1989]

Frank Herbert

1920–1986

Fear is the mind-killer.… I will face my fear.

Dune [1965]

Irving Howe

1920–1993

What one conforms to most of all—despite and against one’s intentions—is the zeitgeist, that vast insidious sum of pressures and fashions; one drifts along, anxious and compliant, upon the favored assumptions of the moment; and not a soul in the intellectual world can escape this.

This Age of Conformity [1954]

When intellectuals can do nothing else, they start a magazine.

Twenty-Five Years of Dissent [1979]

François Jacob

1920–2013

Natural selection does not work as an engineer works. It works like a tinkerer—a tinkerer who does not know exactly what he is going to produce but uses whatever he finds around him whether it be pieces of string, fragments of wood, or old cardboards; in short it works like a tinkerer who uses everything at his disposal to produce some kind of workable object.

Evolution and Tinkering [1977]

Pope John Paul II [Karol Wojtyla]

1920–2005

The greatness of work is inside man.

Easter Vigil and Other Poems [1979]. The Quarry, I, Material

We must ask ourselves whether there will continue to accumulate over the heads of this new generation of children the threat of common extermination.… Are the children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?

Speech at the United Nations [October 2, 1979]

You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.

On visit to the Synagogue of Rome [April 13, 1986]

The culture of life means respect for nature and protection of God’s work of creation. In a special way it means respect for human life from the first moment of conception until its natural end.

Speech, Denver, Colorado [August 15, 1993]

Irving Kristol

1920–2009

A liberal who has been mugged by reality.¹

Definition of a neoconservative; New York Times [December 6, 1981]

Timothy Leary

1920–1996

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.

Slogan (title of lecture) [1967]

Clarice Lispector

1920–1977

The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

The Passion According to G.H. [1964]

All lives are heroic lives.

Agua Viva [1973]

I need secrets in order to live.

Agua Viva

Do not mourn the dead: they know what they are doing.

The Hour of the Star [1977]

Howard Nemerov

1920–1991

There is in space a small black hole

Through which, say our astronomers,

The whole damn thing, the universe,

Must one day fall. That will be all.

Cosmic Comics [1975]

The world is full of mostly invisible things,

And there is no way but putting the mind’s eye,

Or its nose, in a book, to find them out,

Things like the square root of Everest

Or how many times Byron goes into Texas,

Or whether the law of the excluded middle

Applies west of the Rockies.

To David, about His Education [1977]

Charlie [Charles Christopher] Parker [Jr.]

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.

Quoted in Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya [1955]

They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.

Quoted in Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya

Mario Puzo

1920–1999

I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.

The Godfather (novel) [1969]

Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks.

The Godfather [1969]

Mario Puzo

1920–1999

and

Francis Ford Coppola

1939–

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

The Godfather (screenplay) [1972], spoken by Peter Clemenza

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

The Godfather Part II (screenplay) [1974], spoken by Al Pacino

If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it’s that you can kill anyone.

The Godfather Part II, spoken by Al Pacino

Your father did business with Hyman Roth, your father respected Hyman Roth, but your father never trusted Hyman Roth!

The Godfather Part II, spoken by Michael V. Gazzo

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

The Godfather Part III (screenplay) [1990], spoken by Al Pacino

Vincent Scully

1920–2017

One entered the city like a god.… One scuttles in now like a rat.

American Architecture and Urbanism [1969]; on the 1963 demolition of New York’s Penn Station

John Paul Stevens

1920–2019

Money is property; it is not speech.

Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC—528 U.S. 377 [2000]

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

Dissenting opinion in U.S. Supreme Court, Bush v. Gore [December 12, 2000]

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Dissenting opinion, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, January 21, 2010

Stewart [Lee] Udall

1920–2010

A land ethic for tomorrow should be as honest as Thoreau’s Walden, and as comprehensive as the sensitive science of ecology. It should stress the oneness of our resources and the live-and-help-live logic of the great chain of life. If, in our haste to “progress,” the economics of ecology are disregarded by citizens and policy makers alike, the result will be an ugly America.

The Quiet Crisis [1963], ch. 14

Jack [John Randolph] Webb

1920–1982

et al.¹

The story you have just heard is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Dragnet (radio and television)

Sloan Wilson

1920–2003

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Title of novel [1955]

Richard Adler

1921–2012

and

Jerry Ross

1926–1955

I know a dark secluded place,

A place where no one knows your face,

A glass of wine,

A fast embrace,

It’s called Hernando’s Hideaway!

The Pajama Game [1954]. Hernando’s Hideaway

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets,

And little man, little Lola wants you.

Make up your mind to have no regrets,

Recline yourself, resign yourself, you’re through.

Damn Yankees [1955]. Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)

Lloyd Bentsen

1921–2006

[To Dan Quayle:] Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.

Vice-Presidential Debate [October 5, 1988]

Michael Cacoyannis

1921–2011

I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything: the full catastrophe.

Zorba the Greek (screenplay) [1964], from the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis; spoken by Anthony Quinn

Rodney Dangerfield [Jacob Cohen]

1921–2004

I can’t get no respect.

Comedy signature line

[Harold] Hal David

1921–2012

As sure as I believe

There’s a heaven above, Alfie

I know there’s something much more

Something even nonbelievers can believe in

I believe in love, Alfie

Alfie [1966], music by Burt Bacharach; originally recorded by Cilla Black

L.A. is a great big freeway.

Put a hundred down and buy a car.

In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star.

Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass

And all the stars that never were

Are parking cars and pumping gas.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose [1968], music by Burt Bacharach; originally recorded by Dionne Warwick

Mary Douglas

1921–2007

The human body is always treated as an image of society.

Natural Symbols [1970]

Alexander Dubček

1921–1992

Socialism with a human face.

Slogan of the Prague Spring [1968]

Friedrich Dürrenmatt

1921–1990

What was once thought can never be unthought.

The Physicists [1962]

Betty [Naomi] Friedan

1921–2006

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“Is this all?”

The Feminine Mystique [1963], ch. 1

The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities—is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.

The Feminine Mystique, 14

This uneasy sense of battles won, only to be fought over again, of battles that should have been won, according to all the rules, and yet are not, of battles that suddenly one does not really want to win, and the weariness of battle altogether—how many women feel it?

The Second Stage [1981]

Alex Haley

1921–1992

[On West African oral historians:] It is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.

Roots [1976]

Jon Hendricks

1921–2017

Everybody here’s got ears

Only gotta teach ’em how to use ’em

Not abuse ’em

Four¹ [1959], recorded by Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross

Patricia Highsmith

1921–1995

Obsessions are the only things that matter.

Diary entry [September 7, 1942]

I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.

The Price of Salt [1952], published under the pseudonym Claire Morgan

Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love.… It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.

The Price of Salt

It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike. For an instant the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear.

The Talented Mr. Ripley [1955], ch. 11

Ada Louise Huxtable

1921–2013

We will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.

The New York Times [October 30, 1963] Farewell to Penn Station

Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks, not for kings.

The New York Times [September 22, 1968]

Bill [William Henry] Mauldin

1921–2003

I feel like a fugitive from th’ law of averages.

Up Front [1945]. Caption for cartoon

Look at an infantryman’s eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen.

Up Front. Caption for cartoon

Beautiful view. Is there one for the enlisted men?

Up Front. Caption for cartoon

Julius K[ambarage] Nyerere

1921–1999

The survival of our wildlife is a matter of grave concern to all of us in Africa. These wild creatures amid the wild places they inhabit are not only important as a source of wonder and inspiration but are an integral part of our natural resources and of our future livelihood and well-being.

The Arusha Declaration, Tanganyika [September 1961]

Marie Ponsot

1921–2019

Restless, incautious, I want to talk violence,

Speak wild poems, hush, be still, pray grace

Taken forever; and after, lie long in the dense

Dark of your embrace, asleep between earth and space.

True Minds [1957]. Matins & Lauds

What wd it be to be water, one body of water

(what water is is another mystery). (We are

water divided.) It wd be a self without walls,

with surface tension, specific gravity, a local

exchange between bedrock and cloud of falling and rising,

rising to fall, falling to rise.

Springing [1962]

Things of the house of my mother,

You are many. My house is

Poor compared to yours and hers.

My poor house welcomes you.

Come to rest here. Be at home. Please

Do not be frantic do not

Fly whistling up out of your places.

Admit Impediment [1981]. As Is

What women wander?

Not many. All. A few.

Most would, now & then,

& no wonder.

Some, and I’m one,

Wander sitting still.

Admit Impediment. Among Women

John Rawls

1921–2002

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

A Theory of Justice [1971]

Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.

A Theory of Justice

Gene [Eugene Wesley] Roddenberry

1921–1991

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.

Star Trek (television series) [1966–1969]

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov

1921–1989

A thermonuclear war cannot be considered a continuation of politics by other means. It would be a means to universal suicide.

Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom [1968]

Intellectual freedom is the only guarantee of a scientific-democratic approach to politics, economic development, and culture.

Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom

Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships.

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom

Arthur Leonard Schawlow

1921–1999

Anything worth doing is worth doing twice, the first time quick and dirty, and the second time the best way you can.

Quoted in Stanford Report [May 31, 2000]

Thomas Schelling

1921–2016

Violence is most purposive and most successful when it is threatened and not used. Successful threats are those that do not have to be carried out.

Arms and Influence [1966]

Sophie Scholl

1921–1943

Finally, someone has to make a start. We only said and wrote what many people think. They just don’t dare to express it.

At the White Rose trial in Munich [1942]

Leonardo Sciascia

1921–1989

The truth is at the bottom of a well: look into it and you see the sun or the moon; but if you throw yourself in, there’s no more sun or moon: just truth.

The Day of the Owl [1961]

George David Weiss

1921–2010

and

Bob Thiele

1922–1996

I see skies of blue, and clouds of white,

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night.

And I think to myself… what a wonderful world.

What a Wonderful World [1968]

Richard [Purdy] Wilbur

1921–2017

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed

By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it.

The Beautiful Changes [1947], st. 2

    The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,

And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul

Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple

as false dawn.

        Outside the open window

The morning air is all awash with angels.

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World [1956]

        The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,

From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,

And cries,

      “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,

Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam

And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

Mind in its purest play is like some bat

That beats about in caverns all alone,

Contriving by a kind of senseless wit

Not to conclude against a wall of stone.

It has no need to falter or explore;

Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,

And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar

In perfect courses through the blackest air.

And has this simile a like perfection?

The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save

That in the very happiest intellection

A graceful error may correct the cave.

Mind [1956]

Ask us, prophet, how we shall call

Our natures forth when that live tongue is all

Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean

Horse of our courage, in which beheld

The singing locust of the soul unshelled,

And all we mean or wish to mean.

Advice to a Prophet [1961], st. 7, 8

All bitter things conduce to sweet,

    As this example shows;

Without the little spirochete

We’d have no chocolate to eat,

Nor would tobacco’s fragrance greet

The European nose.

Pangloss’s Song: A Comic Opera Lyric [1961]

Raymond Williams

1921–1988

The idea of nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.

Ideas of Nature [1972]

Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language.

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society [1976]

The vitality of a language includes every kind of extension, variation and transfer, and this is as true of change in our own time (however much we may regret some particular example) as of changes in the past which can now be given a sacral veneer.

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society

Whitney M[oore] Young, Jr.

1921–1971

Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job, or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks—and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin.

Beyond Racism: Building an Open Society [1969], ch. 4

Sir Kingsley Amis

1922–1995

A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.

Lucky Jim [1954], ch. 6

Death has got something to be said for it:

There’s no need to get out of bed for it;

Wherever you may be,

They bring it to you, free.

Delivery Guaranteed [1979]

George Axelrod

1922–2003

The Seven Year Itch

Title of play [1952]

There are people who think of Johnny as a clown and a buffoon. But I do not. I despise John Iselin and everything that Iselinism has come to stand for. I think if John Iselin were a paid Soviet agent he could not do more to harm this country than he’s doing now.

The Manchurian Candidate (screenplay) [1962], based on novel by Richard Condon; spoken by John McGiver

Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.

The Manchurian Candidate; spoken by Frank Sinatra

Al Dvorin

1922–2004

Elvis has left the building.

Attributed. Signature catchphrase at Elvis Presley concerts

Michael Flanders

1922–1975

and

Donald Swann

1923–1994

I don’t eat people,

I won’t eat people,

I don’t eat people,

Eating people is wrong!

The Reluctant Cannibal [1956]

William Gaddis

1922–1998

What is it they want from a man that they didn’t get from the work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he’s done his work? What’s any artist but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around.

The Recognitions [1955]

It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least.

The Recognitions

Mavis [Leslie de Trafford Young] Gallant

1922–2014

If you listen at doors, you hear what you deserve.

The Cost of Living [1962]

Erving Goffman

1922–1982

There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive.

Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction [1961]

Damon J[erome] Keith

1922–2019

Democracies die behind closed doors.¹

Decision in Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft [2002]

Burt Kennedy

1922–2001

Some things a man can’t ride around.

The Tall T, screenplay [1957], spoken by Randolph Scott; a similar line is used again in Ride Lonesome [1959], also spoken by Scott

Jack Kerouac

1922–1969

We’re a beat generation.²

Remark [November 1948]. From JOHN CLELLON HOLMES, Nothing More to Declare [1967]

But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

On the Road [1957]

All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile.

Visions of Cody [1951–1952, published 1972]

I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss.

Visions of Cody

Jack Kerouac

1922–1969

and

Allen Ginsberg

1926–1997

and

Neal Cassady

1926–1968

Pull my daisy

tip my cup

all my doors are open

Cut my thoughts

for coconuts

all my eggs are broken

Pull My Daisy [1959]

Lord Kitchener [Aldwyn Roberts]

1922–2000

No, you can never get away from the fact

If you’re not white you’re considered black

Black or White [1953]

Nigel Kneale

1922–2006

We are the Martians.

Quatermass and the Pit (television show) [1959], episode 6

Seymour Krim

1922–1989

You’ve got it made. How the words sing a swift jazz poem of success, hi-fi, the best chicks (or guys), your name in lights, pot to burn, jets to L.A. and London, bread in the bank, baby, a fortress built around your ego like a magic suit of armor!

Views of a Near-Sighted Cannoneer [1961]. Making It!

If you are a proud, searching “failure” in this society, and we can take ironic comfort in the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of us, then it is smart and honorable to know what you attempted and why you are now vulnerable to the body blows of those who once saw you robed in the glow of your vision and now only see an unmade bed and a few unwashed cups on the bare wooden table of a gray day.

For My Brothers and Sisters in the Failure Business [1973]

Thomas Kuhn

1922–1996

Examining the record of past research from the vantage of contemporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1962]

Philip Larkin

1922–1985

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?

Toads [1955]

Marrying left your maiden name disused.

Maiden Name [1955]

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back.

Home Is So Sad [1964]

Never such innocence again.

MCMXIV [1964]

Where can we live but days?

Days [1964]

If I were called in

To construct a religion

I should make use of water.

Water [1964]

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.

Annus Mirabilis [1974]

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.

This Be The Verse [1974]

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms

Inside your head, and people in them, acting.

People you know, yet can’t quite name.

The Old Fools [1974]

  Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.

Interview with London Observer [1979], collected in Required Writing [1983]

Stan Lee [Stanley Martin Lieber]

1922–2018

With great power, there must also come—great responsibility!

Amazing Fantasy #15¹ [1962]. Origin story of The Amazing Spider-Man

I was born to soar… to ride the currents of space… not to be confined within a barren structure!

The Fantastic Four #50: The Startling Saga of the Silver Surfer¹ [1966]

John G[illespie] Magee, Jr.

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 ever 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.

High Flight² [1941]

George McGovern

1922–2012

The Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina.

Lecture, Oxford University [January 21, 1973]

Grace Paley

1922–2007

Thank God for the head. Inside the head is the only place you got to be young when the usual place gets used up.

Later the Same Day [1985]. Zagrowsky Tells

Pier Paolo Pasolini

1922–1975

But I, with the conscious

heart of one who lives only in history,

can I ever act with pure passion again,

when I know that our history has ended?

Gramsci’s Ashes (La ceneri di Gramsci)¹ [1954], Title poem

John A. Powers

1922–1980

All systems go. Everything is A-OK.

Statement as public information officer for U.S. space program [1959–1964]

Yitzhak Rabin

1922–1995

One does not make peace with one’s friends. One makes peace with one’s enemies.

Quoted in Jerusalem Post [November 26, 1993]

Alain Robbe-Grillet

1922–2008

You never seem to be waiting for me, but we kept meeting at every turn of the paths. Behind every bush, at the foot of each statue, near every pond. It is as if it had been only you and I in all that garden.

Last Year at Marienbad, screenplay [1961]

Alice S[chaerr] Rossi

1922–2009

The single most impressive fact about the attempt by American women to obtain the right to vote is how long it took.

The Feminist Papers [1973]. Along the Suffrage Trail

Charles M[onroe] Schulz

1922–2000

It was a dark and stormy night.² Suddenly a scream pierced the air.… Good writing takes enormous concentration.

Peanuts (comic strip)

Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life.

Peanuts

[Linus:] After you’ve died, do you get to come back?

[Charlie Brown:] If they stamp your hand.

Peanuts

I love mankind—it’s PEOPLE I can’t stand!

You’re a Winner, Charlie Brown [1960]

Joseph Stefano

1922–2006

A boy’s best friend is his mother.

Psycho (screenplay) [1960], spoken by Anthony Perkins

We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?

Psycho (screenplay), spoken by Anthony Perkins

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

1922–2007

Science is magic that works.

Cat’s Cradle [1963], ch. 97

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

Cat’s Cradle, 124

Hello babies. Welcome to earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—:

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater [1965]

So it goes.

Slaughterhouse-Five [1969], ch. 1 and passim

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Slaughterhouse-Five, 2

You know—we’ve had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. “My God, my God—” I said to myself, “it’s the Children’s Crusade.”

Slaughterhouse-Five, 5

You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages—they haven’t ended yet.

Deadeye Dick [1982]

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS MUSIC

A Man Without a Country [2005]

John [Edward] Williams

1922–1994

The love of literature, of language, of the mystery of the mind and heart showing themselves in the minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words, in the blackest and coldest print—the love which he had hidden as if it were illicit and dangerous, he began to display, tentatively at first, and then boldly, and then proudly.

Stoner [1965]

Howard Zinn

1922–2010

In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people… not to be on the side of the executioners.

A People’s History of the United States [1980]

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.

Terror over Tripoli [1993]

Diane Arbus

1923–1971

A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.

From the monograph Diane Arbus [1972]

You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.

From the monograph Diane Arbus

Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma.

From the monograph Diane Arbus

Italo Calvino

1923–1985

The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.

Invisible Cities [1972]

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears.

Invisible Cities

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

Invisible Cities

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Why Read the Classics? [1981]

I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.

Six Memos for the Next Millennium [1988]. Lightness

In the even more congested times that await us, literature must aim at the maximum concentration of poetry and of thought.

Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Quickness

Paddy Chayevsky

1923–1981

You don’t like her, that’s too bad. She’s a dog, and I’m a fat, ugly little guy. I had a good time last night. I’m gonna call her up tonight and if I have a good time tonight and enough good times, I’m gonna get down on my knees and I’m gonna beg that girl she should marry me.

Marty (teleplay) [1953], spoken by Rod Steiger

I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.

Network (screenplay) [1976]

You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion.

Network

James Dickey

1923–1997

And I to my motorcycle

Parked like the soul of the junkyard

Restored, a bicycle fleshed

With power, and tore off

Up Highway 106, continually

Drunk on the wind in my mouth,

Wringing the handlebar for speed,

Wild to be wreckage forever.

Cherrylog Road [1963]

All families lie together, though some are burned alive.

The others try to feel

For them. Some can, it is often said.

The Firebombing [1965]

Bob [Robert B.] Elliott

1923–2016

and

Ray [Raymond H.] Goulding

1922–1990

Hang by your thumbs, everybody! Write if you get work!

Bob and Ray radio show [1946], signature closing lines

Shūsaku Endō

1923–1996

This country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself. This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp.

Silence¹ [1966], spoken by Father Ferreira

Paula Fox

1923–2017

There was a siege going on: it had been going on for a long time, but the besieged themselves were the last to take it seriously.

Desperate Characters [1970]

Nadine Gordimer

1923–2014

The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

A Bolter and the Invincible Summer [1963]

That was one of the things she held against missionaries: how they stressed Christ’s submission to humiliation, and so had conditioned the people of Africa to humiliation by the white man.

Not for Publication [1965], title story

She filled her house with blacks, and white parsons who went around preaching Jesus was a revolutionary, and then when the police walked in she was surprised.

The Conservationist [1974]

Joseph Heller

1923–1999

He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

Catch-22 [1961], ch. 3

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.… 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.…“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he [Yossarian] observed. “It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

Catch-22, 5

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

Catch-22, 34

In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of twenty, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total of one hundred and twenty people who are feared by at least one person. Each of these one hundred and twenty people is afraid of the other one hundred and nineteen, and all of these one hundred and forty-five people are afraid of the twelve men at the top who helped found and build the company and now own and direct it.

Something Happened [1974]. The Office in Which I Work

Henry [Alfred] Kissinger

1923–

Power is the great aphrodisiac.¹

In the New York Times [January 19, 1971]

Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.

Testimony before the Pike Commission [1975]

High office teaches decision-making, not substance.… A period in high office consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it.

The White House Years [1979], pt. II

History knows no resting places and no plateaus.

White House Years [1979], III

A conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla army wins if it does not lose.

The Vietnam Negotiation, in Foreign Affairs [January 1969]

[Richard Nixon] would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him.

Quoted in STEPHEN AMBROSE, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1973–1990 [1991]

Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?

Attributed

Lee Kuan Yew

1923–2015

Poetry is a luxury we cannot afford.

Address, National University of Singapore [1968]

Denise Levertov

1923–1999

I like to find

what’s not found

at once, but lies

within something of another nature

in repose, distinct.

Pleasures [1959]

Marvelous Truth, confront us

at every turn,

in every guise.

Matins [1962], VII

Two by two in the ark of

the ache of it.

The Ache of Marriage [1964]

Perhaps he will not return.

            But what we have lived

comes back to us.

      We see more.

        We feel, as our rings increase,

something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest leaf-tips

further.

A Tree Telling of Orpheus [1968]

Györgi Ligeti

1923–2006

I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.

Lecture on modern music [March 10, 1993]

Norman Mailer

1923–2007

Society, which is necessary to enable man to grow, is also the prison whose walls he must perpetually enlarge… It is the artist, embodying the most noble faculty of man—his urge to rebel—who is forever enlarging the walls.

What I Think of Artistic Freedom? [1955]

I finally had the simple sense to understand that if I wanted my work to travel further than others, the life of my talent depended on fighting a little more, and looking for help a little less.

The Mind of an Outlaw [1959]

There is probably no sensitive heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied at one time or another with his latent homosexuality.

Advertisements for Myself [1959]. The Homosexual Villain

So there was a new breed of adventurers, urban adventurers who drifted out at night looking for action with a black man’s code to fit their facts. The hipster had absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro, and for practical purpose could be considered a white Negro.

Advertisements for Myself. The White Negro

Only a hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation; a hero embodies the fantasy and so allows each private mind the liberty to consider its fantasy and find a way to grow.

Esquire [1960]. Superman Comes to the Supermarket

Our tragedy is that we diverge as countrymen further and further away from one another, like a space ship broken apart in flight which now drifts mournfully in isolated orbits, satellites to each other, planets none, communication faint.

An Evening with Jackie Kennedy [1962]

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent; there was a message returned to us by our frontier that the outlaw is worth more than the sheriff.

Preface to the Bantam paperback edition of The Presidential Papers [1964]

Chicago was a town where nobody could ever forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.

Miami and the Siege of Chicago [1968]

The middle-class Left would never learn that workingmen in greasy dungarees make a point of voting against the mother who carries the babe—the righteous face of any such mother reminds them of schoolteachers they used to hate!

Miami and the Siege of Chicago

A politician picks and chooses among moral properties. If he is quick-witted, unscrupulous, and does not mind a life of constant anxiety, he will hasten—there is a great competition for things valuable in politics—to pick up properties wherever he can, even if they are rival holdings. To the extent a politician is his own man, attached to his own search for his own spiritual truth—which is to say to end in any unpalatable position to which the character of his truth could lead him—then he is ill-equipped for the game of politics. Politics is property.¹

Miami and the Siege of Chicago

In the air the Pentagon would then, went the presumption, turn orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled this levitation. At that point the war in Vietnam would end.

The Armies of the Night [1968], pt. III, ch. 5

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.

Of a Fire on the Moon [1970]

We are a Faustian age determined to meet the Lord or the Devil before we are done, and the ineluctable ore of the authentic is our only key to the lock.

Existential Errands [1972]. A Course in Film-Making

Factoids… that is, facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotions in the Silent Majority.

Marilyn [1973]; Mailer coined the term while describing a biography of Marilyn Monroe by Maurice Zolotow

Then the Warden said, “Do you have anything you’d like to say?” and Gary looked up at the ceiling and hesitated, then said, “Let’s do it.” That was it.

The Executioner’s Song [1979], ch. 38

Alice Miller

1923–2010

The grandiose person is never really free; first, because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.

The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self [1979]

Child abuse is still sanctioned—indeed, held in high regard—in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents.

For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence [1984]

Iona [Margaret Balfour] Opie

1923–2017

Nursery rhymes are the smallest great poems of the world’s literature.

Quoted in The Guardian [October 25, 2017]

Jaroslav Pelikan

1923–2006

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.

The Vindication of Tradition [1984]

James Schuyler

1923–1991

New York poets, except I suppose the color-blind, are affected most by the flood of paint in whose crashing surf we all scramble.

Poet and Painter Overture. A statement on poetics in The New American Poetry 1945–1960 [1960], edited by Donald Allen

Not knowing

a name for something proves nothing. Right

now it isn’t raining, snowing, sleeting, slushing,

yet it is

doing something. As a matter of fact

it is raining snow. Snow

from cold clouds

that melts as it strikes.

The Crystal Lithium [1972]. Empathy and New Year

        Is it for miracles

We live? I like it when the morning sun lights up my room

Like a yellow jelly bean, an inner glow. May mutters: “Why

ask questions?” or, “What are the questions you wish to ask?”

Hymn to Life [1974]

            Some-

one is watching morning

TV. I’m not reduced to that

yet. I wish one could press

snowflakes in a book like flowers.

The Morning of the Poem [1980]. The Payne Whitney Poems: February 13, 1975

Then there is a fifth season,

called—but that’s my secret.

Yes, my secret, and I’m going

to keep it that way. Yes, my secret.

A Few Days [1985]. Thursday

Eugene B. Sledge, Jr.

1923–2001

Slowly the reality of it all formed in my mind: we were expendable! It was difficult to accept. We come from a nation and a culture that values life and the individual. To find oneself in a situation where your life seems of little value is the ultimate in loneliness. It is a humbling experience.

With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa [1981], ch. 4

Philip Whalen

1923–2002

Old and ruined, all rotted and broken up

These plum trees function gorgeously

A few days every year

In a way nobody else does.

Scenes of Life at the Capital [1970]

Hank Williams

1923–1953

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill?

He sounds too blue to fly.

The midnight train is whining low,

I’m so lonesome I could cry.

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry [1942]

I can settle down and be doing just fine

Till I hear an old train rolling down the line,

Then I hurry straight home and pack

And if I didn’t go, I believe I’d blow my stack

I love you baby, but you gotta understand

When the Lord made me he made a ramblin’ man

Ramblin’ Man [1951]

Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and a filé gumbo

’Cause tonight I’m gonna see my ma chère amie-o

Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh

Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

Jambalaya (On the Bayou)¹ [1952]

Hank Williams

1923–1953

and

Fred Rose

1898–1954

No matter how I struggle and strive,

I’ll never get out of this world alive.

I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive [1952]

Lee Adams

1924–

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played

Songs that made the hit parade.

Guys like us, we had it made.

Those were the days.

…

Didn’t need no welfare state,

Ev’rybody pulled his weight,

Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.

Those were the days.

Theme song, All in the Family [1971–1979], sung by Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton, with music by Charles Strouse

Yehuda Amichai

1924–2000

God has pity on kindergarten children.

He has less pity on school children.

And on grownups he has no pity at all,

he leaves them alone,

and sometimes they must crawl on all fours

in the burning sand

to reach the first-aid station

covered with blood.

God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children [1955]

Lauren Bacall

1924–2014

Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.

By Myself and Then Some [1978]

James Baldwin

1924–1987

My life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do but from the hatred I carried in my own heart.

Notes of a Native Son [1955], title essay

Harlem had needed something to smash. To smash something is the ghetto’s chronic need.

Notes of a Native Son, title essay

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear.

Notes of a Native Son. Many Thousands Gone

There exists among the intolerably degraded the perverse and powerful desire to force into the arena of the actual the fantastic crimes of which they have been accused, achieving their vengeance and their own destruction through making the nightmare real.

Notes of a Native Son. Many Thousands Gone

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Notes of a Native Son. Stranger in the Village

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Giovanni’s Room [1956]

Americans keep wondering what has “got into” the students. What has “got into” them is their history in this country. They are not the first Negroes to face mobs: they are merely the first Negroes to frighten the mob more than the mob frightens them.

They Can’t Turn Back [1960]

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time.

From The Negro in American Culture, radio symposium [January 10, 1961]

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

Nobody Knows My Name [1961]. Fifth Avenue, Uptown

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.

Nobody Knows My Name. The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy

Most people had not lived—nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died—through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life.

Another Country [1962], bk. 1, ch. 3

You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.

A Letter to My Nephew [1962]

If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!

The Fire Next Time [1963], end

The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to

The Fire Next Time

Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion.

The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity [1963]

The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.

The White Man’s Guilt [1965]

The terrible probability is that the Western populations, struggling to hold on to what they have stolen from their captives, and unable to look into their mirror, will precipitate a chaos throughout the world which, if it does not bring life on this planet to an end, will bring about a racial war such as the world has never seen, and for which generations yet unborn will curse our names forever.

The International War Crimes Tribunal [1967]

If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

Open Letter to My Sister Angela Y. Davis [1970]

People who cannot escape thinking of themselves as white are poorly equipped, if equipped at all, to consider the meaning of black: people who know so little about themselves can face very little in another: and one dare hope for nothing from friends like these.

The Devil Finds Work [1976]

How could we know that the music comes from us, we build the bridge into eternity, we are the song we sing?

Just Above My Head [1979]

Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated—in the main, abominably—because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.

Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood [1985]

Robert Bolt

1924–1995

and

Michael Wilson

1914–1978

Young men make wars—and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men—courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men—mistrust and caution.

Lawrence of Arabia (screenplay) [1962], spoken by Alec Guinness

The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

Lawrence of Arabia (screenplay), spoken by Peter O’Toole

George [Herbert Walker] Bush

1924–2018

Voodoo economics.

Remark, presidential primary campaign [1980]

We are a nation of communities, of tens and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary, and unique… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.¹

Acceptance speech, Republican National Convention, New Orleans [August 18, 1988]

The Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again. And all I can say to them is read my lips: No New Taxes.

Acceptance speech, Republican National Convention, New Orleans

I want a kinder, gentler nation.

Acceptance speech, Republican National Convention, New Orleans

A line has been drawn in the sand.

On U.S. policy toward Iraq [August 8, 1990]

We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order—a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.

On allied military attacks in the Gulf War [January 16, 1991]

Truman Capote

1924–1984

It was a terrible, strange-looking hotel. But Little Sunshine stayed on: it was his rightful home, he said, for if he went away, as he had once upon a time, other voices, other rooms, voices lost and clouded, strummed his dreams.

Other Voices, Other Rooms [1948], ch. 5

Now Second Avenue is a dismal street, made from scraps and ends; part cobblestone, part asphalt, part cement; and its atmosphere of desertion is permanent.

A Tree of Night [1949]. Miriam

It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s [1958]

[It] isn’t writing at all—it’s typing.

Comment [1959] on Beat Generation writers. From GERALD CLARKE, Capote [1988]

I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.

In Cold Blood [1966]

Jimmy [James Earl, Jr.] Carter

1924–

We believe that the first time we’re born, as children, it’s human life given to us; and when we accept Jesus as our Savior, it’s a new life. That’s what “born again” means.

In an interview with Robert L. Turner [March 16, 1976]

A simple and a proper function of government is just to make it easy for us to do good and difficult for us to do wrong.

Speech at Democratic National Convention [July 15, 1976]

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.

Interview in Playboy magazine [October 1976]

Two problems of our country—energy and malaise.

Remark at town meeting, Bardstown, Kentucky [July 31, 1979]

Shirley Chisholm

1924–2005

Health is a human right, not a privilege to be purchased.

Speech in U.S. House of Representatives [1970]

Henry Fairlie

1924–1990

By the “Establishment,” I do not mean only the centers of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised.

The Spectator [September 1955]

Love wants to enjoy in other ways the human beings whom it has enjoyed in bed; it looks forward to having breakfast. But in the morning Lust is always furtive.

Lust [1978]

No democracy has fallen to communism, without an army; many democracies have fallen to fascism, from within.

Washington Post [July 27, 1980]. Mencken’s Booboisie in Control of GOP

Paul Feyerabend

1924–1994

Science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit.

Against Method [1975]

William H[oward] Gass

1924–2017

If you enjoy the opinions you possess, if they give you a glow, be suspicious. They may be possessing you. An opinion should be treated like a guest who is likely to stay too late and drink all the whiskey.

A Temple of Texts [2006]. Influence

Alexander Haig

1924–2010

As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.

After the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan [March 30, 1981]

Zbigniew Herbert

1924–1998

The pebble

is a perfect creature

equal to itself

mindful of its limits

filled exactly

with a pebbly meaning

Pebble¹ [1966]

Joseph Kraft

1924–1986

Exit strategy

Washington Post [February 2, 1984]. Seeking an Exit Strategy

Harvey Kurtzman

1924–1993

What, me worry?

Motto of Alfred E. Neuman, Mad Magazine [1952–2019]

Sidney Lumet

1924–2011

There are no unimportant decisions in a movie.

Making Movies [1995]

Rod Serling

1924–1975

You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone (television series), opening narration [1959]

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices—to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill—and suspicion can destroy—and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own—for the children—and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined—to the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street [1960]

Harvey Shapiro

1924–2013

Above the warehouse and beneath the stars

The poets creep on the harp of the Bridge.

But see,

They fall into the National Cold Storage Company

One by one. The wind off the river is too cold,

Or the times too rough, or the Bridge

Is not a harp at all. Or maybe

A monstrous birth inside the warehouse

Must be fed by everything—ships, poems,

Stars, all the years of our lives.

Battle Report [1966]. National Cold Storage Company

Never using a stuntman,

I went through this life myself.

A Day’s Portion [1994]. The Boast

E[dward] P[almer] Thompson

1924–1993

I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.

The Making of the English Working Class [1963]

Wislawa Szymborska

1924–2012

Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.

But that’s just our simile.

The character’s invented, his haste is make-believe,

his news inhuman.

View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems¹ [1993]. Title poem

You were saved because you were the first.

You were saved because you were the last.

Alone. With others.

On the right. On the left.

Because it was raining. Because of the shade.

Because the day was sunny.

View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems. Could Have

Robert Altman

1925–2006

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman: An Oral Biography [2009]

Howard H. Baker, Jr.

1925–2014

What did the president know and when did he know it?

Senate Watergate Committee hearings [June 25, 1973]

Russell Baker

1925–2019

Being solemn is easy. Being serious is hard. You probably have to be born serious, or at least go through a very interesting childhood. Children almost always begin by being serious, which is what makes them so entertaining when compared to adults as a class.

The New York Times [April 30, 1978]

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.

Growing Up [1982], ch. 9

Yogi [Lawrence Peter] Berra

1925–2015

We made too many wrong mistakes.

On losing the World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates; attributed [1960]

It gets late early out there.

Quoted in Sporting News [August 7, 1971]

It ain’t over till it’s over.

Comment on National League pennant race [1973]

I really didn’t say everything I said.

Quoted in Sports Illustrated [March 17, 1986]

How can you think and hit at the same time?

Remark

You can observe a lot by watching.

Remark

If people don’t want to come out to the ball park, nobody’s going to stop them.

Attributed

It was déjà vu all over again.

Attributed

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Attributed

Lenny Bruce [Leonard Alfred Schneider]

1925–1966

There’s nothing sadder than an old hipster.

How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiography [1965]

Liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them.

The Essential Lenny Bruce [1967]

People should be taught what is, not what should be. All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing in the breadline.

The Essential Lenny Bruce, Epigraph

William F[rank] Buckley, Jr.

1925–2008

National Review… stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

Publisher’s Statement, National Review, inaugural issue [November 19, 1955]

I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

Rumbles Left and Right [1963]

Barbara Pierce Bush

1925–2018

Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President’s spouse. I wish him well!

Remarks at Wellesley College Commencement [June 1, 1990]

Carlos Castaneda

1925–1998

Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge [1968]

Gilles Deleuze

1925–1995

Nietzsche’s active philosophy has only one principle: a word only means something insofar as the speaker wills something by saying it.

Nietzsche and Philosophy [1962]

John [Daniel] Ehrlichman

1925–1999

It’ll play in Peoria.¹

Phrase [1970]

I think we ought to let him [FBI director L. Patrick Gray] hang there. Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.

Telephone conversation with John Dean [March 7/8, 1973]

Frantz Fanon

1925–1961

When I search for man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and an avalanche of murders.

The Wretched of the Earth² [1961]. Conclusion

Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe.

The Wretched of the Earth

I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos.

Black Skin, White Masks [1967]

Russell Hoban

1925–2011

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.

The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

A story is what remains when you leave out most of the action.

Pilgermann

Donald Justice

1925–2004

Men at forty

Learn to close softly

The doors to rooms they will not be

Coming back to.

Men at Forty [1967]

Robert F[rancis] Kennedy

1925–1968

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Speech, University of Cape Town, South Africa [June 6, 1966]

These are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election. At stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country. It is our right to the moral leadership of this planet.

Announcing his candidacy for president [March 16, 1968]

The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Speech, University of Kansas [March 18, 1968]

We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

Remarks on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Indianapolis [April 4, 1968]

Kenneth Koch

1925–2002

At the Poem Society a black-haired man stands up to say,

“You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent!

Haven’t you ever looked out the window at a painting by Matisse,

Or did you always stay in hotels where there were too many spiders crawling on your visages?

Did you ever glance inside a bottle of sparkling pop,

Or see a citizen split in two by the lightning?

I am afraid you have never smiled at the hibernation

Of bear cubs except that you saw in it some deep relation

To human suffering and wishes, oh what a bunch of crackpots!”

Fresh Air [1956]

And all the professors left the room to go back to their duty,

And all that were left in the room were five or six poets

And together they sang the new poem of the twentieth century

Which, though influenced by Mallarmé, Shelley, Byron, and Whitman,

Plus a million other poets, is still entirely original

And is so exciting that it cannot be here repeated.

Fresh Air

Children have a natural talent for writing poetry and anyone who teaches them should know that. Teaching really is not the right word for what takes place: it is more like permitting the children to discover something they already have.

Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry [1970]

Total absorption in poetry is one of the finest things in existence—

It should not make you feel guilty. Everyone is absorbed in something.

The sailor is absorbed in the sea. Poetry is the mediation of life.

The Art of Love [1975]. The Art of Poetry

Maxine [Winokur] Kumin

1925–2014

I took the lake between my legs.

Morning Swim [1965]

Our daughters and sons have burst

from the marionette show

leaving a tangle of strings

and gone into the unlit audience.

The Absent Ones [1972]

Can it be

I am the only Jew residing in Danville, Kentucky,

looking for matzoh in the Safeway and the A & P?

Living Alone with Jesus [1972]

Claude Lanzmann

1925–2018

I’ve always said that archival images are images without imagination. They petrify thought and kill all power of evocation.

Quoted in David Bathwick et al., Visualizing the Holocaust [2008]

I knew that the subject of the film would be death itself, death rather than survival, a radical contradiction since in a sense it attested to the impossibility of the project I was embarking on: the dead could not speak for the dead…. My film would have to take up the ultimate challenge; take the place of the non-existent images of death in the gas chambers.

The Patagonian Hare: A Memoir [2009]; on the making of his film Shoah [1985]

Elmore Leonard

1925–2013

I don’t expect to see something and then look and say, uh-huh, there it is. I try to look without expecting and see what’s actually there. Is that insight?

City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit [1980]

If work was a good thing the rich would have it all and not let you do it.

Split Images [1981]

“I asked him one time what type of writing brought the most money and the agent says, ‘Ransom notes.’”

Get Shorty [1990]

We’re living in the arms capital of America, South Florida. You can buy an assault rifle here in less time than it takes to get a library card.

Rum Punch [1992], ch. 8

Try to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points, and Especially Hooptedoodle [2001]

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points, and Especially Hooptedoodle

Malcolm X [El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz]

1925–1965

If you’re born in America with a black skin, you’re born in prison.

Interview [June 1963]

Whether you’re educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you’re going to catch hell just like I am. We’re all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man.

The Ballot or the Bullet [April 3, 1964]

It’ll be the ballot or the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death.

The Ballot or the Bullet

I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

The Ballot or the Bullet

We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; the rock was landed on us.

The Ballot or the Bullet

We are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as human beings. We are fighting for… human rights.

Speech, Black Revolution, New York [1964]

The day that the black man takes an uncompromising step and realizes that he’s within his rights, when his own freedom is being jeopardized, to use any means necessary to bring about his freedom or put a halt to that injustice, I don’t think he’ll be by himself.

Oxford Union Society debate [December 3, 1964]

[On the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:] It was, as I saw it, a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.” I said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread unchecked, had finally struck down this country’s Chief Magistrate.

Autobiography (as told to ALEX HALEY) [1964]

Zhores Aleksandrovich Medvedev

1925–

Science and technology, and the various forms of art, all unite humanity in a single and interconnected system. As science progresses, the worldwide cooperation of scientists and technologists becomes more and more of a special and distinct intellectual community of friendship, in which, in place of antagonism, there is growing up a mutually advantageous sharing of work, a coordination of efforts, a common language for the exchange of information, and a solidarity, which are in many cases independent of the social and political differences of individual states.

The Medvedev Papers [1970], preface

Yukio Mishima

1925–1970

Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?

Confessions of a Mask [1949]

Flannery O’Connor

1925–1964

I preach that there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else’s, but behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there’s no truth.

Wise Blood [1952], spoken by Hazel Motes

I’m member and preacher to that church where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way.

Wise Blood, spoken by Hazel Motes

Besides the neutral expression she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck.

Good Country People [1955]

Living had got to be such a habit with him that he couldn’t conceive of any other condition.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find [1955]. A Late Encounter with the Enemy

The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it.… If you manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first.

Letter to Father John McCown [May 9, 1956]

I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why.

Talk at Notre Dame University [spring 1957]

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think universities stifle writers. I think they don’t stifle enough of them.

Interview in Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution [May 20, 1960]

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction [1960]

Knowing who you are is good for one generation only.

Everything That Rises Must Converge [1965], title story

I have settled, in short, from reading my own writings, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.

Mystery and Manners [1969]. On Her Own Work

A story really isn’t any good unless it successfully resists paraphrase.

Mystery and Manners. On Her Own Work

The main concern of the fiction writer is with mystery as it is incarnated in human life.

Mystery and Manners. Catholic Novelists and Their Readers

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

Mystery and Manners. The Nature and Aim of Fiction

Sam Peckinpah

1925–1984

All I want is to enter my house justified.

Ride the High Country (screenplay) [1962], written with N. B. Stone and William S. Roberts; spoken by Joel McCrea

Frank R. Pierson

1925–2012

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

Cool Hand Luke (screenplay) [1967]

Robert Rauschenberg

1925–2008

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)

Untitled Statement [1959]

I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.

Quoted in CALVIN TOMPKINS, The Bride and the Bachelors [1965]

James Salter

1925–2015

The myriad past, it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds, exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares, and collecting them, one discovers the true design.

A Sport and a Pastime [1967]

The death of kings can be recited, but not of one’s child.

Burning the Days [1997]

Jack Spicer

1925–1965

A really perfect poem has an infinitely small vocabulary.

After Lorca [1957]

Presently I shall go to a bar and there one or two poets will speak to me and I to them and we will try to destroy each other or attract each other or even listen to each other and nothing will happen because we will be speaking in prose.

After Lorca

Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to.

After Spicer

The English department of the spirit—that great quagmire that lurks at the bottom of all of us.

Admonitions [1958]

Hell is this:

The lack of anything but the eternal to look at

The expansiveness of salt

The lack of any bed but one’s

Music to sleep in.

A Book of Music [1958]. Orfeo

So the heart breaks

Into small shadows

Almost so random

They are meaningless

Like a diamond

Has at the center of it a diamond

Or a rock

Rock.

Billy the Kid [1958], IX

Aimlessly

It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No

One listens to poetry.

Language [1965]

William Styron

1925–2006

In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come—not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute.… And this results in a striking experience—one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded.

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness [1990]

Margaret [Hilda Roberts] Thatcher

1925–2013

You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.

Speech at Conservative Party conference, Brighton, England [October 10, 1980]

If you lead a country like Britain… you have to have a touch of iron about you.

On her reputation as The Iron Lady [March 21, 1986]

There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.

Interview [September 23, 1987]

In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.

Saying

Robert [Charles] Venturi

1925–2018

Where simplicity cannot work, simpleness results. Blatant simplification means bland architecture. Less is a bore.

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture [1966]

Gore Vidal

1925–2012

Power is not a toy we give to good children; it is a weapon, and the strong man takes it and he uses it and I can assure you he don’t turn it on himself nor let another man come at him with a knife that he don’t fight back.

The Best Man (play) [1960]

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

Quoted in Newsweek [March 25, 1968]

We have only one political party in the United States, the Property Party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat.

State of the Union [1972]

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country—and we haven’t seen them since.

State of the Union [1975]

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

Quoted in New York Times [March 12, 1981]

He turned being a Big Loser into a perfect triumph by managing to lose the presidency in a way bigger and more original than anyone else had ever lost it before.

Richard Nixon, in Esquire [December 1983]

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

A View from the Diner’s Club [1991]

A[rchie] R[andolph] Ammons

1926–2001

    the sunlight has never

heard of trees

Gravelly Run [1960]

Though I have looked everywhere

I can find nothing lowly

in the universe.

Still [1972]

In nature there are few sharp lines.

Corson’s Inlet [1972], l. 31

Not so much looking for the shape

as being available

to any shape that may be

summoning itself

through me

from the self not mine but ours.

Poetics [1972]

I attended the burial of all my rosy feelings:

I performed the rites, simple and decisive.

Transaction [1972]

I don’t know about you,

but I’m sick of good poems, all those little rondures

splendidly brought off, painted gourds on a shelf.

Sphere [1974]

garbage has to be the poem of our time because

garbage is spiritual, believable enough

to get our attention, getting in the way, piling

up, stinking, turning brooks brownish and

creamy white: what else deflect us from the

errors of our illusionary ways

Garbage [1993]

Poul Anderson

1926–2001

I’ve yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way didn’t become still more complicated.

Call Me Joe [1957]

Joan Walsh Anglund

1926–2021

A bird does not sing because he has an answer. He sings because he has a song.¹

A Cup of Sun [1967]

Whitney Balliet

1926–2007

A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.

Dinosaurs in the Morning [1962]

John Berger

1926–2017

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

Ways of Seeing [1972], ch. 3

The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.

Ways of Seeing, 3

Chuck Berry [Charles Edward Anderson]

1926–2017

Roll over Beethoven

And tell Tchaikovsky the news.

Roll Over Beethoven [1956]

He never learned to read or write so well

But he could play a guitar just like ringing a bell.

Johnny B. Goode [1958]

Robert Bly

1926–2021

I have wandered in a face, for hours,

Passing through dark fires.

I have risen to a body

Not yet born,

Existing like a light around the body,

Through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

The Light Around the Body [1967]. Looking into a Face

The sound of the rampaging Missouri,

Bending the reeds again and again—something inside us

Like a ghost train in the Rockies

About to be buried in snow!

Its long hoot

Making the owl in the Douglas fir turn his head.

The Light Around the Body. Asian Peace Offers Rejected Without Publication

Why are they dying? I have written this so many times.

They are dying because the President has opened a Bible again.

They are dying because gold deposits have been found among the Shoshoni Indians.

The Teeth-Mother Naked at Last [1970]

Donald G. Brennan

1926–1980

I believe that the concept of mutual assured destruction provides one of the few instances in which the obvious acronym for something yields at once the appropriate description for it; that is, a Mutual Assured Destruction posture as a goal is, almost literally, mad. MAD.

New York Times [May 24, 1971]

Mel Brooks [Melvin Kaminsky]

1926–

Fruit is good, too, you mentioned fruit. Yeah. Fruit kept me going for a hundred and forty years once when I was on a very strict diet. Mainly nectarines. I love that fruit. It’s half a peach, half a plum, it’s a hell of a fruit. I love it!

The 2,000-Year-Old Man [1960]

It’s simply a matter of creative accounting.

The Producers (screenplay) [1968]

That’s it, baby, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

The Producers (screenplay)

Springtime for Hitler and Germany,

Deutschland is happy and gay.

We’re moving to a faster pace,

Look out, here comes the Master Race!

The Producers (screenplay)

It’s good to be the king.

History of the World, Part I (screenplay) [1981], spoken by Mel Brooks as Louis XVI

Mel Brooks [Melvin Kaminsky]

1926–

Norman Steinberg

1939–

Andrew Bergman

1945–

Richard Pryor

1940–2005

and

Alan Unger

1940–

You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.

Blazing Saddles (screenplay) [1974], spoken by Gene Wilder

Fidel Castro

1926–2016

History will absolve me.¹

At his trial for raid on Moncada barracks [October 16, 1953]

We are not only a Latin-American nation; we are an Afro-American nation also.

Speech in Havana [1977]

I am not saying goodbye to you. I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas.

Statement resigning as Cuba’s president [February 19, 2008]

Stanley Cavell

1926–2018

I have found myself asking: How could film be art, since all the major arts arise in some way out of religion? Now I can answer: because movies arise out of magic; from below the world.

The World Viewed [1979]

John Coltrane

1926–1967

That’s what music is to me—it’s just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that’s been given to us, and here’s an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is.

Interview in Downbeat [April 12, 1962]

It all has to do with it.

A Love Supreme [1965]

Robert Creeley

1926–2005

drive, he sd, for

christ’s sake, look

out where yr going.

For Love [1962]. I Know a Man

Into the company of love

it all returns.

For Love. For Love

How can I die alone.

Where will I be then who am now alone,

what groans so pathetically

in this room where I am alone?

For Love. The Door

There is nothing

but what thinking makes

it less tangible.

Words [1967]. “I Keep to Myself Such Measures…”

Miles Davis [Miles Dewey Davis III]

1926–1991

I always listen to what I can leave out.

Quoted in Amiri Baraka, The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues [1987]

Listen. The greatest feeling I ever had in my life—with my clothes on—was when I first heard Diz and Bird together in St. Louis, Missouri, back in 1944.

Miles: The Autobiography [1989]

If you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention.

Attributed

J. P. Donleavy

1926–2017

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.

The Ginger Man [1955]

Clifford Geertz

1926–2006

Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.

The Interpretation of Cultures [1973]. Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture

Morton Feldman

1926–1987

What was great about the fifties is that for one brief moment—maybe, say, six weeks—nobody understood art. That’s why it all happened. Because for a short while, these people were left alone. Six weeks is all it takes to get started. But there’s no place now where you can hide out for six weeks in this town.

Give My Regards to Eighth Street [1971]

Art is a crucial, dangerous operation we perform on ourselves. Unless we take a chance, we die in art.

Give My Regards to Eighth Street

Michel Foucault

1926–1984

As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

The Order of Things [1966]

The soul is the prison of the body.

Discipline and Punish¹ [1975]

Discipline “makes” individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise.

Discipline and Punish

The lyricism of marginality may find inspiration in the image of the “outlaw,” the great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.

Discipline and Punish

Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.

The History of Sexuality, vol. 1² [1976]

Modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question.

The History of Sexuality, 1

The individual is the product of power.

Preface to GILLES DELEUZE and FÉLIX GUATTARI, Anti-Oedipus [1978]

Allen Ginsberg

1926–1997

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?

A Supermarket in California [1955]

We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all beautiful golden sunflowers inside

Sunflower Sutra [1955]

America free Tom Mooney

America save the Spanish Loyalists

America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die

America I am the Scottsboro boys.

America [1956]

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

America

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

America

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 night.

Howl [1956]

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Howl, pt. II

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!

Footnote to Howl [1956]

A word on Academies; poetry has been attacked by an ignorant & frightened bunch of bores who don’t understand how it’s made, & the trouble with these creeps is they wouldn’t know Poetry if it came up and buggered them in broad daylight.

Notes for Howl & Other Poems [1957]

This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Wonderer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping.

Kaddish [1959], pt. I

O mother

what have I left out

O mother

what have I forgotten

Kaddish, IV

come Poet shut up eat my word, and taste my mouth in your ear.

The End [1960]

I’m an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas

  but not afraid

   to speak my lonesomeness in a car,

   because not only my lonesomeness

    it’s Ours, all over America,

     O tender fellows—

    & spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy

Wichita Vortex Sutra [1966]

Candor ends paranoia.

Cosmopolitan Greetings [1986]

Alan Greenspan

1926–

Irrational exuberance

Speech [December 5, 1996]

An infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community.… It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed have grown so enormously.

Testimony before the Senate Banking Committee [July 16, 2002]

This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.

Congressional hearing [October 23, 2008]

Hugh Hefner

1926–2017

We like our apartment. We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.

Editorial statement in first issue of Playboy [December 1953]

Elizabeth Jennings

1926–2001

  Since clarity suggests simplicity

And since the simple thing is here inapt,

  I choose obscurities of tongue and touch,

The shadow side of language and the dark

  Hinted in conversations close to quarrel,

Conceived within the mind in aftermaths.

Song for a Birth or a Death [1961]. The Counterpart

It is the dark, the dark that draws me back

Into a chaos where

Vocations, visions fail, the will grows slack

And I am stunned by silence everywhere.

Song for a Birth or a Death. To a Friend with a Religious Vocation

John Knowles

1926–2001

Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.

A Separate Peace [1959]

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

1926–2004

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

On Death and Dying [1969]

Harper Lee

1926–2016

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.

To Kill a Mockingbird [1960], ch. 7

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, 10

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

To Kill a Mockingbird, 11

Carolyn Leigh

1926–1983

’Cause it’s witchcraft,

Wicked witchcraft.

And although I know it’s strictly taboo,

When you arouse the need in me,

My heart says, “Yes, indeed” in me,

“Proceed with what you’re leadin’ me to!”

Witchcraft¹ [1957]

Alison Lurie

1926–2020

In a poem, each word has to be right and contribute to the whole; in a story only every sentence. In a novel, only every page.

Real People [1969]

Even when we say nothing our clothes are talking noisily to everyone who sees us, telling them who we are, where we come from, what we like to do in bed and a dozen other intimate things.

The Language of Clothes [1981]

Richard Matheson

1926–2013

So close—the Infinitesimal and the Infinite. But suddenly I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (screenplay) [1957]

James [Ingram] Merrill

1926–1995

Always that same old story—

Father Time and Mother Earth,

A marriage on the rocks.

The Broken Home [1966]

I knew

That life was fiction in disguise.

Days of 1935 [1969]

Proust’s Law (are you listening?) is twofold:

(a) What least thing our self-love longs for most

Others instinctively withhold;

(b) Only when time has slain desire

Is his wish granted to a smiling ghost

Neither harmed nor warmed, now, by the fire.

Days of 1971 [1969]

I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found

In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean

Over the centuries by mild old tongues,

Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous.

The Book of Ephraim [1976], sec. A

What we dream up must be lived down, I think.

The Book of Ephraim, I

Newton N[orman] Minow

1926–

When television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air… and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

Speech as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to National Association of Broadcasters, Washington, D.C. [May 9, 1961]

Jan Morris [born James Humphrey Morris]

1926–2020

I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl. I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life.

Conundrum [1974]

There are people everywhere who form a Fourth World, or a diaspora of their own. They are the lordly ones! They come in all colours. They can be Christians or Hindus or Muslims or Jews or pagans or atheists. They can be young or old, men or women, soldiers or pacifists, rich or poor. They may be patriots, but are never chauvinists. They share with each other, across all the nations, common values of humour and understanding. When you are among them you know you will not be mocked or resented, because they will not care about your race, your faith, your sex or your nationality, and they suffer fools if not gladly, at least sympathetically. They laugh easily. They are easily grateful. They are never mean.

Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere [2001]

Frank O’Hara

1926–1966

Fathers of Dada! You carried shining erector sets

in your rough bony pockets, you were generous

and they were lovely as chewing gum or flowers!

Thank you!

Memorial Day 1950

I cannot possibly think of you

other than you are: the assassin

of my orchards.

The Critic

I wear workshirts to the opera,

often. I want my feet to be bare,

I want my face to be shaven, and my heart—

you can’t plan on the heart, but

the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

My Heart [1955]

One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.

Meditations in an Emergency [1957]. Title poem

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

Meditations in an Emergency. Title poem

I wanted to be sure to reach you;

though my ship was on the way it got caught

in some moorings. I am always tying up

and then deciding to depart.

Meditations in an Emergency. To the Harbormaster

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

and interesting, and modern.

Meditations in an Emergency. Mayakovsky

Grace

to be born and live as variously as possible.¹

Meditations in an Emergency. In Memory of My Feelings

You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout, “Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.”

Personism: A Manifesto [1959]

Don’t be bored, don’t be lazy, don’t be trivial, and don’t be proud. The slightest loss of attention leads to death.

David Smith: Sculpting Master of Bolton Landing (television film) [1964]

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille Day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

Lunch Poems [1964]. The Day Lady Died

the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won

and in a sense we’re all winning

we’re alive.

Lunch Poems. Steps

oh god it’s wonderful

to get out of bed

and drink too much coffee

and smoke too many cigarettes

and love you so much

Lunch Poems. Steps

LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!

there is no snow in Hollywood

there is no rain in California

I have been to lots of parties

and acted perfectly disgraceful

but I never actually collapsed

oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Lunch Poems. Poem

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent

and he carries me quietly, like a gondola, through the streets.

Collected Poems [1967]. In Memory of My Feelings

If anyone was looking

for me I hid behind a

tree and cried out “I am

an orphan.”

And here I am, the

center of all beauty!

writing these poems!

Imagine!

Collected Poems. Autobiographia Literaria

“Sun, don’t go!” I was awake

at last. “No, go I must, they’re calling

me.”

“Who are they?”

        Rising he said, “Some

day you’ll know. They’re calling to you

too.” Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

Collected Poems. A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island

Peter Shaffer

1926–2016

We keep saying old people are square. Then when they suddenly aren’t—we don’t like it!

Equus [1973], act II, sc. 31

W[illiam] D[eWitt] Snodgrass

1926–2009

It was the nature of the thing:

No moon outlives its leaving night,

No sun its day. And I went on

Rich in the loss of all I sing

To the threshold of waking light,

To larksong and the live, gray dawn.

So night by night, my life has gone.

Orpheus [1959]

Charles Van Doren

1926–2019

I would give almost anything I have to reverse the course of my life in the last three years.… I have deceived my friends, and I had millions of them.

Statement to congressional committee investigating quiz show scandal [1959]

Lew [Lewis Barrett] Welch

1926–1971

You can’t fix it. You can’t make it go away.

I don’t know what you’re going to do about it,

But I know what I’m going to do about it. I’m just

going to walk away from it.

Ring of Bone: Collected Poems 1950–1971. Chicago Poem [1965]

Those who can’t find anything to live for,

always invent something to die for.

Ring of Bone [2012]. The Basic Con [1967]

Richard Yates

1926–1992

Everything you said was based on this great premise of ours that we’re somehow very special and superior to the whole thing, and I wanted to say “But we’re not! Look at us! We’re just like the people you’re talking about! We are the people you’re talking about!”

Revolutionary Road [1961]

Edward Abbey

1927–1989

Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.

Desert Solitaire [1968]

Most of my wandering in the desert I’ve done alone. Not so much from choice as from necessity—I generally prefer to go into places where no one else wants to go.

Desert Solitaire

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside [1984]

John Ashbery

1927–2017

As I sit looking out of a window of the building

I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.

Some Trees [1956]. The Instruction Manual

    You and I

Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:

That their merely being there

Means something; that soon

We may touch, love, explain.

Some Trees. Title poem

These lacustrine cities grew out of loathing

Into something forgetful, although angry with history.

They are the product of an idea: that man is horrible, for instance,

Though this is only one example.

Rivers and Mountains [1962]. These Lacustrine Cities

But how much survives? How much of any one of us survives?

The articles we’d collect—stamps of the colonies

With greasy cancellation marks, mauve, magenta and chocolate,

Or funny-looking dogs we’d see in the street, or bright remarks.

Rivers and Mountains [1962]. The Skaters

How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine sepulcher

Of life, my great love? Do dolphins plunge bottomward

To find the light? Or is it rock

That is searched? Unrelentingly? Huh.

The Tennis Court Oath [1962]. “How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher…”

For this is action, this not being sure, this careless

Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,

Making ready to forget, and always coming back

To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.

The Double Dream of Spring [1966]. Soonest Mended

We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.

Three Poems [1972]. The Recital

A vast wetness as of sea and air combined, a single smooth, anonymous matrix without surface or depth was the product of these new changes. It no longer mattered very much whether prayers were answered with concrete events or the oracle gave a convincing reply, for there was no longer anyone to care in the old sense of caring.

Three Poems. The Recital

I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave all out would be another, and truer, way.

Three Poems. The New Spirit

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand

Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer

And swerving easily away, as though to protect

What it advertises.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror [1975]. Title poem

How many people came and stayed a certain time,

Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you

Like light behind windblown fog and sand,

Filtered or influenced by it, until no part

Remains that is surely you.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Title poem

Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted,

Desolate, reluctant as any landscape

To yield what are laws of perspective

After all only to the painter’s deep

Mistrust, a weak instrument though

Necessary.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Title poem

Something like living occurs, a movement

Out of the dream into its codification.

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Title poem

The seasons are no longer what they once were,

But it is the nature of things to be seen only once,

As they happen along, bumping into other things, getting along

Somehow. That’s where Orpheus made his mistake.

Houseboat Days [1975]. Syringa

All life

Is as a tale told to one in a dream

In tones never totally audible

Or understandable, and one wakes

Wishing to hear more, asking

For more, but one wakes to death, alas,

Yet one never

Pays any heed to that, the tale

Is still so magnificent in the telling

That it towers far above life, like some magnificent

Cathedral spire

As We Know [1979]. Litany

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,

At incredible speed, traveling day and night,

Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.

But will he know where to find you,

Recognize you when he sees you,

Give you the thing he has for you?

A Wave [1984]. At North Farm

Whatever stops playing is the enemy of the incomplete.

Quick Question [2012]. Tango and Schottische

Erma [Louise Fiste] Bombeck

1927–1996

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but by family picnics where kids throw frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you’ve overeaten, but it’s patriotism.

Syndicated Column [June 28, 1982]

Cesar [Estrada] Chavez

1927–1993

¡Si se puede!¹

Slogan of the United Farm Workers under Chavez’s leadership

Viva la huelga [Long live the strike]!

Slogan of the United Farm Workers [the 1960s]

Guy Davenport

1927–2005

The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.

The Geography of the Imagination [1981]. Ronald Johnson: The Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses

The body of knowledge locked into and releasable from poetry can replace practically any university in the Republic.

The Geography of the Imagination. Where Poems Come From

People who know exactly what they are doing seem to me to miss the vital part of any doing.

The Geography of the Imagination. Finding

Edwin Edwards

1927–2021

The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.

While campaigning for governor of Louisiana [1983]

Gabriel García Márquez

1927–2014

To the Europeans, South America is a man with a mustache, a guitar, and a gun.

No One Writes to the Colonel [1961]

The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Años de Soledad)² [1967]

It was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forevermore, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.

Living to Tell the Tale [2002], epigraph

Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.

Quoted in Gerald Martin, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life [2008]

Günter [Wilhelm] Grass

1927–2015

You can declare at the very start that it’s impossible to write a novel nowadays, but then, behind your back, so to speak, give birth to a whopper, a novel to end all novels.

The Tin Drum³ [1959], bk. I, The Wide Skirt

Allan Kaprow

1927–2006

A happening is not a show. Leave the shows to the theater people and discotheques. A happening is a game with a high, a ritual that no church would want because there’s no religion for sale.

How to Make a Happening [1966]

Galway Kinnell

1927–2014

the rest of my days I spend

wandering, wondering

what, anyway,

was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry by which I lived?

Body Rags [1968]. The Bear

In the half darkness we look at each other

and smile

and touch arms across his little, startlingly muscled body—

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,

sleeper only the mortal sounds can awake,

this blessing love gives again into our arms.

Mortal Acts, Mortal Words [1980]. After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

Leszek Kołakowski

1927–2009

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

Metaphysical Horror [1988]

Can we attribute happiness to the divine being? Is God happy? The question is not absurd.… If He is not indifferent, but subject to emotion like us, He must live in a constant state of sorrow when He witnesses human suffering. He did not cause it or want it, but He is helpless in the face of all the misery, the horrors and atrocities that nature brings down on people or people inflict on each other. If, on the other hand, He is perfectly immutable, He cannot be perturbed by our misery; He must therefore be indifferent. But if He is indifferent, how can He be a loving father? And if He is not immutable, then He takes part in our suffering, and feels sorrow. In either case, God is not happy in any sense we can understand.

Is God Happy? [2006]¹

R[onald] D[avid] Laing

1927–1989

I am a specialist, God help me, in events in inner space and time, in experiences called thoughts, images, reveries, dreams, visions, hallucinations, dreams of memories, memories of dreams, memories of visions, dreams of hallucinations, refractions of refractions of refractions of that original Alpha and Omega of experience and reality, that Reality on whose repression, denial, splitting, projection, falsification, and general desecration and profanation our civilization as much as on anything is based.

The Politics of Experience [1967]

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough. It is potentially liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.

The Politics of Experience

Fran Landesman

1927–2011

Love seemed sure around the New Year,

Now it’s April, love is just a ghost.

Spring arrived on time,

Only what became of you, Dear?

Spring can really hang you up the most!

Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most [1955]

All the sad young men,

Drifting through the town,

Drinking up the night,

Trying not to drown.

The Nervous Set [1959]. The Ballad of the Sad Young Men

W[illiam] S[tanley] Merwin

1927–2019

The dead will think the living are worth it we will know

Who we are

And we will all enlist again.

When the War Is Over [1967]

One must always pretend something

Among the dying

For a Coming Extinction [1967]

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day.

For the Anniversary of My Death [1967]

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars

It is my emptiness among them

While they drift farther away in the invisible morning.

In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year [1967]

I think I was cold in the womb.

The Forebears [1971]

I am the son of the first fish who climbed ashore but the news has not yet reached my bowels.

Psalm: Our Fathers [1971]

    Like shadows

of the plumbing

that is all that is left

of the great city.

The Plumbing [1971]

Some alien blessing

is on its way to us.

Midnight in Early Spring [1971]

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

1927–2003

The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of “benign neglect.”

Memo to President Nixon [1970]

To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.

Attributed

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

Lecture at Harvard University [1986]

Pope Benedict XVI [Joseph Ratzinger]

1927–

We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.

Homily at Pre-Conclave Mass [April 18, 2005]

Neil Simon

1927–2018

I mean, this is honest food. There’s no lying in that beef. There’s no insincerity in those potatoes. There’s no deceit in the cauliflower. This is a totally honest meal. You don’t know what a pleasure it is to sit down in this day and age and eat food that you can believe in.

The Heartbreak Kid, screenplay [1972]

Kenneth Tynan

1927–1980

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a peeping Tom and I will show you the makings of a dramatist.

Pausing on the Stairs [1957]

What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober.

Curtains [1961]

Andy Warhol

1927–1987

Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we’re getting more and more that way.

What Is Pop Art? [1963], an interview with G. R. Swenson

In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.

Catalogue of his photo exhibition in Stockholm [1968]

My instinct about painting says, “If you don’t think about it, it’s right.”

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again [1975]

A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again

People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen to you in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television—you don’t feel anything.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again

I always thought that I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say “Figment.”

America [1985]

James Wright

1927–1980

I will putter as though I had not heard,

And lift him into my arms and sing

Whether he hears my song or not.

Mutterings over the Crib of a Deaf Child

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

The Branch Will Not Break [1963]. A Blessing

Edward [Franklin] Albee

1928–2016

What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing cards when you’re a kid, and pornographic playing cards when you’re older. It’s that when you’re a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you’re older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

The Zoo Story [1958]

George: Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf…

Martha: I… am… George… I am.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?¹ [1962]. The Exorcism

You gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, act II, Walpurgisnacht

Maya Angelou [Marguerite Johnson]

1928–2014

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings [1969]

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Still I Rise [1978]. And Still I Rise

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, but if faced

With courage, need not be lived again.

On the Pulse of Morning [1993]¹

When people show you who they are, believe them.²

Attributed by Oprah Winfrey during an interview with Angelou [June 18, 1997]

[James Earle] Jimmy Breslin

1928–2017

Tip O’Neill at all times has one great political weapon at his disposal. He understands so well that all political power is primarily an illusion. If people think you have power, then you have power. If people think you have no power, then you have no power.

How the Good Guys Finally Won: Notes from an Impeachment Summer [1975]

The Office of President is such a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

How the Good Guys Finally Won: Notes from an Impeachment Summer

Trump Tower, this brown glass building whose cheap architecture bawls one word into the sky over a once beautiful avenue: greed.

New York Daily News [October 13, 1988]

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

The Times [May 9, 1990]

When you leave New York, you ain’t going anywhere.

Attributed

[Avram] Noam Chomsky

1928–

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.³

Syntactic Structures [1957], ch. 2

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.

Interview [1995]

Mary Daly

1928–2010

If God is male, then the male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination.

Beyond God the Father [1973], ch. 1

Phillip K[indred] Dick

1928–1982

It’s all the same, it’s all him, the creator. That’s who and what he is, he realized. The owners of these worlds. The rest of us just inhabit them and when he wants to he can inhabit them, too. Can kick over the scenery, manifest himself, push things in any direction he chooses. Even be any of us he cares to. All of us, in fact, if he desires. Eternal, outside of time and spliced-together segments of all other dimensions…he can even enter a world in which he’s dead.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch [1964]

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [1968]

Once they notice you, Jason realized, they never completely close the file. You can never get back your anonymity. It is vital not to be noticed in the first place.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said [1974]

One of the most effective forms of industrial or military sabotage limits itself to damage that can never be thoroughly proven—or even proven at all—to be anything deliberate. It is like an invisible political movement; perhaps it isn’t there at all.

A Scanner Darkly [1977]

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later [1978]

We are not individuals. We are stations in a single Mind.

VALIS [1981]

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense.

VALIS

Eric Dolphy

1928–1964

When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s gone, in the air. You can never capture it again.

Last Date (album) [June 2, 1964]

Fred Ebb

1928–2004

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play;

Life is a cabaret, old chum,

Come to the cabaret.

Cabaret¹ [1966], title song

Mama thinks I’m living in a convent,

A secluded little convent

In the southern part of France.

Mama doesn’t even have an inkling

That I’m working in a nightclub

In a pair of lacey pants.

Cabaret. Don’t Tell Mama

If I can make it there, I’m gonna make it anywhere,

It’s up to you, New York, New York.

New York, New York [1977]

Carlos Fuentes

1928–2012

The world dissolves when someone ceases to dream, to remember, to write.

Terra Nostra [1975]

The U.S.–Mexico border, some of those who cross it say, is not really a border but a scar. Will it heal? Will it bleed once more? When a Hispanic worker crosses this border, he sometimes asks, “Hasn’t this always been our land? Am I not coming back to it? Is it not in some way ours?” He can taste it, hear its language, sing its songs and pray to its saints. Will this not always be in its bones a Hispanic land?

The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World [1992]

[Ernesto] Che Guevara

1928–1967

The life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.

Speech to medical students and health workers, Cuba [August 20, 1960]

Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ears, and another hand may be extended to wield our weapon, and other men may be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory.

Message to Tricontinental [1967]

Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality.

Quoted in JON LEE ANDERSON, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life [1997]

Gustavo Gutiérrez

1928–

I desire that the hunger for God may remain, that the hunger for bread may be satisfied.… Hunger for God, yes; hunger for bread, no.

A Theology of Liberation [1971]

Michael Harrington

1928–1989

The other America, the America of poverty, is hidden today in a way that it never was before. Its millions are socially invisible to the rest of us.… The very development of American society is creating a new kind of blindness about poverty. The poor are increasingly slipping out of the very experience and consciousness of the nation.

The Other America: Poverty in the United States [1962], ch. 1

A[loyisus] Leon Higginbotham, Jr.

1928–1998

I concede that I am black. I do not apologize for that obvious fact. I take rational pride in my heritage, just as most other ethnics take pride in theirs. However, that one is black does not mean, ipso facto, that he is anti-white; no more than being Jewish implies being anti-Catholic, or being Catholic implies being anti-Protestant.

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. International Union of Operating Engineers [December 4, 1974], on not recusing himself as Federal judge in a civil rights case

Stanley Hoffmann

1928–2015

There are universal values, and they happen to be mine.

Us and Them, The New Republic [July 12, 1993]

Stanley Kubrick

1928–1999

The only definition of a serious writer or filmmaker is, do they wait until they find something they really are obsessed with? A serious writer is somebody who writes when there’s something that really obsesses him.

The Stanley Kubrick Archives [2005]. Interview with Joseph Heller [c. 1964]

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent.

Interview in Playboy [September 1968]

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought it can be filmed.

Cited in The Making of Kubrick’s 2001, edited by JEROME AGEL [1970]

Shooting a movie is the worst milieu for creative work ever devised by man.

Interview with Joseph Gelmis in The Film Director as Superstar [1970]

Never, ever go near power. Don’t become friends with anyone who has real power. It’s dangerous.

Quoted by his wife, Christiane Kubrick, in The Guardian [August 18, 2010]

Stanley Kubrick

1928–1999

and

Peter George

1924–1966

and

Terry Southern

1924–1995

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Dr. Strangelove (screenplay) [1964], spoken by Sterling Hayden

Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!

Dr. Strangelove, spoken by Peter Sellers

I think you’re some kind of deviated prevert, and I think General Ripper found out about your preversion and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.

Dr. Strangelove, spoken by Keenan Wynn

Stanley Kubrick

1928–1999

and

Michael Herr

1940–2016

and

Gustav Hasford

1947–1993

The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle. It is your killer instinct which must be harnessed if you expect to survive in combat. Your rifle is only a tool. It is a hard heart that kills. If your killer instincts are not clean and strong, you will hesitate at the moment of truth. You will not kill. You will become dead Marines. And then you will be in a world of shit. Because Marines are not allowed to die without permission!

Full Metal Jacket (screenplay) [1987], spoken by R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

You talk the talk. Do you walk the walk?

Full Metal Jacket (screenplay), spoken by Adam Baldwin as Animal Mother

Tom [Thomas Andrew] Lehrer

1928–

We will all go together when we go,

All suffused with an incandescent glow.

We Will All Go Together When We Go [1959]

Remember the war against Franco?

That’s the kind where each of us belongs.

Though he may have won all the battles,

We had all the good songs.

The Folk Song Army [1965]

“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.

Wernher von Braun [1965]

Philip Levine

1928–2015

Give me back my young brother, hard

and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse

for God and burning eyes that look upon

all creation and say, You can have it.

7 Years from Somewhere [1979]. You Can Have It

Sol LeWitt

1928–2007

For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.

Sentences on Conceptual Art [1969]

Jim [James] A. Lovell, Jr.

1928–

Houston, we’ve had a problem here. Houston, we’ve had a problem.¹

Message from Apollo 13, April 1970

Cynthia Ozick

1928–

If we blow into the narrow end of the shofar, we will be heard far. But if we choose to be Mankind rather than Jewish and blow into the wider part, we will not be heard at all; for us America will have been in vain.

Art and Ardor [1983]

The whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real life.

Rosa [1984]

I wanted to use what I was, to be what I was born to be—not to have a “career,” but to be that straightforward obvious unmistakable animal, a writer.

Metaphor and Memory [1989]

Robert M[aynard] Pirsig

1928–2017

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [1974]

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Data without generalization is just gossip.

Lila: An Inquiry into Morals [1991], ch. 9

Charles A[lan] Reich

1928–2019

There is a revolution under way—not like revolutions of the past. This is the revolution of a new generation. It has originated with the individual and with culture, and if it succeeds it will change the political structure only as its final act.

The Greening of America [1970]

Jacques Rivette

1928–2016

When I talk about ideas, I really mean ideas of mise en scène or—if I were to be shocking about it—of framing, or the way shots are put together, which these days are the only ideas whose profundity I wish to recognize.

On Imagination. Cahiers du Cinéma [October 1953]

Fred Rogers

1928–2003

When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see, or hear, or touch. That deep part of you, that allows you to stand for those things, without which humankind cannot survive.

Commencement address, Dartmouth [2002]

Andrew Sarris

1928–2012

To the extent that the cinema is a creature of the scientific spirit, it has inherited expectations of infinite development and improvement. It is as if this machine art were designed to transcend the vagaries of human inspiration. A Shakespeare may appear once in a millennium, but the express train of twentieth-century history cannot wait a century or even a decade for the world to be remade from the moonbeams of a movie projector.

The American Cinema [1968]

Richard Selzer

1928–2016

And if the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your soul. I think that if years later I were to see the trace from an old incision of mine, I should know it at once, as one recognizes his pet expressions.

Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery [1976]. The Knife

Maurice Sendak

1928–2012

Let the wild rumpus start!

Where the Wild Things Are [1963]

I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew.… It would scare them.

Quoted in The New Yorker [September 27, 1993]

Anne Sexton

1928–1974

        You, Doctor Martin, walk

from breakfast to madness. Late August,

I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk

of pushing their bones against the thrust

of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel

        or the laughing bee on a stalk

        of death.

You, Doctor Martin [1960], st. 1

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night.

Her Kind [1960]

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

Her Kind

A woman is her mother.

That’s the main thing.

All My Pretty Ones [1962]. Housewife

But suicides have a special language.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.

They never ask why build.

Wanting to Die [1964]

Leaving the page of the book carelessly open,

something unsaid, the phone off the hook

and the love, whatever it was, an infection.

Wanting to Die, last stanza

Beauty is a simple passion,

but, oh my friends, in the end

you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [1971]

L[ouis] E[dward] Sissman

1928–1976

        Through my

Invisible new veil

Of finity, I see

November’s world—

Low scud, slick street, three giggling girls—

As, oddly, not as sombre

As December,

But as green

As anything:

As spring.

Dying: An Introduction. Outbound

Alvin Toffler

1928–2016

Future shock… the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

Future Shock [1970], Introduction

William Trevor

1928–2016

Marriage was an uncalculated risk, Mallory remembered saying once. The trickiest of all undertakings, he might have called it, might even have suggested that knowing this was an insurance against the worst, a necessary awareness of what unwelcome surprises there might be.

Cheating at Canasta [2007]

Agnès Varda

1928–2019

I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.

Quoted in Georges Sadoul, Dictionary of Film Makers [1965]

I didn’t have a career; I made films. It’s very different.

Criterion Collection interview [2015]

James Dewey Watson

1928–

and

Francis [Harry Compton] Crick

1916–2004

This [double helix] structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.… It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.

Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids, in Nature¹ [April 25, 1953]

Elie Wiesel

1928–2016

I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone—terribly alone in a world without God and without man.

Night² [1958]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me forever of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

Night

You’ll try to reveal what should remain hidden, you’ll try to incite people to learn from the past and rebel, but they will refuse to believe you. They will not listen to you.… You’ll possess the truth, you already do; but it’s the truth of a madman.

A Beggar in Jerusalem³ [1970], ch. 5

Rejected by mankind, the condemned do not go so far as to reject it in turn. Their faith in history remains unshaken, and one may well wonder why. They do not despair. The proof: they persist in surviving not only to survive, but to testify.

The victims elect to become witnesses.

One Generation After³ [1970]. Readings

If we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

Nobel Acceptance Speech [December 10, 1986]

Yasser Arafat

1929–2004

Palestine is the cement that holds the Arab world together, or it is the explosive that blows it apart.

Quoted in TIME [November 11, 1974]

Roger Bannister

1929–2018

The earth seemed almost to move with me.… I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.

Sports Illustrated [June 20, 1955]. The Joy of Running

Jean Baudrillard

1929–2007

The American city seems to have stepped right out of the movies.

America [1986]

We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and smug in “the social,” our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial coziness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.

Cool Memories [1987]

We are already more or less disconnected from our history and thus also from its destination. That means, then, that time can slow as it nears its end and that the year 2000, in a certain way, will not take place.

The Anorexic Ruins [1989]

Bert [Bertrand Russell] Berns

1929–1967

Nothing can be sadder

Than a glass of wine alone

Loneliness, loneliness

Such a waste of time

Cry to Me [1961]. Recorded by Solomon Burke

John Cassavetes

1929–1987

I’m not part of anything. I never joined anything. I could work anywhere.

Quoted in Cassavetes on Cassavetes [2001]

Edward [Merton] Dorn

1929–1999

        Nevertheless

it is dangerous to be named

and makes you mortal.

If you have a name

you can be sold

you can be told

by that name leave, or come

you become, in short,

a reference

Gunslinger, Book I [1968]

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

1929–

i speak for none of you now,

all you plotters of perfect crimes,

nor for me, nor for anyone.

i speak for those who can’t speak,

for the deaf and dumb witnesses,

for otters and seals,

for the ancient owls of the earth.

poems for people who don’t read poems [1968]. the end of the owls¹

Bill Evans

1929–1980

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

Improvisation in Jazz [1959]. Liner note to Kind of Blue, album by Miles Davis

Oriana Fallaci

1929–2006

I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born. I have always looked on the silence of those who do not react or who indeed applaud as the real death of a woman or man.

Interview with History [1976]

Jules [Ralph] Feiffer

1929–

[On appropriating images from other artists:] Good swiping is an art in itself.

The Great Comic Book Heroes [1965]

Anne Frank

1929–1945

Whoever is happy will make others happy too. He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl² [1952]. March 7, 1944

What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. May 22, 1944

[Daddy] said: “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. July 15, 1944

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.

Brian Friel

1929–2015

To remember everything is a form of madness.

Translations [1980]

Confusion is not an ignoble condition.

Translations

Thom Gunn

1929–2004

He turns revolt into a style, prolongs

The impulse to a habit of the time.

The Sense of Movement [1957]. Elvis Presley

True, they are not at rest yet,

but now that they are indeed

apart, winnowed from failures,

they withdraw to an orbit

and turn with disinterested

hard energy, like the stars.

My Sad Captains [1961], Title poem

Direct me, gods, whose changes are all holy,

To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly:

Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot,

From milky flower to the black forked root.

Moly [1971]

Jürgen Habermas

1929–

Philosophy remains true to its classic tradition by renouncing it.

Knowledge and Human Interests [1972]

Charles [Vernon] Hamilton

1929–

Black power¹… 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

John Hollander

1929–2013

Each of my pots is quite unusable,

Even for contemplating as an object

Of gross unuse. In its own mode of being

Useless, though, each of them remains unique,

Subject to nothing, and themselves unseeing,

Stronger by virtue of what makes them weak.

Harp Lake [1988]. The Mad Potter

Richard Howard

1929–

      Save it all; you do not know

the value things will come to have until

the world grows dim around you, and your things

—however doubtful in the changing light,

              things are what you have

              left. And all you have.

Untitled Subjects [1969]. 1915

Norton Juster

1929–2021

You often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.

The Phantom Tollbooth [1961]

Jacqueline [Bouvier] Kennedy [Onassis]

1929–1994

There’ll never be another Camelot again.

Quoted in Life [December 6, 1963]

Martin Luther King, Jr.

1929–1968

The Negro’s great stumbling block is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice,… who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.

Letter from Birmingham Jail [April 16, 1963]

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ears of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”

Letter from Birmingham Jail

The question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremist will we be.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Speech in Detroit [June 23, 1963]

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington [August 28, 1963]

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 on Washington

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”¹

Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington [August 28, 1963]

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.²

Speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize [December 11, 1964]

The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery to Oslo is a road over which millions of Negroes are traveling to find a new sense of dignity. It will, I am convinced, be widened into a superhighway of justice.

Speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

The Negro was willing to risk martyrdom in order to move and stir the social conscience of his community and the nation… he would force his oppressor to commit his brutality openly, with the rest of the world looking on.… Nonviolent resistance paralyzed and confused the power structures against which it was directed.

Why We Can’t Wait [1964]

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, sermon [April 1967]

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

The Trumpet of Conscience, Steeler Lecture [1967]

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Where Do We Go from Here? [1967]

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Like anybody, I would like to live 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.

Address to sanitation workers, Memphis, Tennessee [April 3, 1968], the night before his assassination

Milan Kundera

1929–

The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting³ [1980]

Human life is bounded by two chasms: fanaticism on one side, absolute skepticism on the other.

Interview with PHILIP ROTH [1980]

The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel.

Interview with PHILIP ROTH

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being [1984],¹ pt. III

Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, VI

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!

The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, VIII

Like parodies of themselves, theological notions are reflected in the triviality of our lives.

Slowness² [1995]

Ursula K[roeber] Le Guin

1929–2018

No, I don’t mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year. We’ve followed our road too far.

The Left Hand of Darkness [1969], ch. 1

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies, given time; plenty of time.

The Left Hand of Darkness, 3

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

The Left Hand of Darkness, 3

The king was pregnant.

The Left Hand of Darkness, 8

Light is the left hand of darkness,

and darkness the right hand of light.

The Left Hand of Darkness, 16

He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.

The Lathe of Heaven [1971], ch. 6

Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing—instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.

A Left-Handed Commencement Address, delivered at Mills College [1983]

People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas From? [2000]

The way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened. I believe this isn’t very different from what historians of the so-called real world do. Even if we are present at some historic event, do we comprehend it—can we even remember it—until we can tell it as a story?

Tales from Earthsea [2001]

I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.

Speech at National Book Awards [November 19, 2014]

Sergio Leone

1929–1989

Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared.

For a Few Dollars More³ (opening title card) [1965]

See, in this world, there’s two kinds of people, my friend—those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly⁴ (screenplay) [1966], spoken by Clint Eastwood

Alasdair MacIntyre

1929–

Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways.

After Virtue [1981]

George Markstein

1929–1987

I am not a number, I am a free man!

The Prisoner (television series) [1968], spoken by Patrick McGoohan

Gordon Moore

1929–

Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers—or at least terminals connected to a central computer—automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment. The electronic wristwatch needs only a display to be feasible today.¹

Electronics Magazine [April 19, 1965]. Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits

Claes Oldenburg

1929–

I am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a street is. I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street.

Statement for exhibition catalogue [1961]

I am for art that is smoked, like a cigarette, smells, like a pair of shoes. I am for art that flaps like a flag, or helps blow noses, like a handkerchief.

Store Days [1967]

John [James] Osborne

1929–1994

Why don’t we have a little game? Let’s pretend that we’re human beings, and that we’re actually alive.

Look Back in Anger [1956], act I

I must say it’s pretty dreary living in the American Age—unless you’re an American, of course.

Look Back in Anger, I

Adrienne Rich

1929–2012

A too-compassionate art is half an art.

Only such proud restraining purity

Restores the else-betrayed, too-human heart.

A Change of World [1951]. At a Bach Concert

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake,

heavy with useless experience, rich

with suspicion, rumor, fantasy,

crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge

of mere fact.

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law [1963], st. 1

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.

The beak that grips her, she becomes.

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, st. 3

Piece by piece I seem

to re-enter the world.

Necessities of Life [1966], Title poem

They’re tearing down the houses

we met and lived in,

soon our two bodies will be all

left standing from that era.

Necessities of Life. Like This Together

When they read this poem of mine they are translators.

Every existence speaks a language of its own.

Leaflets [1969]. Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib.

    I am an instrument in the shape

of a woman trying to translate pulsations

into images for the relief of the body

and the reconstruction of the mind.

Leaflets. Planetarium

The moment of change is the only poem.

Images for Godard [1971]

My visionary anger cleansing my sight.

The Stranger [1973]

I am the androgyne.

The Stranger

There is a ladder.

The ladder is always there

hanging innocently

close to the side of the schooner.

Diving into the Wreck [1973]

I came to explore the wreck.

Diving into the Wreck

I came to see the damage that was done

and the treasures that prevail.

I stroke the beam of my lamp

slowly along the flank

of something more permanent

than fish or weed.

Diving into the Wreck

All human life on the planet is born of woman. The one unifying, incontrovertible experience shared by all women and men is that months-long period we spent unfolding inside a woman’s body.

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution [1976]

When someone tells me a piece of the truth which has been withheld from me, and which I needed in order to see my life more clearly, it may bring acute pain, but it can flood me with a cold, sea-sharp wash of relief.

Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying [1977]

Re-vision—the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction—is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence [1979]. When We Dead Awaken

The I you know isn’t me, you said, truthtelling liar

My roots are not my chains

Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007–2010. [2011]. Axel Avákar

Robert B. Silvers

1929–2017

and

Barbara Epstein

1929–2006

This issue of The New York Review of Books does not pretend to cover all the books of the season or even all the important ones. Neither time nor space, however, have been spent on books which are trivial in their intentions or venal in their effects, except occasionally to reduce a temporarily inflated reputation or to call attention to a fraud.

Editorial, first issue of The New York Review of Books [February 1963]

George Steiner

1929–2020

We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.

Language and Silence [1967]

Charles Tilly

1929–2008

War made the state, and the state made war.¹

Reflections on the History of European State-Making [1975]

E[dward] O[sborne] Wilson

1929–2021

The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.

On Human Nature [1978]

The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change.… But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months.

The Little Things That Run the World [1987]

Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth’s climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge [1998]

The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured—especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

At a debate with James Watson at Harvard University [September 9, 2009]

Christa Wolf

1929–2011

The most beautiful thing under the sun is being under the sun.

Patterns of Childhood [1976]

Chinua Achebe

1930–2013

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

Things Fall Apart [1958], spoken by the character Obierika

In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest—without asking to be paid.

A Man of the People [1966], closing sentence

Buzz Aldrin [Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.]

1930–

Beautiful! Beautiful! Magnificent desolation.

On setting foot on the moon [July 20, 1969]

Neil [Alden] Armstrong

1930–2012

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

On reaching the moon [July 20, 1969]

That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

On first stepping on the moon [July 20, 1969]

J[ames] G[raham] Ballard

1930–2009

However selective the conscious mind may be, most biological memories are unpleasant ones, echoes of danger and terror. Nothing endures for so long as fear.

The Drowned World [1962]

Science fiction is the apocalyptic literature of the twentieth century, the authentic language of Auschwitz, Eniwetok and Aldermaston.

The Drowned World, biographical note

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the twentieth century.

Fictions of Every Kind [1971]

A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.

News from the Sun [1981]

Allan Bloom

1930–1992

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities.

The Closing of the American Mind [1987]

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

The Closing of the American Mind, introduction

Harold Bloom

1930–2019

The Anxiety of Influence

Title of book [1973]

Strong students, like strong writers, will find the sustenance they must have. And strong students, like strong writers, will rise in the most unexpected places and times, to wrestle with the internalized violence pressed upon them by their teachers and precursors.

A Map of Misreading [1975]

[Poems] are necessarily about other poems; a poem is a response to a poem, as a poet is a response to a poet, or a person to his parent.

A Map of Misreading

Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.

The Western Canon [1994]

To be acquainted with what is best and oldest in yourself, is to know yourself as you were, before the world was made, before you emerged into time.

Preface to Alone with the Alone, by Henry Corbin [1997]

Jimmy Breslin

1930–2017

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Title of book [1970]

Harold Brodkey [Aaron Roy Weintraub]

1930–1996

This is something one must bear, beyond the claims of religion, not the idea of one’s dying but the reality of one’s death. One schools oneself in an acceptance of the terror. It is the shape that life takes toward its end. It is a form of life.

Dying: An Update [1994]

Warren Buffett

1930–

Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume.

Quoted in Fortune [March 9, 1992]

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders [2001]

In our view,… derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.

Berkshire Hathaway annual report [2002]

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.

Quoted in Fortune [June 25, 2006]

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.

Quoted in the New York Times [November 26, 2006]

Claude Chabrol

1930–2010

You have to accept the fact that sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.

Attributed

Ornette Coleman

1930–2015

Many people apparently don’t trust their reactions to art or to music unless there is a verbal explanation for it. In music the only thing that matters is whether you feel it or not.

Change of the Century [1959], liner notes

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

Quoted in WILFRED MELLERS, Music in a New Found Land [1965]

Gregory Corso

1930–2001

When she introduces me to her parents

back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,

should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa

and not ask Where’s the bathroom?

The Happy Birthday of Death [1960]. Marriage

Jacques Derrida

1930–2004

There is nothing outside of the text.¹

Of Grammatology [1967]

If a right to the secret is not maintained, we are in a totalitarian space.

A Taste for the Secret² [1994]

There is no political power without control of the archive.

Archive Fever [1995]

All Nation-States are born and found themselves in violence.… the moment of foundation, the instituting moment, is anterior to the law or legitimacy which it founds. It is thus outside the law, and violent by that very fact.

On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness³ [2001]. On Forgiveness

Clint Eastwood [Clinton Eastwood, Jr.]

1930–

I do make an attempt to always get that first take.… You’re not stepping up to bunt. You’re stepping up to hit the damn thing.

From DAVID BRESKIN, Inner Views: Filmmakers in Conversation [1992]

María Irene Fornés

1930–2018

When I’m not doing something that comes deeply from me, I get bored. When I get bored I get distracted and when I get distracted, I become depressed. It’s a natural resistance, and it ensures your integrity.

Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights [1987]

Jean-Luc Godard

1930–

At the cinema we do not think, we are thought.⁴

Review of Works of Calder, Gazette du Cinéma [October 1950]

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.

Le Petit Soldat [1960]

Film is like a battleground: There’s love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotions.

Pierrot le Fou (screenplay) [1965], spoken by Samuel Fuller

All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.

Journal entry, quoted in Projections, ed. BOORMAN AND DONOHUE [1992]

American pictures usually have no subject, only a story.… A pretty woman is not a subject. Julia Roberts doing this and that is not a subject.

Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor [August 3, 1994]

A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order.

Attributed

A. R. Gurney [Albert Ramsdell Gurney, Jr.]

1930–2017

There is nothing more dangerous than a lengthy cocktail hour.

The Cocktail Hour [1988]

Lorraine Hansberry

1930–1965

When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

A Raisin in the Sun [1959], act 3, spoken by Mama (Lena Younger)

There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.

A Raisin in the Sun

Eventually it comes to you: the thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.

Journal entry [May 1, 1962]

Buck Henry [Henry Zuckerman]

1930–2020

and

Calder Willingham

1922–1995

I want to say one word to you—just one word.… Plastics.

The Graduate (screenplay)¹ [1967]

Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?

The Graduate (screenplay)¹ [1967], spoken by Dustin Hoffman

Ted [Edward J.] Hughes

1930–1998

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:

Something else is alive

Beside the clock’s loneliness

And this blank page where my fingers move.

The Hawk in the Rain [1957]. The Thought-Fox

… with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,

It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks,

The page is printed.

The Hawk in the Rain. The Thought-Fox

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly—

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

Hawk Roosting [1960]

Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat

As an old rough mat, no mouth and no eyes,

Continual wars and wives are what

Have tattered his ears and battered his head.

Esther’s Tomcat [1960]

Jasper Johns

1930–

Generally, I am opposed to painting which is concerned with conceptions of simplicity. Everything looks very busy to me.

Artist’s statement [1959]

Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.

Sketchbook Notes [1965]

Gerald Kaufman

1930–2017

[On the British Labour Party platform:] The longest suicide note in history.

Attributed [1983]

Abbey Lincoln [Anna Marie Wooldridge]

1930–2010

The world is falling down

Hold my hand

It’s a lonely sound

Hold my hand

We’ll follow the breeze

And go like the wind

And look for a place

Where the willows bend

The World Is Falling Down [1990]

Harry Mathews

1930–2017

Mastery is not knowing what you’re going to do next.

20 Lines a Day [1988]

Frank [Francis] McCourt

1930–2009

Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

Angela’s Ashes [1996], ch. 1

Harvey Milk

1930–1978

If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.¹

Taped statement [November 18, 1977]

Gay brothers and sisters… You must come out. Come out… to your parents… I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives… come out to your friends… if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors… to your fellow workers… to the people who work where you eat and shop… come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake.

Speech on Gay Freedom Day [June 25, 1978]

Edna O’Brien

1930–

Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you’d have made them different.

Girls in Their Married Bliss [1964]

Sandra Day O’Connor

1930–

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 [2004]

Harold Pinter

1930–2008

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], I

The earth’s about five million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?

The Homecoming [1965], act III

I don’t think we don’t love each other.

Betrayal [1978], sc. 3

Wilfrid Sheed

1930–2011

If God had died in the blare of the twentieth century and in houses too new and cheap to be haunted, one must seek him in the old quiet places, where he might still live on in retirement.

The Good Word [1978], pt. I, ch. 12

Gary Snyder

1930–

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

Riprap [1959]. Title poem

“I’m sixty-eight” he said,

“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.

I thought, that day I started,

I sure would hate to do this all my life.

And dammit, that’s just what

I’ve gone and done.”

Riprap. Hay for the Horses

this dream pops. it was real:

and it lasted forever.

The Back Country [1967]. For a Stone Girl at Sanchi

Wrathful but Calm, Austere but Comic, Smokey the Bear will

Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would

hinder or slander him,

                HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

A Place in Space [1969]. Smokey the Bear Sutra

Stephen Sondheim

1930–2021

I like to be in America!

O.K. by me in America!

Ev’rything free in America

For a small fee in America!

West Side Story¹ [1957]. America

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,

You gotta understand,

It’s just our bringin’ upke

That gets us out of hand.

Our mothers all are junkies,

Our fathers all are drunks,

Golly Moses,

Natcherly we’re punks!

West Side Story. Gee, Officer Krupke

  Everything’s Coming Up Roses

Gypsy² [1959]. Title of song

Some people can be content

Playing bingo and paying rent

That’s peachy for some people

For some humdrum people to be

But some people ain’t me.

Gypsy. Some People

You can pull all the stops out

Till they call the cops out,

Grind your behind till you’re banned,

But you gotta get a gimmick

If you wanna get a hand.

Gypsy. You Gotta Get a Gimmick

The concerts you enjoy together,

Neighbors you annoy together,

Children you destroy together,

That keep marriage intact.

Company³ [1970]. The Little Things You Do Together

Here’s to the ladies who lunch—

Everybody laugh—

Lounging in their caftans and planning a brunch

On their own behalf.

Company. The Ladies Who Lunch

Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company!

No strings, good times, room hums, company!

Company [1970], title song. Book by George Furth

Every day a little death,

In the parlor, in the bed,

In the curtains, in the silver,

In the buttons, in the bread.

Every day a little sting,

In the heart and in the head.

A Little Night Music³ [1973]. Every Day a Little Death

Isn’t it rich?

Are we a pair?

Me here at last on the ground,

You in mid-air.

Send in the clowns.

A Little Night Music. Send in the Clowns

George Soros

1930–

As an anonymous participant in financial markets, I never had to weigh the social consequences of my actions.… I felt justified in ignoring them on the grounds that I was playing by the rules.

The Crisis of Global Capitalism [1998]

Thomas Sowell

1930–

For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.

The Vision of the Anointed [1995]

Derek Walcott

1930–2017

I who am poisoned with the blood of both,

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?

I who have cursed

The drunken officer of British rule, how choose

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

A Far Cry from Africa [1962]

These palms are greater than Versailles,

for no man made them.

Names [1976], II

Then after Eden,

was there no surprise?

O yes, the awe of Adam

at the first bead of sweat.

Sea Grapes [1976]. The New World

The tourist archipelagoes of my South

are prisons too, corruptible, and though

there is no harder prison than writing verse,

what’s poetry, if it is worth its salt,

but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth?

Forest of Europe [1979]

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.

The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory, Nobel Lecture [December 7, 1992]

Ernie Banks

1931–2015

It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame—let’s play two!

Catchphrase

Donald Barthelme

1931–1989

Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts [1968]. The Dolt

Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.

Not-Knowing [1987]

Thomas Bernhard

1931–1989

Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.

Correction [1975]

In theory we understand people, but in practice we can’t put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our own point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn’t possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.

The Loser [1983]

Otis Blackwell

1931–2002

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain

Too much love drives a man insane

You broke my will, but what a thrill

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

Great Balls of Fire [1957], recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis

Wallace Broecker

1931–2019

Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?

Title of article, Science magazine [August 1975]

The climate system is an angry beast and we are poking it with sticks.

Quoted in New York Times [March 17, 1998]

Sam Cooke

1931–1964

I was born by the river

In a little tent

And just like the river

I’ve been running ever since

It’s been a long, a long time coming

But I know a change gonna come.

A Change Is Gonna Come [1963]

Sam Cooke

1931–1964

Lou Adler

1933–

and

Herb Alpert

1935–

Don’t know much about history

Don’t know much biology

Don’t know much about a science book

Don’t know much about the French I took

(What a) Wonderful World [1960]

Guy Debord

1931–1994

In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

The Society of the Spectacle [1967]

E[dgar] L[awrence] Doctorow

1931–2015

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

Interview in Paris Review [1986]

The president we get is the country we get. With each new president the nation is conformed spiritually.

Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays, 1977–1992 [1993]

Daniel Ellsberg

1931–

[On the Vietnam War:] It’s a tribute to the American public that their leaders perceived that they had to be lied to; it’s no tribute to us that it was so easy to fool the public.

Hearts and Minds, documentary film [1974]

William Goldman

1931–2018

Follow the money.

All the President’s Men (screenplay) [1976]

The single most important fact, perhaps, of the entire movie industry: NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.

Adventures in the Screen Trade [1983]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

The Princess Bride (screenplay) [1987], spoken by Mandy Patinkin

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

The Princess Bride (screenplay), spoken by Cary Elwes

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

1931–

The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage before the Party and the people for the mass repressions and lawlessness they committed is enormous and unforgivable.

Speech on the seventieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution [November 2, 1987]

The idea of restructuring [perestroika]… combines continuity and innovation, the historical experience of Bolshevism and the contemporaneity of socialism.

Speech on the seventieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution

Rona Jaffe

1931–2005

The story of his behavior at last year’s Christmas party had spread immediately afterward and had given courage to those typists and filing clerks who had had similar experiences with him in the past, so that eventually every girl who had been pinched or kissed by Mr. Shalimar had come forth, whispering and giggling, to add her story to the office gossip.

The Best of Everything [1958]

Bert [Thomas Bertram] Lance

1931–2013

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Nation’s Business [May 1977]

John Le Carré [David John Moore Cornwell]

1931–2021

We have to live without sympathy, don’t we? That’s impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren’t like that really, I mean… one can’t be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold… d’you see what I mean?

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold [1963], ch. 2

We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and everywhere can sleep safely in their beds at night.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, 2

What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing rights and wrongs?

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, 25

A mole is a deep penetration agent so called because he burrows deep into the fabric of Western imperialism.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy [1974]

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Home’s where you go when you run out of homes.

The Honourable Schoolboy [1977]

A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.

The Honourable Schoolboy

Spy on your friends today, they’re certain to be your enemies tomorrow.

The Honourable Schoolboy, maxim of Soviet spymaster Karla

John McPhee

1931–

On the geologic time scale, a human lifetime is reduced to a brevity that is too inhibiting to think about. The mind blocks the information.

Basin and Range

Toni Morrison [Chloe Anthony Wofford]

1931–2019

I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.… Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.

Sula [1973]

Like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

Sula

When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world? Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old.

Song of Solomon [1977], ch. 5

When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.

Song of Solomon, 15

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

Interview [1981]

At no point in my life have I ever felt as though I were an American.

In the New York Times [January 5, 1986]

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

Beloved [1987]

In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

Interview in The Guardian [January 29, 1992]

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Nobel Prize lecture [1993]

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.

Nobel Prize lecture

Alice Munro

1931–

Life is not like the dim ironic stories I like to read, it is like a daytime serial on television. The banality will make you weep as much as anything else.

Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You [1974]. The Spanish Lady

Linda Nochlin

1931–2007

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

Title of essay [1971]

Things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and, above all, male. The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education.

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? [1971]

Mordecai Richler

1931–2001

“I’m world-famous,” Dr. Parks said, “all over Canada.”

The Incomparable Atuk [1963], ch. 4

Richard Rorty

1931–2007

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.

Consequences of Pragmatism [1982]. Introduction

Something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.

Achieving Our Country [1998]

Jerome Rothenberg

1931–

The mind of man is on fire

And where will his eye find rest

The Seven Hells of the Jigoku Zoshi [1962]

There are no half-formed languages, no underdeveloped or inferior languages. Everywhere a development has taken place into structures of great complexity. People who have failed to achieve the wheel will not have failed to invent & develop a highly wrought grammar.

Technicians of the Sacred [1967]. Pre-Face

Nicholas [Osborne] Tomalin

1931–1973

The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability.

Stop the Press, I Want to Get On, Sunday Times Magazine (London) [October 26, 1969]

Tomas [Gösta] Tranströmer

1931–2015

It is still beautiful to feel your heart throbbing.

But often the shadow feels more real than the body.

Bells and Tracks [1966]. After Someone’s Death¹

Desmond Tutu

1931–2021

Having looked the beast of the past in the eye, having asked and received forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past—not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.

Report of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission [1998]. Foreword

Don’t raise your voice; improve your argument.

Address at the Second Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, Johannesburg, South Africa [November 23, 2004]

Colin Wilson

1931–2013

The Outsider is a man who has awakened to chaos.

The Outsider [1956]

Gene Wolfe

1931–2019

Action, you see, is the end that thought achieves. Action is its only purpose. What else is it good for? If we don’t act, it’s worthless. If we can’t act, useless.

The Book of the Long Sun [1993–96], vol. 1

Tom [Thomas Kennerly, Jr.] Wolfe

1931–2018

Las Vegas is the only town in the world whose skyline is made up neither of buildings, like New York, nor of trees, like Wilbraham, Massachusetts, but signs.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby [1965]. Las Vegas (What?)

Cars, miles of cars, in every direction, millions of cars, pastel cars, aqua green, aqua blue, aqua beige, aqua buff, aqua dawn, aqua dusk, aqua Malacca, Malacca lacquer, Cloud lavender, Assassin pink, Rake-a-cheek raspberry, Nude Strand coral, Honest Thrill orange, and Baby Fawn Lust cream-colored cars are all going to the stock car races, and that old mothering North Carolina sun keeps exploding off the windshields.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. The Last American Hero

The Life—that feeling—The Life—the late 1940s early 1950s American Teenage Drive-In Life.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test² [1968]

A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon Renaissance—And the myths that actually touched you at that time—not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas—but Superman, Captain Marvel, Batman.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: “You’re either on the bus… or off the bus.”

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Wonder what the Black Panthers eat here on the hors d’oeuvre trail? Do the Panthers like little Roquefort cheese morsels wrapped in crushed nuts this way, and asparagus tips in mayonnaise dabs, and meatballs petites au Coq Hardi, all of which are at this very moment being offered to them on gadrooned silver platters by maids in black uniforms with hand-ironed white aprons.

Radical Chic [1970]

Radical Chic, after all, is only radical in style; in its heart it is part of Society and its traditions.

Radical Chic

The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening

Title of essay [1976]

The idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher and even—ultimately, God willing, one day—that you might be able to join that special few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men’s eyes, the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.

The Right Stuff [1979], ch. 2

A cult is a religion with no political power.

In Our Time [1980]

On Wall Street he and a few others—how many?—three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?—had become precisely that… Masters of the Universe.

The Bonfire of the Vanities [1987], ch. 1, The Master of the Universe

A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.

The Bonfire of the Vanities, 24, The Informants

Aharon Appelfeld

1932–2018

The Holocaust is a central event in many people’s lives, but it has also become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it.

In the New York Times [November 15, 1986]

Johnny Cash

1932–2003

I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Folsom Prison Blues [1955]

I keep my eyes wide open all the time,

I keep the ends out for the tie that binds,

Because you’re mine,

I walk the line.

I Walk the Line [1956]

Stephen R. Covey

1932–2012

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

First Things First [1994]

Mario Cuomo

1932–2015

We campaign in poetry. But when we’re elected we’re forced to govern in prose.

Chubb Fellowship Lecture, Yale University [February 1, 1985]

John Gregory Dunne

1932–2003

Writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.

Laying Pipe [1986]

Umberto Eco

1932–2016

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

The Name of the Rose [1980]

“Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.”

The Name of the Rose

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

Travels in Hyperreality [1983]

Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.

Travels in Hyperreality

The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

The New York Review of Books [June 22, 1995]. Ur-Fascism

Glenn Gould

1932–1982

The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

Let’s Ban Applause! [1962]

[Richard Claxton]Dick Gregory

1932–2017

Last time I was down South, I walked into this restaurant. This White waitress came up to me and said, “We don’t serve colored people here.” I said, “That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people, no way! Bring me a whole fried chicken.”

Comedy routine [1961], quoted in Callus on My Soul: A Memoir [2000, with SHEILA P. MOSES]

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.

Nigger¹ [1964]

If a man calls me a nigger, he is calling me something I am not. The nigger exists only in his own mind; therefore his mind is the nigger. I must feel sorry for such a man.

The Shadow That Scares Me [1968]

Geoffrey Hill

1932–2016

By blood we live, the hot, the cold,

To ravage and redeem the world:

There is no bloodless myth will hold.

For the Unfallen [1959]. Genesis

If it is without

Consequence when we vaunt and suffer, or

If it is not, all echoes are the same

In such eternity. Then tell me, love,

How that should comfort us—or anyone

Dragged half-unnerved out of this worldly place,

Crying to the end ‘I have not finished’.

King Log [1968]. Funeral Music, section 8

Between bay window and hedge the impenetrable holly

strikes up again taut wintry vibrations.

The hellebore is there still,

half-buried; the crocuses are surviving.

From the front room I might be able to see

the coal fire’s image planted in a circle

of cut-back rose bushes. Nothing is changed

by the strength of this reflection.

The Triumph of Love [1998], section 6

Edward Hoagland

1932–

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semihuman. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

Dogs, and the Tug of Life [1975]

Jenny Joseph

1932–2018

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

Warning [1965]

Ryszard Kapuściński

1932–2007

The custom of relating things by word of mouth had this advantage: if need be, the Emperor could say that a given dignitary had told him something quite different from what had really been said, and the latter could not defend himself, having no written proof.

The Emperor [1978]

It’s so very difficult to establish where the borderline runs between true power that subdues everything, power that creates the world or destroys it—where the borderline is between living power, great, even terrifying, and the appearance of power, the empty pantomime of ruling, being one’s own dummy, only playing the role, not seeing the world, not hearing it, merely looking into oneself.

The Emperor

Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anesthetizes thought, blurs vision, corrupts.

Shah of Shahs [1982]

Christopher Lasch

1932–1994

In a dying culture, narcissism appears to embody—in the guise of personal “growth” and “awareness”—the highest attainment of spiritual enlightenment. The custodians of culture hope, at bottom, merely to survive its collapse.

The Culture of Narcissism [1979]

Little Richard [Richard Penniman]

1932–2020

Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop-bam-boom!

Tutti-Frutti [1955]

Loretta Lynn

1932–

Well, I was borned a coal miner’s daughter

In a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler.

We were poor but we had love,

That’s the one thing that Daddy made sure of,

He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar.

Coal Miner’s Daughter [1969]

Pauline Oliveros

1932–2016

Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.

Sonic Meditations [1971]. Native

Carl Perkins

1932–1998

You can do anything,

But don’t step on my blue suede shoes.

Blue Suede Shoes [1956]

Sylvia Plath

1932–1963

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

The Moon and the Yew Tree [1961]

I am terrified by this dark thing

That sleeps in me;

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Elm [1962]

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.

The Bell Jar [1963], opening line

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.

  I am, I am, I am.

The Bell Jar

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.

The Bell Jar

The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life. Then, at the rim of vision, it gathered itself, and in one sweeping tide, rushed me to sleep.

The Bell Jar

A living doll, everywhere you look.

It can sew, it can cook,

It can talk, talk, talk.…

My boy, it’s your last resort.

Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

The Applicant [1963]

I have done it again.

Lady Lazarus [1963], st. 1

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.

Lady Lazarus, st. 15, 16

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

Lady Lazarus, last stanza

The woman is perfected.

Her dead

Body wears the smile of accomplishment,

The illusion of a Greek necessity

Flows in the scrolls of her toga,

Her bare

Feet seem to be saying:

We have come so far, it is over.

Edge [1963]

What a thrill—

My thumb instead of an onion.

Cut [1963]

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy [1963], st. 1

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—

Daddy, st. 9

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

Daddy, st. 10

There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

Daddy, st. 16

White

Godiva, I unpeel—

Dead hands dead stringencies.

Ariel [1965]

And now I

Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.

Ariel

Donald Rumsfeld

1932–2021

Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.

Aide’s notes on remarks at meeting [September 11, 2001]

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Defense Department news briefing [February 12, 2002]

As you know, you go to war with the army you have. They’re not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Remark [December 8, 2004]

Gay Talese

1932–

Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only worse.… A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a president of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy.

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold [1966]

Andrei Tarkovsky

1932–1986

Joy is lack of understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves.

Interview, Le Monde [May 12, 1983]

François Truffaut

1932–1984

I am bothered by the theater. The performance is not the same every night.

Interview with Charles Thomas Samuels [1970]

John Updike

1932–2009

Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

Hub Fans Bid Kid¹ Adieu, in The New Yorker [October 22, 1960]

Welcome, she said, to the post-pill paradise.

Couples [1968]

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

Couples

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.

How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time [1972]

We are cruel enough without meaning to be.

Rabbit Is Rich [1981]

Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance?

Self-Consciousness: Memoirs [1989]

Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead.

Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world—it happens to everybody.

Self-Consciousness: Memoirs

Paul J. Crutzen

1933–

and

Eugene F. Stoermer

1934–2012

To assign a more specific date to the onset of the “anthropocene” seems somewhat arbitrary, but we propose the latter part of the 18th century, although we are aware that alternative proposals can be made (some may even want to include the entire holocene). However, we choose this date because, during the past two centuries, the global effects of human activities have become clearly noticeable. This is the period when data retrieved from glacial ice cores show the beginning of a growth in the atmospheric concentrations of several “greenhouse gases,” in particular CO2 and CH4. Such a starting date also coincides with James Watt’s invention of the steam engine in 1784.

IGBP Newsletter 41 [2000], pioneering use of term “anthropocene”

Vine [Victor] Deloria, Jr.²

1933–2005

Tribalism is the strongest force at work in the world today.

Custer Died for Your Sins [1969], ch. 11

This country was a lot better off when the Indians were running it.

In the New York Times Magazine [March 3, 1970]

Michael Frayn

1933–

It’s not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It’s the hope.

Clockwise (screenplay) [1986], spoken by John Cleese

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

1933–2020

People ask me sometimes, when—when do you think it will be enough? When will it, will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine.

Speech at Georgetown University [February 4, 2015]

When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners, faute de mieux, at great risk to their health and safety.… So long as this Court adheres to Roe v. Wade… laws like H. B. 2 that “do little or nothing for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion”… cannot survive judicial inspection.

Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 U.S. [2016]

Karl Lagerfeld

1933–2019

I’m very much down to earth, just not this earth.

Attributed

Jerry Leiber

1933–2011

and

Mike Stoller

1933–

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog cryin’ all the time.

Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine.

Hound Dog [1956]

Take out the papers and the trash

Or you don’t get no spending cash;

If you don’t scrub that kitchen floor,

You ain’t gonna rock ’n’ roll no more.

Yakety yak, don’t talk back.

Yakety Yak [1958]

Cormac McCarthy

1933–

Do you know what happens with people who cannot govern themselves? That’s right. Others come in to govern for them.

Blood Meridian [1985], ch. 3, spoken by Captain White

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

Blood Meridian, spoken by the judge

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

All the Pretty Horses [1992]

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.

No Country for Old Men [2005], spoken by Sheriff Bell

He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

The Road [2006]

Leonard Michaels

1933–2003

The meaning of life is that it stops.¹

Legible Death [1980]

Stanley Milgram

1933–1984

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Obedience to Authority [1974]

It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.

Obedience to Authority

Control the manner in which a man interprets his world, and you have gone a long way toward controlling his behavior.

Obedience to Authority

Joe Orton [John Kingsley]

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 I

Two young people—one mad and one sexually insatiable—both naked—are roaming this house. At all costs we must prevent a collision.

What the Butler Saw, II

Nicholas Pileggi

1933–

If you’re part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they’re going to kill you. It doesn’t happen that way. There aren’t any great arguments or finger-biting curses like in Mafia movies. Your murderers come with smiles. They come as friends, people who have cared deeply about you all your life, and they always come at a time when you are at your weakest and most in need of their help and support.

Wise Guy: Life in a Mafia Family [1985], quoting Henry Hill

Nicholas Pileggi

1933–

and

Martin Scorsese

1942–

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States.

Goodfellas¹ (screenplay) [1990], spoken by Ray Liotta

To us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day and worried about their bills were dead. I mean they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something, we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again.

Goodfellas (screenplay), spoken by Ray Liotta

You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it’s me, I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?

Goodfellas (screenplay), spoken by Joe Pesci

Charles Portis

1933–2020

It was awful to see but you must remember that these chained beasts were murderers and robbers and train wreckers and bigamists and counterfeiters, some of the most wicked men in the world. They had ridden the “hoot-owl trail” and tasted the fruits of evil and now justice had caught up with them to demand payment. You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

True Grit [1968]

Ann Willis Richards

1933–2006

Poor George, he can’t help it—he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

On Republican candidate George W. Bush [July 18, 1988]

After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.²

Speech at Democratic National Convention, Atlanta [1988]

[In response to a question about her legacy:] How about, “She changed the economic future of Texas.” And that really beats what I feared my tombstone was going to say, and that was, “She kept a really clean house.”

Quoted in the Houston Chronicle [May 1, 1994]

Joan Rivers [Joan Alexandra Molinsky]

1933–2014

Can we talk?

Catchphrase

Who knew?

Catchphrase

Philip Roth

1933–2018

The American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, and then describe, and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one’s own meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents.

Writing American Fiction [1961]

Doctor Spielvogel, this is my life, my only life, and I’m living it in the middle of a Jewish joke! I am the son in the Jewish joke—only it ain’t no joke!

Portnoy’s Complaint [1969]. Whacking Off

A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!

Portnoy’s Complaint. Cunt Crazy

All you had to be was attentive, methodical, thorough, punctual, and persevering; all you had to be was orderly, patient, self-disciplined, undiscourageable, and industrious—and, of course, intelligent. And that was it. What could be simpler?

My Life as a Man [1974]

Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half-imaginary existence out of the actual drama of my life is my life.

Interview in Paris Review [Fall 1984]

I am like somebody who is trying vividly to transform himself out of himself and into his vividly transforming heroes. I am very much like somebody who spends all day writing.

Interview in Paris Review

When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters.

Interview in Paris Review

Here where the literary culture is held hostage, the art of narration flourishes by mouth. In Prague, stories aren’t simply stories; it’s what they have instead of life.

The Prague Orgy [1985]

The closest we can come to the truth about reality is in the fictions that we create about it.

The Counterlife [1986]. Introduction

I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you—it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

Deception: A Novel [1990]

I’m an écouteur—an audiophiliac. I’m a talk fetishist.

Deception

The radio was playing “Easter Parade” and I thought, But this is Jewish genius on a par with the Ten Commandments. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments and then He gave to Irving Berlin “Easter Parade” and “White Christmas.”… Easter he turns into a fashion show and Christmas into a holiday about snow.

Operation Shylock [1993]

He could not fucking die. How could he leave? How could he go? Everything he hated was here.

Sabbath’s Theater [1995], final lines

But who is set up for the impossible that is going to happen? Who is set up for tragedy and the incomprehensibility of suffering? Nobody. The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy—that is every man’s tragedy.

American Pastoral [1997]

What was astonishing to him was how people seemed to run out of their own being, run out of whatever the stuff was that made them into who they were and, drained of themselves, turn into the sort of people they would once have felt sorry for. It was as though while their lives were rich and full they were secretly sick of themselves and couldn’t wait to dispose of their sanity and their health and all sense of proportion so as to get down to that other self, the true self, who was a wholly deluded fuckup.

American Pastoral

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again.

American Pastoral

All that we don’t know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

The Human Stain [2000]

Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as “History,” harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.

The Plot Against America [2004]

Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.

Everyman [2006]

I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.

The New Yorker [January 30, 2017]

Oliver Sacks

1933–2015

Health is infinite and expansive in mode, and reaches out to be filled with the fullness of the world; whereas disease is finite and reductive in mode, and endeavors to reduce the world to itself.

Awakenings [1973]

If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales [1985]. The Lost Mariner

There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition.… Nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it.

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain [2007]. Brainworms, Sticky Music, and Catchy Tunes

When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leaves holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

My Own Life. In the New York Times [February 19, 2015]

Amartya Sen

1933–

No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.

Development as Freedom [1999]

Nina Simone [Eunice Kathleen Waymon]

1933–2003

Can’t you see it, can’t you feel it

It’s Shawnall in the air.

I can’t stand the pressure much longer

Somebody say a prayer.

Alabama’s got me so upset

Tennessee made me lose my rest

And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Nina Simone in Concert [1964]. Mississippi Goddam

Susan Sontag

1933–2004

Life is a movie. Death is a photograph.

The Benefactor [1963]

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

Against Interpretation [1966]. Against Interpretation

In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

Against Interpretation. Against Interpretation

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

Against Interpretation. Against Interpretation

The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak.

Against Interpretation. Notes on Camp

Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style—but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the “off,” of things-being-what-they-are-not.… The ultimate Camp statement: “it’s good because it’s awful.”

Against Interpretation. Notes on Camp

The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets…. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, “virile” posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death.

Fascinating Fascism [1975]

So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

On Photography [1977]

We’re all going to die—that’s a very difficult thing to take in—and we all experience this process. It feels as if there’s this person—in your head, mainly—trapped in this physiological stock that can only survive seventy- or eighty-plus years normally, in any kind of decent condition. It starts deteriorating at a certain point, and then for half of your life, if not more, you watch this material begin to fray. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re trapped inside it, and when it goes, you go.

Rolling Stone [1978]. Interview with Jonathan Cott

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.

Illness as Metaphor [1978]

TB [tuberculosis] was a disease in the service of a romantic view of the world. Cancer is now in the service of a simplistic view of the world that can turn paranoid.

Illness as Metaphor

Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by willpower are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease.

Illness as Metaphor

Depression is melancholy minus its charms.

Illness as Metaphor

I don’t consider devotion to the past a form of snobbery. Just one of the more disastrous forms of unrequited love.

I, Etcetera [1978]. Unguided Tour

The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.

AIDS and Its Metaphors [1989]

My idea of a writer: someone interested in “everything.”

Preface to Spanish translation [1996] of Against Interpretation

If I had to choose between the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then—of course—I’d choose Dostoyevsky. But do I have to choose?

Thirty Years Later…[1996]

Capitalism has a truly radical relation to culture, dismantling the very notion of greatness in the arts, which is now most successfully dismissed by the ecumenical philistinism of both cultural progressives and cultural reactionaries as an “elitist” presumption.

Where the Stress Falls [2001]. The Wisdom Project

Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us.

Regarding the Pain of Others [2003]

Ben J. Wattenberg

1933–2015

and

Richard M. Scammon

1915–2001

Demography is destiny.¹

The Real Majority: An Extraordinary Examination of the American Electorate [1970]

Steven Weinberg

1933–

It is very hard to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

The First Three Minutes [1977]. Epilogue

Donald Westlake [writing as Richard Stark]

1933–2008

His face was a chipped chunk of concrete, with eyes of flawed onyx. His mouth was a quick stroke, bloodless. His suit coat fluttered behind him, and his arms swung easy as he walked.

The Hunter [1962]

Yevgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko

1933–2017

There is no Jewish blood in my veins,

But I am hated with a scabby hatred

By all the anti-Semites,

            like a Jew.

And therefore

            I am a true Russian.

Babi Yar [1961]

Amiri Baraka [LeRoi Jones]

1934–2014

Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelops me

Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note [1961]

Saturday mornings we listened to Red Lantern & his undersea folk.

At 11, Let’s Pretend / & we did/& I, the poet, still do, Thank God!

In Memory of Radio [1961]

Cold air blown through narrow blind eyes. Flesh,

white hot metal. Glows as the day with its sun.

It is a human love, I live inside. A bony skeleton

you recognize as words or simple feeling.

But it has no feeling. As the metal, is hot, it is not,

given to love.

It burns the thing

inside it. And that thing

screams.

An Agony. As Now. [1964]

        (Wipes

her nose

on the draperies. Spills drinks

fondles another man’s

life. She is looking

for alternatives. Openings

where she can lay all

this greasy talk

on somebody. Me, once. Now

I am her teller.

Crow Jane in High Society [1964]

New Black Music is this: find the self, then kill it.

The New Wave in Jazz [1965]. Liner notes

We are phantoms and visions, ourselves

Some star’s projection, some sun’s growth beneath that holy star

And all the other worlds there are exist alive beneath their own beautiful fires

real and alive, just as we are

beings of the star’s mind

images cast against the eternally shifting

heavens.

Study Peace [1972]

Walk it slow

where you go

walk it slow…

We in the world

Poor as dirt

      Don’t get some rhythm

Somebody’ll get hurt

the world is black

the world is green

the world is red, yellow, brown

the world is mean

3rd World Blues [1979]

Wendell Berry

1934–

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief.

Openings [1968]. The Peace of Wild Things

I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children.

The Unforeseen Wilderness [1971]

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

The Country of Marriage [1973]. Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

        And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

The Country of Marriage. The Wild Geese

I have lived mainly in, and mainly know about, one little stretch of country in Henry County, Kentucky, and so I assume that my sense of that place has an inestimable importance to me. To imagine myself without knowledge of that place would to be to imagine somebody else.

The Art of Living Right [1983]

The wildness of the soil that we call fertility begins to diminish, and the soil itself begins to flee from us in water and wind.

Home Economics [1987]. Getting Along with Nature

Eating is an agricultural act.

What Are People For? [1990]. The Pleasures of Eating

James Brown

1934–2006

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

Title of song [1965]

Say It Loud: “I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

Some people say we’ve got a lot of malice,

Some say it’s a lot of nerve.

But I say we won’t quit moving

Until we get what we deserve.

Say It Loud: “I’m Black and I’m Proud” [1968] (song)

Stay on the scene

Like a sex machine

Get Up (I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine) [1970]

Being alone in the woods like that, spending nights in a cabin with nobody else there, not having anybody to talk to, worked a change in me that stayed with me from then on: It gave me my own mind. No matter what came my way after that—prison, personal problems, government harassment—I had the ability to fall back on myself.

The Godfather of Soul¹ [1986]

Donald Cammell

1934–1996

The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.

Performance (screenplay) [1970], spoken by Mick Jagger

Leonard Cohen

1934–2016

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.

The Favorite Game [1963]

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that she will trust you

For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.

Suzanne [1966]

Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.

The Old Revolution [1969]

It goes like this

The fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah.

Hallelujah [1984]

Well my friends are gone and my hair is gray

I ache in the places where I used to play

And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on

I’m just paying my rent every day

Oh in the Tower of Song

Tower of Song [1988]

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

Anthem [1992]

We asked for signs

The signs were sent

The Future [1992]. Anthem

Joan Didion

1934–2021

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem [1968], preface

Heard him tell the girl in a picture called War of the Wildcats that he would build her a house, “at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow.” As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where the artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I wait to hear.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem. John Wayne: A Love Song

One of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Goodbye to All That

New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Goodbye to All That

Our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable “I.”

Slouching Towards Bethlehem. On Keeping a Notebook

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

The White Album [1979]

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five.

The White Album

Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brush fire through the community, and in a sense this is true.

The White Album

I want you to understand exactly what you are getting. You are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest other people. You are getting a woman who somewhere along the line misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract, in the meliorative principle, in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor.

The White Album

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.

The White Album

Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.

Quoted by Michiko Kakutani in The Poet at the Piano [1988]. A Visit with Joan Didion

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.

The Year of Magical Thinking [2005]

These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved.

The Year of Magical Thinking

We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Diane di Prima

1934–2020

I have just realized that the stakes are myself

I have no other

ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life

my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over

the roulette table, I recoup what I can

Revolutionary Letters [1971]. Revolutionary Letter #1

Henry Dumas

1934–1968

         If an eagle be imprisoned

         on the back of a coin,

         and the coin be tossed

         into the sky,

         the coin will spin,

         the coin will flutter,

         but the eagle will never fly.

America [c. 1960]

Harlan Ellison

1934–2018

I’m a writer. Call me a science fiction writer, and I’ll come to your house and I’ll nail your pet’s head to a coffee table. I’ll hit you so hard your ancestors’ll die.

Harlan Ellison’s Watching [1993]

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Title of story [1967]

David Halberstam

1934–2007

The Best and the Brightest

Title of book [1972]

Frederic Jameson

1934–

The Prison-House of Language

Title of book [1972]

Daniel Kahneman

1934–

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

Thinking, Fast and Slow [2011]

John Keegan

1934–2012

Generalship is bad for people.

The Mask of Command [1987]

Audre Lorde

1934–1992

The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.

Poetry Is Not a Luxury [1977]

Poetry is not only dream and vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.

Poetry Is Not a Luxury

My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.

The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action [1977], address to the Modern Language Association

when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.

The Black Unicorn [1978]. A Litany for Survival

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House

Title of essay [1979]

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Learning from the 60s [February 1982], Keynote address at Malcolm X Weekend, Harvard University

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

A Burst of Light [1988]

Sophia Loren

1934–

Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti.

Quoted in LIFE [August 11, 1961]

Janet Malcolm

1934–2021

Human nature is such that when we are suddenly taken up by someone whom we consider superior and admirable, we accept his attentions calmly, whereas when we are dropped we cannot rest until we feel we have got to the bottom of the person’s profound irrationality.

In the Freud Archives [1983]

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

The Journalist and the Murderer [1990], pt. I

The person who insists on speaking the whole truth, who painfully spells out every last detail of an action and interrupts his wife to say it was Tuesday, not Wednesday, and the gunman was wearing a Borsalino, not a fedora, is not honored for his honesty but is shunned for his tiresomeness.

The Crime of Sheila McGough [1999]

Over the years, the social status and the education level of journalists has risen, and some journalists write extremely well. But the profession retains its transgressiveness. Human frailty continues to be the currency in which it trades. Malice remains its animating impulse. A trial offers unique opportunities for journalistic heartlessness.

Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial [2011]

Charles Manson

1934–2017

They are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them.

Statement at trial [November 20, 1970]

N[avarre] Scott Momaday

1934–

Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold.

House Made of Dawn [1968], January 26

Loneliness is an aspect of the land. All things in the plain are isolate; there is no confusion of objects in the eye, but one hill or one tree or one man. To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion. Your imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.

The Way to Rainy Mountain [1969]

Mary Quant

1934–

I didn’t think of the mini as sexual but as an instrument of liberation. I wanted to make clothes that you could move in, skirts you could run and dance in, but, of course, wearing clothes like that made you feel and look sexy.

The Daily Telegraph [1967]. The Meaning of the Mini

Carl Sagan

1934–1996

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.¹

Why We Need to Understand Science. In the Skeptical Inquirer [Spring 1990]

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.… Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark [1995]

We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.²

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage

[Sandra] Sandy Chapin

1934–

and

Harry Chapin

1942–1981

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon,

Little boy blue and the man in the moon.

“When you coming home, dad?” “I don’t know when,

But we’ll get together then.

You know we’ll have a good time then.”

Cat’s in the Cradle [1974]

Wole [Akinwande Oluwole] Soyinka

1934–

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

The Man Died [1972]

Gloria Steinem

1934–

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke; that’s their natural and first weapon.

Sisterhood in Ms. [spring 1972]

I can sometimes deal with men as equals and therefore can afford to like them.

Sisterhood in Ms.

Women are taught to be female impersonators all the time.

Quoted in the New York Times [March 2, 1973]

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

Speech at Yale University [September 1981]

Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions [1983]

Mark Strand

1934–2014

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

Eating Poetry [1968]

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

Keeping Things Whole [1969]

Nothing could stop you.

Not the best day. Not the quiet. Not the ocean rocking.

You went on with your dying.

Elegy for My Father [1970]. 3. Your Dying

Now you invent the boat of your flesh and set it upon the waters

and drift in the gradual swell, in the laboring salt.

Now you look down. The waters of childhood are there.

Where Are the Waters of Childhood? [1978]

Robert Towne [Robert Bertram Schwartz]

1934–

Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.

Chinatown (screenplay) [1974]

Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything.

Chinatown (screenplay)

John Wieners

1934–2002

The poem

does not lie to us. We lie under its

law, alive in the glamour of this hour

able to enter into the sacred places

of his dark people, who carry secrets

glassed in their eyes and hide words

under the roofs of their mouth.

The Hotel Wentley Poems [1958]. A poem for Tea Heads

Only the score of a man’s

struggle to stay with

what is his own, what

lies within him to do.

Without which is nothing,

for him or those who hear him

The Hotel Wentley Poems. A poem for Painters

Garry Wills

1934–

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?

Our Moloch [December 15, 2012]

Woody Allen [Allen Stuart Konigsberg]

1935–

This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.

Bananas¹ [1971]

Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.

Getting Even [1972]. My Philosophy

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Without Feathers. Death (A Play)

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Without Feathers. The Early Essays

There’s an old joke: Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mountain resort, and one of ’em says, “Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.” The other one says, “Yeah, I know; and such small portions.”¹

Annie Hall (screenplay)² [1977]

[Sex:] The most fun I’ve ever had without laughing.³

Annie Hall (screenplay)

Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.

Annie Hall (screenplay)

A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies, and I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.

Annie Hall (screenplay)

When you do comedy, you’re not sitting at the grownups’ table, you’re sitting at the children’s table.

Interview in Newsweek [April 24, 1978]

He adored New York City.… No matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white, and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.

Manhattan (screenplay) [1979]

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Husbands and Wives (screenplay) [1992]

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Interview

Kofi Awoonor [George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams]

1935–2013

I am on the world’s extreme corner,

I am not sitting in the row with the eminent

But those who are lucky

Sit in the middle and forget

I am on the world’s extreme corner

I can only go beyond and forget.

Rediscovery and Other Poems [1964]. Songs of Sorrow

Susan Brownmiller

1935–

Man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe.

Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape [1975], ch. 1

Robert Caro

1935–

Power corrupts—that has been said and written so often that it has become a cliché. But what is never said, but is just as true, is that power reveals.

Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson [2002]

[Leroy] Eldridge Cleaver

1935–1998

You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.

Speech, San Francisco [1968]

the Dalai Lama [Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Dhondup]

1935–

Because violence can only breed more violence and suffering, our struggle must remain nonviolent and free of hatred. We are trying to end the suffering of our people, not to inflict suffering on others.

Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech [December 10, 1989]

Sylvia [Alice] Earle

1935–

There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.

Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans [1995]

Preston Foster

1935–

I got my mojo working

But it just don’t work on you.

Got My Mojo Working¹ [1956]

Vivian Gornick

1935–

Put romantic love at the center of a novel today, and who could be persuaded that in its pursuit the characters are going to get to something large?

The End of the Novel of Love [1997]

George L[ee] Kelling

1935–2019

Crime, as well fear of crime, is closely associated with disorder.… For most people, New York’s crime problem comes down to the fear they endure as a consequence of disorder—the well-founded belief that in disorderly places society has ceded control to those… who are outside the law, and therefore that anything might happen.

The City Journal [1992]. Measuring What Matters

Ken Kesey

1935–2001

A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance… like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn’t care any more about anything but himself and his dying.

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1962], pt. IV

There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. If you’re on the bus, and you get left behind, then you’ll find it again. If you’re off the bus in the first place—then it won’t make a damn.

Quoted by TOM WOLFE in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test² [1968], ch. 6

The job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

The Paris Review [spring 1994]

W[illiam] P. Kinsella

1935–2016

If you build it, he will come.

Shoeless Joe³ [1982]

Larry Kramer

1935–2020

[On AIDS:] We’re all going to go crazy, living this epidemic every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it’s like, what we’re going through. We’re living through war, but where they’re living it’s peacetime, and we’re all in the same country.

The Normal Heart [1985]

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]

Eugene [Gene] McDaniels

1935–2011

The President, he’s got his war

Folks don’t know just what it’s for

No one gives us rhyme or reason

Have one doubt, they call it treason

Compared to What [1969]. Recorded by Roberta Flack and by Les McCann and Eddie Harris

Mary Oliver

1935–2019

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Dream Work [1986]. Wild Geese

        There is only one question:

how to love this world.

House of Light [1990]. Spring

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

House of Light. The Swan

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day [1990]

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

New and Selected Poems [1992]. When Death Comes

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.

New and Selected Poems. When Death Comes

The world where the owl is endlessly hungry and endlessly on the hunt is the world in which I live too.

Blue Pastures [1995]. Owls

Elvis Presley

1935–1977

Well since my baby left me

Well I found a new place to dwell

Well it’s down at the end of lonely street

At Heartbreak Hotel.

Heartbreak Hotel¹ [1956]

[Edna] Annie Proulx

1935–

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Brokeback Mountain [1997]

Edward Said

1935–2003

Orientalism… a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.

Orientalism [1978]

In the system of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its origin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an amalgam of all these.

Orientalism

Exile is predicated on the existence of, love for, and a real bond with one’s native place; the universal truth of exile is not that one has lost that love or home, but that inherent in each is an unexpected, unwelcome loss. Regard experiences then as if they were about to disappear.

Culture and Imperialism [1993]

Calvin Trillin

1935–

No sophisticated study of public opinion is needed to establish the fact that in the United States, North or South, a white life is considered to be of more value than a Negro life.

Jackson, 1964 [1964]

Jane Wagner

1935–

What is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a collective hunch.

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe [1985], performed by Lily Tomlin

It’s my belief we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

William Julius Wilson

1935–

A history of discrimination and oppression created a huge black underclass, and the technological and economic revolutions have combined to insure it a permanent status.

The Declining Significance of Race [1978]

Charles Wright

1935–

Out of the nothing nothing comes.

                        The rain keeps falling,

As we expected, the bitter and boundaryless rain.

The grass leaves no footprints,

              the creek keeps on eating its one word.

In the night, the light assembles the stars

                    and tightens their sash.

Scar Tissue [2006]. China Traces

Lucia Berlin

1936–2004

I’ve never understood how so many barely literate people read the Bible so much. It’s hard. In the same way it surprises me that uneducated seamstresses all over the world can figure out how to put in sleeves and zippers.

Phantom Pain [1984]

A. S. Byatt [Antonia Susan Duffy]

1936–

Think of this—that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

Possession [1990]

Lucille Clifton

1936–2010

children

when they ask you

why is your mama so funny

say

she is a poet

she don’t have no sense

Good Times [1969]. Admonition

they ask me to remember

but they want me to remember

their memories

and i keep on remembering

mine.

why some people be mad at me sometimes [1987]

Frank Conroy

1936–2005

Success has ruined more writers than failure.

In a Different Voice [1982]

Don DeLillo

1936–

Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

White Noise [1985]

It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.

White Noise

There’s always more to it. This is what history consists of. It’s the sum total of the things they aren’t telling us.

Libra [1988]

A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach.

Libra

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

Interview with Kevin Connolly [1988]

Longing on a large scale is what makes history.

Underworld [1997]

Sometimes I see something so moving I know I’m not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.

Underworld

Pope Francis [Jorge Mario Bergoglio]

1936–

Men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption: it is the “culture of waste.” If a computer breaks it is a tragedy, but poverty, the needs and dramas of so many people end up being considered normal.… In this way people are thrown aside as if they were trash.

General audience [June 5, 2013]

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.… it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

Interview [September 19, 2013]

I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.

Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home [May 24, 2015]

Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation, and filth.

Laudato Sí: On Care for Our Common Home

Carol Gilligan

1936–

In the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of care, the tie between relationship and responsibility, and the origins of aggression in the failure of connection.

In a Different Voice [1982]

Walon Green

1936–

and

Sam Peckinpah

1925–1984

What do I have? Nothin’ but you damned egg-suckin’, chicken-stealing gutter trash with not even sixty rounds between you. We’re after men—and I wish to God I was with them.

The Wild Bunch (screenplay) [1969]

It ain’t like it used to be, but it’ll do.

The Wild Bunch (screenplay), final line

Václav Havel

1936–2011

Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.

The Power of the Powerless [1978]

If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.

The Power of the Powerless

God—I don’t know why—wanted me to be a Czech. It was not my choice. But I accept it, and I try to do something for my country because I live here.

Interview [1988]

Eva Hesse

1936–1970

The hell with them all. Paint yourself out, through and through, it will come by you alone. You must come to terms with your own work not with any other being.

Journal entry [1959]

Abbie [Abbott] Hoffman

1936–1989

Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.

Remark. Recalled at his death

Barbara C. Jordan

1936–1996

“We, the people.” It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document¹ was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision, I have finally been included in “We, the people.”

Statement at Debate on Articles of Impeachment, House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress [July 25, 1974]

Anthony Kennedy

1936–

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672 [1992]

Any society that relies on nine unelected judges to resolve the most serious issues of the day is not a functioning democracy.

Remarks at the University of Pennsylvania [October 3, 2013]

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

Majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges [June 26, 2015]

Kris Kristofferson

1936–

Yesterday is dead and gone

And tomorrow’s out of sight

And it’s sad to be alone

Help me make it through the night

Help Me Make It Through the Night [1970]

Kris Kristofferson

1936–

and

Fred Foster

1931–2019

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,

And nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.

Me and Bobby McGee [1969]

Yves Saint Laurent

1936–2008

We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.

Exhibition catalog of retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [1983]

John McCain

1936–2018

Yet those who claim their liberty but not their duty to the civilization that ensures it, live a half-life, having indulged their self-interest at the cost of their self-respect.… Sacrifice for a cause greater than your self-interest, and you invest your lives with the eminence of that cause, your self-respect assured.

Speech at Boston College convocation [September 18, 2006]

The fundamentals of America’s economy are strong.

Interview on Bloomberg TV [April 17, 2008]

Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle…. We’re getting nothing done.

Speech to the Senate [July 25, 2017]

Larry McMurtry

1936–2021

The older the violin, the sweeter the music.

Lonesome Dove [1985], spoken by Augustus

Georges Perec

1936–1982

Despite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzlemaker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other.

Life: A User’s Manual [1978]. Preamble

Bartlebooth resolved one day that his whole life would be organized around a single project, an arbitrarily constrained program with no purpose outside its own completion. The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming—what should I do?—with an answer taking shape: nothing.

Life: A User’s Manual¹

To question the habitual. But that’s just it, we’re habituated to it. We don’t question it, it doesn’t question us, it doesn’t seem to pose a problem, we live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither questions nor answers, as if it weren’t the bearer of any information. This is no longer even conditioning, it’s anaesthesia.

The Infra-Ordinary [1989]

Alejandra Pizarnik

1936–1972

I cannot speak with my voice, but I speak with my voices.²

A Musical Hell (El Infierno Musical) [1971]. Cornerstone

Steve Reich

1936–

All music turns out to be ethnic music.

Music as a Gradual Process [1968]

Antonin Scalia

1936–2016

The Imperial Judiciary lives. It is instructive to compare this Nietzschean vision of us unelected, life-tenured judges—leading a Volk who will be “tested by following,” and whose very “belief in themselves” is mystically bound up in their “understanding” of a Court that “speak[s] before all others for their constitutional ideals”—with the somewhat more modest role envisioned for these lawyers by the Founders.

Dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 [1992]

The premise of the First Amendment is that the American people are neither sheep nor fools, and hence fully capable of considering both the substance of the speech presented to them and its proximate and ultimate source. […] Given the premises of democracy, there is no such thing as too much speech.

McConnell v. Federal Election Commission 540 U.S. 93 [2003]

The Constitution is not a living organism; it is a legal document. It says something and doesn’t say other things.

Speech [February 13, 2006]

Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food; therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.

During oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act [March 27, 2012]

The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.

Obergefell v. Hodges [June 26, 2015], dissenting opinion

Frederick Seidel

1936–

The United States of America preemptively eats the world.

The doctrine of eat lest you be eaten

Is famished, roars

And tears their heads off before its own is sawed off.

The human being sawing screams God is Great!

God is—and pours cicadas

By the tens of millions through the air.

They have risen from underground.

The voices of the risen make a summer sound.

It is pouring cicadas on Madison Avenue, making the street thick.

Ooga-Booga [2006]. The Bush Administration, pt. 4

Wavy Gravy [Hugh Nanton Romney]

1936–

We’re all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.¹

Catchphrase

Renata Adler

1937–

That “writers write” is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

Speedboat [1976]

Every love story, every commercial trade, every secret, every matter in which trust is involved, is a gentle transaction of hostages. Everything is, to a degree, in the custody of every other thing.

Speedboat

Claude Brown

1937–2002

The children of these disillusioned colored pioneers inherited the total lot of their parents—the disappointments, the anger. To add to their misery, they had little hope of deliverance. For where does one run to when he’s already in the promised land?

Manchild in the Promised Land [1965]

George Carlin

1937–2008

There are four hundred thousand words in the English language, and there are seven of ’em you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is: 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad; they’d have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large.

Class Clown [1972]

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Napalm and Silly Putty [2001]

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium, digital and smoke-free. A diversified multicultural postmodern deconstructionist. Politically, anatomically, and ecologically incorrect.

Life Is Worth Losing [2005]. Modern Man

It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Life Is Worth Losing

Johnnie Cochran, Jr.

1937–2005

If it doesn’t fit, then you must acquit.²

Closing argument, murder trial of O. J. Simpson [September 27, 1995]

Sonny Curtis

1937–

I fought the law, and the law won.

I Fought the Law [1958]. Hit 1964 single by The Bobby Fuller Four

Richard Farina

1937–1966

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me

Title of book [1966]

Merle Haggard

1937–2016

and

Roy Edward Burris

1931–2011

I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee,

A place where even squares can have a ball.

We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse,

And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.

Okie from Muskogee [1969]

Jim Harrison

1937–2016

The idea is to eat well and not die from it—for the simple reason that that would be the end of your eating.

Smart Magazine [1988]. Sporting Food

The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.

The Beast God Forgot to Invent [2000], opening line

David Hockney

1937–

How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don’t. There’s a hierarchy. Why do I pick out that thing, that thing, that thing?

Interview with Mark Feeney, Boston Globe [February 26, 2006]

Susan Howe

1937–

Poetry is the great stimulation of life. Poetry leads past possession of self to transfiguration beyond gender. Poetry is redemption from pessimism.

My Emily Dickinson [1985]

A poem is a glass, through which light is conveyed to us.

Vagrancy in the Park [2015]

Saddam Hussein [Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti]

1937–2006

Everybody must realize that this battle will be the mother of all battles, and that God wanted us to wage the battle of liberating the nation and humanity, the battle of liberating Jerusalem and the holy shrines on the land of Iraq.

Speech [September 20, 1990]

Jeremy Larner

1937–

What do we do now?

The Candidate (screenplay) [1972], spoken by Robert Redford as Bill McKay

Thomas Nagel

1937–

It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God.… It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

The Last Word [1997]

Colin Powell

1937–2021

[On invading Iraq:] You break it, you own it.

Remark [2003] cited in BOB WOODWARD, Plan of Attack [2004]

Thomas Pynchon

1937–

Keep cool, but care.

V. [1963]

Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.

Gravity’s Rainbow [1973]

If there is something comforting—religious, if you want—about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.

Gravity’s Rainbow

“Temporal bandwidth” is the width of your present, your now. […] The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are.

Gravity’s Rainbow

Joanna Russ

1937–2011

If you scream, people say you’re melodramatic; if you submit, you’re masochistic; if you call names, you’re a bitch. Hit him and he’ll kill you. The best thing is to suffer mutely and yearn for a rescuer, but suppose a rescuer doesn’t come?

The Female Man [1975]

I didn’t and don’t want to be a “feminine” version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidiary version or an ancillary version, or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves.

The Female Man

To act in a way that is both sexist and racist, to maintain one’s class privilege, it is only necessary to act in the customary, ordinary, usual, even polite manner.

How to Suppress Women’s Writing [1983]

Erich Segal

1937–2010

Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry.¹

Love Story [1970]

Robert Stone

1937–2015

Moby-Dick is the explanation of America. It’s not just a novel. It is a book of prophecy. It is the book. It is the book of America.

Interview with David Samuels [November 15, 2013]

Tom Stoppard

1937–

If rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!

Jumpers [1972], act I

War is capitalism with the gloves off.

Travesties [1974], act I

No matter how imperfect things are, if you’ve got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.

Night and Day [1978]

You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.

Professional Foul [1978], sc. 14

I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you’re dead.

The Real Thing [1982], act II, scene 5

Left to themselves, people are noble, generous, uncorrupted, they’d create a completely new kind of society if only people weren’t so blind, stupid and selfish.

The Coast of Utopia: Salvage [2002], spoken by Mikhail Bakunin

Hunter S. Thompson

1937–2005

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Title of book [1971]

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [1971]

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Gonzo journalism… is a style of “reporting” based on William Faulkner’s idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism—and the best journalists have always known this.

The Great Shark Hunt [1979]

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

The Great Shark Hunt

Eleanor Bergstein

1938–

Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

Dirty Dancing (screenplay) [1987], spoken by Patrick Swayze

Stewart Brand

1938–

We are as Gods, and we might as well get good at it.

The Whole Earth Catalog [1968]

Information wants to be free.

The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T. [1987]

All buildings are predictions.

All predictions are wrong.

How Buildings Learn [1994]

Raymond Carver

1938–1988

It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love [1981]. Title story

Maxine said it was another tragedy in a long line of low-rent tragedies.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. One More Thing

You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this.

Cathedral [1983]. A Small, Good Thing

Autobiography is the poor man’s history.

Where I’m Calling From [1988]. Blackbird Pie

John Dean

1938–

We have a cancer within, close to the Presidency, that is growing.

From The [Nixon] Presidential Transcripts [March 21, 1973]

It’s a limited hang-out.¹

To Richard Nixon, The Presidential Transcripts [March 22, 1973]

Curt Flood

1938–1997

After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes.

Letter to Bowie Kuhn, Commissioner of Major League Baseball [December 24, 1969]

A. Bartlett Giamatti

1938–1989

[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone.

The Green Fields of the Mind [1977]

John Guare

1938–

The Atlantic Ocean was something then. Yes, you should have seen the Atlantic Ocean in those days.

Atlantic City (screenplay) [1980], spoken by Burt Lancaster

Everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet.

Six Degrees of Separation [1990]

Dave Hickey

1938–2021

People despise critics because people despise weakness, and criticism is the weakest thing you can do in writing. It is the written equivalent of air guitar—flurries of silent, sympathetic gestures with nothing at their heart but the memory of the music.

Air Guitar [1997]

Robert Hughes

1938–2012

The flight of speculative capital to the art market has done more to alter and distort the way we experience painting and sculpture in the last twenty years than any style, movement or polemic.

The New York Times Review of Books [1978]. Mark Rothko in Babylon

The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive.

The Shock of the New (television series) [1982]

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

1938–

Africa… is not poor, but rather poorly managed.

Speech, Johannesburg [July 12, 2008]

Donald Knuth

1938–

Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don’t fully understand something, it is an art to deal with it.

Turing Award lecture [1974]

Gordon Lightfoot

1938–

Does anyone know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald [1976]

[Bernard] Bernie Madoff

1938–2021

It’s all just one big lie.

Admission that he had been conducting a Ponzi scheme [December 10, 2008]

Joyce Carol Oates

1938–

This is a work of history in fictional form—that is, in personal perspective, which is the only kind of history that exists.

Them [1969]. Author’s Note

The worst cynicism was a belief in luck.

Do with Me What You Will [1970]

Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.

On Boxing [1987]

Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning.

On Boxing

How crucial for us to rehearse the future, in words. Never to doubt that you will live to utter them. Never to doubt that you will tell your story.

Black Water [1992]

Her problem wasn’t she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn’t a blonde and she wasn’t dumb.

Blonde [2000]

Charles Simic

1938–

I have no news of the animals.

Do they still exist? Those toads

I used to know so well. And the foxes,

Are they still out there in the dark?

Dismantling the Silence [1971]. The Animals

Robert Smithson

1938–1973

Size determines an object, but scale determines art.

The Spiral Jetty [1972]

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

1938–

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Virtuous Women Found, American Quarterly [Spring 1976]

Margaret Atwood

1939–

A divorce is like an amputation, you survive but there’s less of you.

Surfacing [1972]

A word after a word

after a word is power.

True Stories [1981]. Spelling

“Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine…. So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. “I mean,” I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.” “They’re afraid women will laugh at them,” he said. “Undercut their world view.” Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?” “They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.¹

Writing the Male Character [1982]

Nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.

The Handmaid’s Tale [1985]

It’s impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.

The Handmaid’s Tale

Alan Ayckbourn

1939–

The only thing for old age is a brave face, a good tailor and comfortable shoes.

The Norman Conquests: Table Manners [1975], act 2, sc.1

William Bell

1939–

Born under a bad sign

Been down since I began to crawl

If it wasn’t for bad luck

I wouldn’t have no luck at all

Born Under a Bad Sign [1967]. Music by Booker T. Jones; recorded by Albert King

Jim [James Alan] Bouton

1939–2019

You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.

Ball Four [1970]

John Cleese

1939–

Pretentious? Moi?

Fawlty Towers [1979]. The Psychiatrist

John Cleese

1939–

and

Connie Booth

1944–

Please don’t alarm yourself, it’s only my wife laughing. I’m afraid her local finishing school was bombed.

Fawlty Towers [October 3, 1975]. The Wedding Party

Don’t mention the war.

Fawlty Towers [October 24, 1975]. The Germans

Francis Ford Coppola

1939–

and

John Milius

1944–

I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours.… The smell, you know that gasoline smell. Smelled like victory.

Apocalypse Now (screenplay) [1979], spoken by Robert Duvall

Marvin Gaye [Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr.]

1939–1984

Father, father

We don’t need to escalate

War is not the answer

For only love can conquer hate

What’s Going On [1971]. Title song

Make me wanna holler

The way they do my life

What’s Going On. Inner City Blues

Gerry Goffin

1939–2014

and

Carole King

1942–

Tonight you’re mine completely

You give your love so sweetly

Tonight the light of love is in your eyes

But will you love me tomorrow?

Will You Love Me Tomorrow [1960]

Now Smackwater Jack

He bought a shotgun

’Cause he was in the mood

For a little confrontation

He just let it all hang loose

He didn’t think about the noose

He couldn’t take no more abuse

So he shot down the congregation

Tapestry [1971]. Smackwater Jack. Recorded by Carole King

Germaine Greer

1939–

Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.

The Female Eunuch [1970]. Loathing and Disgust

Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?

The Female Eunuch. Loathing and Disgust

Molly Haskell

1939–

For a woman—at least for the woman I was then—there is nothing more erotic than being understood.

Love and Other Infectious Diseases [1990]

Tom Hayden

1939–2016

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.

The Port Huron Statement, manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society [1962]

Seamus [Justin] Heaney

1939–2013

A people hungering from birth,

grubbing, like plants, in the bitch earth,

were grafted with a great sorrow.

Hope rotted like a marrow.

Stinking potatoes fouled the land,

pits turned pus into filthy mounds:

and where potato diggers are

you still smell the running sore.

Death of a Naturalist [1966]. At a Potato Digging

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

Death of a Naturalist. Digging

Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

Death of a Naturalist. Storm on the Island

I shouldered a kind of manhood

stepping in to lift the coffins

of dead relations.

North [1975]. Funeral Rites, I

And that moment when the bird sings very close

To the music of what happens.

Field Work. Song

You lose more of yourself than you redeem

Doing the decent thing.

Station Island [1984], XII

In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil—no lyric has ever stopped a tank. In another sense, it is unlimited. It is like the writing in the sand in the face of which accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed.

The Government of the Tongue [1986]

History says, Don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

The Cure at Troy [1990]

Clive James

1939–2019

The book of my enemy has been remaindered

And I am pleased.

In vast quantities it has been remaindered

Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized.

Other Passports [1986]. The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered

Perhaps an old man dying would do well

To smile as he rejoins the cosmic dust

Life comes from, for resign himself he must.

The New Yorker [2015]. Star System

John Leonard

1939–2008

Celebrity is what a democratic society has instead of aristocrats.

A Really Big Show [1992]. Ed Sullivan Died for Our Sins

Thomas McEvilley

1939–2013

Art’s primary social function is to define the communal self, which includes redefining it when the community is changing. Its images, however varied, arcane, or abstract, coalesce in the communal mind into a kind of face hovering in a mirror.

Opening the Trap [1989]

If a great artistic innovation is going to last only a few years or months, what really is the value of it? Shall history be rewritten for such a transient consummation? Are historical periods to become mere fads?

Art and Otherness [1992]. One Culture of Many Cultures

Michael O’Brien

1939–2016

Be aware that there’s freedom in your head.

Don’t look down. Focus where the gesture ends.

The release should be fearless. The work is in the drawing close.

The two free gifts are the floor and the breath.

Sills [2000]. The Terms

Richard Posner

1939–

When urgent considerations of the public safety require compromise with the normal principles constraining law enforcement, the normal principles may have to bend. The Constitution is not a suicide pact.¹

Decision in Edmond v. Goldsmith, U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals [1999]

James Rado [James Radomski]

1939–

and

Gerome Ragni

1942–1991

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.

Hair² [1966]. Aquarius

Grace Slick [Grace Barnett Wing]

1939–

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don’t do anything at all.

Go ask Alice

When she’s ten feet tall.

White Rabbit [1967]

Tzvetan Todorov

1939–2017

A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live—Manichaean thinking itself.

Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century [2000]

Ronald L. Ziegler

1939–2003

This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.

Statement as Richard Nixon’s press secretary [April 17, 1973]

Peter Benchley

1940–2006

and

Carl Gottlieb

1938–

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Jaws (screenplay) [1975], based on Benchley’s novel [1974]. Spoken by Roy Scheider

Marshall Berman

1940–2013

To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world—and, at the same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.

All That Is Solid Melts into Air [1982]

If we look behind the sober scenes that the members of our bourgeoisie create, and see the way they really work and act, we see that these solid citizens would tear down the world if it paid.

All That Is Solid Melts into Air

Joseph Brodsky

1940–1996

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even—if you will—eccentricity. That is, something that can’t be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned impostor couldn’t be happy with. Something, in other words, that can’t be shared, like your own skin: not even by a minority. Evil is a sucker for solidity.

Commencement address at Williams College [1984]

Had we been choosing our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth.… I believe… that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens, to shoot his like in the name of some idea is more problematic than for someone who has read no Dickens.

Nobel Prize acceptance speech [1987]

There are worse crimes than burning books—one is not reading them.

Press conference accepting post as U.S. Poet Laureate [May 17, 1991]

Tom Brokaw

1940–

This is the greatest generation any society has ever produced.

On the 50th anniversary of D-Day, to World War II veterans [1994]

Angela Carter

1940–1992

It is far easier for a woman to lead a blameless life than it is for a man; all she has to do is to avoid sexual intercourse like the plague.

Wayward Girls and Wicked Women [1986]

Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.

Wise Children [1991]

Bruce Chatwin

1940–1989

My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don’t need any other God.

In Patagonia [1977]

“Music,” said Arkady, “is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.”

The Songlines [1987]

Carol J. Clover

1940–

The image of the distressed female most likely to linger in memory is the image of the one who did not die: the survivor, or Final Girl. She is the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril; who is chased, cornered, wounded; whom we see scream, stagger, fall, rise, and scream again. She is abject terror personified.

Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film [1992]

J[ohn] M[axwell] Coetzee

1940–

Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run. As happens when one writes: believing whatever has to be believed in order to get the job done.

Elizabeth Costello [2003]

Anthony [Stephen] Fauci

1940–

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a state that has no case or one case: you have to start taking seriously what you can do now to prepare for when the infections come—and they will come.

White House briefing on COVID-19 [March 9, 2020]

Go out, wear a mask, stay six feet away from anyone so you have the physical distancing, and go out. Go for a run. Go for a walk. Go fishing.

Interview on CNN [May 21, 2020]

Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.

Interview on MSNBC [June 9, 2021]

Gao Xingjian

1940–

Once literature is contrived as the hymn of the nation, the flag of the race, the mouthpiece of a political party or the voice of a class or a group it can be employed as a mighty and all-engulfing tool of propaganda. However, such literature loses what is inherent in literature, ceases to be literature, and becomes a substitute for power and profit.

The Case for Literature (Nobel Lecture) [2000]

Michael Herr

1940–2016

There was a map of Vietnam on the wall of my apartment in Saigon and some nights, coming back late to the city, I’d lie out on my bed and look at it, too tired to do anything more than just get my boots off. That map was a marvel, especially now that it wasn’t real anymore.

Dispatches [1977]. Breathing In, opening

I think Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

Dispatches. Colleagues

Out on the street I couldn’t tell the Vietnam veterans from the rock and roll veterans. The sixties had made so many casualties, its war and its music had run power off the same circuit for so long they didn’t even have to fuse.

Dispatches. Breathing Out

Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop.

Dispatches. Hell Sucks

As one American major said, in a successful attempt at attaining history, “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.”¹

Dispatches. Hell Sucks

Maxine Hong Kingston

1940–

Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?

The Woman Warrior [1976]. No Name Woman

Bill Knott

1940–2014

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.

They will place my hands like this.

It will look as though I am flying into myself.

Collected Poetry 1960–2014 [2014]. Death

John [Ono] Lennon

1940–1980

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.

At Royal Variety Performance by the Beatles, London [November 4, 1963]

We’re more popular than Jesus now.² I don’t know which will go first—rock ’n’ roll or Christianity.

Interview in London Evening Standard [March 4, 1966]

God is a concept

By which we measure our pain.

God [1970]

The dream is over…

I was the Dreamweaver

But now I’m reborn

I was the Walrus

But now I’m John.

God

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school

They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool

Till you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be

Working Class Hero [1970]

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV

And you think you’re so clever and classless and free

But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.

Working Class Hero

John Lennon

1940–1980

and

Sir Paul McCartney

1942–

She told me she worked in the morning

And started to laugh,

I told her I didn’t

And crawled off to sleep in the bath.

And when I awoke

I was alone,

This bird had flown.

So I lit a fire,

Isn’t it good

Norwegian wood.

Norwegian Wood [1965]

There’s a shadow hanging over me,

Oh yesterday came suddenly.

Yesterday [1965]

All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

Eleanor Rigby [1966]

It’s a thousand pages give or take a few,

I’ll be writing more in a week or two.

I can make it longer if you like the style,

I can change it round

And I want to be a paperback writer.

Paperback Writer [1966]

Everybody seems to think I’m lazy,

I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy

Running everywhere at such a speed

Till they find there’s no need.

Please don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away

And after all I’m only sleeping.

I’m Only Sleeping [1966]

When I get older losing my hair

Many years from now

Will you still be sending me a Valentine

Birthday greetings, bottle of wine.

If I’d been out till quarter to three

Would you lock the door,

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I’m sixty-four.

When I’m Sixty-Four [1967]

I saw a film today, oh boy.

The English army had just won the war.

A crowd of people turned away.

But I just had to look,

Having read the book.

I’d love to turn you on.

A Day in the Life [1967]

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends

Mmm get high with a little help from my friends.

With a Little Help from My Friends [1967]

You say you want a revolution

Well you know

we all want to change the world…

But when you talk about destruction

Don’t you know that you can count me out

Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright.

Revolution [1968]

Words are flowing out

Like endless rain into a paper cup

They slither while they pass, they slip away

Across the universe

Across the Universe [1968]

And so I quit the police department

And got myself a steady job

And though she tried her best to help me

She could steal but she could not rob.

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window [1969]

You never give me your money

You only give me your funny paper

And in the middle of negotiations

You break down.

You Never Give Me Your Money [1969]

And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

The End [1969]

Phil Ochs

1940–1976

It’s always the old to lead us to the wars,

Always the young to fall.

I Ain’t Marching Anymore [1965]

Nancy Pelosi

1940–

We believe that no one is above the law, including the president of the United States. And we believe that the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up.

Press interview [May 22, 2019]

Kevin Phillips

1940–

The whole secret of politics—knowing who hates who.

In conversation with writer Garry Wills [1968], quoted in Wills’ The Politics of Grievance, New York Review of Books [July 19, 1990]

Richard Pryor

1940–2005

I was a nigger for twenty-three years. I gave it up—no room for advancement.

Live and Smokin’ [1971]

Smokey Robinson [William Robinson, Jr.]

1940–

So take a good look at my face

You’ll see my smile looks out of place

If you look closer it’s easy to trace

The tracks of my tears

The Tracks of My Tears [1965]. Recorded by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

Pharoah [Ferrell] Sanders

1940–

and

Leon Thomas

1937–1999

The creator has a master plan,

Peace and happiness for every man.

Karma [1968]. The Creator Has a Master Plan

Gilbert Shelton

1940–

Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, No. 1 [1971], underground comic

Peter Steiner

1940–

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

Caption for New Yorker cartoon [July 5, 1993]

Jack Weinberg

1940–

We have a saying in the movement that we don’t trust anybody over thirty.

Interview on Free Speech movement at University of California, Berkeley [1964]

Edmund White

1940–

San Francisco is where gay fantasies come true, and the problem the city presents is whether, after all, we wanted these particular dreams to be fulfilled—or would we have preferred others? Did we know what price these dreams would exact? Did we anticipate the ways in which, vivid and continuous, they would unsuit us for the business of daily life? Or should our notion of daily life itself be transformed?

States of Desire [1980]

Frank Zappa

1940–1993

Who are the brain police?

Freak Out! [1966]. Who Are the Brain Police?

Take a day and walk around

Watch the Nazis run your town

Then go home and check yourself

You think we’re singing ’bout someone else

Absolutely Free [1967]. Plastic People

A world of secret hungers

Perverting the men who make your laws

Every desire is hidden away

In a drawer in a desk by a Naugahyde chair

On a rug where they walk and drool

Past the girls in the office

Absolutely Free. Brown Shoes Don’t Make It

Every major industrialized nation has A BEER (you can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need A BEER).

The Real Frank Zappa Book [1989]

Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk in order to provide articles for people who can’t read.

Quoted in KELLY FISHER LOWE’s The Words and Music of Frank Zappa [2006]

Frank Zappa

1940–1993

and

Moon Unit Zappa

1967–

Okay, fine, fer sure, fer sure,

She’s a Valley Girl and there is no cure.

Valley Girl [1982]

Paul Anka

1941–

I’ve lived a life that’s full, I traveled each and ev’ry highway,

And more, much more than this, I did it my way.

My Way¹ [1969]

Roberto Calasso

1941–2021

Stories never live alone: they are the branches of a family that we have to trace back, and forward.

The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony [1988]

A life in which the gods are not invited is not worth living. It will be quieter, but there won’t be any stories.

The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

The unmanifest is much greater than the manifest. The invisible than the visible. The same also with language.

L’Ardore [2010]

Philip [Joseph] Caputo

1941–

Stack ’em like cordwood. Victory was a high body-count, defeat a low kill-ratio, war a matter of arithmetic.

A Rumor of War [1977]

You’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.

A Rumor of War

Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture]

1941–1998

It’s time we stand up and take over…. Every courthouse in Mississippi ought to be burned down tomorrow to get rid of the dirt, and the filth.

Speech in Greenwood, Mississippi [June 16, 1966]

We’ve been saying “freedom” for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start saying now is Black Power.

Speech in Greenwood, Mississippi

Dick [Richard Bruce] Cheney

1941–

If there’s a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.

At a meeting with CIA director George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [November 2001]

George Clinton

1941–

Free your mind and your ass will follow

The kingdom of heaven is within

Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow [1970]. Recorded by Funkadelic

God bless… Chocolate City… and its vanilla suburbs.

Chocolate City [1975]. Recorded by Parliament

Billy Collins

1941–

Of all the questions you might want to ask

about angels, the only one you ever hear

is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time

besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin

or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth

or guiding a boy and a girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Questions About Angels [1991]. Questions About Angels

Richard Dawkins

1941–

We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.

The Selfish Gene [1976]. Preface

Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

The Selfish Gene, ch. 11

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

The Blind Watchmaker [1986], ch. 1

Bob Dylan [Robert Zimmerman]

1941–

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you 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]

Where black is the color, where none is the number,

And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,

And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it,

Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,

But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall [1962]

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build the big bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know

I can see through your masks

Masters of War [1963]

The order is

Rapidly fadin’.

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’.

The Times They Are A-Changin’ [1963]

But I was so much older then

I’m younger than that now.

My Back Pages [1964]

Oh, I wish I was on some

Australian mountain range.

I got no reason to be there, but I

Imagine it would be some kind of change.

Bringing It All Back Home [1965]. Outlaw Blues

Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’

I just might tell you the truth.

Bringing It All Back Home. Outlaw Blues

She knows there’s no success like failure

And that failure’s no success at all.

Bringing It All Back Home. Loves Minus Zero, No Limit

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun

Crying like a fire in the sun

Look out, the saints are comin’ through

And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.

It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue [1965]

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece

The hollow horn plays wasted words

Proves to warn

That he not busy being born

Is busy dying.

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) [1965]

But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have to stand naked.

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

And if my thought-dreams could be seen

They’d probably put my head in a guillotine

But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life and life only

It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)

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]

Take me for a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship,

My senses have been stripped,

My hands can’t feel to grip,

My toes too numb to step

Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’.

Mr. Tambourine Man

The kingdoms of Experience

In the precious winds they rot

While paupers change possessions

Each one wishing for what the other has got

And the princess and the prince

Discuss what’s real and what is not

It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden

Gates of Eden [1965]

You used to be so amused

At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used

Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose

You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

Like a Rolling Stone [1965]

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

Well, I wake up in the morning,

Fold my hands and pray for rain.

I got a head full of ideas

That are drivin’ me insane.

It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor.

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

Maggie’s Farm [1965]

You don’t need a weather man

To know which way the wind blows

Subterranean Homesick Blues [1965]

The pump don’t work

’Cause the vandals took the handles.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

She takes just like a woman, yes, she does,

She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does,

And she aches just like a woman,

But she breaks just like a little girl.

Blonde on Blonde [1966]. Just Like a Woman

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet?

We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it

Blonde on Blonde. Visions of Johanna

And here I sit so patiently

Waiting to find out what price

You have to pay to get out of

Going through all these things twice.

Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again [1966]

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Absolutely Sweet Marie [1966]

Dear landlord,

Please don’t dismiss my case.

I’m not about to argue,

I’m not about to move to no other place.

Now, each of us has his own special gift

And you know this was meant to be true,

And if you don’t underestimate me,

I won’t underestimate you.

Dear Landlord [1967]

I see my light come shining

From the west unto the east

Any day now, any day now

I shall be released.

I Shall Be Released [1967]

There are many here among us

Who feel that life is but a joke

All Along the Watchtower [1968]

We always did feel the same

We just saw it from a different point of view

Tangled up in blue

Blood on the Tracks [1975]. Tangled Up in Blue

Tin Pan Alley is gone. I put an end to it.

Biograph [1985]. Liner notes

After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell, but you can’t buy it back.

Chronicles: Volume 1 [2004]

Barbara Ehrenreich

1941–

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

The Worst Years of Our Lives

To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America [2001]

Nora Ephron

1941–2012

There is no reason to confuse television news with journalism.

Scribble Scrabble [1978]

I’ll have what she’s having.

When Harry Met Sally (screenplay) [1989], spoken by Estelle Reiner

Alan Furst

1941–

One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.

The World at Night [1996]

Stephen Jay Gould

1941–2002

Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History [1989]

Homo sapiens… a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree.

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

Homo sapiens, I fear, is a “thing so small” in a vast universe, a wildly improbable evolutionary event well within the realm of contingency. Make of such a conclusion what you will. Some find the prospect depressing; I have always regarded it as exhilarating, and a source of both freedom and consequent moral responsibility.

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

One of anything can be a mistake, an oddball, an isolated peculiarity; two, on the other hand, is the beginning of a pattern. Second specimens always provide a great increment of respect.

Bully for Brontosaurus [1991]

James Hansen

1941–

Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now, yet we dither.

Why I Must Speak Out About Climate Change, TED talk [2012]

[On the exploitation of Canadian tar sands:] If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Game Over for the Climate, New York Times [May 9, 2012]

Robert Hass

1941–

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles the old thinking.

The idea, for example, that each particular erases

the luminous clarity of a general idea.

Praise [1979]. Meditation at Lagunitas

Robert Hunter

1941–

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Truckin’ [1970]. Recorded by The Grateful Dead

Jesse Jackson

1941–

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised.

Speech at Democratic National Convention, San Francisco [July 17, 1984]

When I look out at this convention, I see the face of America, red, yellow, brown, black and white. We are all precious in God’s sight—the real rainbow coalition.

Speech at Democratic National Convention, Atlanta [July 19, 1988]

Trent Lott

1941–

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.

At Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party [December 5, 2002]

Derek Mahon

1941–2020

Even now there are places where a thought might grow.

A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford [1975]

Robin Morgan

1941–

Let it all hang out. Let it seem bitchy, catty, dykey, frustrated, crazy, Solanesque,¹ nutty, frigid, ridiculous, bitter, embarrassing, man-hating, libelous, pure, unfair, envious, intuitive, low-down, stupid, petty, liberating. We are the women that men have warned us about.

Goodbye to All That [1970]

Pornography is the theory, and rape the practice.

Going Too Far [1977]

Laura Mulvey

1941–

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema [1975]

Wilson Pickett

1941–2006

I’m gonna wait till the midnight hour

That’s when my love comes tumblin’ down.

In the Midnight Hour [1965], co-written by Steve Cropper

Ricardo Piglia

1941–2017

All writing holds a secret and is the site of some revenge. The secret is always a wound (impotence, alcohol, self-destruction); the revenge is the penance that life makes the writer pay. The poet consumes his life up until the final consequences and, in suffering, pays the price for the beauty he produces.

The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative Years [2015]

Otis Redding

1941–1967

All I’m asking for

Is a little respect when I come home.

Respect [1965]

Otis Redding

1941–1967

and

Steve Cropper

1941–

I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay,

Watchin’ the tide roll away.

I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay,

Wastin’ time.

Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay [1967]

Helen Reddy

1941–2020

If I have to, I can do anything.

I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman.

I Am Woman [1972]

Bernie [Bernard] Sanders

1941–

We are living in a world where greed has become for the wealthiest people their own religion, and they make no apologies for it.

Interview [September 21, 2015]

Let me say something that may not be great politics, but I think the Secretary is right. And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!

Remark during a Democratic presidential primary debate [October 13, 2015], on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server

Paul Simon

1941–

Hello darkness my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again.

The Sounds of Silence [1964]

The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls

And whispered in the sounds of silence.

The Sounds of Silence

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Mrs. Robinson [1966]

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

The Boxer [1968]

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down.

Bridge over Troubled Water [1969]

And we talked about some old times

And we drank ourselves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Still Crazy After All These Years [1975]. Title song

You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip slidin’ away.

Slip Slidin’ Away [1977]

If you’ll be my bodyguard

I can be your long lost pal,

I can call you Betty

And, Betty, when you call me

You can call me Al.

You Can Call Me Al [1985]

Twyla Tharp

1941–

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

Push Comes to Shove [1992]

David Thomson

1941–

How could anyone be “Cary Grant”? But how can anyone, ever after, not consider the attempt?

A Biographical Dictionary of Film [1975]

The world is very large and the greatest films so small.

Rosebud [1997]

Harlan Ullman

1941–

and

James Wade, Jr.

1930–

Shock and Awe

Title of paper [1996]

George F[rederick] Will

1941–

Football combines the two worst features of American life. It’s violence punctuated by committee meetings.

FOX News broadcast [1998]

Ellen Willis

1941–2006

The rock culture has not merely assimilated male supremacy but, with its own Orwellian logic, tried to pass it off as liberation.… Freedom for women is defined solely as sexual freedom, which in practice means availability on men’s terms.

But Now I’m Gonna Move [1971]

Coercion and guilt-mongering—the symbiotic weapons of authoritarian culture—inevitably provoke resistance; when the left uses these tactics it merely encourages people to confuse their most oppressive impulses with their need to be themselves, offensively honest instead of hypocritically nice.

Identity Crisis [1992]

Muhammad Ali¹

1942–2016

I am the greatest.

Slogan, inspired by wrestler Gorgeous George

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Boxing credo, devised by aide Drew “Bundini” Brown

Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round.

Statement [December 1962]

I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

Press conference following his first heavyweight championship [February 26, 1964]

I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.

On the draft [February 1966]

My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father.… Shoot them for what? How am I going to shoot them poor little black people, little babies, children, and women? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.

Statement regarding his refusal to serve in the military [1967]

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room in Heaven.

Epitaph

Joe [Joseph Robinette] Biden [Jr.]

1942–

What we’re seeing are a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness. This is not dissent. It’s disorder. It’s chaos. It borders on sedition. And it must end now.

On the assault on the Capitol [January 6, 2021]

We’ve learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.

Inaugural address [January 20, 2021]

Michael Bloomberg

1942–

On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked “What God do you pray to?” “What beliefs do you hold?”

Statement defending the right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan [August 3, 2010]

Trump says he wants to run the nation like he’s running his business. God help us. I’m a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one.

Democratic National Convention [July 27, 2016]

Joe Brainard

1942–1994

Another comforting thought about death is that 80 years or so after you die nobody who knew you will still be alive to miss you.

Selected Writings, 1962–1971 [1971]. Death

I hope you have enjoyed not reading this story as much as I have enjoyed not writing it.

New Work [1973]. No Story

That a fantastic flower develops from just a little tiny seed—that knowing that doesn’t totally rip us out of our minds—that’s a depressing thought.

A Depressing Thought [1973]

Robert Christgau

1942–

Punk nostalgia… is a grotesque oxymoron. What can it mean to pine for a time when you were young and nihilistic? To look back twenty years to when you believed there was no future?

Grown Up All Wrong [1998]

Samuel R[ay] Delany [Jr.]

1942–

Imagination should be used for something other than pondering murder, don’t you think?

Babel-17 [1966]

Until something is named, it doesn’t exist.

Babel-17

Apocalypse has come and gone. We’re just grubbing in the ashes.

Dhalgren [1975]

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations.

About Writing [2005]. Thickening the Plot

Ian Dury

1942–2000

Sex and drugs and rock and roll

Is all my brain and body need

Sex and drugs and rock and roll

Is very good indeed.

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll [1977]

Roger Ebert

1942–2013

Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts.

Remarks upon receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame [June 23, 2005]

Aretha Franklin

1942–2018

Let’s go back, let’s go back

Let’s go way on way back when

I didn’t even know you

You couldn’t have been too much more than ten

I ain’t no psychiatrist, I ain’t no doctor with degrees

But it don’t take too much high IQ

To see what you’re doing to me

Think [1968]

Jerry [Jerome John] Garcia

1942–1995

Somebody has to do something.… It seems pathetic that it has to be us.

At press conference for concert to benefit rain forests [September 13, 1988]

Stephen [William] Hawking

1942–2018

What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?

A Brief History of Time [1988], ch. 12

If we do discover a complete [unified] theory [of the universe], it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we should know the mind of God.

A Brief History of Time. Conclusion

We have only to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking (television series) [2010]

We don’t know much about aliens, but we know about humans. If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms has often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced.

Remarks at Royal Society, London [July 20, 2015]

Jimi [James Marshall] Hendrix

1942–1970

’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

Are You Experienced [1967]. Purple Haze

I’m gonna wave my freak flag high.

Axis: Bold as Love [1967]. If 6 Was 9

Werner Herzog [Werner H. Stipetić]

1942–

You look into the eyes of a chicken and you lose yourself in a completely flat, frightening stupidity. They are like a great metaphor for me.

Audio commentary [2005] on Signs of Life [1968]

You should look straight at a film; that’s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

Quoted in the New York Times [September 11, 1977]

This was once a forest before it was covered with oil. Everything that looks like water is in actuality oil. Ponds and lakes are spread out all over the land. The oil is treacherous because it reflects the sky. The oil is trying to disguise itself as water.

Lessons of Darkness [1992]

I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.

Grizzly Man [2005]

Our presence on this planet does not seem to be sustainable.… Human life is part of an endless chain of catastrophes, the demise of the dinosaurs being just one of these events. We seem to be next.

Encounters at the End of the World [2007]

John Irving

1942–

In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.

The World According to Garp [1978]

Erica Jong

1942–

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not “taking” and the woman is not “giving.” No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn.

Fear of Flying [1973], ch. 1

Garrison Keillor

1942–

That’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

A Prairie Home Companion [1974–], signature line

You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.

Pontoon [2007]

Carole King

1942–

You just call out my name

And you know wherever I am

I’ll come running to see you again.

Winter, spring, summer, or fall

All you have to do is call

And I’ll be there, hey, hey, yeah.

You’ve got a friend.

Tapestry [1971]. You’ve Got a Friend

Curtis Mayfield

1942–1999

When you wake up early in the morning

Feelin’ sad like so many of us do

Hum a little soul, make life your goal

And surely something’s got to come to you

And say it’s all right.

It’s All Right [1963], recorded by The Impressions

I’ve got to keep on pushing

I can’t stop now

Move up a little higher

Someway or somehow

’Cause I’ve got my strength

And it don’t make sense

Not to keep on pushing

Keep On Pushing [1964], recorded by The Impressions

People get ready

There’s a train a-coming

You don’t need no baggage

You just get on board

All you need is faith to hear the diesels humming

Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.

People Get Ready [1965], recorded by The Impressions

Some people think we don’t have the right

To say it’s my country

Before they give in they’d rather fuss and fight

Than say it’s my country

I’ve paid three hundred years or more

Of slave-driving sweat and welts on my back

This is my country

This Is My Country [1968], recorded by The Impressions

And Nixon talking ’bout “Don’t worry”

He say “Don’t worry”

He say “Don’t worry”

He say “Don’t worry”

But they don’t know

There can be no show

And if there’s hell below

We’re all gonna go

Curtis [1970]. If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go

[Addison] Mitch[ell] McConnell, III

1942–

She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Remark after silencing Elizabeth Warren in the Senate [February 7, 2017]

Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty. Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.

Senate speech [February 13, 2021]

[Joseph Allen] Country Joe McDonald

1942–

And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam;

And it’s five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates,

Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,

Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag [1967]

Lou [Lewis Allan] Reed

1942–2013

And what costume shall the poor girl wear

To all tomorrow’s parties

A hand-me-down dress from who knows where

To all tomorrow’s parties

All Tomorrow’s Parties [1966]. Recorded by The Velvet Underground, sung by Nico

When you think the night has seen your mind

That inside you’re twisted and unkind

Let me stand to show that you are blind

Please put down your hands

’Cause I see you

I’ll Be Your Mirror [1966]. Recorded by The Velvet Underground, sung by Nico

I don’t know just where I’m going

I’m gonna try for the kingdom, if I can

’Cause it makes me feel like I’m a man

When I put a spike into my vein

And I tell ya things aren’t quite the same

When I’m rushing on my run

And I feel just like Jesus’s son.

Heroin [1967]. Recorded by The Velvet Underground

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.

Hitch-hiked her way across the USA

Plucked her eyebrows on the way

Shaved her legs and then he was a she

She says, “Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.”

Transformer [1972]. Walk on the Wild Side

Life’s like Sanskrit read to a pony.

Magic and Loss [1992]. What’s Good

Martin Rees

1942–

[On extraterrestrial life:] Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Quoted in Project Cyclops, edited by B. M. OLIVER and J. BILLINGHAM [1973]

Mario Savio

1942–1996

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.

Speech in Sproul Plaza [December 2, 1964]

Martin Scorsese

1942–

and

Mardik Martin

1937–2019

You don’t make up for your sins in church, you do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

Mean Streets (screenplay) [1973]

Brian Wilson

1942–

Where did your long hair go?

Where is the girl I used to know?

How could you lose that happy glow?

Oh Caroline, no.

Pet Sounds [1966]. Caroline, No. Recorded by The Beach Boys

I’m a cork on the ocean

Floating over the raging sea

How deep is the ocean?

How deep is the ocean?

I lost my way

Surf’s Up [1971]. ’Til I Die. Recorded by The Beach Boys

Brian Wilson

1942–

and

Mike Love

1941–

Well, she got her daddy’s car

And she cruised through the hamburger stand now

Seems she forgot all about the library

Like she told her old man now

And with the radio blasting goes cruising

Just as fast as she can now

And she’ll have fun, fun, fun

Till her daddy takes the T-Bird away

Fun, Fun, Fun [1964]. Recorded by the Beach Boys

Tammy Wynette [Virginia Wynette Pugh]

1942–1998

and

Billy Sherrill

1936–2015

Stand by your man

And tell the world you love him,

Keep giving all the love you can.

Stand by Your Man¹ [1968]

Eve Babitz

1943–2021

Secrets are lies that you tell to your friends.

Sex and Rage [1979]

Mars Bonfire [Dennis Edmonton]

1943–

Like a true nature’s child

We were born, born to be wild

We can climb so high

I never wanna die

Born to Be Wild [1968]. Recorded by Steppenwolf

H. Rap Brown [Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin]

1943–

Violence is as American as cherry pie.

Press conference [July 27, 1967]

Wayne Carson [Thompson]

1943–2015

Give me a ticket for an aeroplane

Ain’t got time to take a fast train

Lonely days are gone, I’m a-goin’ home

My baby just wrote me a letter.

The Letter [1967], recorded by The Box Tops

David Cronenberg

1943–

and

Charles Edward Pogue

1950–

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The Fly (screenplay)²[1986]

R[obert] Crumb

1943–

Keep on truckin’.³

Slogan of cartoon character

It’s only lines on paper, folks!!

Despair [1969]. Drawing Cartoons Is Fun!

Industrial civilization figured out how to manufacture popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it! The problem is that the longer this buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes. It loses its fertility, like worn out, ravaged farmland. Eventually, the yokels who bought the hype, the pitch, they want in on the game. When there are no more naïve hicks left, you have a culture where everybody is conning each other all the time.

The R. Crumb Handbook [2005]

I could never relate to heroes. I have no interest in drawing heroic characters. It’s not my thing, man. I’m more inclined toward the sordid underbelly of life.

The R. Crumb Handbook

Elena Ferrante [pseudonym]

c. 1943

The circle of an empty day is brutal, and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.

The Days of Abandonment [2002]

Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us. When you haven’t been in the world long, it’s hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don’t even feel the need to.

My Brilliant Friend [2011]

Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night.

My Brilliant Friend

Nikki Giovanni

1943–

show me someone not full of herself and i’ll show you a hungry person

Poem for a Lady Whose Voice I Like [1970], last line

    I really hope no white person ever has cause

to write about me

because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they’ll

probably talk about my hard childhood

and never understand that

all the while I was quite happy.

Nikki-Rosa [1970]

Louise Glück

1943–

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras

And there were other signs

That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us

By land:

Firstborn [1968]. Cottonmouth Country

George Harrison

1943–2001

If you drive a car, I will the tax the street,

If you try to sit, I will tax your seat,

If you get too cold, I will tax the heat,

If you take a walk, I will tax your feet.

Taxman [1966]

I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping

While my guitar gently weeps

I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping

Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know why nobody told you

How to unfold your love

I don’t know how someone controlled you

They bought and sold you

While My Guitar Gently Weeps [1968], recorded by The Beatles

All through the day

I me mine, I me mine, I me mine

All through the night

I me mine, I me mine, I me mine

I Me Mine [1970], recorded by The Beatles

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning

A cloudburst doesn’t last all day

Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning

It’s not always going to be this gray

All things must pass

All things must pass away

All Things Must Pass [1970]

Jim Hightower

1943–

Ain’t nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.¹

Quoted in the New York Times [July 22, 1984]

[On George H. W. Bush:] George Bush is a man who was born on third base and thinks that he’s hit a triple.

Democratic National Convention [1988]

Mick [Michael Philip] Jagger

1943–

and

Keith Richards

1943–

I can’t get no satisfaction…

I can’t get no girl reaction.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction [1965]. Recorded by The Rolling Stones

And though she’s not really ill

There’s a little yellow pill

She goes running for the shelter

Of a mother’s little helper

And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.

Mother’s Little Helper [1966]

I see a red door and I want it painted black

No colors anymore, I want them to turn black

I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.

Paint It Black [1966]

All of my friends from school grew up and settled down

And they mortgaged off their lives

One thing’s not said too much, but I think it’s true

They just get married ’cause there’s nothing else to do

Sitting on a Fence [1967]

I was born in a crossfire hurricane.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash [1968]

Please allow me to introduce myself,

I’m a man of wealth and taste.

I’ve been around for long, long years,

Stolen many a man’s soul and faith.

Sympathy for the Devil [1968]

Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints.

Sympathy for the Devil

You can’t always get what you want

But if you try sometimes

You just might find

You get what you need.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want [1969]

Janis Joplin

1943–1970

Down on me, down on me,

Looks like everybody in this whole round world

Is down on me.

Down on Me [1967]

Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz,

My friends all drive Porsches,

I must make amends.

Mercedes-Benz [1970]

Onstage I make love to twenty-five thousand people, then I go home alone.

Quoted in The New Yorker [August 14, 1971]

John [Forbes] Kerry

1943–

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Statement to Senate Foreign Relations Committee [April 22, 1971]

[On a vote to fund the Iraq war:] I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.

Remark [March 16, 2004]

Billie Jean King

1943–

[On tennis:] A perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquility.

Billie Jean [1974], written with Kim Chapin

Phillip Lopate

1943–

Over the years I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre, the knack of knowing how to live. Not that I disapprove of all hearty enjoyment of life. A flushed sense of happiness can overtake a person anywhere, and one is no more to blame for it than the Asiatic flu or a sudden benevolent change in the weather (which is often joy’s immediate cause). No, what rankles me is the stylization of this private condition into a bullying social ritual.

Against Joie de Vivre [1987]

Charles Ludlam

1943–1987

You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low.

Manifesto: Ridiculous Theater, Scourge of Human Folly [1975]

Richard Manuel

1943–1986

Well we could try to reason

But you might think it’s treason

Music from Big Pink [1968]. We Can Talk. Recorded by The Band

Leonard Matlovich

1943–1988

When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.

Inscription on tombstone

Christine McVie [Christine Anne Perfect]

1943–

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,

Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here.

It’ll be better than before,

Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.

Rumours [1976]. Don’t Stop.¹ Recorded by Fleetwood Mac

Joni Mitchell

1943–

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,

From up and down, and still somehow

It’s cloud illusions I recall,

I really don’t know clouds at all.

Both Sides, Now [1967]

And the seasons they go round and round,

And the painted ponies go up and down,

We’re captive on the carousel of time

We can’t return, we can only look behind

From where we came

And go round and round and round

In the circle game.

The Circle Game [1967]

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot.

Big Yellow Taxi [1969]

We are stardust,

We are golden,

And we’ve got to get ourselves

Back to the garden.

Woodstock [1969]

By the time we got to Woodstock we were half a million strong

And everywhere there was song and celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bombers riding shotgun in the sky

And they were turning into butterflies above our nation

Woodstock

Everything comes and goes

Marked by lovers and styles of clothes.

Down to You [1974]

We’re only particles of change I know, I know

Orbiting around the sun.

But it’s hard to have that point of view

When I’m always hung up on someone.

Hejira [1976]

Jim Morrison

1943–1971

Before you slip into unconsciousness

I’d like to have another kiss

Another flashing chance at bliss

The Crystal Ship [1967]. Recorded by The Doors

Come on, baby, light my fire

Try to set the night on fire.

Light My Fire [1967]. Recorded by The Doors

Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand

In a desperate land

The End [1967]. Recorded by The Doors

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain

And all the children are insane

The End

People are strange when you’re a stranger

Faces look ugly when you’re alone

Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted

Streets are uneven when you’re down

People Are Strange [1967]. Recorded by The Doors

Cancel my subscription to the resurrection,

Send my credentials to the house of detention.

When the Music’s Over [1967]. Recorded by The Doors

Elaine Pagels

1943–

The gnostic understands Christ’s message not as offering a set of answers, but as encouragement to engage in a process of searching.

The Gnostic Gospels [1979]

Times of mourning displace us from ordinary life.

Why Religion?: A Personal Story [2018]

Robbie Robertson [Jaime Royal Klegerman]

1943–

I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin’ ’bout half-past dead

I just need some place where I can lay my head.

“Hey, mister, can you tell where a man might find a bed?”

He just grinned and shook my hand; “No” was all he said.

Music from Big Pink [1968]. The Weight. Recorded by The Band

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me

If I spring a leak she mends me

I don’t have to speak, she defends me

A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one

The Band [1969]. Up on Cripple Creek. Recorded by The Band

Marilynne Robinson

1943–

Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world’s true workings.

Housekeeping [1980]

Once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.

Housekeeping

Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

Gilead [2004]

Wallace Shawn

1943–

It’s the same with any kind of prophecy or sign or an omen, because if you believe in omens, then that means the universe—I mean, I don’t even know how to begin to describe this. That means that the future is somehow sending messages backwards to the present! Which means that the future must exist in some sense already in order to be able to send these messages. And it also means that things in the universe are there for a purpose: to give us messages. Whereas I think that things in the universe are just there. I mean, they don’t mean anything. I mean, you know, if the turtle’s egg falls out of the tree and splashes on the paving stones, it’s just because that turtle was clumsy, by accident. And to decide whether to send my ships off to war on the basis of that seems a big mistake to me.

My Dinner with André (screenplay) [1981]

The cup of coffee contains the history of the peasants who picked the beans, how some of them fainted in the heat of the sun, some were beaten, some were kicked.

The Fever [1990]

Sam Shepard [Rogers IV]

1943–2017

The mind ain’t nothing without the old body tagging along behind to follow things through. And the old body ain’t nothing without a little amoeba.

La Turista [1967]

You can’t believe people when they look you in the eyes. You gotta’ look behind them. See what they’re standing in front of. What they’re hiding. Everyone’s hiding, Wes. Everybody. Nobody looks like what they are.

Curse of the Starving Class [1978]

You’re all alike, you hopers.… You think everything’s gonna be different just ’cause the sun comes out.

Buried Child [1978]

When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter.… All the ones who wrote on matchbook covers. Paper bags. Toilet paper. Who had their writing destroyed by their jailers. Who persisted beyond all odds.

True West [1980], act I, scene 8

In this business we make Movies, American Movies. Leave the Films to the French.

True West, II, 5

You can’t keep messing me around like this. It’s been going on too long. I can’t take it anymore. I get sick every time you come around. Then I get sick when you leave. You’re like a disease to me.

Fool for Love [1983]

Joseph Stiglitz

1943–

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent.

Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1% [March 31, 2011]

Sly Stone [Sylvester Stewart]

1943–

You can’t leave ’cause your heart is there

But you, you can’t stay ’cause you been somewhere else

There’s a Riot Goin’ On. [1971]. Family Affair. Recorded by Sly and the Family Stone

James Tate

1943–2015

All I know

is this: when I see you,

as I have seen you at least

once every year of my life,

spin across the wilds of the sky

like a tiny, African god,

I feel dead. I feel as if I were

the residue of a stranger’s life,

that I should pursue you.

The Lost Pilot [1967]. Title poem

                  I did not say silence,

I said nothing about the love I

did not go out of myself into.

I said nothing fire, I said nothing

water, I said nothing air. I went

out of myself into no, into

nowhere. I was not alone.

Absences [1972]. Saint John of the Cross in Prison

I am sad without hands,

I’m very sad without sleeves or pockets.

Winter is coming to this city,

I can’t speak for the wind

which chips away at me.

Viper Jazz [1976]. Poem (I Can’t Speak for the Wind)

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ‘bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

Riven Doggeries [1979]. Goodtime Jesus

Roger Waters

1943–

We don’t need no education

We don’t need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teacher leave them kids alone

Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

The Wall [1979]. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2). Recorded by Pink Floyd

Kathy Acker

1944–1997

For 2,000 years you’ve had the nerve to tell women who we are.

Blood and Guts in High School [1978]

Ban Ki-moon

1994–

At the current rate, we will soon need two planet earths. But we have only one planet. There can be no Plan B because there is no planet B.

Speech at Stanford University [January 17, 2013]

Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book.

Statement on awarding of Nobel Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai [October 10, 2014]

When so-called surgical strikes end up hitting surgical wards, something is deeply wrong.

Remarks to the United Nations Security Council on the bombing of a hospital in Aleppo, Syria [May 3, 2016]

Rita Mae Brown

1944–

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

Sudden Death [1983]¹

Sport strips away personality, letting the white bone of character shine through.

Sudden Death

Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.

Starting from Scratch [1988]. The Passive Voice, or The Secret Agent

William Broyles, Jr.

1944–

and

Al Reinert

1947–

Failure is not an option.

Apollo 13 (screenplay) [1995]

James Carville

1944–

It’s the economy, stupid.

Political campaign motto [1992]

Douglas Crase

1944–

So many versions at any time are all exemplary

(In fog, suspended drops of rain; in a blizzard,

Each driven crystal the authentic apotheosis of the snow)

It is impossible to choose, to even want to choose

From millions of improbably accurate identities,

Things as they are.

The Revisionist [1981]. The Lake Effect

Ray [Sir Raymond Douglas] Davies

1944–

One week he’s in polka dots, the next week he’s in stripes

’Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion

Dedicated Follower of Fashion [1966]. Recorded by The Kinks

The tax man’s taken all my dough

And left me in my stately home,

Lazing on a sunny afternoon.

Sunny Afternoon [1966]. Recorded by The Kinks

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls

It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world except for Lola.

Lola [1970]. Recorded by The Kinks

Buchi Emecheta

1944–

If you don’t have children the longing for them will kill you, and if you do, the worrying over them will kill you.

The Joys of Motherhood [1979]

Richard Ford

1944–

Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.

The Sportswriter [1986]

Rudolph W[illiam] Giuliani

1944–

The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear ultimately.

Press conference [September 11, 2001]

Bill Griffith

1944–

Are we having fun yet?

Zippy the Pinhead (comic strip) [1979]

Donna Haraway

1944–

Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections—and it matters which ones get made and unmade.

A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century [1985]

Rem Koolhaas

1944–

A Hotel is a plot, a cybernetic universe with its own laws generating random but fortuitous collisions between human beings who would never have met elsewhere.

Delirious New York [1978]

Richard [Erskine Frere] Leakey

1944–2022

Homo sapiens might not only be the agent of the sixth extinction, but also risks being one of its victims.

In Leakey and Lewin, The Sixth Extinction [1995]

George [W.] Lucas [Jr.]

1944–

Evil empire

Star Wars (screenplay) [1977]

May the Force be with you!

Star Wars (screenplay), spoken by Alec Guinness

Bob [Robert] Mankoff

1944–

No, Thursday’s out. How about never—is never good for you?

Cartoon caption, The New Yorker [May 3, 1993]

Robert Mueller

1944–

If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election [2019]

If we had confidence that the President did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

Press conference [May 29, 2019]

Daniel Pennac [Daniel Pennacchioni]

1944–

The Reader’s Bill of Rights: The right to not read… to skip pages… to not finish… to reread… to read anything… to escapism… to read anywhere… to browse… to read out loud… to not defend your tastes.

The Rights of the Reader¹ [2006]

Tim Rice

1944–

Don’t cry for me, Argentina.

Evita² [1976]

Richard Rodriguez

1944–

The child reminds the adult: to seek intimate sounds is to seek the company of intimates. I do not expect to hear those sounds in public. I would dishonor those I have loved, and those I love now, to claim anything else. I would dishonor our intimacy by holding on to a particular language and calling it my family language. Intimacy cannot be trapped within words; it passes through words. It passes.

Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood [1980]

Roger Scruton

1944–

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is “merely relative,” is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey [1994]

W[infried] G[eorg] Sebald

1944–2001

From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fires still spread.

The Rings of Saturn³ [1995]

If we view ourselves from a great height, it is frightening to realize how little we know about our species, our purpose and our end.

The Rings of Saturn

From the first smoldering taper to the elegant lanterns whose light reverberated around eighteenth-century courtyards and from the mild radiance of these lanterns to the unearthly glow of the sodium lamps that line the Belgian motorways, it has all been combustion. Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artifact we create.

The Rings of Saturn

Whenever one is imagining a bright future, the next disaster is just around the corner.

The Rings of Saturn

If you look at a dog following the advice of his nose, he traverses a patch of land in a completely unplottable manner. And he invariably finds what he’s looking for.

Interview with Joseph Cuomo, Queens College, New York [March 13, 2001]

Peter Tosh

1944–1987

Legalize it, don’t criticize it.

Legalize it, yeah, yeah, and I will advertise it.

Legalize It [1976]. Title song

Vernor Vinge

1944–

We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence.

The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era [1993]

Alice Walker

1944–

Nobody’s as powerful as we make them out to be.

The Third Life of Grange Copeland [1970]

Our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see.

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens [1974]

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

The Color Purple [1982]

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

The Color Purple

I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.

The Color Purple

Bobby [Robert Dwayne] Womack

1944–2014

The family on the other side of town

Would catch hell without a ghetto around.

In every city you find the same thing going down,

Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town.

Across 110th Street [1973]

Alice Waters

1944–

Let things taste of what they are.

The Art of Simple Food [2007]

David Chase

1945–

Whatever happened to Gary Cooper—the strong, silent type? That was an American. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do. See… see, what they didn’t know is once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings, they wouldn’t be able to shut him up!

The Sopranos [1999], season 1, ep. 1; spoken by James Gandolfini

Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.

The Sopranos, season 1, ep. 13

Annie Dillard

1945–

Just think: in all the clean, beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death. I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death and the land is a stained altar stone. We the living are survivors huddled on flotsam, living on jetsam. We are escapees. We wake in terror, eat in hunger, sleep with a mouthful of blood.

The Force That Drives the Flower [1973]

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek [1974], ch. 2

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1

The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright. We are making hay when we should be making whoopee; we are raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 15

Deborah Eisenberg

1945–

You meet people in your family you’d never happen to run into otherwise.

Some Other, Better Otto [2004], collected in Twilight of the Superheroes [2006]

John Fogerty

1945–

Some folks are born made to wave the flag;

Ooh, they’re red, white, and blue.

And when the band plays “Hail to the Chief,”

They point the cannon at you.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me—I ain’t no senator’s son.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me—I ain’t no fortunate one.

Fortunate Son [1969]. Recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Hope you got your things together,

Hope you are quite prepared to die.

Looks like we’re in for nasty weather.

One eye is taken for an eye.

Don’t go around tonight,

Well it’s bound to take your life.

There’s a bad moon on the rise.

Bad Moon Rising [1969]. Recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Still the rain kept pouring, falling on my ears,

And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain.

Who’ll Stop the Rain [1970]. Recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival

First thing I remember was asking papa, why,

For there were many things I didn’t know.

And daddy always smiled and took me by the hand,

Saying, someday you’ll understand.

Well, I’m here to tell you now, each and every mother’s son,

That you better learn it fast, you better learn it young,

’Cause someday never comes.

Mardi Gras [1972]. Someday Never Comes. Recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival

General Tommy Franks

1945–

We don’t do body counts.

Press conference in Afghanistan [March 18, 2002]

Michael V[incent] Hayden

1945–

We kill people based on metadata.

Hayden (former NSA and CIA director) made the remark during a symposium on the National Security Agency, Johns Hopkins University [April 1, 2014]

Richard [Gordon Heath] Holmes

1945–

The more closely and scrupulously you follow someone’s footsteps through the past the more conscious do you become that they never existed wholly in any one place along the recorded path. You cannot freeze them, you cannot pinpoint them, at any particular turn in the road, bend of the river, view from the window. They are always in motion, carrying their past lives over into the future.

Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer [1985]

Lewis Hyde

1945–

There is no technology, no time-saving device that can alter the rhythms of creative labor. When the worth of labor is expressed in terms of exchange value, therefore, creativity is automatically devalued every time there is an advance in the technology of work.

The Gift [1983]

John Koethe

1945–

                    Yet what

Troubles me is just the way what used to be a world

Turned out, in retrospect, to be a state of mind,

And no more tangible than that. And now it’s gone,

And in its place I find the image of a process

Of inexorable decay, or of some great unraveling

That drags the houses forward into emptiness

And backwards into pictures of the intervening days

Love pieced together out of nothing.

Falling Water [1997], Title poem

Barbara Kruger

1945–

I shop therefore I am.

Text on artwork

Greil Marcus

1945–

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.

Mystery Train [1976]

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

Mystery Train

Bob Marley

1945–1981

One good thing about music

When it hits you

You feel no pain.

Trench Town Rock [1971]

No sun will shine in my day today

The high yellow moon won’t come out to play

Darkness has covered my light,

And has changed my day into night

Where is the love to be found?

Won’t someone tell me?

Cause my life must be somewhere to be found

Instead of concrete jungle

Catch a Fire [1973]. Concrete Jungle.

Slave driver, the table is turn.

Catch a fire so you can get burn.

Catch a Fire. Slave Driver

I shot the sheriff

But I did not shoot the deputy.

Burnin’ [1973]. I Shot the Sheriff

Every day the bucket a go a well

One day the bottom a go drop out.

Burnin’. I Shot the Sheriff

A hungry mob is an angry mob.

Natty Dread [1974]. Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)

Steve Martin

1945–

Comedy Is Not Pretty!

Title of album [1979]

J. D. McClatchy

1945–2018

Decades now of looking back at it—

in some old satellite’s rearview mirror, say—

has something to show beyond the folds and feeders,

the volumes of magma risen into native rock

or the buried flow of old fires cooling

in ocean beds. The damage has been memorized.

Lines on My Face [1997]

Now that you are gone, you are everywhere.

Hazmat [2002]. Orchid

Don[ald] McLean

1945–

Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

Them good old boys were drinkin’

Whiskey and Rye

Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die

This’ll be the day that I die

American Pie [1971]

Van [Sir George Ivan] Morrison

1945–

You breathe in you breathe out

You breathe in you breathe out

And you’re high on your high-flyin’ cloud

Wrapped up in your magic shroud

As ecstasy surrounds you

This time it’s found you

Astral Weeks [1968]. Beside You

All the girls walk by dressed up for each other

And the boys do the boogie woogie

On the corner of the street

And the people passing by just stare in wild wonder

And the inside jukebox roars just like thunder

Tupelo Honey [1971]. Wild Night

Oh ain’t it lonely

When you’re living with a gun

Well you can’t slow down

And you can’t turn around

And you can’t trust anyone

Veedon Fleece [1974]. Who Was That Masked Man

Carly Simon

1945–

You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.

You’re So Vain [1972]

P. F. [Philip Gary “Flip”] Sloan

1945–2015

You may leave here for four days in space

But when you return it’s the same old place.

Eve of Destruction [1965], made famous by Barry McGuire’s 1965 recording

Scott Spencer

1945–

When I was seventeen and in full obedience to my heart’s most urgent commands, I stepped far from the pathway of normal life and in a moment’s time ruined everything I loved.

Endless Love [1979], opening words

Stephen Stills

1945–

Paranoia strikes deep,

Into your life it will creep.

It starts when you’re always afraid.

Step out of line, the men come and take you away.

For What It’s Worth [1966]. Recorded by Buffalo Springfield

Pete [Peter] Townshend

1945–

Hope I die before I get old.

This is my generation.

My Generation [1965]

That deaf dumb and blind kid

Sure plays a mean pinball

Tommy [1969]. Pinball Wizard

See me, feel me

Touch me, heal me.

Tommy. Go to the Mirror

It’s only teenage wasteland.

Who’s Next [1971]. Baba O’Riley

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution

Take a bow for the new revolution…

And I’ll get on my knees and pray

We don’t get fooled again.

Who’s Next. Won’t Get Fooled Again

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss.

Who’s Next. Won’t Get Fooled Again

Anne Waldman

1945–

I’m a fast speaking woman

I’m a fast-rolling woman

I’m a rolling-speech woman

I’m a rolling-water woman

Fast Speaking Woman and Other Chants [1975]. Title poem

I am putting makeup on empty space

all patinas convening on empty space

rouge blushing on empty space

I am putting makeup on empty space

Makeup on Empty Space [1984]. Title poem

Wim [Ernst Wilhelm] Wenders

1945–

The Yanks have colonized our subconscious!

Kings of the Road (screenplay) [1976]

I wish I could see your face. Just look into your eyes and tell you how good it is to be here. Just to touch something.… To smoke, have coffee, and if you do it together—it’s fantastic! Or to draw, you know, you take a pencil and you make a dark line, then you make a light line, and together it’s a good line. Or when your hands are cold and you rub them together. See that’s good, that feels good. There’s so many good things.

Wings of Desire, screenplay [1987]; spoken by Peter Falk

August Wilson, Jr.

1945–2005

As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say… as long as he looks to white folks for approval… then he ain’t never gonna find out who he is and what he’s about.¹

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom [1984], act 1

White folks don’t understand about the blues. They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand that’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing ’cause that’s a way of understanding life.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, II

It got so I used all of myself up in the making of that song. Then I was the song in search of itself. That song rattling in my throat and I’m looking for it.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone [1988], act II, sc. 2

Neil Young

1945–

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,

We’re finally on our own.

This summer I hear the drumming,

Four dead in Ohio.

Ohio [1970]

It’s better to burn out than to fade away.

My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) [1979]

Adam Zagajewski

1945–2021

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Without End: New and Selected Poems [2002].Try To Praise the Mutilated World²

Julian Barnes

1946–

Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can’t we leave well enough alone? Why aren’t the books enough?

Flaubert’s Parrot [1984], ch. 1

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn’t turn out to be like Literature.

The Sense of an Ending [2011]

Steve [Stephen Bantu] Biko

1946–1977

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

Statement as witness [May 3, 1976]³

George W[alker] Bush

1946–

Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less—the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Speech to the Latin Business Association [September 2, 1999]

This is an impressive crowd—the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base.

Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner [October 19, 2000]

Our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world of justice.

Address to joint session of Congress [September 20, 2001]

In our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment.

Address to joint session of Congress

States like these¹… constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.

State of the Union address [2002]

There are some who feel like—that if they attack us—that we may decide to leave prematurely.… My answer is, bring ’em on.

Press conference [July 2, 2003]

[On the invasion of Iraq:] Had we had to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success, being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day.

TIME (interview) [August 29, 2004]

I’m the decider, and I decide what is best.

To reporters, defending Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld [April 18, 2006]

Laura Bush

1946–

[On the policy of separating children of immigrants from their parents:] Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso.

Editorial in Washington Post [June 17, 2018]

Bill [William Jefferson] Clinton

1946–

I’ll be with you until the last dog dies.

Primary campaign speech, Dover, New Hampshire [February 12, 1992]

I feel your pain.

Remark at a primary campaign rally [March 26, 1992]

I experimented with marijuana a time or two. And I didn’t like it, and didn’t inhale, and never tried it again.

Television interview [March 29, 1992]

I do not believe that the politics of personal destruction is what the American people are interested in.

News conference [March 8, 1994]

I am going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

News conference [January 26, 1998]

It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is. If the—if he—if “is” means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.

Grand jury testimony [August 17, 1998]

Donovan [Philips Leitch]

1946–

The whole wide human raceHas a-taken far too much methedrine.

The Trip [1967]

Andrea [Rita] Dworkin

1946–2005

The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.

Woman Hating [1974], ch. 9

Women do not believe that men believe what pornography says about women. But they do. From the worst to the best of them, they do.

Pornography [1981]

Gretel Ehrlich

1946–

We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough.… We have only to look at the houses we build to see how we build against space, the way we drink against pain and loneliness. We fill up space as if it were a pie shell, with things whose opacity further obstructs our ability to see what is already there.

The Solace of Open Spaces [1985]

Reggie Jackson

1946–

Fans don’t boo nobodies.

Quoted in syndicated UPI story [April 21, 1974]

I’m the straw that stirs the drink.

Attributed

Adam Michnik

1946–

Impotence in the face of armed evil is probably the worst of human humiliations. When six hulks pin you to the ground, you are helpless. But you do not want to give up your natural right to dignity: you are not going to reach any agreements with the ruffians, you are not going to make any commitments.… Your ordinary instinct for self-preservation and your basic sense of human dignity will make you say NO.

Letters from Prison [1985]. Why You Are Not Signing…: A Letter from Białołęka Internment Camp 1982

Tim O’Brien

1946–

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.

The Things They Carried [1990]

Dolly Parton

1946–

It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.

Tagline

Philip Pullman

1946–

Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well. Just tell them stories.

The Amber Spyglass [2000], ch. 32

Elaine Scarry

1946–

Physical pain has no voice, but when it at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story.

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World [1985]

Paul Schrader

1946–

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Taxi Driver (screenplay) [1976], spoken by Robert DeNiro

You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here.

Taxi Driver (screenplay), spoken by Robert DeNiro

Jeff[erson Beauregard] Sessions [III]

1946–

I was your colleague in this body for 20 years,… and the suggestion that I participated in any collusion, that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country, which I have served with honor for 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie.

Testimony before Senate Intelligence Committee [June 13, 2017]

Peter Singer

1946–

To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.

Practical Ethics [1979]

Patti [Patricia Lee] Smith

1946–

Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.

Horses [1975]. Gloria¹

[On her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe:] We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world. There were temptations and witches and demons we never dreamed of and there was splendor we only partially imagined.

Just Kids [2010]

David Allen Stockman

1946–

[On reducing the federal government:] Starve the beast.

Catchphrase [early 1980s]

Oliver Stone

1946–

Greed is good! Greed is right! Greed works! Greed will save the U.S.A.!¹

Wall Street (screenplay) [1987], spoken by Michael Douglas

Lunch is for wimps.

Wall Street, spoken by Michael Douglas

Donald J[ohn] Trump

1946–

“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Recorded conversation [2005] with Billy Bush, host of television show Access Hollywood; the tape was made public by the Washington Post on October 7, 2016

I’ve been known as being a very smart guy for a long time.

Remarks [May 29, 2012]

[On John McCain:] He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.

Family Leadership Summit [July18, 2015]

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.

Campaign rally [January 23, 2016]

I love the poorly educated!

Speech following his victory in the Nevada Republican caucus [February 23, 2016]

[Defending his claim that a protestor was connected to ISIS:] What do I know about it? All I know is what’s on the Internet.

Meet the Press [March 13, 2016]

I am your voice.

Acceptance speech for Republican presidential nomination [July 21, 2016]

Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.

Acceptance speech, Republican National Convention [July 21, 2016]

Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.

News conference [July 26, 2016]

[About Hillary Rodham Clinton:] Such a nasty woman.

Presidential debate [October 19, 2016]

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

Inaugural address [January 20, 2017]

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

Tweet [March 4, 2017]

People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?

Radio interview [May 1, 2017]

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.

Letter to James Comey [May 9, 2017]

Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.

Spoken to Attorney General Sessions [May 17, 2017]. Quoted in the Mueller Report

Look at the way I’ve been treated lately. Especially by the media. No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly.

Speech at Coast Guard Academy [May 17, 2017]

As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?

Tweet [June 4, 2018]

[Regarding interference in 2016 U.S. election:] My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be.

Press conference with Vladimir Putin, Helsinki [July 16, 2018]

I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.

Press conference with Vladimir Putin, Helsinki

Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.

Speech to VFW Convention, Kansas City, Missouri [July 24, 2018]

One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.

Remark on COVID-19 at White House reception [February 27, 2020]

Frankly, we did win this election.

Election night speech [November 7, 2020]

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.… We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.

Speech at Washington DC rally [January 6, 2021]

John Waters

1946–

I hate message movies and pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.

Shock Value [1981]

Laurie Anderson

1947–

Paradise

Is exactly like

Where you are right now

Only much much

Better.

Language Is a Virus [1986]

When my father died

we put him in the ground.

When my father died

it was like a whole library burned down.¹

World Without End [1994]

Paul Auster

1947–

No one calls at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning unless it is to give news that cannot wait. And news that cannot wait is always bad news.

The Invention of Solitude [1982]. Portrait of an Invisible Man

New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he had no intention of ever leaving it again.

City of Glass [1985]

Con men and tricksters run the world. Rascals rule.

The Brooklyn Follies [2005]

Ann Beattie

1947–

Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost? People forget years and remember moments.

Where You’ll Find Me [1986]. Snow

John Perry Barlow

1947–

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace [February 8, 1996]

David Bowie [David Robert Jones]

1947–2016

Ground control to Major Tom

Commencing countdown, engines on

Check ignition and may God’s love be with you.

Space Oddity [1969]

Do you remember your President Nixon?

Do you remember the bills you have to pay,

Or even yesterday?

Young Americans [1975]

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity.

Quoted in the New York Times [June 9, 2002]

Octavia Butler

1947–2006

There is no end

To what a living world

Will demand of you.

Parable of the Sower [1993]

    Choose your leaders

with wisdom and forethought.

    To be led by a coward

is to be controlled

by all that the coward fears.

    To be led by a fool

is to be led

by the opportunists

who control the fool.

    To be led by a thief

is to offer up

your most precious treasures

to be stolen.

    To be led by a liar

is to ask

to be told lies.

    To be led by a tyrant

is to sell yourself

and those you love

into slavery.

Parable of the Talents [1998]

Hillary Rodham Clinton

1947–

I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

60 Minutes [January 26, 1992]

I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.

Press interview on conflict of interest [March 17, 1992]

Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.

Speech at UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing [September 5, 1995]

We need to take these people on. They are often connected to big drug cartels, they are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators—no conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel.

Speech, Keene State College [January 28, 1996]

It Takes a Village

Title of book [1996]

We’ve been married for twenty-two years. And I have learned a long time ago that the only two people who count in any marriage are the two who are in it.

The Today show (television interview) [January 27, 1998]

The great story… is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for President.

The Today show (television interview)

This is a moment in history where it is almost hard to catch your breath.

Interview with CNN [March 16, 2011]

We came, we saw, he died.

Interview with CBS News [October 20, 2011], on the death of Muammar el-Qadaffi

I would imagine I’ve thought more about what happened than all of you put together. I’ve lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been racking my brain about what more could have been done, or should have been done.

Remarks to House Select Committee on Benghazi [October 22, 2015]

A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia [July 28, 2016]

To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people—now have 11 million. He tweets and re-tweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks—they are irredeemable. But thankfully, they are not America.

Speech [September 9, 2016]

I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse.

New York Times [October 11, 2016]

I have, as Tim [Kaine] said, spent my entire adult life fighting for what I believe in. I’ve had successes and I’ve had setbacks, sometimes really painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your professional, public, and political careers. You will have successes and setbacks, too. This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It is, it is worth it.

Concession speech [November 9, 2016]

Larry David

1947–

It’s about nothing, everything else is about something; this, it’s about nothing.

Seinfeld (television series). The Pitch [September 16, 1992]

Lydia Davis

1947–

The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes I can figure out that it’s not the truth and sometimes I don’t know and never know, and sometimes just because he says it to me over and over again I am convinced that it is the truth because I don’t believe he would repeat a lie so often.

Break It Down [1986]. Story

No one is calling me. I can’t check the answering machine because I have been here all this time. If I go out, someone may call while I’m out. Then I can check the answering machine when I come back in.

Varieties of Disturbance [2007]. Lonely

David Franzoni

1947–

John Logan

1961–

and

William Nicholson

1948–

Are you not entertained?

Gladiator [2000]; spoken by Russell Crowe

Temple Grandin

1947–

In an ideal world the scientist should find a method to prevent the most severe forms of autism but allow the milder forms to survive. After all, the really social people did not invent the first stone spear. It was probably invented by an Aspie who chipped away at rocks while the other people socialized around the campfire. Without autism traits we might still be living in caves.

Thinking in Pictures [1995]

Allan Gurganus

1947–

Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to the people who can tell them.

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All [1989]

Don Henley

1947–2016

Don Felder

1947–2016

and

Glenn Frey

1948–2016

You can check out anytime you like,

But you can never leave.

Hotel California [1976]. Recorded by the Eagles

Margo Jefferson

1947–

Being an Other, in America, teaches you to imagine what can’t imagine you.

Negroland [2015]

Sir Elton John [Reginald Kenneth Dwight]

1947–

I am sick to death of politicians, especially British politicians. I am sick to death of Brexit. I am a European. I am not a stupid, colonial, imperialist English idiot.

Verona concert [May 29, 2019]

Sir Elton John [Reginald Kenneth Dwight]

1947–

and

Bernie Taupin

1950–

They crawled out of the woodwork

And they whispered into your brain.

They set you on a treadmill

And they made you change your name.

And it seems to me you lived your life

Like a candle in the wind.

Candle in the Wind (Goodbye Norma Jean) [1973]

Jane Kenyon

1947–1995

Let it come, as it will, and don’t

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

Let Evening Come [1990]

Stephen King

1947–

I recognize terror as the finest emotion… and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find I cannot terrify him/her, I will try to horrify; and if I find I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out.

Danse Macabre [1981]

If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

Christine [1983]

Bruno Latour

1947–

We have never been modern.

Title of book [1993]

David Letterman

1947–

Maybe life is the hard way, I don’t know. When the show was great, it was never as enjoyable as the misery of the show being bad.

Quoted in New York Times Magazine [October 18, 2016]

David Mamet

1947–

It’s called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.

House of Games (screenplay) [1987], spoken by Joe Mantegna

Life in the movie business is like the… beginning of a new love affair: it’s full of surprises, and you’re constantly getting fucked.

Speed-the-Plow [1988]

These are the new leads, these are the Glengarry Leads.… They’re for the closers.¹

Glengarry Glen Ross (screenplay) [1992], spoken by Alec Baldwin

Who ever told you that you could work with men?

Glengarry Glen Ross

Always be closing.

Glengarry Glen Ross (screenplay), spoken by Alec Baldwin

First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado.… Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.

Glengarry Glen Ross (screenplay), spoken by Alec Baldwin

Herbert Muschamp

1947–2007

[On an architectural design by Santiago Calatrava:] A city is never more fully human than when expertise—our own or someone else’s—allows us access to ebullience, lightness and delight.

New York Times [March 3, 2004]

Laura Nyro

1947–1997

And when I die

And when I’m gone

There’ll be one child born

And a world to carry on.

More Than a New Discovery [1967]. And When I Die

There’ll be lots of time and wine

red yellow honey

sassafras and moonshine

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession [1968]. Stoned Soul Picnic

I got fury in my soul

Fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal

In my mind I can’t study war no more

New York Tendaberry [1969]. Save the Country

P[atrick] J[ake] O’Rourke

1947–

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.

Parliament of Whores [1991]

Camille Paglia

1947–

We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.

Sexual Personae [1990], ch. 4

In the theory of gender, I began from zero. There is no masculine power or privilege I did not covet. But slowly, step by step, decade by decade, I was forced to acknowledge that even a woman of abnormal will cannot escape her hormonal identity.

Sex, Art, and American Culture [1992]. Sexual Personae: The Cancelled Preface

[Ahmed] Salman Rushdie¹

1947–

Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.

Midnight’s Children [1981]

Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy.

The Satanic Verses [1988]

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

Is Nothing Sacred? [1990]

Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.

Statement following massacre at Charlie Hebdo office in Paris [January 7, 2015]

Lynne Tillman

1947–

One remembers even the recent past so imperfectly and so much in relation to oneself that every object is skewered upon one’s own identity, like a kind of shish kebob.

Motion Sickness [1991]

I’m not willing to doubt everything all the time, because then doubt isn’t doubt, but a form of certainty.

American Genius [2006]

Cecilia Vicuña

1947–

Language is migrant. Words move from language to language, from culture to culture, from mouth to mouth. Our bodies are migrants; cells and bacteria are migrants too. Even galaxies migrate. What is then this talk against migrants?

Language Is Migrant [2016]

Alan Weisman

1947–

Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be.

The World Without Us [2007]

Warren Zevon

1947–2003

LeRoy Marinell

c. 1942–

and

Waddy Wachtel

1947–

You hear him howlin’ around your kitchen door

You better not let him in

Little old lady got mutilated late last night

Werewolves of London again

Excitable Boy [1978]. Werewolves of London. Recorded by Warren Zevon

Svetlana Alexievich

1948–

It always troubled me that the truth doesn’t fit into one heart, into one mind, that truth is somehow splintered. There’s a lot of it, it is varied, and it is strewn about the world.

Nobel Lecture [2015]

Lester [Leslie Conway] Bangs

1948–1982

The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious.

James Taylor Marked for Death [1971]

I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.

The Village Voice [August 29, 1977]. How Long Will We Care?

Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales

1948–

Give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.

Speech in London [December 1987]

Jimmy Cliff

1948–

Many rivers to cross

But I can’t seem to find my way over

Wandering I am lost

As I travel along the White Cliffs of Dover

Many Rivers to Cross [1969]

As sure as the sun will shine

I’m going to get it, what’s mine

And then the harder they come

The harder they fall,

One and all.

The Harder They Come [1972]

Jean-Marie Colombani

1948–

We are all Americans¹

Editorial headline [September 13, 2001]

Nick Drake

1948–1974

I saw it written and I saw it say

Pink moon is on its way

And none of you stand so tall

Pink moon’s gonna get you all.

Pink Moon [1972]

Brian Eno

1948–

Honor thy mistake as a hidden intention.

Oblique Strategies: Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas [1975]

Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part.

Discreet Music [1975], liner notes

I was talking to Lou Reed the other day and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years.… I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!

Interview with Musician Magazine [October 1982]

Repetition is a form of change.

Quoted in Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of Sound [1995]

William Gibson

1948–

The street finds its own uses for things.

Burning Chrome [1982]

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts.… A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.

Neuromancer [1984]

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Neuromancer

Al [Albert Arnold] Gore, Jr.

1948–

The global environmental crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.

Earth in the Balance [1992]

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.²

Interview on CNN [March 9, 1999]

I am Al Gore; I used to be the next president of the United States of America.

An Inconvenient Truth [2006]

S[usan] E[loise] Hinton

1948–

That Was Then, This Is Now

Title of book [1971]

Tony Judt

1948–2010

Just as an obsession with “growth” has left a moral vacuum at the heart of some modern nations, so the abstract, materialist quality of the idea of Europe is proving insufficient to legitimate its own institutions and retain popular confidence.

A Grand Illusion? [1996]. A Grand Illusion

Ray[mond] Kurzweil

1948–

This book will argue, however, that within several decades information-based technologies will encompass all human knowledge and proficiency, ultimately including the pattern-recognition powers, problem-solving skills, and emotional and moral intelligence of the human brain itself.

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology [2005]

David Lehman

1948–

The World Trade center was an example of what was wrong

with American architecture,

and it stayed that way for twenty-five years

until that Friday afternoon in February

when the bomb went off and the buildings became

a great symbol of America, like the Statue

of Liberty at the end of Hitchcock’s Saboteur.

My whole attitude toward the World Trade Center

changed overnight.

Valentine Place1 [1996]. The World Trade Center

George R. R. Martin

1948–

Winter is coming.

A Game of Thrones [1996]. Motto of House Stark

The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.

A Game of Thrones

Ian McEwan

1948–

The cultists came armed with savage nihilism and a hatred that lies beyond our understanding. Their protective armor was the suicide belt, their idea of the ultimate hiding place was the virtuous after-life, where the police cannot go. (The jihadist paradise is turning out to be one of humanity’s worst ever ideas; slash and burn in this life, eternal rest among kitsch in the next.)

Edge [November 14, 2015], on the jihadist attacks in Paris one day earlier

Errol Morris

1948–

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but truth is something that arises out of the relationship between language and the world. If I look at a picture alone, it tells me nothing. In the previous incarnation of this lecture, I was going to put a picture of the Titanic and the Lusitania up on the screen. They look very, very similar—four smokestacks. They look almost identical. You look at either picture, true or false? Neither. Put a caption at the bottom of one of them, that changes everything.

The Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist, lecture at Harvard Center for the Humanities [2005]

They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.

Believing Is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography) [2011]

Azar Nafisi

1948–

Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home.

Reading Lolita in Tehran [2003]

Robert Plant

1948–

And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.

Led Zeppelin IV [1971]. Stairway to Heaven. Music by Jimmy Page. Recorded by Led Zeppelin

Terry Pratchett

1948–2015

People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

Mort [1987]

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Reaper Man [1991]

Pascal Quignard

1948–

What is heard knows neither eyelids, nor partitions, neither curtains, nor walls.… Sound rushes in. It violates.

The Hatred of Music [1996]

Ntozake Shange

1948–2018

i found god in myself

and i loved her / i loved her fiercely

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf [1975]

Leslie Marmon Silko

1948–

It’s only a matter of time, Indian

      you can’t sleep with the river forever.

Storyteller [1981]. Indian Song: Survival

James Taylor

1948–

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain

I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I’d see you again.

Sweet Baby James [1970]. Fire and Rain

Clarence Thomas

1948–

This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I am concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an older order, this is what will happen to you, you will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.

Supreme Court confirmation hearings [1991]

Garry Trudeau

1948–

Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful… Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.

The Abuse of Satire. Speech on receiving the George Polk Career Award, [April 10, 2015]

Richard Hell [Richard Meyers]

1949–

I belong to the blank generation

I can take it or leave it each time

Blank Generation [1977]

Christopher Hitchens

1949–2011

The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

Ireland [1998]

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

Letters to a Young Contrarian [2001]

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.¹

God Is Not Great [2007]

Cheap booze is a false economy.

Hitch-22 [2010]

I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn’t ever have to rely on the press for my information.

Hitch-22

Denis Johnson

1949–2017

He was in the middle of taking the last breath of his life before he realized he was taking it.

Angels [1983]

That world! These days it’s all been erased and they’ve rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers. But where is it?

Jesus’ Son [1992]

Lawrence Kasdan

1949–

and

George Lucas

1944–

You weak-minded fool! He’s using an old Jedi mind-trick.

Return of the Jedi [1983], spoken by Larry Ward as Jabba the Hutt

Jamaica Kincaid

1949–

An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you.

A Small Place [1988]

History is full of great events; when the great events are said and done, there will always be someone, a little person, unhappy, dissatisfied, discontented, not at home in her own skin, ready to stir up a whole new set of great events again.

Lucy [1990]

August Kleinzahler

1949–

But when Johnny goes out

on Johnny’s own Time

he’s out there doing the only one thing:

he’s burning off all the stillborn Johnnys

that hatched in his head in the night.

And that John, he won’t ever come home,

not until he’s right.

Earthquake Weather [1989]. On Johnny’s Time

Cities each have a kind of light,

a color even,

or set of undertones

determined by the river or hills

as well as by the stone

of their countless buildings.

I cannot yet recall what city this is I’m in.

It must be close to dawn.

The Strange Hours Travelers Keep [2003]. On Waking in a Room and Not Knowing Where One Is

Leslie Moonves

1949–

[On Donald Trump’s candidacy for the presidency:] It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.

Remarks at Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference [February 29, 2016]

Haruki Murakami

1949–

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

Norwegian Wood¹ [1987]

Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running [2007]

Eileen Myles

1949–

I think a poem is like a party. Because it has to end. You’ve got to leave, eventually.

Inferno [2010]

[On New York Times reference to “unsubstantiated rumors” regarding Louis C.K.:] Unsubstantiated means just women telling other women & everybody knows.

Tweet [November 9, 2017]

Philippe Petit

1949–

Lawlessness doesn’t mean lack of method: in fact, the outlaw I became needed method all the more, because I was swimming alone to the island of my dreams.

Creativity: The Perfect Crime [2014]

Gil Scott-Heron

1949–2011

You will not be able to stay home, brother.

You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.

You will not be able to lose yourself on scag

and skip out for beer during commercial breaks.

The revolution will not be televised.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised [1970]

Home is where the hatred is

Home is filled with pain

And it might not be such a bad idea

If I never, never went home again.

Pieces of a Man [1971]. Home Is Where the Hatred Is

And don’t you think it’s a crime

When time after time after time

People in the bottle

There’s people livin’ in the bottle

Winter in America [1974]. The Bottle. Recorded by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson

McCord has blown, Mitchell has blown, no tap on my telephone

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean

It follows a pattern if you dig what I mean

Winter in America. H₂O Gate Blues. Recorded by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson

Just thirty miles from Detroit

Stands a giant power station.

It ticks each night as the city sleeps

Seconds from annihilation.

But no one stopped to think about the people

Or how they would survive

And we almost lost Detroit this time.

Bridges [1977]. We Almost Lost Detroit.¹ Recorded by Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson

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]

Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true

Or is it something worse?

The River [1980]

We made a promise we swore we’d always remember

No retreat, baby, no surrender.

No Surrender [1984]

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary,

Out by the gas fires of the refinery;

I’m ten years burning down the road,

Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go.

Born in the U.S.A. [1984]

57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)

Human Touch [1992]. Song title

Exposed in front of thousands, I have always felt perfectly safe. That’s why you can’t get rid of me.

Born to Run [2016]

Nick Tosches

1949–2019

We know that rock ’n’ roll was not a human invention, that it was the work of the Holy Ghost.

Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll [1984]. Wynonie Harris: The Man Who Shook Down the Devil

Tom Waits

1949–

If I exorcise my devils, well, my angels may leave too.

The Heart of Saturday Night [1974]. Please Call Me, Baby

And the things you can’t remember

Tell the things you can’t forget

That history puts a saint in every dream.

Rain Dogs [1985]. Time

We are monkeys with money and guns.

Tom Waits’ True Confessions [2008]

Elizabeth [Ann] Warren

1949–

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.

Speech [September 2011]

I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for. I don’t get it.

Democratic presidential primary debate [July 30, 2019]

Eliot Weinberger

1949–

Poetry is that which is worth translating. The poem dies when it has no place to go.

Notes on Poetry [1988]. Translating

Like the flapping kookaburra in Australia that sets off a tornado in Kansas, poetry operates under its own version of chaos theory: the unpredictable effects of remote, sometimes forgotten causes.

An Elemental Thing [2007]

C[arolyn] D. Wright

1949–2016

I poetry. I write it, study it, read it, edit it, publish it, teach it… Sometimes I weary of it. I could not live without it. Not in this world. Not in my lifetime. I also arkansas. Sometimes these verbs coalesce. Sometimes they trot off in opposite directions.

Cooling Time [2005]

Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.

Cooling Time

William [Pelham] Barr

1950–

To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.

Interview with Associated Press [December 1, 2020]

Walter Becker

1950–

and

Donald Fagen

1948–

I’ll learn to work the saxophone

I’ll play just what I feel

Drink Scotch whiskey all night long

And die behind the wheel

Aja [1977]. Deacon Blues. Recorded by Steely Dan

When Josie comes home

So good

She’s the pride of the neighborhood

She’s the raw flame

The live wire

She prays like a Roman

With her eyes on fire

Aja [1977]. Josie. Recorded by Steely Dan

Charles Bernstein

1950–

I hate artifice. All these

contraptions so many barriers

against what otherwise can’t

be contested, so much seeming

sameness in a jello of

squirms. Poetry scares me.

The Absent Father in Dumbo [1990]

The poetry is not in speaking to the dead but listening to the dead.

How Empty Is My Bread Pudding [2007]

Anne Carson

1950–

All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies.

Eros the Bittersweet [1986]

Infants begin to see by noticing the edges of things. How do they know an edge is an edge? By passionately wanting it not to be. The experience of eros as lack alerts a person to the boundaries of himself, of other people, of things in general. It is the edge separating my tongue from the taste for which it longs that teaches me what an edge is.

Eros the Bittersweet

There is something uniquely convincing about the perceptions that occur to you when you are in love. They seem truer than other perceptions, and more truly your own, won from reality at personal cost.

Eros the Bittersweet

As lover you reach forward to a point in time called “then” when you will bite into the long-desired apple. Meanwhile you are aware that as soon as “then” supervenes upon “now,” the bittersweet moment, which is your desire, will be gone. You cannot want that, and yet you do.

Eros the Bittersweet

It is in large part according to the sounds people make that we judge them sane or insane, male or female, good, evil, trustworthy, depressive, marriageable, moribund, likely or unlikely to make war on us, little better than animals, inspired by God.

Glass, Irony and God [1995]. The Gender of Sound

My religion makes no sense

and does not help me

therefore I pursue it.

Glass, Irony and God. The Truth About God

Paul Goldberger

1950–

[On the World Trade Center buildings in New York:] So utterly banal as to be unworthy of the headquarters of a bank in Omaha.

The City Observed [1979]

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

1950–

We are no more born into the self than we are born into the truth. Both must be acquired with a labor and a love that call forth powers few possess, with the consequence that the earth is populated by veritable zombies, whose inner emptiness would elicit a chorus of execration if exposed to the eyes of the few carriers of consciousness among us.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction [2010], spoken by Jonas Elijah Klapper

Jenny Holzer

1950–

Protect Me from What I Want

Title of installation, Times Square [1985–1986]

Abuse of power comes as no surprise.

Text on artwork

Fran Lebowitz

1950–

Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication.

Metropolitan Life [1978]. Letters

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death.

Metropolitan Life. Manners

Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

Social Studies [1981]

If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with “Let’s Make a Deal.”¹

New York Times [September 13, 1987]. The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community

No one earns 100 million. You steal 100 million.

Interview with Sam Adams, The A. V. Club [June 17, 2011]

Peggy [Margaret Ellen] Noonan

1950–

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

What I Saw at the Revolution [1990]

Anna Deavere Smith

1950–

In America, identity is always being negotiated.

Fires in the Mirror [1993]. Introduction

Brian Swimme

1950–

and

Mary Evelyn Tucker

1949–

We are seeking patterns that connect us to a vaster destiny—a vital participation in Earth’s unfolding. There is nothing more mysterious than destiny—of a person, of our species, of a planet, or of the universe itself.

Journey of the Universe [2011]

Wendy Wasserstein

1950–2006

No matter how lonely you get or how many birth announcements you receive, the trick is not to get frightened. There’s nothing wrong with being alone.

Isn’t It Romantic [1983]

Stevie Wonder [Stevland Hardaway Judkins, later Morris]

1950–

You’ve killed all our leaders,

I don’t even have to do nothing to you,

You’ll cause your own country to fall.

Talking Book [1972]. Big Brother

Thirteen month old baby broke the lookin’ glass,

Seven years of bad luck, good things in your past.

When you believe in things that you don’t understand

Then you suffer,

Superstition ain’t the way.

Talking Book. Superstition

Sven Birkerts

1951–

This “domination by the author” has been, at least until now, the point of writing and reading. The author masters the resources of language to create a vision that will engage and in some way overpower the reader; the reader goes to the work to be subjected to the creative will of another.

The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age [1994]

Elijah Cummings

1951–2019

When we’re dancing with the angels, the question we’ll be asked: In 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?

Statement following Congressional testimony of Michael Cohen [February 27, 2019]

Amy Hempel

1951–

The smart dog obeys, but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.

Reasons to Live [1986]. In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried

Oscar Hijuelos

1951–2013

A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love [1989]

Eric Holder

1951–

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.

Remarks at the Department of Justice African American History Month Program [February 18, 2009]

Michael Kinsley

1951–

A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.

The Guardian [January 14, 1992]

Jed Perl

1951–

Imagine the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art as the perfect storm. And at the center of the perfect storm there is a perfect vacuum. The storm is everything going on around Jeff Koons: the multimillion-dollar auction prices, the blue chip dealers, the hyperbolic claims of the critics, the adulation and the controversy and the public that quite naturally wants to know what all the fuss is about. The vacuum is the work itself, displayed on five of the six floors of the Whitney, a succession of pop culture trophies so emotionally dead that museumgoers appear a little dazed as they dutifully take out their iPhones and produce their selfies.

The New York Review of Books [September 25, 2014]. The Cult of Jeff Koons

Joey Ramone [Jeffry Ross Hyman]

1951–2001

Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go

I wanna be sedated

Nothing to do, nowhere to go

I wanna be sedated

Road to Ruin [1978]. I Wanna Be Sedated. Recorded by The Ramones

Jonathan Richman

1951–

I’m in love with the modern world

Massachusetts when it’s late at night

And the neon when it’s cold outside

I’ve got the radio on

Roadrunner [1972]. Recorded by The Modern Lovers

Well some people try to pick up girls

And get called assholes

This never happened to Pablo Picasso

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare and

So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole.

The Modern Lovers [1972]. Pablo Picasso. Recorded by The Modern Lovers

Sting [Gordon Matthew Sumner]

1951–

We are spirits in the material world.

Ghost in the Machine [1981]. Spirits in the Material World. Recorded by The Police

Robin Williams

1951–2014

You’re only given a little spark of madness and if you lose that, you’re nothing.

Live at the Roxy [1978]

And there’s a wonderful thing called freebasing. It’s not free, it costs you your house!

A Night at the Met [1986]

Douglas Adams

1952–2001

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, radio serial [1978]

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

The Salmon of Doubt [2002]

Jean-Dominique Bauby

1952–1997

My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas’s court. You can visit the woman you love, slide down beside her and stroke her still-sleeping face.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly¹ [1997]

Bill Bryson

1951–

Stand in a desert or prairie and you know you are in a big space. Stand in a woods and you only sense it. They are a vast, featureless nowhere. And they are alive.

A Walk in the Woods [1997]

David Byrne

1952–

The band in heaven, they play my favorite song

Play it once again

Play it all night long

Fear of Music [1979]. Heaven

This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around.

Fear of Music. Life During Wartime

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself in another part of the world

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house… with a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, “Well… how did I get here?”

Remain in Light [1980]. Once in a Lifetime

Rita Dove

1952–

You start out with one thing, end

up with another, and nothing’s

like it used to be, not even the future.

The Yellow House on the Corner [1980]. O

Fact is, the invention of women under siege

has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

Grace Notes [1989]. Canary

[Yoshihiro] Francis Fukuyama

1952–

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

The End of History? [1989]

Anne Herbert

1952–

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.

Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty [1985]

Hilary Mantel

1952–

It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

Wolf Hall [2009]

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.

Wolf Hall

Those who are made can be unmade.

Bring Up the Bodies [2012]

Orhan Pamuk

1952–

There are moments in all our lives when we realize, even as we experience them, that we are living through events we will never forget, even long afterward.

My Name Is Red¹ [2001]

The biggest deception of the past thousand years, is this: to confuse poverty with stupidity.

Snow [2002]

The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature’s eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people’s stories, and to tell other people’s stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is.

Nobel Lecture [2006]

Vladimir Putin

1952–

The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

Address to the Russian Parliament [April 25, 2005]

Kim Stanley Robinson

1952–

Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can’t grasp the current situation.

Red Mars [1992]

When it comes to the environment, the invisible hand never picks up the check.

Keynote address at the Crown College Social Fiction Conference [March 2014]

Mary Ruefle

1952–

All day I have done nothing.

To admonish me a few aspen

jostle beneath puny stars.

Memling’s Veil [1982]. Standing Furthest

Vikram Seth

1952–

He goes home, seeking consolation

Among old Beatles and Pink Floyd—

But “Girl” elicits mere frustration,

While “Money” leaves him more annoyed.

Alas, he hungers less for money

Than for a fleeting Taste of Honey.

Murmuring, “Money—it’s a gas!…

The lunatic is on the grass,”

He pours himself a beer. Desires

And reminiscences intrude

Upon his unpropitious mood

Until he feels that he requires

A one-way Ticket to Ride—and soon—

Across the Dark Side of the Moon.

The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse [1986], 1. 8

Joe Strummer [John Graham Mellor]

1952–2002

and

Mick [Michael Lewis] Jones

1955–

Never mind the stars and stripes

Let’s print the Watergate tapes

I’ll salute the New Wave

And I hope nobody escapes

I’m so bored with the U.S.A.

But what can I do?

I’m So Bored with the U.S.A. [1977], recorded by The Clash

The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in

Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin

Engines stop running, but I have no fear

’Cause London is drowning and I live by the river

London Calling [1979]. Title song. Recorded by The Clash

Kick over the wall ’cause government’s to fall

How can you refuse it?

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power

D’you know that you can use it?

London Calling. Clampdown. Recorded by The Clash

Amy Tan

1952–

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

The Joy Luck Club [1989]

How can you say luck and chance are the same thing? Chance is the first step you take, luck is what comes afterward.

The Kitchen God’s Wife [1991]

Rex Tillerson

1952–

When we as people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth—even on what may seem the most trivial of matters—we go wobbly on America.

Commencement address, Virginia Military Institute [May 16, 2018]

Robert Zemeckis

1951–

and

Bob [Michael Robert] Gale

1951–

You’ve got a real attitude problem, McFly. You’re a slacker!

Back to the Future (screenplay) [1985]

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.

Back to the Future

Ben Bernanke

1953–

Under current law, on January 1, 2013, there is going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases.

Statement to House Financial Services Committee [February 29, 2012]

Tony [Anthony Charles Lynton] Blair

1953–

She was the People’s Princess, and that’s how she will stay… in our hearts and in our memories forever.

Statement on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales [August 31, 1997]

Roberto Bolaño [Ávalos]

1953–2003

Write in the morning, revise in the afternoon, read at night, and spend the rest of your time exercising your diplomacy, stealth, and charm.

Los detectives salvajes [The Savage Detectives, 1998]

Poetry and prison have always been neighbors.

Los detectives salvajes

We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.

Last Evenings on Earth [1977]. Dentist

Bishop Michael Curry

1953–

When love is the way, there’s plenty good room—plenty good room—for all of God’s children. Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well, like we are actually family. When love is the way, we know that God is the source of us all, and we are brothers and sisters, children of God. My brothers and sisters, that’s a new heaven, a new earth, a new world, a new human family.

Sermon at the marriage of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan Markle [May 19, 2018]

Elaine Equi

1953–

Why did I buy it?

What was I thinking?

It’s all wrong.

Tacky, but not in a good way.

It looks suburban.

It spells housewife.

Too nurturing.

I don’t even have kids.

No one will take me seriously.

It must have been the lighting.

I was in a hurry.

I don’t even want to return it.

Just get it out of here.

Throw it away.

Voice-Over [1998]. Remorse After Shopping

I’ve always liked reading poetry in translation. In fact, I prefer it that way.

Poetry is the sound one language makes when it escapes into another.

Ripple Effect [2007]. Found in Translation

Anne Fadiman

1953–

The action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where edges meet.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down [1997]

Nan Goldin

1953–

I used to think that I couldn’t lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost.

Couples and Loneliness [1998]

Paul Krugman

1953–

Supply-side economics… is like one of those African viruses that, however often it may be eradicated from the settled areas, is always out there in the bush, waiting for new victims.

Slate [August 16, 1996]

Cyndi [Cynthia Ann Stephanie] Lauper

1953–

Some boys take a beautiful girl

And hide her away from the rest of the world

I want to be the one to walk in the sun

Oh girls they want to have fun

Oh girls just want to have fun

She’s So Unusual [1983]. Girls Just Want To Have Fun; adapted from lyrics by Robert Hazard.

Thomas Ligotti

1953–

If we vanished tomorrow, no organism on this planet would miss us. Nothing in nature needs us.

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror [2010]

Darryl Pinckney

1953–

No one sat me down and told me I was a Negro. That was something I figured out on the sly, late in my childhood career as a snoop, like discovering that babies didn’t come from an exchange of spinach during a kiss.

High Cotton [1992]

V¹

1953–

It is almost a guarantee that in the pursuit of security you will become more insecure.

Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir [2006]

Xi Jinping

1953–

We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.

Speech for centenary of Chinese Communist Party [July 1, 2021]

K[wame] Anthony Appiah

1954–

There are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do all we ask race to do for us.

In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture [1992]

Jane Campion

1954–

I am learning to speak. My sound is still so bad I feel ashamed. I practice only when I am alone and it is dark.

The Piano (screenplay) [1993]

Sandra Cisneros

1954–

People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don’t look down at all excerpt to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week’s garbage or fear of rats. Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the wind.

The House on Mango Street [1984]. Bums in the Attic

Joel Coen

1954–

and

Ethan Coen

1957–

The Dude abides.

The Big Lebowski (screenplay) [1998]

This aggression will not stand, man.

The Big Lebowski. Spoken by Jeff Bridges

Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.

The Big Lebowski. Spoken by John Goodman

[Karen] Louise Erdrich

1954–

I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.

Love Medicine [1984]. The Good Tears

James Gleick

1954–

Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.… In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.

Chaos [1987], Prologue

Patricia Campbell Hearst [Shaw]

1954–

Stockholm Syndrome is what it is called when you begin to identify with your captors.… They get nicer every day that they don’t kill you.

Television interview [2001]

Annie Lennox

1954–

and

Dave Stewart

1952–

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

Sweet dreams are made of this

Who am I to disagree?

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) [1983]. Recorded by the Eurythmics

Angela Merkel

1954–

We can do it.¹

Slogan in response to the crisis of refugees seeking to settle in Germany [summer 2015]

[Discussing G7 meetings after the election of President Trump:] The times in which we could fully count on others are to a certain extent over, as I have experienced in the past few days. We Europeans must really take our destiny in our own hands.

Speech in Munich [May 27, 2017]

Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness, for nothing has to stay as it is.

Harvard commencement address [May 30, 2019]

Michael Moore

1954–

We live in a time when we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president… a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.… We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush.

Academy Award acceptance speech [2003]

Adam Phillips

1954–

At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused.

Monogamy [1996]

A couple is a conspiracy in search of a crime. Sex is often the closest they can get.

Monogamy

People are always persecuted by what they protect themselves from.

Going Sane [2005]

Condoleezza Rice

1954–

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly [Saddam Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

Interview with CNN [September 8, 2002]

Lucy Sante¹

1954–

New York’s ghosts are the unresting souls of the poor, the marginal, the dispossessed, the depraved, the defective, the recalcitrant. They are the guardian spirits of the urban wilderness in which they lived and died.

Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York [1991]. Preface

Every human being is an archeological site.

The Factory of Facts [1998]

Utopias last five minutes, to the extent that they happen at all.

The Other Paris [2015]. The Game

Jerry [Jerome] Seinfeld

1954–

Everybody lies about sex. People lie during sex. If it weren’t for lies, there’d be no sex.

New York Times [December 18, 1998]

Sonia Sotomayor

1954–

Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.… I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Speech at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law [October 26, 2001]

We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are “isolated.” They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere.… They are the ones who recognize that unlawful police stops corrode all our civil liberties and threaten all our lives. Until their voices matter too, our justice system will continue to be anything but. I dissent.

Utah v. Strieff [June 20, 2016], dissenting opinion

Mary Beard

1955–

It doesn’t much matter what line of argument you take as a woman. If you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it—it’s the fact that you are saying it.

Oh Do Shut Up Dear! (lecture at British Museum) [February 2014]

Tim Berners-Lee

1955–

[On the Internet:] There is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way.

The Guardian [November 3, 2006]

Jerry Dammers

1955–

Can’t fight corruption with con tricks

They use the law to commit crime

I dread, dread to think what the future’ll bring

When we’re living in gangster time.

Gangsters [1979], recorded by The Specials

Bill Gates [William Henry Gates III]

1955–

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

The Road Ahead [1995]

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.

The Road Ahead

John Gilmore

1955–

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Quoted in TIME [December 6, 1993]

Siri Hustvedt

1955–

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.

The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves [2010]

Chronic headaches are my fate, and I have adopted a position of philosophical resignation. I am aware that such a view is resoundingly un-American. Our culture does not encourage anyone to accept adversity. On the contrary, we habitually declare war on the things that afflict us, whether it’s drugs, terrorism, or cancer.

My Strange Head: Notes on Migraine [2012, originally from Arms at Rest, a 2008 opinion piece in the New York Times]

Steve Jobs

1955–2011

I’m just a guy who probably should have been a semi-talented poet on the Left Bank. I sort of got sidetracked here.

Interview with Access magazine [Fall 1984]

That's been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

Interview in Businessweek [May 1998]

Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.

Interview in Businessweek [May 25, 1998]

It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

New York Times Magazine [November 30, 2003]

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else’s life.

Commencement speech at Stanford University [2005]

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

Last words [2011]

John E. Jones III

1955–

To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.… The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.

Ruling against the teaching of intelligent design in Kitzmiller v. Dover [December 20, 2005]

Chris Kraus

1955–

I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

I Love Dick [1997]

Liu Xiaobo

1955–2017

I have no enemies and no hatred.

I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement [2009]

Michael Pollan

1955–

Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much.

Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns [1989]

“Industrial organic” might sound like an oxymoron, but it is a reality.

Gourmet [September 2002]. Sustaining Vision

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

In Defense of Food [2008]

Eric Schmidt

1955–

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.

Speech at Netscape Communications Developers’ conference [1996]

[On Google:] We don’t need you to type at all. Because we know where you are—with your permission. We know where you’ve been—with your permission. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about.

Interview at Washington Ideas Forum [October 1, 2010]

If you have a child, your child is asleep or online. There are only two states of children now.

Speech at DLD Conference, Munich [2011]

Colm Tóibín

1955–

For the first time in years, he felt the deep sadness of exile, knowing that he was alone here, an outsider, and too alert to the ironies, the niceties, the manners and, indeed, the morals to be able to participate.

The Master [2004]

If you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.

The Testament of Mary [2012]

Anthony Bourdain

1956–2018

The members of a tight, well-greased kitchen staff are a lot like a submarine crew. Confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders, they often acquire the characteristics of the poor saps who were press-ganged into the royal navies of Napoleonic times—superstition, a contempt for outsiders, and a loyalty to no flag but their own.

New Yorker [April 19, 1999], Don’t Eat Before Reading This

Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafés and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taquerias’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.

Kitchen Confidential [2000]

Good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime ‘associates’, food, for me, has always been an adventure.

Kitchen Confidential

Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers.

Under the Volcano (blog) [May 3, 2014]

Lucie Brock-Broido

1956–2018

I was not ready for your form to be cold

Ever. Even in life

You did not inhabit, necessarily, a form,

But a mind of

Rarer liquid element.

Periodic Table of Ethereal Elements [2000]

David Carr

1956–2015

End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame.

The Night of the Gun [2008]

I now inhabit a life I don’t deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn’t end any time soon.

The Night of the Gun

Chris Carter

1956–

The Truth Is Out There.

The X-Files [1993–2002], tagline

Larry Charles

1956–

We’re not gay!

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Seinfeld [1993], The Outing. Spoken by Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld

Amitav Ghosh

1956–

It is very difficult, surely, to imagine a conception of seriousness that is blind to potentially life-changing threats. And if the urgency of a subject were indeed a criterion of its seriousness, then, considering what climate change actually portends for the future of the earth, it should surely follow that this would be the principal preoccupation of writers the world over—and this, I think, is very far from being the case.

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable [2016]

Mike Godwin

1956–

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

Godwin’s Law [1990]

Chris Hedges

1956–

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning [2002]

Anita Hill

1956–

I have no personal vendetta against Clarence Thomas.… It would have been more comfortable to remain silent. I took no initiative to inform anyone. But when I was asked by a representative of this committee to report my experience, I felt that I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.

Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court [October 11, 1991]

Laura Kipnis

1956–

As is true of all human languages, the language of coupledom is governed by a finite set of rules that determine what can be verbalized and how…. Close observation reveals that this is a language comprising one recurring unit of speech: the interdiction.

Against Love: A Polemic [2003]. Couple Linguistics 101

There’s an excess of masculine power in the world, and women have to be educated to contest it in real time, instead of waiting around for men to reach some new stage of heightened consciousness—just in case that day never comes.

Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus [2017]

Tony Kushner

1956–

Love is the world’s infinite mutability; lies, hatred, murder even, are all knit up in it; it is the inevitable blossoming of its opposites, a magnificent rose smelling faintly of blood. A dream which makes the world seem… an illusion.

The Illusion [1990], “freely adapted” from Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique [1636]

People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable, unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize… maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.

Angels in America, pt. I: Millennium Approaches [1992]

There are no angels in America.

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches

Lawyers are… the High Priests of America.¹

Angels in America: Perestroika

We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.

Bye now.

You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.

And I bless you: More Life.

The Great Work Begins.

Angels in America: Perestroika, epilogue

Carol Leifer

1956–

Jerry, just remember. It’s not a lie if you believe it.

Seinfeld [1995]. The Beard. Spoken by Jason Alexander

Peter Mehlman

1956–

and

Jill Franklyn

I gotta tell you, I am loving this yada yada thing. I can gloss over my whole life story.

Seinfeld [1997], The Yada Yada. Spoken by Jason Alexander

Grover Norquist

1956–

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

The Nation [April 26, 2001]

Gary Portnoy

1956–

and

Judy Hart Angelo

1956–

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

Theme from the television show Cheers [1982–1993]

Johnny Rotten [John Lydon]

1956–

There’s no future in England’s dreaming

No future, no future, no future for you

No future, no future, no future for me

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols [1977]. God Save the Queen

David [Raymond] Sedaris

1956–

We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort, it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well-made cocktail.

Naked [1997]

In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.

Me Talk Pretty One Day [2000]

Nicholson Baker

1957–

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

The Anthologist [2009]

Osama [bin Mohammed bin Awad] bin Laden

1957–2011

To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who can, in any country where this is possible, until the Aqsa mosque [in Jerusalem] and the Haram mosque [in Mecca] are freed from their grip, and until their armies, shattered and broken-winged, depart from all the lands of Islam, incapable of threatening any Muslim.

Declaration of jihad [February 1998]

We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all.… Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.

Transcript of videotape [released by the U.S. government December 2001]

Cameron Crowe

1957–

Show me the money!

Jerry Maguire (screenplay) [1996], spoken by Cuba Gooding, Jr.

You had me at hello.

Jerry Maguire (screenplay), spoken by Renée Zellweger

Good-looking people, they got no spine; their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we’re smarter.… The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

Almost Famous, screenplay [2000], spoken by Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs

James McBride

1957–

Being mixed is like that tingling feeling you have in your nose just before you sneeze—you’re waiting for it to happen but it never does. Given my black face and upbringing it was easy for me to flee into the anonymity of blackness, yet I felt frustrated to live in a world that considers the color of your face an immediate political statement whether you like it or not.

The Color of Water [1996]

Amy Goodman

1957–

Go to where the silence is and say something.

Awards speech quoted in Columbia Journalism Review [March–April 1994]

Lorrie [Marie Lorena] Moore

1957–

A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.

Introduction to Best American Short Stories 2004

A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life, to choose the best unhappiness.

Bark [2014]

George Pelecanos

1957–

Like most of the trouble that’s happened in my life or that I’ve caused to happen, the trouble that happened that night started with a drink. Nobody forced my hand; I poured it myself, two fingers of bourbon into a heavy, beveled shot glass.

Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go [1995]

George Pelecanos

1957–

and

David Simon

1960–

You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy’s pocket.

The Wire, season 2, ep. 11: Bad Dreams [August 17, 2003]; spoken by Chris Bauer as Frank Sobotka

Richard Powers

1957–

Each thing is what it is only through everything else.

The Gold Bug Variations [1991]

Eric S. Raymond

1957–

[On software development:] Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.¹

The Cathedral & the Bazaar [1999]

Geoff Dyer

1958–

Booze, junk, prison. It wasn’t that jazz musicians died young, they just got older quicker.

But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz [1991]

Grandmaster Flash [Joseph Saddler]

1958–

Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge

I’m tryin’ not to lose my head

It’s like a jungle sometimes

It makes me wonder how I keep from going under.

The Message [1982]

Michael Jackson

1958–2009

and

Lionel Richie

1949–

We are the world,

We are the children,

We are the ones

To make a better day.

We Are the World [1985]

Robert Kagan

1958–

[On the candidacy of Donald J. Trump:] This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes… but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party—out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear—falling into line behind him.

The Washington Post [May 18, 2016]

Madonna [Louise Ciccone]

1958–

I have the same goal I’ve had since I was a girl. I want to rule the world.

Quoted in People [July 27, 1992]

Lucia Perillo

1958–2016

You might have to sit in a sweat lodge until you pass out

or eat a weird vine and it will not be pleasant. Your pulse

goes staccato like a Teletype machine—then blam

you’ll be transformed into your post-larval being.

Maybe swallowtail, maybe moth: trust me, I know

because once I was a baby blue convertible

but now I’m this black hot rod painted with flames.

Inseminating the Elephant [2009]. Found Object

Prince [Rogers Nelson]

1958–2016

I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray

But when I woke up this mornin’, could’ve sworn it was judgment day

The sky was all purple, there were people runnin’ everywhere

Tryin’ to run from the destruction, you know I didn’t even care

Say say two thousand zero zero party over, oops, out of time

So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s nineteen ninety-nine

1999 [1982], title track

I’m not a woman

I’m not a man

I am something that you’ll never understand

I Would Die 4 U [1984]

George Saunders

1958–

Do all the other things, the ambitious things—travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop)—but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.

Commencement speech, Syracuse University [May 11, 2013]

Neil deGrasse Tyson

1958–

I don’t want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don’t understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don’t understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before.

The Perimeter of Ignorance [2005]

Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. We’re not afraid to admit what we don’t know—there’s no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that we have all the answers.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey [2014], episode 2

That’s the good thing about science: it’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.¹

Interview with Stephen Colbert [March 10, 2014]

Marjorie Williams

1958–2005

Having found myself faced with that old bull-session question (What would you do if you found out you had a year to live?), I learned that a woman with children has the privilege or duty of bypassing the existential. What you do, if you have little kids, is lead as normal a life as possible, only with more pancakes.

The Woman at the Washington Zoo [2005]. Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir

I think cancer brings to most people a new freedom to act on the understanding that their time is important.… The knowledge that time’s expenditure is important, that it is up to you, is one of the headiest freedoms you will ever feel.

The Woman at the Washington Zoo. Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir

Gérard Biard

1959–

Being shocked is a part of democratic debate. Being shot is not.

At PEN dinner [May 5, 2015] in honor of Charlie Hebdo

Julie Birchill

1959–

This is the age of the Cry-Bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper.

Meet the Cry-Bully, The Spectator [April 21, 2015]

Rahm Emanuel

1959–

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.

Quoted in Wall Street Journal [November 21, 2008]

Jonathan Franzen

1959–

The first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone.

How to Be Alone [2002]. The Reader in Exile [1995]

Deborah Levy

1959–

Anything covered is always interesting. There is never nothing beneath something that is covered.

Hot Milk [2016]

Loretta Lynch

1959–

Hate crimes are the original domestic terrorism.

Remarks [June 24, 2015] on Charleston church massacre

Yasmina Reza

1959–

If I’m who I am because I’m who I am and you’re who you are because you’re who you are, then I’m who I am and you’re who you are. If, on the other hand, I’m who I am because you’re who you are, and if you’re who you are because I’m who I am, then I’m not who I am and you’re not who you are.

“Art”¹ [1994], spoken by Yvan

Eric Schlosser

1959–

The United States now has more prison inmates than full-time farmers.

Fast Food Nation [2002]

Sandra Steingraber

1959–

However it is made, dioxin reaches us when it falls from the sky. Blades of grass absorb it, are eaten by cows, and then by us. Oceanic algae absorb it, are eaten by crustaceans, are eaten by fish, and then by us. The crusty fronds of lichens absorb it, are eaten by caribou, and then by us.

And then we feed our babies.

Having Faith [2001]

Ron Suskind

1959–

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.… That’s not the way the world really works anymore.… We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

Interview with an unnamed aide to President George W. Bush (later identified as Karl Rove); New York Times Magazine [October 17, 2004]. Without a Doubt

Hilton Als

1960–

For black people, being around white people is sometimes like taking care of babies you don’t like, babies who throw up on you again and again, but whom you cannot punish, because they’re babies.

White Girls [2013]

Jean-Michel Basquiat

1960–1988

I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.

Quoted by Cathleen McGuigan in the New York Times Magazine [February 10, 1985]

Alison Bechdel

1960–

I have this rule, see… I only go to a movie if it satisfies three basic requirements. One, it has to have at least two women in it who, two, talk to each other about, three, something besides a man.

The Rule [1985], from the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For

I suppose that a lifetime spent hiding one’s erotic truth could have a cumulative renunciatory effect. Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic [2006]

I am not ultimately interested in writing fiction. I can’t make things up. Or rather, I can only make things up about things that have already happened.

Are You My Mother? [2012]

David O. Brown

1960–

Our profession is hurting. Dallas officers are hurting. We are heartbroken. There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city. All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.

Press conference following a shooting that killed five Dallas police officers [July 8, 2016]

Chuck D [Carlton Douglas Ridenhour]

1960–

Don’t Believe the Hype

Title of song [1988]. Recorded by Public Enemy

Rap music is the invisible TV station that black people never had.²

At Black Expo Seminar on Rap [July 22, 1989]

James B. Comey

1960–

[On his announcement, eleven days before the 2016 presidential election, that the FBI was revisiting an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails:] It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election. But honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.

Testimony in Senate hearing [May 3, 2017]

I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo. To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting. Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past.

Written testimony to Senate [June 7, 2017]

This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values.

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership [2018]

Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.

The New York Times [May 1, 2019]. How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr

Jeffrey Eugenides

1960–

The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It’s a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.

Middlesex [2002]

Neil Gaiman

1960–

Google can bring you back, you know, a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

Interview as Honorary Chair of Library Week [April 2010]

The problems of failure are hard. The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them.

Make Good Art (commencement address), University of the Arts [May 17, 2012]

Jonathan Gold

1960–2018

I am fond of driving long distances on surface streets, coursing down the 40-mile length of Rosemead Boulevard from Pasadena until it disappears into a traffic circle deep in Long Beach, cruising down Slauson from the Marina to Whittier, or up the old Sierra Highway toward Lancaster, passing endless low stucco buildings and hundreds of tiny malls, mom ’n’ pop truck stops and original-issue diners, 24-hour steakhouses and blinking neon drive-ins, seedy cantinas waiting for a fistfight to break out, ethnic enclaves strung along the boulevards like colorful beads on taut skeins of thread.

Los Angeles Times [1993]

When we’re hungry, everything tastes good, hunger is the best spice. When you’re in an area that has few resources, you work incredibly hard to have something. And then you make the something taste good.

Interview with Patrick McDonald [March 23, 2016]

Mitch Landrieu

1960–

To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past. It is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future. History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it.

Speech [May 19, 2017]

Jaron Lanier

1960–

The Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart. If you can have a conversation with a simulated person presented by an AI program, can you tell how far you’ve let your sense of personhood degrade in order to make the illusion work for you?

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto [2010]

At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only thirteen people. Where did all those jobs disappear to?

Who Owns the Future? [2013]

Jonathan Larson

1960–1996

No Day But Today

Rent [1996]. Title of song

Richard Linklater

1960–

and

Kim Krizan

1961–

When the stars exploded billions of years ago, they formed everything that is in this world. The moon, the trees, everything we know is stardust. So don’t forget. You are stardust.¹

Before Sunrise (screenplay) [1995]

Bill McKibben

1960–

The greenhouse effect is a more apt name than those who coined it imagined. The carbon dioxide and trace gases act like the panes of glass on a greenhouse—the analogy is accurate. But it’s more than that. We have built a greenhouse, a human creation where once there bloomed a sweet and wild garden.

The End of Nature [1989]

George Packer

1960–

The problem came down to this: Americans, who had invented the modern assembly line, the skyscraper, the airplane, and the integrated circuit, no longer believed in the future.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America [2013]

An old city can lose its industrial foundation and two-thirds of its people, while all its mainstays—churches, government, businesses, charities, unions—fall like building flats in a strong wind, hardly making a sound.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

Adam Schiff

1960–

My colleagues may think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what was described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think that’s okay. My colleagues might think it’s okay that when that was offered to the son of the president, who had a pivotal role in the campaign, that the president’s son did not call the FBI, he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help—no, instead that son said he would “love” the help of the Russians. You might think it’s okay that he took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience of running campaigns, also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that they concealed it from the public. You might think it’s okay that their only disappointment after that meeting was that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better. You might think that’s okay.… I don’t.… You might say that’s all okay. You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt, and evidence of collusion.

Remarks to House Intelligence Committee [March 28, 2019]

David Simon

1960–

and

Ed Burns

1946–

You come at the king, you best not miss.²

The Wire, season 1, ep. 8 [July 28, 2002], spoken by Michael K. Williams as Omar Little

The past is always with us. And where we come from, what we go through, how we go through it; all a’ this shit matters.… Like at the end of the book, ya’ know, boats and tides and all. It’s like you can change up, right? You can say you’re somebody new, you can give yourself a whole new story. But… what came first is who you really are, and what happened before is what really happened.

The Wire, season 2, ep. 6 [July 6, 2003], spoken by Larry Gilliard, Jr., as D’Angelo Barkdale, in a discussion of The Great Gatsby

Michael Stipe

1960–

Peter Buck

1956–

Mike Mills

1958–

Bill Berry

1958–

It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Document [1987]. Title of song. Recorded by R.E.M.

That’s me in the corner

That’s me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

Out of Time [1991]. Losing My Religion. Recorded by R.E.M.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

1960–

The more data we have, the more likely we are to drown in it.

Fooled by Randomness [2001]

Economic, financial, and political predictors… are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients—and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable [2007]

Cumulative errors depend largely on the big surprises, the big opportunities. Not only do economic, financial, and political predictors miss them, but they are quite ashamed to say anything outlandish to their clients—and yet events, it turns out, are almost always outlandish.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Globalization… creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are now interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks… when one fails, they all fall.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Sally Yates

1961–

I remember my confirmation hearing, in an exchange that I had with you, and others of your colleagues, where you specifically asked me in that hearing that if the president asked me to do something that was unlawful or unconstitutional, and one of your colleagues said, or even just that would reflect poorly on the Department of Justice, would I say no? And I looked at this; I made a determination that I believed that it was unlawful. I also thought that it was inconsistent with principles at the Department of Justice, and I said no. And that’s what I promised you I would do and that’s what I did.

Testimony to Senate Judiciary Subcommittee¹ [May 8, 2017]

Douglas Coupland

1961–

Generation X

Title of book [1991]

We live small lives on the periphery; we are marginalized and there’s a great deal in which we choose not to participate.

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture [1991]

Diana [Frances Spencer], Princess of Wales

1961–1997

There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.

BBC television interview [November 20, 1995]

David Graeber

1961–2020

If history shows anything, it is that there’s no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it’s the victim who’s doing something wrong.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years [2011]

Elizabeth Kolbert

1961–

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe [2006]

Obviously, the fate of our own species concerns us disproportionately. But at the risk of sounding anti-human—some of my best friends are humans!—I will say that it is not, in the end, what’s most worth attending to. Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this, and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History [2014]

Barack [Hussein] Obama

1961–

I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.

Speech to anti-war rally in Chicago [October 2, 2002]

Yes, we can!¹

Slogan [2004 Illinois senate campaign and 2008 presidential campaign]

The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Keynote address at Democratic National Convention [2004]

I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.

Keynote address at Democratic National Convention

Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us.

Keynote address at Democratic National Convention

You’re likeable enough, Hillary.

Democratic presidential primary debate, New Hampshire [January 5, 2008]

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Campaign speech [February 5, 2008]

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

At a San Francisco fundraiser [April 6, 2008]

We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus—and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

Inaugural address [January 20, 2009]

Elections have consequences… and, Eric, I won.

Remark to House Republican Whip Eric Cantor [January 23, 2009]

Our troops come from every corner of this country—they are black, white, Latino, Asian, and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love.

State of the Union address [January 25, 2011]

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

Speech [May 2, 2011]

Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.

Commencement address, Barnard College [May 14, 2012]

[On foreign policy:] Don’t do stupid shit.

New York Times [May 28, 2014]

We also see faith being twisted and distorted, used as a wedge—or, worse, sometimes used as a weapon.… And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often were justified in the name of Christ.

National Prayer Breakfast [February 5, 2015]

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

Speech to commemorate 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” Selma, Alabama [March 7, 2015]

Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought, the cause of slavery, was wrong; the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds.

Eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, Charleston, South Carolina [June 25, 2015]

Even as I continue to take every action possible as president, I will also take every action I can as a citizen. I will not campaign for, vote for or support any candidate, even in my own party, who does not support common-sense gun reform.

New York Times [January 7, 2016]

Our children won’t have time to debate the existence of climate change. They’ll be busy dealing with its effects.

Farewell address, Chicago [January 10, 2017]

If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the Internet, try talking with one of them in real life.

Farewell address, Chicago

A politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment began to appear, and that kind of politics is now on the move. It’s on the move at a pace that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. I am not being alarmist. I am simply stating the facts.

Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, Johannesburg [July 17, 2018]

Alexander Payne

1961–

I like to think about the life of wine, how it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing, how the sun was shining, if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And, if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now.

Sideways (screenplay) [2004], spoken by Virginia Madsen

Rebecca Solnit

1961–

If gold has been prized because it is the most inert element, changeless and incorruptible, water is prized for the opposite reason—its fluidity, mobility, changeability that make it a necessity and a metaphor for life itself. To value gold over water is to value economy over ecology, that which can be locked up over that which connects all things.

Storming the Gates of Paradise [2007]

Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about.

Men Explain Things to Me, blog post [April 2008]

Moby-Dick, which I love, reminds me that a book without women is often said to be about humanity but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book.

Literary Hub [November 18, 2015]

Elizabeth Alexander

1962–

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise Song for the Day [January 20, 2009], read at the inauguration of President Barack Obama

Paul Beatty

1962–

That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.

The Sellout [2015]

Suzanne Collins

1962–

Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor.

The Hunger Games [2008]

Mark Haddon

1962–

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [2003]

Walter Kirn

1962–

Airworld is a nation within a nation, with its own language, architecture, mood, and even its own currency—the token economy of airline bonus miles that I’ve come to value more than dollars.

Up in the Air [2001]

Chuck [Charles Michael] Palahniuk

1962–

The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.… The second rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

Fight Club (novel) [1996]

Jon Stewart [Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz]

1962–

Here it is… your moment of Zen.

Nightly signoff, The Daily Show

The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina, and the roads are named for Confederate generals. And the white guy’s the one who feels like his country’s being taken away from him.

The Daily Show [June 18, 2015]; remarks following mass killing of churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina

David Foster Wallace

1962–2008

Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction [1993]

Make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us.

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

Infinite Jest [1996]

Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e., almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.

Infinite Jest

You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.

Infinite Jest

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

Infinite Jest

Most of the literary readers I know personally are under 40, and a fair number are female, and none of them are big admirers of the postwar G.M.N.’s [Great Male Narcissists]. But it’s Mr. Updike in particular they seem to hate. And not merely his books, for some reason—mention the poor man himself and you have to jump back: “Just a penis with a thesaurus.”

Review of John Updike’s Toward the End of Time [October 13, 1997]

By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

Up, Simba!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate [2000]

Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?

Gourmet [August 2004]. Consider the Lobster

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness—awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”

Commencement address, Kenyon College [May 21, 2005]

Learning how to think really means learning to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

Commencement address, Kenyon College

The truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.

Federer as Religious Experience, New York Times [August 20, 2006]

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war. The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.

Federer as Religious Experience

Aren’t there parts of ourselves that are just better left unfed?

Host. In The Atlantic Monthly magazine [2006]

There are four trillion bits coming at you, 99 per cent of them are shit, and it’s too much work to do triage to decide.

On the Internet, 1996; quoted in David Lipsky, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace [2010]

Sarah Bakewell

1963–

The twenty-first century is full of people who are full of themselves. A half-hour’s trawl through the online ocean of blogs, tweets, tubes, spaces, faces, pages, and pods brings up thousands of individuals fascinated by their own personalities and shouting for attention. They go on about themselves; they diarize, and chat, and upload photographs of everything they do. Uninhibitedly extrovert, they also look inward as never before.

How to Live, or A Life of Montaigne [2010]

Michael Chabon

1963–

The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay [2000]

Every generation loses the messiah it has failed to deserve.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union [2007]

Lucy Grealy

1963–2002

This singularity of meaning—I was my face, I was ugliness—though sometimes unbearable, also offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognizable place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life. Everything led to it, everything receded from it—my face as personal vanishing point.

Autobiography of a Face [1994]

Kool Moe Dee [Mohandas Dewese]

1963–

Guns, we don’t like to use ’em

Unless our enemies choose ’em

We prefer to fight you on like a man and

Beat you down with our hands, and bodyslam you

At the wild, wild west.

How Ya Like Me Now [1987]. Wild Wild West

Viktor Orbán

1963–

The era of liberal democracy is over. Rather than try to fix a liberal democracy that has run aground, we will build a twenty-first-century Christian democracy

Inaugural address to Hungarian parliament [May 10, 2018]

Claudia Rankine

1963–

Perhaps this is how racism feels no matter the context—randomly the rules everyone else gets to play by no longer apply to you, and to call this out by calling out “I swear to God!” is to be called insane, crass, crazy. Bad sportsmanship.

Citizen: An American Lyric [2014]

The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.

Citizen: An American Lyric

Andrew Solomon

1963–

I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression [2000]

Steven Soderbergh

1963–

Lying is like alcoholism. You’re continually in recovery.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (screenplay) [1989], spoken by James Spader

Quentin Tarantino

1963–

I’m a get medieval on your ass.

Pulp Fiction (screenplay) [1994], spoken by Ving Rhames

Donna Tartt

1963–

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The Secret History [1992]

Jeff Bezos

1964–

The common question that gets asked in business is, why? That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?

Wired [November 13, 2011]

Tracy Chapman

1964–

They’re talkin’ ’bout a revolution

It sounds like a whisper

While they’re standing in the welfare lines

Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation

Wasting time in the unemployment lines

Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Poor people gonna rise up

And get their share

Poor people gonna rise up

And take what’s theirs

Talkin’ ’bout a Revolution [1988]

Stephen Colbert

1964–

I will speak to you in plain, simple English. And that brings us to tonight’s word: Truthiness. Now I’m sure some of the Word Police, the wordanistas over at Webster’s, are gonna say, “Hey, that’s not a word.” Well, anybody who knows me knows that I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They’re elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn’t true, or what did or didn’t happen.

The Colbert Report [October 17, 2005]

Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know—fiction!

White House Correspondents’ Dinner [April 29, 2006]

The best career advice I can give you is to get your own TV show. It pays well, the hours are good, and you are famous. And eventually, some very nice people will give you a doctorate in fine arts for doing jack squat.

Commencement address, Knox College [June 3, 2006]

Nigel Farage

1964–

When I came here seventeen years ago and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me—well, I have to say, you’re not laughing now, are you?

Speech to EU parliament [June 28, 2016] after a majority of UK voters supported a referendum to leave the European Union

Niall Ferguson

1964–

[The United States] is an empire… that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.

Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power [2002]

Kamala [Devi] Harris

1964–

There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me.

Democratic presidential debate [June 27, 2019]

While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.

Vice-presidential victory speech [November 7, 2020]

Aleksandar Hemon

1964–

All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.

The Lazarus Project [2008]

Jonathan Lethem

1964–

Insomnia is a variant of Tourette’s—the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod.

Motherless Brooklyn [1999]

[John Joseph] J. R. Moehringer

1964–

Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.

The Tender Bar [2005]

Michelle Obama

1964–

For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.

Campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin [February 18, 2008]

When they go low, we go high.

Speech at the Democratic National Convention [July 25, 2016], endorsing Hillary Clinton

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.

Speech at the Democratic National Convention

How many “angry black women” have been caught in the circular logic of that phrase? When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder?

Becoming [2018]

Sarah Palin

1964–

I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.

Speech at Republican National Convention [September 3, 2008]

They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.¹

Interview with Charles Gibson [September 11, 2008]

Clay Shirky

1964–

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

Quoted by Kevin Kelly in the Technium blog [April 2, 2010]

Joss Whedon

1964–

Because you’re still asking me that question.

Reply to “Why do you write these strong female characters?” at Equality Now event [May 15, 2006]

Linda Evangelista

1965–

We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day.

Quoted in Vogue [October 1990], about herself and model Christy Turlington

Atul Gawande

1965–

If human life spans depend on our genetics, then medicine has got the upper hand. We are, in a way, freaks living well beyond our appointed time.

The Way We Age Now [2007]

We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End [2014]

KRS-One [Lawrence Parker]

1965–

We gotta put our heads together, and stop the violence

Cause real bad boys move in silence

When you’re in a club, you come to chill out

Not watch someone’s blood just spill out

That’s what these other people want to see

Another race fight endlessly

Stop the Violence [1988]. Recorded by Boogie Down Productions

Rodney King

1965–2012

People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?

Statement following Los Angeles riots [May 1, 1992]

Colum McCann

1965–

Every immigrant carries in him or her a certain quiet desire to be wounded. It’s the nature of leaving in the first place. We leave in order, one day, to remember.

No Place Like Home, New York Times [December 31, 2006]

J[oanne] K[athleen] Rowling

1965–

Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone [1997], ch. 7

I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed—or worse, expelled.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, 9

Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, 17

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [1998], ch. 18

Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!

Interview with salon.com [March 13, 1999]

If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [2000]

People find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [2005]

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [2007]

Matthew Weiner

1965–

Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent.

Mad Men [2007], The Wheel, spoken by Jon Hamm

TV writing is for people who hate being alone more than they hate writing.

Interview in Paris Review [Spring 2014]

Sherman Alexie

1966–

I ain’t got nothing, I heard no good news

I fill my pockets with those reservation blues

Those old, those old rez blues, those old reservation blues

And if you ain’t got choices

What else do you choose?

Reservation Blues [1995]. Title lyric

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian [2007]

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I see them all the time.

You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me [2017]

Christian Bök

1966–

Minds grim with nihilism still find first light inspiring. Mild pink in tint, its shining twilight brings bright tidings which lift sinking spirits.

Eunoia [2009]

Michael Cohen

1966–

[On President Donald Trump:] He is a racist. He is a con man. And he is a cheat.

Congressional hearing [February 27, 2019]

Michael Imperioli

1966–

The Emerald Piper. That’s our hell. It’s an Irish bar where it’s St. Patrick’s Day every day forever.

The Sopranos, From Where to Eternity [March 12, 2000], spoken by Michael Imperioli as Christopher Moltisanti

Purgatory—a little detour on the way to paradise.… I figure I’m gonna have to do 6,000 years before I get accepted into heaven and 6,000 years is nothin’ in eternity terms. I can do that standing on my head. It’s like a couple of days here.

The Sopranos, From Where to Eternity, spoken by Tony Sirico as Paulie Gualtieri

Mike [Michael Gerard] Tyson

1966–

Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.

Quoted in the Los Angeles Times [1987]

Michelle Alexander

1967–

We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [2010]

Stéphane [“Charb”] Charbonnier¹

1967–2015

It may sound pompous, but I would rather live on my feet than die on my knees.²

Interview in Le Monde [September 20, 2012]

Kurt Cobain

1967–1994

I’d rather be dead than cool.

Stay Away [1991]. Recorded by Nirvana

Teenage angst has paid off well

Now I’m bored and old.

Serve the Servants [1993]. Recorded by Nirvana

Kellyanne Conway

1967–

[On Donald Trump’s statement on the size of his inauguration crowd:] You’re saying it’s a falsehood. And they’re giving—Sean Spicer, our press secretary—gave alternative facts.

Meet the Press [January 22, 2017]

Rachel Cusk

1967–

Motherhood, for me, was a sort of compound fenced off from the rest of the world. I was forever plotting my escape from it, and when I found myself pregnant again when Albertine was six months old I greeted my old cell with the cheerless acceptance of a convict intercepted at large.

A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother [2001]

The only alternative to form is chaos.

Aftermath [2012]

Now I imagine a different kind of knowledge, knowledge without exposure, without risk; the knowledge of the voyeur, watching, assessing, staying hidden.

Aftermath

Sometimes it has seemed to me that life is a series of punishments for such moments of unawareness, that one forges one’s own destiny by what one doesn’t notice or feel compassion for; that what you don’t know and don’t make the effort to understand will become the very thing you are forced into knowledge of.

Outline [2014]

Jenny Erpenbeck

1967–

Richard wonders how much the speed with which a country lets people die has to do with its prestige. Why should a refugee jumping off a roof be so much worse for that country’s reputation than letting him slowly expire under miserable conditions? […] Is the scandal just that these men want to determine the time and manner of their own deaths, rather than continuing to let their lives—which have been made impossible—be administered by a country that doesn’t want them? Is the question of power over one’s life still above all a question of power, and not a question of life?

Go, Went, Gone [2015]

Michael Gove

1967–

People in this country have had enough of experts.

Interview on Sky News [June 3, 2016], concerning the impending referendum on British membership in the European Union

Laura Hillenbrand

1967–

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man’s soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.

Unbroken [2010]

[Jonathan] Jony Ive

1967–

Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people’s minds.

Interview with the BBC [January 18, 2002]

Jimmy Kimmel

1967–

If your baby is going to die and it doesn’t have to, it shouldn’t matter how much money you make.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! [May 1, 2017]

Louis C.K. [Louis Székely]

1967–

Everything is amazing right now, and nobody’s happy.

Interview on Late Night with Conan O’Brien [October 1, 2008]

Peter Thiel

1967–

We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.

Credo of his venture-capital firm, Founders Fund

Todd Beamer

1968–2001

Let’s roll.¹

Before storming the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 [September 11, 2001]

Junot Díaz

1968–

If you didn’t grow up like I did then you don’t know and if you don’t know it’s probably better you don’t judge.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [2007]

The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.

Interview in the Daily Beast [August 21, 2013]

Harvard Crimson

Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29

Headline [November 24, 1968]

Heidi Julavits

1968–

I fear that book reviews are just an opportunity for a critic to strive for humor, and to appear funny and smart and a little bitchy, without attempting to espouse any higher ideals.… This is wit for wit’s sake—or hostility for hostility’s sake.… I call it Snark.

Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard! in The Believer [March 2003]

Karl Ove Knausgaard

1968–

For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone, and water. And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor.

My Struggle, bk. 1 [2009]¹

The duty of literature is to fight fiction. It’s to find a way into the world as it is.

Interview in The New Yorker [November 11, 2018]

Rachel Kushner

1968–

People who are harder to love pose a challenge, and the challenge makes them easier to love. You’re driven to love them. People who want their love easy don’t really want love.

The Flamethrowers [2013]

Jenny Offill

1968–

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn’t even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.

Dept. of Speculation [2014]

Now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.

Dept. of Speculation

Wes Anderson

1969–

and

Roman Coppola

1965–

I can’t argue against anything you’re saying. But then again, I don’t have to, ’cause you’re 12 years old. Look, let’s face it, you’re probably a much more intelligent person than I am. In fact, I guarantee it. But even smart kids stick their finger in electrical sockets sometimes.

Moonrise Kingdom (screenplay) [2012], spoken by Bruce Willis

Alain de Botton

1969–

True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.

Tweet [March 10, 2012]

Ice Cube [O’Shea Jackson]

1969–

and

MC Ren [Lorenzo Patterson]

1969–

Fuck tha police

Comin’ straight from the underground

A young nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown

And not the other color so police think

They have the authority to kill a minority.

Straight Outta Compton [1988]. Fuck tha Police. Recorded by N.W.A.

Jay-Z [Shawn Corey Carter]

1969–

I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!

Diamonds from Sierra Leone (song), by Kanye West [2005]

When a rapper jumps on a beat, he adds his own rhythm. Sometimes you stay in the pocket of the beat and just let the rhymes land on the square so that the beat and flow become one. But sometimes the flow chops up the beat, breaks the beat into smaller units, forces in multiple syllables and repeated sounds and internal rhymes, or hangs a drunken leg over the last bap and keeps going, sneaks out of that bitch.

Decoded [2010]

Monty Python’s Flying Circus

1969–1974¹

And now for something completely different.

Recurring phrase

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.

Series 1, episode 8 [1969]

I cut down trees, I skip and jump,

I like to press wild flowers.

I put on women’s clothing

And hang around in bars.

Series 1, episode 9

Well it certainly looks as though we’re in for a splendid afternoon’s sport in this the 127th Upperclass Twit of the Year Show.

Series 1, episode 12

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Series 2, episode 2 [1970]

Mr. Bun: What have you got, then?

Waitress: Well there’s egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam; or lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam.

Series 2, episode 12

Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (screenplay) [1979], spoken by John Cleese as the spokesman of the People’s Front of Judea

Patton Oswalt

1969–

In the center of the wasteland that was once America in 2017 should be a huge monument that just says “… BUT HER E-MAILS.”

Tweet [December 9, 2016]

Trey Parker

1969–

and

Matt Stone

1971–

Oh my God, they killed Kenny!

Catchphrase, South Park (television series) [1997– ]

Sheryl Sandberg

1969–

Lean In.

Title of book [2013]

Sesame Street

1969–

Me want cookie!

Spoken by Cookie Monster²

It’s not that easy bein’ green.

Bein’ Green.³ Sung by Kermit the Frog

Timothy Snyder

1969–

The Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers, some of which we can only estimate, some of which we can reconstruct with fair precision. It is for us as scholars to seek these numbers and to put them into perspective. It is for us as humanists to turn the numbers back into people. If we cannot do that, then Hitler and Stalin have shaped not only our world, but our humanity.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin [2010]

Post-truth is pre-fascism.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century [2017]

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

On Tyranny

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

On Tyranny

Kara Walker

1969–

I often compare my method of working to that of a well-meaning freed woman in a Northern state who is attempting to delineate the horrors of Southern slavery but with next to no resources, other than some paper and a pen knife and some people she’d like to kill.

Interview [1996]

Colson Whitehead

1969–

No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey’s, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge.… You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.

The Colossus of New York [2004]

Paul Thomas Anderson

1970–

Here: if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw; there it is, that’s the straw, see? Watch it. My straw reaches across the room, and starts to drink your milkshake: I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!

There Will Be Blood (screenplay) [2007], spoken by Daniel Day-Lewis

If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you’d be the first person in the history of the world.

The Master (screenplay) [2012], spoken by Philip Seymour Hoffman

If we meet again in the next life, you will be my sworn enemy, and I will show you no mercy.

The Master, spoken by Philip Seymour Hoffman

Charles M. Blow

1970–

A madman and his legislative minions are holding America hostage. There are no new words to express it; there is no new and novel way to catalog it. It is what it is and has been from day one: The most extraordinary and profound electoral mistake America has made in our lifetimes and possibly ever.

The Hijacked American Presidency. In the New York Times [July 3, 2017]

Dave Eggers

1970–

We’ve become a nation of indoor cats.… A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers.

A Hologram for the King [2012], ch. 2

You sit at a desk twelve hours a day and you have nothing to show for it except for some numbers that won’t exist or be remembered in a week. You’re leaving no evidence you lived. There’s no proof.

The Circle [2013]

Tina Fey

1970–

Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.

Bossypants [2011]

Eric Garner

1970–2014

I can’t breathe.

Last recorded words, repeated eleven times after being held in a chokehold by an arresting police officer in Staten Island, New York [July 17, 2014]

Marlon James

1970–

Killing don’t need no reason. This is ghetto. Reason is for rich people. We have madness.

A Brief History of Seven Killings [2014]

It’s not for the black person to be more open-minded. It’s for the white person to be less racist.

Why I’m Done Talking About Diversity [2016]

Naomi Klein

1970–

Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate [2014]

Lemony Snicket [Daniel Handler]

1970–

If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.

The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #1) [1999]

Christopher Nolan

1970–

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

The Dark Knight (screenplay) [2008], written with Jonathan Nolan; spoken by Michael Caine

M. Night Shyamalan

1970–

I see dead people.

The Sixth Sense (screenplay) [1999], spoken by Haley Joel Osment

Peter Strzok

1970–

I have the utmost respect for Congress’s oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart.

Congressional hearing on the Trump campaign [July 12, 2018]

Matt Taibbi

1970–

[Goldman Sachs] is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Rolling Stone [July 2009]. The Great American Bubble Machine

Uma Thurman

1970–

Personally, it has taken me forty-seven years to stop calling people who are mean to you “in love” with you. It took a long time because I think that as little girls we are conditioned to believe that cruelty and love somehow have a connection and that is like the sort of era that we need to evolve out of.

Quoted in the New York Times [February 3, 2018]

Kevin Young

1970–

Falsetto is the supernatural made vocal, Ariel for the airwaves: simultaneously hypermasculine and lovingly feminine, sexy yet chaste, falsetto in soul music is a sign of vulnerability that emerges from strength.

The Grey Album [2012]

What if truth is not an absolute or relative, but a skill—a muscle, like memory—that collectively we have neglected so much that we have grown measurably weaker at using it?

Bunk [2017]

Megan Abbott

1971–

There’s something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.

Dare Me [2012]

I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?

The Fever [2014]

Marc Andreessen

1971–

Software is eating the world.

Why Software Is Eating the World, Wall Street Journal [August 20, 2011]

Julian Assange

1971–

It is impossible to correct abuses unless we know that they’re going on.

Remarks to Oslo Freedom Forum [April 26–28, 2010]

Gillian Flynn

1971–

It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

Gone Girl [2012]

Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot.

Gone Girl

Terrance Hayes

1971–

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame. I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat-Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin [2018]

Elon Musk

1971–

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.

Quoted in Bloomberg Businessweek [September 14, 2012]

With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.

Statement at the MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium [October 2014]

Viet Thanh Nguyen

1971–

Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity.

The Sympathizer [2015]

All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.

Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War [2016]

Thomas Piketty

1971–

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century [2013]¹

It seems to me that all social scientists, all journalists and commentators, all activists in the unions and in politics of whatever stripe, and especially all citizens should take a serious interest in money, its measurement, the facts surrounding it, and its history. Those who have a lot of it never fail to defend their interests.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Justin Trudeau

1971–

Canadians, we are polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.

G7 Summit, Quebec [June 9, 2018]

Chuck Klosterman

1972–

I have always tried to live by a simple principle: If I am sober enough to drive, I am too sober to dance.

Fargo Rock City [2001]

Yiyun Li

1972–

Loneliness is the inability to speak with another in one’s private language. That emptiness is filled with public language or romanticized connections.

To Speak Is To Blunder [2016]

The Notorious B.I.G. [Christopher Wallace]

1972–1997

Mo Money, Mo Problems

Life after Death [1997]. Song title; album released posthumously

Gwyneth Paltrow

1972–

Conscious Uncoupling

Title of statement on separating from Chris Martin, citing family therapist Katherine Woodward Thomas [March 25, 2014]

Ben Sasse

1972–

Don’t let nihilists become your drug dealers. There are some who want to burn it all down. We met some of them today. But they aren’t going to win. Don’t let them be your prophets.

Speech in Senate [January 6, 2021]

Tarana Burke

1973–

Me Too.¹

Phrase used to raise awareness of sexual abuse and assault [2006]

Justin Haythe

1973–

No one forgets the truth, Frank; they just get better at lying.

Revolutionary Road (screenplay) [2008], based on the 1961 novel by Richard Yates

Nas [Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones]

1973–

I never sleep ’cause sleep is the cousin of death.

Illmatic [1994]. N. Y. State of Mind

Maggie Nelson

1973–

Loneliness is solitude with a problem.

Bluets [2009]

So far as I can tell, most worthwhile pleasures on this earth slip between gratifying another and gratifying oneself. Some would call that an ethics.

The Argonauts [2015]

D’Angelo [Michael Eugene Archer]

1974–

All we wanted was a chance to talk

’Stead we only got outlined in chalk

Black Messiah [2014]. The Charade

Miranda July

1974–

Have you ever wanted something very badly and then gotten it. Then you know that winning is many things, but it is never the thing you thought it would be.

Birthmark [2003]

All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.

It Chooses You [2011]

Sarah Manguso

1974–

To write a diary is to make a series of choices about what to omit, what to forget.

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary [2015]

John Jeremiah Sullivan

1974–

Given the relevant maps and a pointer, I think I could convince even the most exacting minds that when the vast and blood-soaked jigsaw puzzle that is this country’s regional scheme coalesced into more or less its present configuration after the Civil War, somebody dropped a piece, which left a void, and they called the void Central Indiana.

The Final Comeback of Axl Rose [2006]

Ta-Nehisi Coates

1975–

To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting America’s origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte.

The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic [May 21, 2014]

All our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

Between the World and Me [2015]

In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.

Between the World and Me

Teju Cole

1975–

I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

Tweet [March 8, 2012]

Voting for Obama, in spite of my strong objections both to some of his ideas and to much of the system in which he functioned, was a declaration, mostly to myself, that we participate in things not because they are ideal but because they are not.

Known and Strange Things [2016]. The Reprint

Robert Lopez

1975–

and

Jeff Marx

1970–

The Internet Is for Porn

Avenue Q [2002]. Title of song

Everyone’s a little bit racist

Sometimes.

Doesn’t mean we go

Around committing hate crimes.

Look around and you will find

No one’s really color blind.

Avenue Q

Zadie Smith

1975–

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

White Teeth [2000]

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

The Danger of a Single Story [July 2009]

Yuval Noah Harari

1976–

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind [2014]

In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow [2015]

Sheila Heti

1976–

We live in an age of some really great blow-job artists. Every era has its art form. The nineteenth century, I know, was tops for the novel.

How Should a Person Be? [2012]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

1977–

The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.

Half of a Yellow Sun [2006]

Elif Batuman

1977–

If I could start over today, I would choose literature again. If the answers exist in the world or in the universe, I still think that’s where we’re going to find them.

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them [2010]

What did you know about Uzbekistan once you learned that Old Uzbek had a hundred different words for crying?

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

Eula Biss

c. 1977–

Wealthier countries have the luxury of entertaining fears the rest of the world cannot afford.

On Immunity: An Inoculation [2014]

John Oliver

1977–

If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.

Last Week Tonight [June 1, 2014]

Jesmyn Ward

1977–

Replace ropes with bullets. Hound dogs with German shepherds. A gray uniform with a bulletproof vest. Nothing is new.

The Fire This Time [2016]

Kanye West

1977–

Name one genius that ain’t crazy.

The Life of Pablo [2016]. Feedback

You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy.

Tweet [April 25, 2018]

Ben Lerner

1979–

Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I’d come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity.

Leaving the Atocha Station [2011]

Scottie Nell Hughes

1980–

[Defending Donald Trump’s unsupported statement that millions of people voted illegally in 2016:] And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts—they’re not really facts. Everybody has a way—it’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not truth. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts.

The Diane Rehm Show [November 30, 2016]

Lin-Manuel Miranda

1980–

The ten-dollar Founding Father without a father

Got a lot farther by working a lot harder

By being a lot smarter

By being a self-starter

Hamilton: The Musical [2015]. Alexander Hamilton

A civics lesson from a slaver. Hey neighbor

Your debts are paid cuz you don’t pay for labor

“We plant seeds in the South. We create.”

Yeah, keep ranting

We know who’s really doing the planting

Hamilton: The Musical. Cabinet Battle #1

But they don’t have a plan, they just hate mine!

Hamilton: The Musical. Cabinet Battle #1

Legacy, what is a legacy?

It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see

I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me

America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me

You let me make a difference

A place where even orphan immigrants

Can leave their fingerprints and rise up

Hamilton: The Musical. The World Was Wide Enough

Death doesn’t discriminate

between the sinners and the saints

It takes and it takes and it takes

Hamilton: The Musical. The World Was Wide Enough

Immigrants, we get the job done

Look how far I come

Look how far I come

Look how far I come

We get the job done

The Hamilton Mixtape [2016]. Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)

Beyoncé [Giselle Knowles]

1981–

Singin’ freedom

Freedom

Where are you?

’Cause I need freedom, too

I break chains all by myself

Won’t let my freedom rot in hell

Hey! I’ma keep running

’Cause a winner don’t quit on themselves

“Freedom” from Lemonade [2016]

Justin Timberlake

1981–

I am sorry if anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance at the Super Bowl. It was not intentional and is regrettable.

Apologizing for brief exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast [February 2, 2004]

Pete Buttigieg

1982–

That’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me—your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.

Remarks at GBTQ Victory Fund event [April 7, 2019]

Ibram X. Kendi

1982–

One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of “not racist.”

How to Be an Anti-Racist [2019]

Leslie Jamison

1983–

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse.

The Empathy Exams [2014]

I wanted to be loved because I deserved it. Except I was scared to be loved like this, because what if I stopped deserving it? Unconditional love was insulting, but conditional love was terrifying.

The Recovering [2018]

Edward [Joseph] Snowden

1983–

If living unfreely but comfortably is something you’re willing to accept—and I think many of us are, it’s the human nature—you can get up every day, you can go to work, you can collect your large paycheck for relatively little work, against the public interest, and go to sleep at night after watching your shows.

Video interview with Glenn Greenwald, Hong Kong [June 2013]

I do not want to live in a world where we have no privacy and no freedom, where the unique value of the Internet is snuffed out.

Video interview with Glenn Greenwald, Hong Kong

I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.

Quoted in The Guardian [June 2013]

Amy Winehouse

1983–2011

You should be stronger than me

You’ve been here seven years longer than me

Don’t you know you’re supposed to be the man?

Not pale in comparison to who you think I am

Frank [2003]. Stronger Than Me

I ain’t got the time

And if my daddy thinks I’m fine

Just try to make me go to rehab

I won’t go, go, go.

Back to Black [2006]. Rehab

Scarlett Johansson

1984–

The Internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself.

Washington Post [December 31, 2018]

Marie Kondo

1984–

I came to the conclusion that the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in one’s hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up [2014]

Meghan McCain

1984–

We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness—the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.

Eulogy for John McCain [September 1, 2018]

J. D. Vance

1984–

Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it—not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis [2016]

Mark Zuckerberg

1984–

Young people are just smarter.

Remarks at Stanford University [March 2007]

I’m also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about. I bet there is.

Q&A on Facebook [April 14, 2015]

Usain Bolt

1986–

I just blew my mind. And I blew the world’s mind.

After setting a world record winning the 200-meter race at the Beijing Olympics [August 20, 2008]

Ryan Coogler

1986–

and

Joe Robert Cole

Wakanda forever!

Black Panther (screenplay) [2018]

Lady Gaga [Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta]

1986–

I’m beautiful in my way

’Cause God makes no mistakes

I’m on the right track, baby

I was born this way

Born This Way [2011]

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

1986–

I’m not obsessed with sex. I just can’t stop thinking about it. The performance of it. The awkwardness of it, the drama of it. The moment you realize someone wants your body… Not so much the feeling of it.

Fleabag [2016], season 1, episode 2

He’s one of those men who is explosively sexually inappropriate with everyone but makes you feel bad if you take offence because he was just ‘being fun.’

Fleabag, 1, 3

Colin Kaepernick

1987–

[On his refusal to stand for the playing of the national anthem:] I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.

[August 26, 2016]

Kendrick Lamar

1987–

And I’m not sure why I’m infatuated with death

My imagination is surely an aggravation of threats

That can come about, ’cause the tongue is mighty powerful

And I can name a list of your favorites that probably vouch

Maybe cause I’m a dreamer and sleep is the cousin of death

Really stuck in the scheme of wonderin’ when I’mma rest.

good kid, m.A.A.d. city [2012]. Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

1989–

Congresswomen dance too!

Tweet [January 4, 2019]

The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are.… If that doesn’t bother you… I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not—“never again” means something.

On Instagram Live [June 17, 2019]

Sally Rooney

1991–

Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.

Conversations with Friends [2017]

Simone [Arianne] Biles

1997–

We have to protect our minds and our bodies and not just go out and do what the world wants us to do… We’re not just athletes, we’re people at the end of the day and sometimes you just have to step back.

Statement on withdrawing from competition at Tokyo Olympics [July 27, 2021]

Malala Yousafzai

1997–

Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons.

Address at the United Nations [July 12, 2013]

Amanda Gorman

1998–

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:

That even as we grieved, we grew

That even as we hurt, we hoped

That even as we tired, we tried

“The Hill We Climb,” poem read at inauguration of President Biden [January 20, 2021]

When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid.

The new dawn blooms as we free it.

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

“The Hill We Climb,” poem read at inauguration of President Biden

Emma Gonzáles

1999–

Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have ever been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say that tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say that no laws could have been able to prevent the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.

Rally, Fort Lauderdale, Florida [February 17, 2018]

Darnella Frazier

2003–

A year ago, today I witnessed a murder. The victim’s name was George Floyd… It changed me. It changed how I viewed life. It made me realize how dangerous it is to be Black in America. We shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells around police officers, the same people that are supposed to protect and serve… I am 18 now and I still hold the weight and trauma of what I witnessed a year ago. It’s a little easier now, but I’m not who I used to be… My video didn’t save George Floyd, but it put his murderer away and off the streets.

Statement on Facebook [May 25, 2021]; Frazier recorded Floyd’s death at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin and testified at Chauvin’s trial

Greta Thunberg

2003–

Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.

Speech at United Nations climate summit [December 2018]

Anonymous

Sumer is icumen in,

Lhude sing cuccu!

Groweth sed, and bloweth med,

And springth the wude nu —

Sing cuccu!¹

Cuckoo Song [c. 1250]

A new broom sweeps clean.

Saying [13th century]

Ich am of Irlonde

Ant of the holy lande

    Of Irlonde.

Gode sire, pray ich the,

For of saynte charite,

Come ant dance wyth me

    In Irlonde.

Ich Am of Irlonde² [14th century]

When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then a gentleman?

Text used by JOHN BALL for his speech at Blackheath to the men in Wat Tyler’s Rebellion [1381]

I must go walk so the wood so wild,

        And wander here and there

        In dread and deadly fear;

For where I trusted I am beguiled,

        And all for one.

English verse [15th century]

I sing of a maiden

That is makeless;

King of all kings

To her son she ches.

Carol. I Sing of a Maiden [15th century]

Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.

Proverb³

A fool’s paradise.

Paston Letters [1462], no. 457

O Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind.

Everyman [before 1500], l. 119

Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide,

In thy most need to go by thy side.

Everyman, l. 522

O Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

That the small rain down can rain?

Christ, that my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again!

O Western Wind [c. 1530]

Love me little, love me long,

Is the burden of my song.

Love Me Little [1569–1570], refrain

Multiplication is vexation,

Division is as bad;

The rule of three doth puzzle me,

And practice drives me mad.

Elizabethan MS [1570]

Alas, my Love! ye do me wrong

To cast me off discourteously:

And I have loved you so long,

Delighting in your company.

From A Handful of Pleasant Delights [1584], st. 1

Greensleeves was all my joy,

Greensleeves was my delight;

Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

And who but Lady Greensleeves.

From A Handful of Pleasant Delights, refrain

Where griping griefs the heart would wound

And doleful dumps the mind oppress,

There music with her silver sound

With speed is wont to send redress.⁴

A Song to the Lute in Musicke, st. 1

A fool and his money are soon parted.

English proverb

April is in my mistress’ face,

And July in her eyes hath place,

Within her bosom is September,

But in her heart a cold December.

From THOMAS MORLEY, Madrigals to Four Voices [1594]

Hobson’s choice⁵

Phrase meaning no choice

Kill then, and bliss me,

But first come kiss me.

From THOMAS MORLEY, The First Book of Ballets to Five Voices [1595]

Shoot, false Love, I care not.

Spend thy shafts and spare not.

From THOMAS MORLEY, The First Book of Ballets to Five Voices

I was more true to Love than Love to me.

From JOHN DOWLAND, The First Book of Songs or Airs [1597]

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.

Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care.

The Passionate Pilgrim [1599]

Jerusalem, my happy home,

When shall I come to thee?

When shall my sorrows have an end?

Thy joys when shall I see?

The Song of Mary [1601]

Turn again, Whittington,

Lord Mayor of London.¹

Refrain of Bow Bells heard by Dick Whittington [c. 1605]

If you will not when you may

You shall not when you will, sir.

Blow Away the Morning Dew (Child Ballad no. 112) [1609]

From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rags would rend ye,

And the spirit that stands by the naked man

In the book of Moons defend ye!

Tom o’ Bedlam [17th century], st. 1

The law locks up both man and woman

Who steals the goose from off the common,

But lets the greater felon loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

From EDWARD POTTS CHEYNEY, Social and Industrial History of England [1901], introduction

The silver swan, who living had no note,

When death approached unlocked her silent throat;

Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,

Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:

Farewell, all joys; O death, come close mine eyes;

More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.

From ORLANDO GIBBONS, The First Set of Madrigals and Motets of Five Parts [1612], I

Stay, O sweet, and do not rise!

The light that shines comes from thine eyes;

The day breaks not: it is my heart,

Because that you and I must part.

Stay, or else my joys will die,

And perish in their infancy.²

From JOHN DOWLAND, A Pilgrim’s Solace [1612]

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;

He chastens and hastens his will to make known;

The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing:

Sing praises to his Name; he forgets not his own.

Hymn³ [1625]

If there is a paradise on the face of the earth,

It is this, oh! it is this, oh! it is this.

Mogul Inscription in the Red Fort at Delhi [1640]

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

Legend related to the “Three Wise Monkeys” carved over door of Sacred Stable, Nikko, Japan [17th century]

Over the mountains and over the waves,

Under the fountains and under the graves;

Under floods that are deepest, which Neptune obey,

Over rocks that are steepest, Love will find out the way.

Love Will Find Out the Way, st. 1

All the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous.

From the inscription on the tomb of the Duchess of Newcastle in Westminster Abbey [1673]

Begone, dull Care! I prithee begone from me!

Begone, dull Care! Thou and I shall never agree.

From JOHN PLAYFORD, Musical Companion [1687]

Carriages without horses shall go,

And accidents fill the world with woe.

Attributed to Mother Shipton⁴

Around the world thoughts shall fly

In the twinkling of an eye.

Attributed to Mother Shipton

Under water men shall walk,

Shall ride, shall sleep, and talk;

In the air men shall be seen

In white, in black, and in green.

Attributed to Mother Shipton

Iron in the water shall float

As easy as a wooden boat.

Attributed to Mother Shipton

A swarm of bees in May

Is worth a load of hay;

A swarm of bees in June

Is worth a silver spoon;

A swarm of bees in July

Is not worth a fly.

Old English proverb

When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out the window.

Saying [17th century]

Please to remember the fifth of November,

Gunpowder treason and plot.

Guy Fawkes rhyme [17th century]

It is so soon that I am done for,

I wonder what I was begun for.

For a child aged three weeks, Cheltenham Churchyard

Live and let live.

Scottish proverb

Coming through the rye.¹

The Bob-tailed Lass, refrain

God rest you merry, gentlemen,

Let nothing you dismay;

Remember Christ our Savior,

Was born on Christmas Day.

Carol

The holly and the ivy,

When they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood,

The holly bears the crown:

The rising of the sun

And the running of the deer,

The playing of the merry organ,

Sweet singing in the choir.

Carol

Open sesame!

The Arabian Nights (A Thousand and One Nights). The History of Ali Baba

Drive a coach and six through an Act of Parliament.

Credited to Sir Stephen Rice [1637–1715], Chief Baron of the Exchequer, by MACAULAY in History of England [1849–1861], ch. 12

The Campbells are comin’, oho, oho.

Song [c. 1715]

Fools’ names, like fools’ faces,

Are often seen in public places.²

Saying

Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules;

Of Hector, and Lysander, and such great names as these;

But of all the world’s brave heroes, there’s none that can compare

With a tow, row, row, row, row, row for the British Grenadier.

The British Grenadiers [c. 1750]

The united voice of all His Majesty’s free and loyal subjects in America—liberty and property, and no stamps.

Motto of various American colonial newspapers [1765–1766]

Yankee Doodle came to town

Riding on a pony,

He stuck a feather in his hat

And called it macaroni.

Yankee Doodle, keep it up,

Yankee Doodle dandy,

Mind the music and the step,

And with the girls be handy.

Yankee Doodle,³ st. 1 and chorus

Man may work from sun to sun,

But woman’s work is never done.

Saying

Count that day lost whose low descending sun

Views from thy hand no worthy action done.⁴

Saying

Don’t tread on me.

Motto of the first official American flag; first raised by Lieutenant John Paul Jones in Commodore Esek Hopkins’s flagship Alfred [December 3, 1775]

Our cargoes of meat, drink, and clothes beat the Dutch.

Siege of Boston [1775]

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.⁵

Motto on Thomas Jefferson’s seal [c. 1776]

There were three gypsies a-come to my door,

And downstairs ran this lady, O!

One sang high and another sang low,

And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!

The Wraggle-Taggle Gypsies, O!, st. 1

She’s gone with the wraggle-taggle gypsies, O!

The Wraggle-Taggle Gypsies, O!, st. 2

Down in the valley, the valley so low,

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

Down in the Valley

The goose hangs high.¹

Saying

O Paddy dear, an’ did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?

The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!

No more St. Patrick’s Day we’ll keep, his color can’t be seen,

For there’s a cruel law agin the wearin’ o’ the Green!

The Wearing o’ the Green [c. 1795]

For they’re hangin’ men an’ women there for wearin’ o’ the Green.

The Wearing o’ the Green

With drums and guns, and guns and drums

The enemy nearly slew ye.

My darling dear, you look so queer,

Oh, Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

Irish folk song, st. 1

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat,

Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat;

If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,

If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you!

Beggar’s rhyme

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties

And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!

Cornish prayer

O God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.

Breton fishermen’s prayer

Rest and be thankful.

Inscription on stone seat in the Scottish Highlands, and title of one of William Wordsworth’s poems

Don’t cross the bridge until you come to it.

Proverb

It’s gude to be merry and wise,

It’s gude to be honest and true;

It’s gude to be off with the old love,

Before you are on with the new.²

Rhyme

Oh, ye’ll tak’ the high road an’ I’ll tak’ the low road,

An’ I’ll be in Scotland before ye;

But me and my true love will never meet again,

On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

Loch Lomond, refrain

The woods are full of them.

Quoted by ALEXANDER WILSON, American Ornithology [1808], preface

I wooed her in the wintertime

And in the summer too;

And the only, only thing I did that was wrong

Was to keep her from the foggy, foggy dew.

The Foggy, Foggy Dew, st. 1

Turkey in the straw, turkey in the hay,

Roll ’em up and twist ’em up a high tuckahaw,

And hit ’em up a tune called Turkey in the Straw.

Turkey in the Straw,³ st. 1 and refrain

Sugar in the gourd and honey in the horn,

I never was so happy since the hour I was born.

Turkey in the Straw, st. 6

Jimmie crack corn and I don’t care,

Old Massa’s gone away.

The Blue-tail Fly, chorus

Give me that old-time religion,

It’s good enough for me.

Hymn

It was good for Paul and Silas

And it’s good enough for me.

Hymn

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.⁴

Proverbial saying

I’ve been working on the railroad

All the livelong day,

I’ve been working on the railroad

To pass the time away.

Don’t you hear the whistle blowing?

Rise up so early in the morn.

Don’t you hear the captain shouting,

“Dinah blow your horn.”

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad

From the halls of Montezuma,

To the shores of Tripoli,

We fight our country’s battles

On the land as on the sea.

The Marines’ Hymn [1847], st. 1

’Tis the gift to be simple,

’Tis the gift to be free,

’Tis the gift to come down

Where we ought to be.

Simple Gifts. Shaker song [c. 1848], st. 1

Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight,

And dance by the light of the moon?

Buffalo Gals

Women and children first.

The Birkenhead Drill¹ [February 26, 1852]

Up and down the City Road,

In and out the Eagle,

That’s the way the money goes—

Pop goes the weasel!

Pop Goes the Weasel² [c. 1853]

Free soil, free men, free speech, Frémont³

Republican party rallying cry [1856]

Muscular Christianity⁴

Popular term in the 19th century for Christian social reform in England

It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.

The Chicago Times [1861]

John Henry told his captain,

Says, “A man ain’t nothin’ but a man,

And before I’d let your steam drill beat me down, Lord,

I’d die with this hammer in my hand.”

John Henry [1873]

There is a tavern in the town,

And there my true love sits him down,

And drinks his wine with laughter and with glee,

And never, never thinks of me.

There Is a Tavern in the Town, st. 1

Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu, adieu, adieu,

I can no longer stay with you.

I’ll hang my harp on a weeping willow-tree,

And may the world go well with thee.

There Is a Tavern in the Town, refrain

I belong to that highly respectable tribe

Which is known as the Shabby Genteel…

Too proud to beg, too honest to steal.

The Shabby Genteel; sung by Sol Smith Russell [1848–1901] in A Poor Relation

Sow a thought, and you reap an act;

Sow an act, and you reap a habit;

Sow a habit, and you reap a character;

Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

Quoted by SAMUEL SMILES [1812–1904], in Life and Labor [1887]

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.

Practice sentence used in typing⁵

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Practice sentence used in typing (using whole alphabet)

As Maine goes, so goes the nation.⁶

American political maxim [c. 1888]

Lizzie Borden took an ax

And gave her mother forty whacks;

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one!

Rhyme popular after the murder trial of Lizzie Borden, Fall River, Massachusetts [June 1893]

Oh, why don’t you work like other men do?

How the hell can I work when there’s no work to do?

Hallelujah, I’m a Bum⁷ [c. 1897]

Remember the Maine!⁸

Slogan in the Spanish-American War [1898]

Frankie and Johnny were lovers, my gawd, 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 Johnny,⁹ st. 1

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs,

The homely hen lays one.

The codfish never cackles

To tell you what she’s done.

And so we scorn the codfish,

While the humble hen we prize,

Which only goes to show you

That it pays to advertise.

It Pays to Advertise

One white foot—try him,

Two white feet—buy him,

Three white feet—look well about him;

Four white feet—go without him.¹

Rhyme for a horse-buyer

You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much.

Attributed to JAMES BARNES [1866–1936]

There’s a sucker born every minute.

Saying²

Hit’s a lot worse to be soul-hungry than to be body-hungry.

A Kentucky mountain woman asking for her granddaughter to be admitted to Berea College high school [c. 1900]. Quoted by CARL R. WOODWARD in The Wonderful World of Books, edited by Alfred Stefferud [1953]

There ain’t no such animal.

Caption for cartoon of a farmer at the circus looking at a dromedary. From Life [November 7, 1907], credited to Everybody’s Magazine

The Pyramids first, which in Egypt were laid;

Next Babylon’s Gardens, for Amytis made;

Then Mausolos’ Tomb of affection and guilt;

Fourth, the Temple of Dian in Ephesus built;

The Colossus of Rhodes, cast in brass, to the Sun;

Sixth, Jupiter’s Statue, by Phidias done;

The Pharos of Egypt comes last, we are told,

Or the Palace of Cyrus, cemented with gold.

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Use it up, wear it out;

Make it do, or do without.

New England maxim

Something old, something new,

Something borrowed, something blue,

And a lucky sixpence in her shoe.³

Wedding rhyme

Church ain’t out till the fat lady sings.⁴

From FABIA RUE SMITH and CHARLES RAYFORD SMITH, Southern Words and Sayings [1976]

Would you like to sin

With Elinor Glyn

On a tiger skin?

Or would you prefer

To err with her

On some other fur?

On Elinor Glyn’s romantic novel, Three Weeks (1907), and its episode of illicit sex on a tiger skin

We want bread and roses too.

Slogan of women strikers, Lawrence, Massachusetts [1912]

“Shine, Shine, save poor me!

I’ll give you all the pussy a Shine can see.”

Shine says, “Now pussy’s good, but pussy don’t last—

Shine’s going to save his own black ass.”

And Shine swam on.

Shine and the Titanic⁵

Monkey in the tree,

Lion on the ground.

Monkey kept on signifying

But he didn’t come down.

The Signifying Monkey

Old soldiers never die;

They only fade away!⁶

British Army song [c. 1915]

I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.

A Mother’s Plea for Peace [1915]

She was poor but she was honest,

And her parents was the same,

Till she met a city feller,

And she lost her honest name.

Song [c. 1915]

It’s the same the whole world over,

It’s the poor wot gets the blame,

It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure,

Ain’t it all a bloomin’ shame?

Song, chorus

Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.⁷

Saying popular with American soldiers during World War I [1917–1918]

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Small boy to “Shoeless Joe” Jackson of the Chicago White Sox, as he emerged from a grand jury session [1920] on corruption in the 1919 World Series

One picture is worth a thousand words.

Misattributed “Chinese proverb”¹

Don’t sell America short.

Saying [c. 1925]

Don’t lose

Your head

To gain a minute

You need your head

Your brains are in it.

Burma-Shave, roadside advertisement [1925–1963]

God is in the details.

Saying²

Lord, through this hour

Be Thou our Guide,

So by Thy power

No foot shall slide.

Westminster Chimes

Climb high

Climb far

Your goal the sky

Your aim the star.

Inscription on Hopkins Memorial Steps, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Mother, may I go out to swim?

Yes, my darling daughter:

Hang your clothes on a hickory limb

And don’t go near the water.

Rhyme

The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.

Slogan of United States Army Service Forces

Loose lips sink ships.

Government slogan, World War II

Kilroy was here.

Army saying, World War II

SNAFU (Situation Normal All Fucked Up).

Army saying, World War II

G.I. Joe

World War II term for infantryman³

Keep Calm and Carry On

British Ministry of Information; slogan [1939] for poster that was never issued; rediscovered in 2000

And when he goes to heaven

To Saint Peter he will tell:

Another Marine reporting, sir;

I’ve served my time in hell!⁴

Epitaph on grave of Pfc. Cameron of the Marine Corps, Guadalcanal [1942]

Stay with me, God. The night is dark,

The night is cold: my little spark

Of courage dies. The night is long;

Be with me, God, and make me strong.

A Soldier—His Prayer,⁵ st. 1

We sure liberated the hell out of this place.

American soldier in the ruins of a French village [1944]; quoted by MAX MILLER, The Far Shore [1945]

Spartan simplicity must be observed. Nothing will be done merely because it contributes to beauty, convenience, comfort, or prestige.

From the Office of the Chief Signal Officer, U.S. Army [May 29, 1945]

In brightest day, in blackest night,⁶

No evil shall escape my sight.

Let those who worship evil’s might

Beware my power, Green Lantern’s light!

Green Lantern’s oath in Green Lantern comics [mid-1940s onward]

One man, one vote.

Civil rights slogan

Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate.

Instructions on punch cards and computer cards [c. 1950s]

“Murphy’s Law”: If something can go wrong, it will.

Saying⁷ [1950s]

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

Saying [1953], often attributed to U.C.L.A. football coach Henry (“Red”) Sanders [1905–1958]⁸

What, Me Worry?

Mad magazine (“Alfred E. Neuman”) motto [1955], adapted from a turn-of-the-century advertising slogan

Black is beautiful.

Slogan [1960s]

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,

We shall overcome some day

Oh, deep in my heart I do believe

We shall overcome some day.

Adapted [1960s] for the civil rights movement from an old religious song¹

Eyeball to eyeball.²

Common expression

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.

Plaque on moon marking the U.S. landing there [July 1969]

Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here.

Invented [early 1970s] by fans of Star Trek television series³

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

Feminist slogan coined by Irina Dunn [1970]

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

United Negro College Fund advertising slogan⁴ [1972]

Anonymous: African

In the time when Dendid created all things,

He created the sun,

And the sun is born, and dies, and comes again.

Old Song (Dinka)

He created man,

And man is born, and dies, and does not come again.

Old Song (Dinka)

Somewhere the Sky touches the Earth, and the name of that place is the End.

Saying (Wakamba)

All animals of the forest are alike, though we eat some and not others, because we the Dorobo and the animals all live side by side in the forest.

From a Dorobo

When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.

Proverb (Kikuyu)

To the person who seizes two things, one always slips from his grasp!

Proverb (Swahili)

The lie has seven endings.

Proverb (Swahili)

Goodness sold itself, badness flaunted itself about.

Proverb (Swahili)

Speak silver, reply gold.

Proverb (Swahili)

Leave a log in the water as long as you like: it will never be a crocodile.

Proverb (Guinea-Bissau)

Anonymous: Ballads

The king sits in Dunfermline town

Drinking the blude-red wine.

Sir Patrick Spens, st. 1

I saw the new moon late yestreen

Wi’ the auld moon in her arm;

And if we gang to sea, master,

I fear we’ll come to harm.

Sir Patrick Spens, st. 10

Half owre, half owre to Aberdour,

’Tis fifty fathoms deep;

And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,

Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet!

Sir Patrick Spens, st. 19

“And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear,

Edward, Edward?”

Edward, Edward, st. 7

“The curse of hell frae me sall ye bear,

Sic counsels ye give to me, O!”

Edward, Edward, st. 7

Fight on, my merry men all;

For why, my life is at an end.⁵

Chevy Chase

A fairer lady there never was seen

Than the blind beggar’s daughter of Bethnal Green.

The Beggar’s Daughter of Bethnal Green,⁶ st. 33

When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt,

Did march to the siege of the city of Gaunt,

They mustered their soldiers by two and by three,

And the foremost in battle was Mary Ambree.

Mary Ambree,¹ st. 1

“I’ll rest,” said he, “but thou shalt walk”;

So doth this wandering Jew

From place to place, but cannot rest

For seeing countries new.

The Wandering Jew, st. 9

Glasgerion swore a full great oath,

By oak, and ash and thorn.

Glasgerion, st. 19

In Scarlet town, where I was born,

There was a fair maid dwellin’,

Made every youth cry Well-a-day!

Her name was Barbara Allen.

All in the merry month of May,

When green buds they were swellin’,

Young Jemmy Grove on his deathbed lay,

For love of Barbara Allen.

Barbara Allen’s Cruelty, st. 1, 2

There were three ravens sat on a tree,

They were as black as they might be.

The one of them said to his mate,

“Where shall we our breakfast take?”

The Three Ravens, st. 1, 2

Mony a one for him maks mane,

But nane sall ken where he is gane:

O’er his white banes, when they are bare,

The wind sall blaw for evermair.

The Twa Corbies, st. 5

Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,

O where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl of Murray,

And laid him on the green.

The Bonny Earl of Murray, st. 1

O waly, waly, up the bank,

And waly, waly, doun the brae,

And waly, waly, yon burnside,

Where I and my Love wont to gae!

Waly, Waly, st. 1

“What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son?

What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?”

“I gat eels boil’d in broo’; mother, make my bed soon,

For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.”

Lord Randal

Anonymous: Cowboy Songs

As I was a-walking one morning for pleasure,

I spied a cowpuncher a-riding along.

Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along, Little Dogies

Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies,

It’s your misfortune and none of my own,

Whoopee ti yi yo, git along, little dogies,

For you know Wyoming will be your new home.

Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along, Little Dogies

My foot in the stirrup, my pony won’t stand,

Good-bye, Old Paint, I’m a-leavin’ Cheyenne.

Good-bye, Old Paint

Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,

Best damned cowboy ever was born.

Come-a ti yi youpy, youpy yea, youpy yea,

Come-a ti yi youpy, youpy yea.

The Old Chisholm Trail

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,

As I walked out in Laredo one day,

I spied a poor cowboy wrapped up in white linen,

Wrapped up in white linen as cold as the clay.

The Cowboy’s Lament, st. 1

Oh, beat the drum slowly² and play the fife lowly,

Play the Dead March as you carry me along;

Take me to the green valley, there lay the sod o’er me,

For I’m a young cowboy and I know I’ve done wrong.

The Cowboy’s Lament, refrain

Oh bury me not on the lone prairie

Where the wild coyotes will howl o’er me.

The Dying Cowboy

Oh, bury me out on the prairie,

Where the coyotes may howl o’er my grave.

Bury Me out on the Prairie

        Remember the Red River Valley

And the cowboy that loves you so true.

Red River Valley

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,

Where the deer and the antelope play,

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Home on the Range³ [1873]

Anonymous: French

Revenons à nos moutons [Let us return to our sheep (i.e., subject)].

Maître Pathelin (15th-century farce)

Il ne faut pas être plus royaliste que le roi [One must not be more royalist than the king].

Saying from the time of Louis XVI

Ça ira, ça tiendra [That will be, that will last].

Revolutionary song, based on a phrase of Benjamin Franklin’s

Liberté! Égalité! Fraternité! [Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!]

Phrase from before the French Revolution, officially adopted in 1793

Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse [Everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls].

Proverb

L’amour, l’amour fait tourner le monde [It’s love, it’s love that makes the world go round].

Song

On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs [You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs].

Proverb

Ami, entends-tu

Le vol noir—des corbeaux—sur nos plaines…

Ami, entends-tu

Les cris sourds—du pays—qu’on enchaine.¹

Song of the Partisans [1940s]

Au clair de la lune,

Mon ami Pierrot,

Prête-moi ta plume

Pour écrire un mot.

Au Clair de la Lune²

Anonymous: North American Indian

Screaming the night away

With his great wing feathers

Swooping the darkness up;

I hear the Eagle bird

Pulling the blanket back

Off from the eastern sky.

Invitation Song (Iroquois)

Holy Mother Earth, the trees and all nature are witnesses of your thoughts and deeds.

Saying (Winnebago)

A people without history is like the wind on the buffalo grass.

Saying (Sioux)

Out of the earth

I sing for them

a Horse nation…

I sing for them

the animals.

I Sing for the Animals (Teton Sioux)

O our Mother the Earth, O our Father the Sky,

Your children are we, and with tired backs

We bring you gifts.

Song of the Sky Loom (Tewa)

May the warp be the white light of morning,

May the weft be the red light of evening,

May the fringes be the falling rain,

May the border be the standing rainbow.

Thus weave for us a garment of brightness.

Song of the Sky Loom (Tewa)

Lovely! See the cloud, the cloud appear!

Lovely! See the rain, the rain draw near!

Who spoke?

It was the little corn ear

High on the tip of the stalk.

Corn-grinding Song (Zuñi)

Big Blue Mountain Spirit,

The home made of blue clouds…

I am grateful for that mode of goodness there.

Chant (Apache)³

The black turkey gobbler, the tips of his beautiful tail; above us the dawn becomes yellow.

The sunbeams stream forward.

Black Turkey Gobbler Chant (Apache)⁴

House made of dawn,

House made of evening light,

House made of the dark cloud.…

Dark cloud is at the house’s door,

The trail out of it is dark cloud,

The zigzag lightning stands high upon it.

Night Chant (Navajo)⁵

Happily may I walk.

May it be beautiful before me.

May it be beautiful behind me.

May it be beautiful below me.

May it be beautiful above me.

May it be beautiful all around me.

In beauty it is finished.

Night Chant (Navajo)

Hi! ni! ya! Behold the man of flint, that’s me!

Four lightnings zigzag from me, strike and return.

War Chant (Navajo)

The ancient folk with evil spells, dashed to earth, plowed under!

War Chant (Navajo)

Quarry mine, blessed am I

In the luck of the chase.

Comes the deer to my singing.

Hunting Song (Navajo)

Idlers and cowards are here at home now,

But the youth I love is gone to war, far hence.

Weary, lonely, for me he longs.

Wind Song (Kiowa)

In the beginning God gave to every people a cup of clay, and from this cup they drank their life.

Proverb (Northern Paiute)

As long as the moon shall rise,

As long as the rivers shall flow,

As long as the sun shall shine,

As long as the grass shall grow.

Expression for term of a treaty

It ended…

With his body changed to light,

A star that burns forever in that sky.

The Flight of Quetzalcoatl (Aztec)¹

I was out in my kayak…

and the seal came gently toward me.

Why didn’t I harpoon him?

Was I sorry for him?

Was it the day, the spring day, the seal

playing in the sun

like me?

Spring Fjord (Inuit)²

Anonymous: Nursery Rhymes

A man of words and not of deeds

Is like a garden full of weeds.

A Man of Words and Not of Deeds

It’s like a lion at the door;

And when the door begins to crack,

It’s like a stick across your back;

And when your back begins to smart,

It’s like a penknife in your heart;

And when your heart begins to bleed,

You’re dead, and dead, and dead, indeed.

A Man of Words and Not of Deeds

Cock a doodle doo!

My dame has lost her shoe;

My master’s lost his fiddle stick,

And knows not what to do.

Cock a Doodle Doo

Three blind mice, see how they run!

They all ran after the farmer’s wife,

She cut off their tails with a carving knife,

Did you ever see such a sight in your life,

As three blind mice?

Three Blind Mice

A frog he would a-wooing go.

Sing heigh-ho says Rowley.

A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go

With a rowley powley gammon and spinach,

Heigh-ho says Anthony Rowley.

A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go, chorus

Old King Cole

Was a merry old soul,

And a merry old soul was he,

He called for his pipe,

And he called for his bowl,

And he called for his fiddlers three.

Old King Cole

The King of France went up the hill

With forty thousand men;

The King of France came down the hill

And ne’er went up again.

The King of France

Jack Sprat could eat no fat,

His wife could eat no lean;

And so betwixt them both,

They licked the platter clean.

Jack Sprat

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day.

Rain, Rain

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man,

Bake me a cake as fast as you can;

Pat it and prick it, and mark it with B,

Put it in the oven for baby and me.

Pat-a-Cake

The lion and the unicorn

Were fighting for the crown;

The lion beat the unicorn

All round about the town.

Some gave them white bread,

And some gave them brown;

Some gave them plum cake,

And sent them out of town.

The Lion and the Unicorn

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner,

Eating a Christmas pie.

He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,

And said, “What a good boy am I!”

Little Jack Horner

London Bridge is falling down,

My fair lady.

London Bridge

Tell tale tit,

Your tongue shall be slit,

And all the dogs in our town

Shall have a bit.

Tell Tale Tit

As I was going to St. Ives,

I met a man with seven wives,

Each wife had seven sacks,

Each sack had seven cats,

Each cat had seven kits:

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,

How many were there going to St. Ives?

As I Was Going to St. Ives

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home,

Your house is on fire, and your children will burn.

Ladybug, Ladybug

Hickory dickory dock,

The mouse ran up the clock,

The clock struck one,

The mouse ran down;

Hickory dickory dock.

Hickory Dickory Dock

Baa, baa, black sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three bags full:

One for my master,

And one for my dame,

And one for the little boy

Who lives down the lane.

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells, and cockleshells,

And pretty maids all in a row.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Oranges and lemons,

Say the bells of St. Clement’s.

You owe me five farthings,

Say the bells of St. Martin’s.

When will you pay me?

Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,

Say the bells of Shoreditch.

Oranges and Lemons

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

Oranges and Lemons

“Who killed Cock Robin?”

“I,” said the sparrow,

“With my bow and arrow,

I killed Cock Robin.”

Who Killed Cock Robin?

“Who saw him die?”

“I,” said the fly,

“With my little eye,

I saw him die.”

Who Killed Cock Robin?

This little pig went to market;

This little pig stayed home;

This little pig had roast beef;

This little pig had none;

And this little pig cried, Wee, wee, wee!

All the way home.

This Little Pig

Little boy blue, come blow your horn,

The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn;

But where is the boy who looks after the sheep?

He’s under the haystack fast asleep.

Will you wake him? No, not I,

For if I do, he’ll be sure to cry.

Little Boy Blue

Simple Simon met a pieman

Going to the fair:

Says Simple Simon to the pieman,

“Let me taste your ware.”

Simple Simon

Ding dong bell,

Pussy’s in the well.

Who put her in?

Little Johnny Green.

Ding Dong Bell

Little Tom Tucker

Sings for his supper;

What shall he eat?

White bread and butter.

How will he cut it

Without e’er a knife?

How will he be married

Without e’er a wife?

Little Tom Tucker

High diddle diddle

The cat and the fiddle,

The cow jumped over the moon;

The little dog laughed

To see such craft

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

High Diddle Diddle

Three wise men of Gotham

Went to sea in a bowl:

And if the bowl had been stronger,

My song had been longer.

Three Wise Men of Gotham

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water;

Jack fell down and broke his crown,

And Jill came tumbling after.

Jack and Jill

Seesaw, Margery Daw,

Jacky shall have a new master;

Jacky must have but a penny a day,

Because he can work no faster.

Seesaw, Margery Daw

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief;

Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef.

I went to Taffy’s house, Taffy wasn’t in;

Taffy came to my house and stole a silver pin.

I went to Taffy’s house; Taffy wasn’t home.

Taffy came to my house and stole a marrow bone.

I went to Taffy’s house and Taffy was in bed;

So I picked up the poker and hit him in the head.

Taffy Was a Welshman

The Queen of Hearts

She made some tarts,

All on a summer’s day;

The Knave of Hearts

He stole the tarts,

And took them clean away.

The Queen of Hearts

Bye baby bunting,

Daddy’s gone a-hunting.

Gone to get a rabbit skin

To wrap the baby bunting in.

Bye Baby Bunting

Goosey goosey gander,

Whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs,

And in my lady’s chamber;

There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers;

I took him by the left leg

And threw him down the stairs.

Goosey Goosey Gander

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye,

Four and twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie;

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Wasn’t that a dainty dish

To set before a king?

The king was in his countinghouse

Counting out his money;

The queen was in the parlor

Eating bread and honey;

The maid was in the garden

Hanging out the clothes,

Along came a blackbird,

And snipped off her nose.

Sing a Song of Sixpence

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children she didn’t know what to do;

She gave them some broth without any bread,

She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

There Was an Old Woman

Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross,

To see a fine lady upon a white horse;

Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,

She shall have music wherever she goes.

Ride a Cockhorse

Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,

He learned to play when he was young.

But all the tune that he could play

Was “Over the hills and far away.”

Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son

Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,

Stole a pig, and away he run;

The pig was eat, and Tom was beat,

And Tom went howling down the street.

Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son

“Where are you going to, my pretty maid?”

“I’m going a-milking, sir,” she said.

Where Are You Going To, My Pretty Maid?

“My face is my fortune, sir,” she said.

Where Are You Going To, My Pretty Maid?

“Nobody asked you, sir,” she said.

Where Are You Going To, My Pretty Maid?

One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns;

If you have no daughters, give them to your sons.

Hot Cross Buns

Pease-porridge hot, pease-porridge cold,

Pease-porridge in the pot, nine days old.

Pease-Porridge Hot

Curlylocks, Curlylocks,

Wilt thou be mine?

Thou shalt not wash dishes

Nor yet feed the swine,

But sit on a cushion

And sew a fine seam,

And feed upon strawberries,

Sugar and cream.

Curlylocks

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear

But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear;

The king of Spain’s daughter came to visit me,

And all for the sake of my little nut tree.

I Had a Little Nut Tree

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses

And all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty

Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep,

And cannot tell where to find them;

Leave them alone, and they’ll come home,

And bring their tails behind them.

Little Bo-peep

Little Polly Flinders

Sat among the cinders,

Warming her pretty little toes.

Her mother came and caught her,

And whipped her little daughter

For spoiling her nice new clothes.

Little Polly Flinders

The north wind doth blow,

And we shall have snow,

And what will poor robin do then,

Poor thing? He’ll sit in a barn,

To keep himself warm,

And hide his head under his wing,

Poor thing!

The North Wind Doth Blow

Old mother Hubbard

Went to the cupboard,

To fetch her poor dog a bone;

But when she came there

The cupboard was bare,

And so the poor dog had none.

Old Mother Hubbard

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

I’ve been to London to look at the queen.

Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there?

I frightened a little mouse under the chair.

Pussy Cat

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;

A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Peter Piper

Monday’s child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s child is full of grace,

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go,

Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child has to work for its living,

But a child that’s born on the Sabbath day

Is fair and wise and good and gay.

Monday’s Child Is Fair of Face

Solomon Grundy,

Born on a Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,

Married on Wednesday,

Took ill on Thursday,

Worse on Friday,

Died on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday:

This is the end

Of Solomon Grundy.

Solomon Grundy

What are little boys made of?

Snips and snails, and puppy dogs’ tails;

That’s what little boys are made of.

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice, and everything nice;

That’s what little girls are made of.

What Are Little Girls Made Of?

Hickety pickety, my black hen,

She lays eggs for gentlemen.

Gentlemen come every day

To see what my black hen doth lay.

Hickety Pickety¹

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet,

Eating some curds and whey.

Along came a spider,

And sat down beside her,

And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Little Miss Muffet

Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater,

Had a wife and couldn’t keep her.

He put her in a pumpkin shell,

And there he kept her very well.

Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater

Jack, be nimble,

Jack, be quick,

Jack, jump over the candlestick.

Jack Be Nimble

There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

There Was a Crooked Man

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,

He went to bed with his stockings on;

One shoe off, one shoe on;

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John.

Diddle Diddle Dumpling

Rub-a-dub-dub,

Three men in a tub,

And who do you think they be?

The butcher, the baker,

The candlestick-maker;

And all of them went to sea!

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

I saw three ships come sailing by,

Come sailing by, come sailing by,

I saw three ships come sailing by,

On New Year’s Day in the morning.

I Saw Three Ships

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,

Kitty Fisher found it;

There was not a penny in it,

But a ribbon round it.

Lucy Locket

There were three jolly huntsmen,

As I have heard them say,

And they would go a-hunting

Upon St. David’s Day.

There Were Three Jolly Huntsmen

All day they hunted,

And nothing did they find,

But a ship a-sailing,

A-sailing with the wind.

There Were Three Jolly Huntsmen

O do you know the muffin man,

The muffin man, the muffin man,

O do you know the muffin man,

That lives in Drury Lane?

The Muffin Man

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

To Market, To Market

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester

In a shower of rain;

He stepped in a puddle, up to his middle,

And never went there again.

Doctor Foster

There was an old woman

Lived under a hill;

And if she’s not gone,

She lives there still.

There Was an Old Woman

Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly, lavender’s green;

When I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen.

Lavender’s Blue

A dillar, a dollar,

A ten o’clock scholar,

What makes you come so soon?

You used to come at ten o’clock,

And now you come at noon.

A Dillar, a Dollar

One flew east, one flew west,

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

One Flew East

I had a little pony,

His name was Dapple Gray;

I lent him to a lady

To ride a mile away.

She whipped him, she slashed him,

She rode him through the mire;

I would not lend my pony now

For all the lady’s hire.

I Had a Little Pony

Polly, put the kettle on,

We’ll all have tea.

Polly, Put the Kettle On, st. 1

Sukey, take it off again,

They’ve all gone away.

Polly, Put the Kettle On, st. 1

Little Tommy Tittlemouse

Lived in a little house;

He caught fishes

In other men’s ditches.

Little Tommy Tittlemouse

The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell,

Heigho! the derry oh, the farmer in the dell.

The Farmer in the Dell

Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark,

The beggars are coming to town;

Some in rags, some in tags,

And some in velvet gowns.

Hark! Hark!

Ten little Indians standing in a line—

One went home, and then there were nine.

Ten Little Indians

Bobby Shaftoe’s gone to sea,

Silver buckles on his knee;

He’ll come back and marry me,

Pretty Bobby Shaftoe.

Bobby Shaftoe

Fe fi fo fum!

I smell the blood of an Englishman;

Be he alive or be he dead,

I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

Fe Fi Fo Fum

This is the farmer sowing the corn,

That kept the cock that crowed in the morn,

That waked the priest all shaven and shorn,

That married the man all tattered and torn,

That kissed the maiden all forlorn,

That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,

That tossed the dog

That worried the cat

That killed the rat

That ate the malt

That lay in the house that Jack built.

The House That Jack Built

Anonymous: Russian

An egg is dear on Easter Day.

Proverb

To live a life through is not like crossing a field.¹

Proverb

The eggs do not teach the hen.

Proverb

Live with wolves, howl like a wolf.

Proverb

Anonymous: Shanties

Whiskey is the life of man,

Whiskey, Johnny!

Oh, I’ll drink whiskey while I can,

Whiskey for my Johnny!

Whiskey Johnny

Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!

To me way-aye, blow the man down.

Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow him right down!

Give me some time to blow the man down!

Blow the Man Down

What shall we do with the drunken sailor,

Early in the morning?

The Drunken Sailor

Hooray and up she rises

Early in the morning.

The Drunken Sailor, chorus

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you,

Way-hay, you rolling river!

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you,

Ha-ha, we’re bound away,

’Cross the wide Missouri!

Shenandoah

A-roving, a-roving,

Since roving’s been my ru-i-in,

I’ll go no more a-roving

With you, fair maid!

A-Roving

Glos’ter girls they have no combs,

Heave away, heave away!

They comb their hair with codfish bones.

The Codfish Shanty

    Good-bye, fare you well!

We’re homeward bound for New York town,

Hurrah, my boys, we’re homeward bound!

Good-bye, Fare You Well

Oh, the times are hard and the wages low;

Leave her, Johnny, leave her!

I’ll pack my bag and go below.

It’s time for us to leave her!

Leave Her, Johnny

There were two lofty ships, from old England they set sail,

Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we!…

Cruising down along the shores of High Barbaree!

High Barbaree

There was a ship came from the north country,

And the name of the ship was the Golden Vanity.

And they feared she might be taken by the Turkish enemy,

That sails upon the Lowland, Lowland, Lowland,

That sails upon the Lowland sea.

The Golden Vanity

Then blow ye winds, heigh-ho!

A-roving I will go,

I’ll stay no more on England’s shore,

To hear the music play.

I’m off on the morning train

To cross the raging main,

I’m taking a trip on a Government ship,

Ten thousand miles away!

Ten Thousand Miles Away

Anonymous: Spanish

A enemigo que huye puente de plata [If your enemy turns to flee, give him a silver bridge].

Proverb

Al que madruga Dios le ayuda [God helps those who get up early].

Proverb

Con pan y vino se anda el camino [With bread and wine you can walk your road].

Proverb

El pez muere por la boca [The fish dies because he opens his mouth].

Proverb

En boca cerrada no entran moscas [The closed mouth swallows no flies].

Proverb

No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano [Dawn comes no sooner for the early riser].

Proverb

Quien bien te quiere te hará llorar [Whoever really loves you will make you cry].

Proverb

El oro y amores eran malos de encubrir [Gold and love affairs are difficult to hide].

Proverb

Dios te tenga en su santa mano [God keep you in his holy hand].

A farewell

Anonymous: Spirituals

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,

Nobody knows but Jesus.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,

And the walls come tumbling down.

Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,

A long ways from home,

A long ways from home.

Motherless Child

Go tell it on the mountain,

Over the hills and everywhere;

Go tell it on the mountain,

That Jesus Christ is born.

Go Tell It on the Mountain

Go down, Moses,

Way down in Egypt land,

Tell old Pharaoh,

Let my people go.

Go Down, Moses

Free at last, free at last,

Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last.¹

Free at Last

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see?…

A band of angels coming after me,

Coming for to carry me home.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, st. 1

Swing low, sweet chariot,

Coming for to carry me home.

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, refrain

Michael row the boat ashore,

Hallelujah!

Michael Row the Boat Ashore

Rise and shine and give God the glory

For the year of Jubilee.

Rise and Shine

My Lord, what a morning,

When the stars begin to fall.

My Lord, What a Morning

You’ll hear the trumpet sound,

To wake the nations underground,

Look in my God’s right hand,

When the stars begin to fall.

My Lord, What a Morning

One more river,

And that’s the river of Jordan,

One more river,

There’s one more river to cross.

One More River

Oh, freedom! Oh, freedom!

Oh, freedom over me!

And before I’d be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave,

And go home to my Lord and be free.

Oh, Freedom!

Get on board, little children,

There’s room for many a more.

Get on Board, Little Children

The Gospel train’s a-coming.

Get on Board, Little Children

Just like a tree that’s standing by the water,

We shall not be moved.

We Shall Not Be Moved

O Lord, I want to be in that number

When the saints go marching in.

When the Saints Go Marching In

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1 From the tomb of King Inyotef. Translated by WILLIAM KELLY SIMPSON.

2 Translated by R. O. FAULKNER.

3 A treatise on kingship addressed by a king of Heracleopolis, whose name is lost, to his son and successor, Merikare.

Translated by R. O. FAULKNER.

4 Translated by MIRIAM LICHTHEIM.

5 All songs translated by WILLIAM KELLY SIMPSON.

1 Architects to Amenhotep III (reigned c. 1411–1375 B.C.E.).

Translated by MIRIAM LICHTHEIM.

2 Aten is the Egyptian sun god, which came to be worshipped as the sole creator god. Translated by MIRIAM LICHTHEIM.

3 Translated by N. K. SANDARS.

4 Translated from Chinese into German by RICHARD WILHELM, and into English by CARY F. BAYNES.

5 Translated by MIRIAM LICHTHEIM.

6 Bible quotations are from the Authorized (King James) Version [1611]. Numbers in Bible citations represent chapter and verse. The oldest part of the Bible, Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1–18; see 8:4–8:7), dates from the tenth century B.C.E, the era of Solomon, but the material used by the author (called J, or the Yahwist) was much older. Next oldest is the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:1–12, 10:8–10:9).

7 The Hebrew Scriptures. The first five books (the Pentateuch, or the five books of Moses) are the Jewish Torah.

8 Fiat lux.—The Vulgate [fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Aramaic texts]

1 The Geneva Bible [1560] was known sometimes as the Breeches Bible because in this passage “aprons” is rendered as “breeches.”

1 Exodus 20:2–17 contains the Ten Commandments (the Decalogue), which, according to scripture, Moses received from God on Mount Sinai.

1 Also in Matthew 19:19 and 22:39; Mark 12:31 and 33; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14; James 2:8.

2 From “proclaim” through “thereof”: inscription on the Liberty Bell, Philadelphia [1751].

3 Quoted by Samuel F. B. Morse in the first telegraph message he sent to his partner, Alfred Vail, from Washington to Baltimore [May 24, 1844].

1 Man shall not live by bread alone.—Matthew 4:4

1 Solomon’s temple (the house of the Lord).

1 Book of Common Prayer, Burial of the Dead, anthem.

1 This was the psalm Jesus recited on the cross, according to Matthew 27:46.

2 Dominus illuminatio mea.—The Vulgate. Motto of Oxford University.

3 Flourishing.—Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 37:37

1 This psalm is known as the Miserere from its opening word in the Vulgate. The first line is: Have mercy upon me, O God.

1 See Isaiah 22:13, and Luke 12:19.

1 Also in Joel 3:10 and Micah 4:3.

1 See Ecclesiastes 8:15, and Luke 12:19.

1 See Isaiah 25:8, and I Corinthians 15:54.

2 The faces of them all are as the blackness of a kettle.—Douay Bible [1609]

1 The Apocrypha (The Hidden Books) is a term for a set of ancient Jewish writings that are not a part of Hebrew scripture. Some of these writings are considered deuterocanonical by the Roman Catholic Church; others, by various branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Most are included in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible.

2 Magna est veritas et praevalet.—The Vulgate, Book III (noncanonical)

3 See Horace, Ronsard, Spenser, and Herrick.

1 The earliest Christian writings [c. 50–c. 64 C.E.] are the Letters (Epistles) of Paul the Apostle. The Gospels were written later, between the years 70 and 100.

2 These verses are referred to as the Beatitudes. Chapters 5–7 of the book of Matthew are known as the Sermon on the Mount.

1 These verses are known as the Lord’s Prayer. In some prayer books this verse is rendered as: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

2 The Golden Rule. Common form: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

See Confucius, Aristotle, Hillel, and the Earl of Chesterfield.

1 See Leviticus 19:18. Also Mark 12:31 and 33, Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14, and James 2:8.

1 This night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.—Matthew 26:34

1 See Psalm 22:1.

1 Quo vadis?—The Vulgate

2 Ecce homo.—The Vulgate

3 Noli me tangere.—The Vulgate

1 See Saint Augustine.

2 Men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen.—Isaiah 64:4

1 In most newer translations “charity” throughout this chapter is translated as “love”—the love of humanity in the sense of the Greek agapē and the Latin caritas.

1 Radix malorum est cupiditas.—CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales, The Pardoner’s Prologue, l. 6

1 The Latin liturgy, regularly used by Catholics until 1964.

2 Attributed to THOMAS OF CELANO (c. 1185–c. 1255).

3 Attributed to SAINT AUGUSTINE and SAINT AMBROSE.

4 The Book of Common Prayer of the American Episcopal Church derives from the English Book of Common Prayer. First published in 1789, the American version was revised in 1892, 1928, and 1979. Bartlett’s draws from the 1928 edition, much of which is retained in Rite One of the 1979 BCP.

5 Te Deum laudamus.

1 THOMAS CRANMER [1489–1556] compiled the first official Anglican prayer book [1549], which was known as The Prayer Book of Edward VI and was twice revised [1552, 1559]. The present English Book of Common Prayer was published in 1662. Various alternative prayer books are also widely used in the Church of England.

2 Ancient sacred Hindu texts written in Sanskrit.

3 Translated by F. MAX MÜLLER.

4 Translated by R. C. ZAEHNER.

5 The voice of the thunder. The full Sanskrit is: Da da da iti. Damyata datta dayadhvamiti.

“Datta, dayadhvam, damyata” (Give, sympathize, control).—T. S. ELIOT, The Waste Land, note to line 401

See T. S. Eliot.

6 See Ralph Waldo Emerson.

7 Om is a sacred syllable used especially to begin and end a scriptural recitation.

8 Shanti means “peace.” T. S. Eliot, in his note to line 434 of The Waste Land, says, “ ‘The Peace which passeth understanding’ is our equivalent to this word.”

9 Translated by JUAN MASCARÓ.

1 Also in The Odyssey, bk. VIII, l. 326.

1 Sleep, the brother of Death.—HESIOD, The Theogony, l. 756

Sleep, Death’s twin-brother.—TENNYSON, In Memoriam, pt. 68, st. 1

2 See Horace, and Wilfred Owen.

3 Of two evils, the least should be chosen.—CICERO, De Officiis (On Moral Duties), bk. III, ch. 1

Of harmes two, the lesse is for to chese.—CHAUCER, Troilus and Criseyde, bk. II, l. 470

Of two evils the less is always to be chosen.—THOMAS À KEMPIS, Imitation of Christ, bk. III, ch. 12

1 Also familiar as: In the lap of the gods.

2 The majesty of the gods is revealed, and their peaceful abodes, which neither the winds shake nor clouds soak with showers, nor does the snow congealed with biting frost besmirch them with its white fall, but an ever cloudless sky vaults them over, and smiles with light bounteously spread abroad.—LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), bk. III, l. 18

3 See Virgil.

4 Then the omnipotent Father with his thunder made Olympus tremble, and from Ossa hurled Pelion.—OVID, Metamorphoses, bk. I, l. 154

I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient giants, that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa, and set among those the shady Olympus.—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Works, bk. IV [1548], ch. 38

1 The “Dryden translation,” edited by A. H. CLOUGH.

2 See ISAIAH BERLIN.

The fox has many tricks, and the hedgehog has only one, but that is the best of all.—ERASMUS, Adagia.

3 Translated by DOUGLAS E. GERBER.

4 Sayings throughout antiquity were variously attributed to the figures known as The Seven Sages. The list is commonly given as Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias, Pittacus. See Solon.

5 Spare your breath to cool your porridge.—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Works, bk. V [1552], ch. 28

6 See Terence, Horace, Lucan, and Anonymous: Latin.

7 The Latin form: De mortuis nil nisi bonum [Of the dead, nothing but good].

8 Herodotus attributed these words to Solon.

9 Stesichorus allegedly went blind after writing an account of Helen’s perfidy to Menelaus in his Helen, but he was cured after he composed a palinode denying that Helen ever went to Troy and blaming Homer for the story.

1 Earliest references to what became the proverb “in vino veritas,” “in wine is truth,” which was known to Plato (Symposium, pt. 2, sec. 217) and to Pliny the Elder (Natural History, bk. XIV, sec. 141).

See Anonymous: Latin.

2 “How thick do you judge the planks of our ship to be?” “Some two good inches and upward,” returned the pilot. “It seems, then, we are within two fingers’ breadth of damnation.”—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Works, bk. IV [1548], ch. 23

3 Literally: Anacharsis said [to Solon] that in Greece wise men spoke and fools decided.

4 Some say there are nine Muses: but they’re wrong. / Look at Sappho of Lesbos; she makes ten.—PLATO, epigram 9.506, translated by PETER JAY in his edition of The Greek Anthology.

5 Or “with your intricate charms.”

6 See A. E. Housman.

7 Describing a young girl before marriage.

8 Translated by MARY BARNARD.

9 Translated by WING-TSIT CHAN unless otherwise noted.

1 Straw dogs were used in sacrifices and then discarded.

2 Traditional

3 Translated by R. D. HICKS (Loeb Classical Library).

4 The phrase the cranes of Ibycus derives from the legend that Ibycus was murdered at sea and his murderers were discovered through cranes that followed the ship. The phrase became a term for the agency of the gods in revealing crime.

1 Animal fables from before Aesop’s time and after were attributed to him. The first collection was made two hundred years after his death. Unless otherwise noted, the quotations derive from retellings by JOSEPH JACOBS. See also Jean de La Fontaine, 266.

2 To swallow gudgeons ere they’re catched / And count their chickens ere they’re hatched.—SAMUEL BUTLER [1612–1680], Hudibras, pt. II, canto III, l. 923

3 The fox, when he cannot reach the grapes, says they are not ripe.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

“They are too green,” he said, “and only good for fools.”—JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, Fables, bk. III, fable 11, The Fox and the Grapes

4 Traditional.

5 Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.—MARK TWAIN, Notebooks [1935]

6 A mountain was in labor, sending forth dreadful groans, and there was in the region the highest expectation. After all, it brought forth a mouse.—PHAEDRUS, Fables, bk. IV, fable 22, l. 1

7 God loves to help him who strives to help himself.—AESCHYLUS, Fragment 223

Heaven helps not the men who will not act.—SOPHOCLES, Fragment 288

Try first thyself, and after call in God; / For to the worker God himself lends aid.—EURIPIDES, first version of Hippolytus, fragment 435

Help thyself, and God will help thee.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

God helps those who help themselves.—ALGERNON SIDNEY, Discourses on Government, ch. 2, sec. 23, and BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Poor Richard’s Almanac [1736]

8 Granting our wish one of Fate’s saddest jokes is!—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, Two Scenes from the Life of Blondel [1863], sc. II, st. 2

Beware, my lord! Beware lest stern Heaven hate you enough to hear your prayers!—ANATOLE FRANCE, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, pt. II, ch. 4

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.—OSCAR WILDE, An Ideal Husband [1895], act II

1 Translated by DAVID A. CAMPBELL.

2 Translated by W. L. BOWLES.

Epitaph for the Lacedaemonian [Spartan] king Leonidas and his small force at Thermopylae, who all died fighting to hold the pass against the invading Persian army [480 B.C.E.].

3 Translated by PETER JAY in his edition of The Greek Anthology.

4 Translated by ARTHUR WALEY.

1 See Matthew 7:12, Confucius, Hillel, and the Earl of Chesterfield.

2 Translated by W. H. S. JONES (Loeb Classical Library).

3 Usually quoted as: river.

1 This was Themistocles’ interpretation to the Athenians in 480 B.C.E. of the second oracle at Delphi: “Safe shall the wooden wall continue for thee and thy children.” The account appears in full in HERODOTUS, Histories, bk. VII, ch. 141–143.

2 Said in reply to Eurybiades, commander of the Spartan fleet, when he raised his staff as though to strike.

3 Said to the Andrians, when demanding money from them, to which they replied that they already had two great gods, Penury and Powerlessness, who hindered them from giving him money.

4 Translated by EDITH HAMILTON.

1 Translated by RICHMOND LATTIMORE.

2 See Horace, and Pope.

3 Translated by C. D. YONGE.

4 The sacred scriptures of Theravada Buddhists.

5 Ancient Indian literary chronology is conjectural.

6 Translated by JAN NATTIER-BARBARO.

7 Translated by T. W. RHYS DAVIDS and H. OLDENBERG.

8 Translated by WILLIAM THEODORE DE BARY.

A text addressed—exceptionally in the early Buddhist literature—to laity rather than monks.

9 Translated by PURUSHOTTAMA LAL.

10 Translated by F. MAX MÜLLER.

1 See Thucydides, Funeral Oration of Pericles.

2 Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.—ARISTOTLE, Poetics, ch. 25

3 Translated by R. C. TREVELYAN.

4 Translated by DUDLEY FITTS and ROBERT FITZGERALD.

5 Don’t shoot the messenger.—Saying

6 Translated by DUDLEY FITTS and ROBERT FITZGERALD.

1 Pride will have a fall.—English proverb [c. 1509]

A variant is: Pride goeth before a fall.

Pride goeth before, and shame cometh behind.—Treatise of a Gallant [c. 1510]

Pride will have a fall; / For pride goeth before and shame cometh after.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 10

See Proverbs 16:18.

2 The riddle of the Sphinx: What creature walks in the morning on four feet, at noon upon two, and at evening upon three? Oedipus solved it: Man as a baby crawls on hands and knees, then strides erect on his feet, and in old age walks with a staff. The Sphinx, a monster with a woman’s head and bust and a lion’s body with wings, waylaid passers on the road to Thebes to propound the riddle, destroying anyone who failed to guess the answer. Oedipus solved the riddle, the Sphinx destroyed herself, and the grateful Thebans made him king.

3 Translated by SIR GEORGE YOUNG.

4 Translated by ROBERT FITZGERALD.

5 The fragments are from the Everyman edition of The Dramas of Sophocles.

6 All Greece is his monument, though his grave / Lies in Macedon, refuge of his last days. / Hellas of Hellas, Athens his land, who gave / so much joy by his art, whom so many praise.—THUCYDIDES, Euripides; translated by PETER JAY in his edition of The Greek Anthology

Sophocles said he drew men as they ought to be, and Euripides as they were.—ARISTOTLE, Poetics, ch. 25

7 Translated by DUDLEY FITTS and ROBERT FITZGERALD.

1 Translated by REX WARNER.

2 Translated by DAVID GRENE unless otherwise noted.

3 Second thoughts, they say, are best.—JOHN DRYDEN, The Spanish Friar, act II, sc. ii

Is it so true that second thoughts are best?—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, Sea Dreams [1864]

4 Translated by GILBERT MURRAY.

5 Translated by RICHARD LATTIMORE.

1 Translated by WILLIAM ARROWSMITH.

2 Translated by MORRIS HICKEY MORGAN.

3 If there be any good in nobility, I judge it to be only this, that it imposeth a necessity upon those which are noble, not to suffer their nobility to degenerate from the virtue of their ancestors.—BOETHIUS, The Consolation of Philosophy, bk. III, prose 6, l. 25

4 Translated by MORRIS HICKEY MORGAN. The Temenidae are a mythic people said to be ancestors of Alexander the Great.

5 Translated by MORRIS HICKEY MORGAN.

Familiar form: A man is known by the company he keeps.

6 Translated by MORRIS HICKEY MORGAN.

7 For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer.—HORACE, Odes, bk. III, no. vi, l. 1

The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice, act III, sc. v, l. 1

8 In Boswell’s Life of Johnson [1791], vol. II, pp. 442–443 (Everyman edition), this is quoted as a saying which everybody repeats but nobody knows where to find.

Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes mad.—PUBLILIUS SYRUS, Maxim 911

When falls on man the anger of the gods, / First from his mind they banish understanding.—LYCURGUS [fl. 820 B.C.E.]

For those whom God to ruin has designed, / He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.—JOHN DRYDEN, The Hind and the Panther, pt. III, l. 1093

Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, The Masque of Pandora [1875], pt. VI

9 Translated by A. D. GODLEY, with adaptations.

10 Polyneices and Eteocles, sons of Oedipus and descendants of Cadmus, fought for the possession of Thebes and killed each other. Hence, in a Cadmean victory, victor and vanquished suffer alike.

See also Pyrrhus (“Pyrrhic victory”).

1 It is the lofty pine that by the storm / Is oftener tossed; towers fall with heavier crash / Which higher soar.—HORACE, Odes, bk. II, no. x, l. 9

The bigger they come, the harder they fall.—Boxing expression attributed to ROBERT FITZSIMMONS [1862–1917] and to JOHN L. SULLIVAN [1858–1918]; probably predates both

2 Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.—Inscription, New York City General Post Office, adapted from HERODOTUS by architect William Kendall [1913]

3 Much of Plato, especially in the Apology and Phaedo, is thought to be direct quotation from Socrates. See Plato.

4 See Milton.

5 He used to say that other men lived to eat, but that he ate to live.—DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Socrates, sec. 14

We must eat to live, and not live to eat.—MOLIÈRE, The Miser, act III, sc. v

1 Translated by W. H. S. JONES (Loeb Classical Library).

2 Often cited in Latin: primum non nocere.

See Florence Nightingale.

3 Vita brevis est, ars longa.—SENECA, De Brevitate Vitae (On the Shortness of Life), ch. I, sec. 1

4 Translated by RICHARD LIVINGSTONE unless otherwise noted.

1 Translated by REX WARNER.

2 Rather by conferring than by accepting favors, they [the Romans] established friendly relations.—SALLUST, The War with Catiline, sec. 6

3 Translated by REX WARNER.

4 Translated by RICHARD CRAWLEY.

1 Translated by DUDLEY FITTS.

2 Translated by BENJAMIN BICKLEY ROGERS (Loeb Classical Library).

3 The appellation of Halcyon days, which was applied to a rare and bloodless week of repose.—EDWARD GIBBON, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 48

4 A play on the proverb: Under every stone lurks a scorpion.

5 Refers to Aeschylus.

1 Thalatta! Thalatta! / Hail to thee, O Sea, ageless and eternal!—HEINRICH HEINE, The North Sea, cycle 2, Greeting to the Sea, st. 1

2 When his son was killed in battle.

3 Translated by BENJAMIN JOWETT unless otherwise noted.

Asclepius cured the body: to make men whole / Phoebus sent Plato, healer of the soul.—On Plato’s Grave, anonymous inscription translated by WILLIAM J. PHILBIN in The Greek Anthology edited by PETER JAY

4 On the Eretrian exiles settled in Persia by Darius.

Translated by J. W. MACKAIL.

5 See Socrates.

6 The jalous swan, ayens his deth that singeth.—CHAUCER, The Parliament of Fowls, l. 342

I will play the swan and die in music.—SHAKESPEARE, Othello, act V, sc. ii, l. 245

1 Proverbial. Also in PLATO, Laws, VI, 2.

2 Translated by PAUL SHOREY (Loeb Classical Library).

3 Translated by FRANCIS CORNFORD.

1 Iphicrates, a shoemaker’s son who became a famous general, said this to Harmodius of distinguished ancestry when he reviled him for his mean birth.

Curtius Rufus seems to be descended from himself.—TIBERIUS [42 B.C.E.–37 C.E.]. From TACITUS, Annals, bk. XI, sec. 21

2 Said when an opinion he delivered pleased the people.

1 Seeing that the human race falls into the same classification as the feathered creatures, we must divide the biped class into featherless and feathered.—PLATO, The Statesman, sec. 266–E

2 The rich when he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat.—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Works, bk. IV [1548], ch. 64

3 Attributed also to AESOP.

4 The spiritual virtue of a sacrament is like light: although it passes among the impure, it is not polluted.—SAINT AUGUSTINE, Homilies on the Gospel of John, tractate 5, sec. 15

The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted.—LYLY, Euphues, Arber’s reprint, p. 43

The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.—FRANCIS BACON, Advancement of Learning, bk. II, sec. 1

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.—JOHN MILTON, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

5 From The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by RICHARD MCKEON, unless otherwise noted.

6 Andrágathos, my soul’s half.—MELEAGER, Epigram

7 Also attributed to Xenocrates [396–314 B.C.E.] by Cicero.

8 See Matthew 7:12, Confucius, Hillel, and the Earl of Chesterfield.

9 Translated by PHILIP H. WICKSTEED and FRANCIS CORNFORD (Loeb Classical Library).

10 Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas [Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth]. Adapted from a medieval life of Aristotle.

1 One swallow maketh not summer.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. II, ch. 5

One swallow makes a summer.—ROBERT LOWELL, Fall 1961

2 God and nature do nothing uselessly.—ARISTOTLE, On the Heavens, bk. I, ch. 4

3 Aristotle is quoting a proverb.

1 In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend, but in adversity it is the most difficult of all things.—EPICTETUS [c. 55–135 C.E.], Fragment 127

2 See Julius Caesar.

3 In reply to the courtesan Laïs.

4 His pilot had told him that the enemy outnumbered him in ships.

5 Translated by JAMES LEGGE.

6 Translated by LIN YUTANG.

7 Translated by BURTON WATSON.

1 Translated by BURTON WATSON.

2 Translated by THOMAS CLEARY.

3 Pytheas refers to the orations of Demosthenes, who worked in an underground cave lit only by a lamp.

4 Nulla dies sine linea.

5 Ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret.

The more common rendering is: Cobbler, stick to your last.

6 All fragments translated by F. C. ALLINSON (Loeb Classical Library).

7 Also in PLAUTUS, Bacchides, act IV, sc. vii, l. 816.

Those that God loves do not live long.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

Heaven gives its favorites—early death.—LORD BYRON, Childe Harold, canto IV [1818], st. 102

8 They spare the rod and spoil the child.—RALPH VENNING [c. 1621–1674], Mysteries and Revelations [1649]

9 Also in LUCIAN, Hermotimus, sec. 86.

1 Also attributed to Aristophanes by LUCIAN, The Way to Write History, sec. 41.

The Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade.—PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Philip of Macedon

I think it good plain English, without fraud, To call a spade a spade, a bawd a bawd.—JOHN TAYLOR [1580–1653], A Kicksey Winsey [1619]

2 He who flees will fight again.—TERTULLIAN, De Fuga in Persecutione (On Fleeing Persecution), ch. 10

That same man that runneth away / May again fight another day.—ERASMUS, Apothegms [1542]

Celuy qui fuit de bonne heure / Peut combattre derechef / [Who flies in good time / Can fight anew].—ANONYMOUS [1594]; translated from VARRO, Saturae Menippeae (Menippean Satires)

For he who fights and runs away / May live to fight another day; / But he who is in battle slain / Can never rise and fight again.—OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Art of Poetry on a New Plan [1761]

A version similar to Goldsmith’s appears in JAMES RAY [fl. 1745], Compleat History of the Rebellion [1752].

3 Sometimes attributed to METRODORUS THE YOUNGER.

4 Nothing is so dear and precious as time.—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Works, bk. V [1564], ch. 5

5 Alter ego.

6 Proposition 5, too difficult for many students to pass beyond, became known as the asses’ bridge [pons asinorum].

7 Often quoted as: There is no royal road to learning.

8 A passage broad, / Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell.—MILTON, Paradise Lost, bk. II, l. 432

1 Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, refers to the dearly bought victory at Asculum, 280 B.C.E. Hence the phrase: Pyrrhic victory. See also Herodotus (“Cadmean victory”).

2 Translated by R. C. TREVELYAN.

3 In reference to the traditional epics.

4 Callimachus.

5 Translated by PETER JAY.

6 Elegiac poet from Halicarnassus, author of a collection of poems, Nightingales, and a friend of Callimachus.

7 Translated by FLEUR ADCOCK.

8 On discovery of a method to test the purity of gold.

9 Said with reference to the lever.

1 Translated by PAUL NIXON.

2 I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek / That hath but oon hole for to sterte to, / And if that faille, thanne is al ydo.—CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 572

The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole / Can never be a mouse of any soul.—ALEXANDER POPE, The Wife of Bath: Her Prologue [1713], l. 298

3 Fish and guests in three days are stale.—JOHN LYLY, Euphues

Fish and visitors stink in three days.—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Poor Richard’s Almanac [1736], January

4 A friend in need is a friend indeed.—WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT [1834–1913] editor, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases [1882], p. 14

5 Facias ipse quod faciamus suades.

6 Vincere scis, Hannibal, victoria uti nescis.

Maharbal was commander of cavalry under Hannibal, who had insisted on a day’s rest for the army after the victory at Cannae [216 B.C.E.], thereby enabling the enemy to recoup.

7 Ancient Hindu scriptures written in Sanskrit. The title means Song of God.

8 Ancient Indian literary chronology is conjectural. The dates given are approximate.

9 Translated by ANNIE BESANT.

10 Translated by F. EDGERTON.

At the moment which is not of action or inaction / You can receive this: “on whatever sphere of being / The mind of a man may be intent / At the time of death”—that is the one action / (And the time of death is every moment) / Which shall fructify in the lives of others: / And do not think of the fruit of action, / Fare forward.—T. S. ELIOT, Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages, pt. III

11 Translated by F. EDGERTON.

12 Translated by SWAMI NIKHILANANDA.

See J. Robert Oppenheimer.

1 Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis!

2 Translated by WILLIAM D. HOOPER, revised by HARRISON BOYD ASH (Loeb Classical Library).

3 The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Works, bk. IV [1548], ch. 67

4 Delenda est Carthago.

These words were added to every speech Cato made in the senate, preceded by ceterum censeo [in my opinion].

5 Rem tene; verba sequentur.

6 Serit arbores quae alteri seculo prosint.

He that plants trees loves others beside himself.—THOMAS FULLER [1654–1734], Gnomologia [1732]

A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.—ALEXANDER SMITH, Dreamthorp. Books and Gardens

7 Translated by IAN SCOTT-KILVERT.

8 Translated by JOHN SARGEAUNT (Loeb Classical Library), with occasional adaptations.

9 See The Seven Sages, Horace, Lucan, and Anonymous: Latin.

10 Hinc illae lacrimae.

The phrase is proverbial for “That’s the cause of it,” and was often quoted, by Horace in Epistles, bk. I, epistle xix, l. 41, and by others.

Hence rage and tears [Inde irae et lacrimae].—JUVENAL, Satires, bk. I, l. 168

11 Amantium irae amoris integratio est.

The anger of lovers renews the strength of love.—PUBLILIUS SYRUS, Maxim 24

The falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love.—RICHARD EDWARDS [c. 1523–1566], The Paradise of Dainty Devices [1576]

Let the falling out of friends be a renewing of affection.—JOHN LYLY, Euphues

The falling out of lovers is the renewing of love.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 2

1 Proxumus sum egomet mihi.

2 Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto. Quoted by CICERO in De Officiis, bk. I, sec. 30.

I consider nothing human as alien to myself.—CARSON MCCULLERS, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter [1940], pt. 2, ch. 6

By tradition, a favorite maxim of KARL MARX.

3 Periclum ex aliis facito tibi quod ex usu siet. (A saying.)

4 Quid si nunc caelum ruat?

Some ambassadors from the Celtae, being asked by Alexander what in the world they dreaded most, answered, that they feared lest the sky should fall upon them.—FLAVIUS ARRIANUS [c. 100–170], Campaigns of Alexander, bk. I, ch. 4

5 Ius summum saepe summa est malitia.

Extreme law, extreme injustice, is now become a stale proverb in discourse.—CICERO, De Officiis, bk. I, sec. 33

Extreme justice is often injustice.—JEAN RACINE, La Thébaïde [1664], act IV, sc. iii

Mais l’extrême justice est une extrême injure.—VOLTAIRE, Oedipe [1718], act III, sc. iii

6 Ego non flocci pendere.

Nor do they care a straw.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. I, bk. III, ch. 9

7 Pliny the Younger says (Letters, bk. VI, no. 16) that Pliny the Elder said this during the eruption of Vesuvius: “Fortune favors the brave.”

8 Quot homines tot sententiae: suo quoque mos.

So many heads so many wits.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 2

So many men so many minds.—GEORGE GASCOIGNE [c. 1525–1577], The Glass of Government [1575]

9 From Sources of Chinese Tradition [1960], edited by WILLIAM THEODORE DE BARY.

Huai-nan Tzu is from the scholarly court of Liu An (d. 122 B.C.E.), prince of Huai-nan.

10 Oderint dum metuant.

From a lost tragedy. Frequently cited by Cicero and others. Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, Gaius Caligula, sec. 30) says that the emperor Caligula was fond of quoting it.

11 Sixth emperor of the Han dynasty.

12 Translated by ARTHUR WALEY.

1 Translated by WILLIAM D. HOOPER, revised by HARRISON BOYD ASH (Loeb Classical Library).

2 Divina natura dedit agros, ars humana aedificavit urbes.

3 Translated by J. W. MACKAIL.

4 Quo usque, Catilina, abutere patientia nostra?

5 Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.

Depart—be off—excede—evade—erump!—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Aestivation, ch. 2

6 Civis Romanus sum.

7 Silent enim leges inter arma.

8 In full: Cui bono fuerit? [To whose advantage was it?]

9 Cum dignitate otium.

10 Poetarum licentiae liberiora.

11 Dum anima est, spes est.

12 Quae est domestica sede iucundior?

1 O vitae philosophia dux.

2 Summum bonum.

The nature of the good and the highest good.—HORACE, Satires, bk. II, no. vi, l. 76

See Lucretius.

3 Salus populi suprema est lex.

4 Excitabat enim fluctus in simpulo.

A tempest in a teapot.—Proverb

5 Noxiae poena par esto.

See W. S. Gilbert.

6 He who first called money the sinews of business seems to have spoken with special reference to the affairs of war.—PLUTARCH, Lives, Cleomenes, sec. 27

Neither is money the sinews of war (as it is trivially said).

—FRANCIS BACON, Essays. Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms

Money is the sinew of love as well as of war.—THOMAS FULLER [1654–1734], Gnomonologia [1732], no. 3442

7 Addressed to Sulla.

8 Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

9 Translated by W. A. MCDEVITTE and W. S. BOHN.

10 Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.

See Demosthenes.

11 Princes in this case do hate the traitor, though they love the treason.—SAMUEL DANIEL, Tragedy of Cleopatra [1594], act IV, sc. i

This principle is old, but true as fate, / Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.—THOMAS DEKKER, The Honest Whore, pt. I [1604], act IV, sc. iv

Though I love the treason, I hate the traitor.—SAMUEL PEPYS, Diary, March 7, 1667

12 Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.—Traditional saying

13 Iacta alea est. Proverb quoted by Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon.

Also in SUETONIUS, Lives of the Caesars, Julius.

14 Veni, vidi, vici. Inscription displayed in Caesar’s Pontic triumph.

Also in PLUTARCH, Apothegms, Caesar Augustus.

1 Et tu, Brute. Suetonius reports that Caesar said this in Greek.

2 The reference is to Brutus and Cassius.

3 Translated by W. H. D. ROUSE (Loeb Classical Library), with adaptations, unless noted otherwise.

4 Flammantia moenia mundi.

5 Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

The reference is to Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia.

Translated by CYRIL BAILEY.

6 Nil posse creari de nilo.

7 Anulus in digito subter tenuatur habendo, / Stilicidi casus lapidem cavat.

See also the concluding lines of Book IV:

Nonne vides etiam guttas in saxa cadentis / Umoris longo in spatio pertundere saxa? [Do you not see that even drops of water falling upon a stone in the long run beat a way through the stone?]

Drops of water hollow out a stone, a ring is worn thin by use.—OVID, Ex Ponto, bk. IV, letter 10, l. 5

Also in PLUTARCH, Morals, Of the Training of Children.

The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.—HUGH LATIMER, Seventh Sermon Before Edward VI [1549]

The soft droppes of rain perce the hard marble.—JOHN LYLY, Euphues

And drizling drops that often doe redound, / The firmest flint doth in continuance wear.—EDMUND SPENSER, Amoretti, sonnet 18

8 Translated by R. E. LATHAM.

9 Translated by CYRIL BAILEY.

10 It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth… and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.—FRANCIS BACON, Essays. Of Truth

11 Translated by CYRIL BAILEY.

Insensate care of mortals! Oh how false the argument which makes thee downward beat thy wings.—DANTE, Divine Comedy, Paradiso, canto XI, l. 1

12 Et quasi cursores vitae lampada tradunt.

1 Translated by CYRIL BAILEY.

2 Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum, / Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.

3 Ut quod ali cibus est aliis fuat acre venenum.

What’s one man’s poison, signor, / Is another’s meat or drink.—BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, Love’s Cure [1647], act III, sc. ii

One man’s meat is another man’s poison.—OSWALD DYKES [fl. c. 1709], English Proverbs [1709]

4 Translated by FRANCIS CORNFORD (Loeb Classical Library).

5 Passer, deliciae meae puellae.

This is also the opening line of Carmina, poem II.

6 Sed haec prius fuere.

7 Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus…/ Soles occidere et redire possunt: / Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux / Nox est perpetua una dormienda. / Da mi basia mille.

8 Per caputque pedesque.

9 Iam ver egelidos refert tepores.

1 Salaputium disertum!

2 Quid datur a divis felici optatius hora?

3 Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. / Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

4 Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

5 Translated by J. C. ROLFE (Loeb Classical Library).

6 Alieni appetens, sui profusus.

7 Quippe secundae res sapientium animos fatigant.

8 Ita in maxima fortuna minima licentia est.

9 Pro patria, pro liberis, pro aris atque focis suis.

10 Dux atque imperator vitae mortalium animus est.

11 Jugurtha’s remark as he looked back at Rome upon being ordered by the senate to leave Italy.

12 Fortunate senex!

1 Latet anguis in herba.

2 Paulo maiora canamus!

3 Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. / Iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; / Iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.

Interpreted by the Middle Ages as a prophecy of the birth of Christ. Dante cites the lines in Purgatorio, canto XXII, l. 70.

A phrase altered from the first line (Novus ordo seclorum) appears on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States of America. Virgil’s Latin is the source of other mottoes of the Great Seal.

4 Non omnia possumus omnes.

5 Carpent tua poma nepotes.

6 Omnia vincit amor: et nos cedamus amori.

7 Ultima Thule.

The phrase, designating a far-off land, has been in use since the Greek mariner Pytheas discovered in the fourth century B.C.E. an island he named Thule six days north of England, thought to be Iceland.

8 Audacibus annue coeptis.

This phrase also was adapted for use on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States of America: Annuit coeptis.

9 Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

The reference is apparently to Lucretius.

10 Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis.

11 Optima dies… prima fugit.

12 Fugit inreparabile tempus.

13 Fervet opus.

1 Tityrus is also referred to in Eclogues, no. I, l. 1.

2 Arma virumque cano.

Arms and the Man.—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, title of play [1898]

See John Dryden.

3 O terque quaterque beati!

4 Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

5 Dux femina facti.

6 Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

7 The mind, conscious of rectitude, laughed to scorn the falsehood of report.—OVID, Fasti, bk. IV, l. 311

8 Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.

9 Horresco referens.

10 Dis aliter visum.

11 Virgil here translates HOMER, Odyssey, bk. XI, l. 204.

12 Fama volat.

13 Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.

14 Varium et mutabile semper femina.

Woman often changes; foolish the man who trusts her.—FRANCIS I OF FRANCE, written by him with his ring on a window of the château of Chambord (PIERRE DE BRANTÔME [d. 1614], Oeuvres, vol. VII)

La donna è mobile.—FRANCESCO MARIA PIAVE [1810–1879], libretto of Verdi’s Rigoletto, Duke’s song

15 Sic, sic, iuvat ire sub umbras.

1 Facilis descensus Averni: / Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; / Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, / Hoc opus, hic labor est.

2 Fidus Achates. Proverbial for a trusted friend; Achates was the faithful comrade of Aeneas.

3 Aeneas to the ghost of Dido, who had killed herself when he left her.

4 Quoted by DANTE in The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, canto XXX, l. 21.

5 The line is displayed at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Except for the omission of one word, it corresponds to the translation of Allen Mandelbaum.

6 Macte nova virtute, puer, sic itur ad astra.

7 Audentes fortuna iuvat.

8 Experto credite.

Believe an expert; believe one who has had experience.—SAINT BERNARD, Epistle 106

Believe the experienced Robert. Believe Robert, who has tried it.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, Introduction

9 E pluribus unus.

Adapted (E pluribus unum) for the motto on the face of the Great Seal of the United States, adopted June 20, 1782.

10 De te fabula.

11 Est modus in rebus.

See The Seven Sages, Terence, Lucan, and Anonymous: Latin.

12 Hoc genus omne.

1 Disiecti membra poetae.

The reference is to Orpheus torn apart by the Maenads.

2 Ad unguem factus homo.

3 Hoc erat in votis.

4 O noctes cenaeque deum!

5 Animae dimidium meae.

The reference is to Virgil.

6 Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam.

7 Simplex munditiis.

Translated by JOHN MILTON.

8 Nil desperandum.

9 Cras ingens iterabimus aequor.

Translated by S. E. MORISON.

10 Permitte divis cetera.

11 Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

See The Wisdom of Solomon 2:8, Ronsard, Spenser, and Herrick.

12 O matre pulchra filia pulchrior.

13 Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens.

14 Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero / Pulsanda tellus.

Ode on the death of Cleopatra.

15 Persicos odi, puer, apparatus.

16 Mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum / Sera moretur.

17 Aequam memento rebus in arduis / Servare mentem.

18 Omnes eodem cogimur.

19 Auream quisquis mediocritatem / Diliget.

Keep the golden mean.—PUBLILIUS SYRUS, Maxim 1072

1 Neque semper arcum / Tendit Apollo.

2 Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

See Homer, and Wilfred Owen.

3 Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens.

4 Splendide mendax.

Chosen by Swift as Gulliver’s motto.

5 Hypermestra.

6 In my hot youth, when George the Third was king.—LORD BYRON, Don Juan, canto 1, st. 212

7 Magnus inter opes inops.

8 Ille potens sui / Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem / Dixisse “Vixi: cras vel atra / Nube polum pater occupato / Vel sole puro.”

9 Exegi monumentum aere perennius.

10 Non omnis moriar.

11 Non sum qualis eram bonae / Sub regno Cinarae. Desine, dulcium / Mater saeva Cupidinum.

Mater saeva Cupidinum.—HORACE, Odes, bk. I, no. xix, l. 1

12 How many, famous while they lived, are utterly forgotten for want of writers!—BOETHIUS, The Consolation of Philosophy, bk. II, prose 7, l. 45

Brave men were living before Agamemnon / And since, exceeding valorous and sage, / A good deal like him too, but quite the same none; / But then they shone not on the poet’s page.—LORD BYRON, Don Juan, canto I, st. 5

See Pindar, and Alexander Pope.

13 Get money; still get money, boy, no matter by what means.—BEN JONSON, Every Man in His Humour, act II, sc. iii

14 Belua multorum es capitum.

Plato describes the multitude as a “great strong beast.”—The Republic, bk. VI, sec. 493–B

The multitude of the gross people, being a beast of many heads.—ERASMUS, Adagia, no. 122

O weak trust of the many-headed multitude.—PHILIP SIDNEY, Arcadia, bk. II

The beast of many heads, the staggering multitude.—MARSTON AND WEBSTER, The Malcontent [1604], act III, sc. iii

If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude… one great beast and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.—THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici, pt. II, sec. 1

Sir, your people is a great beast.—Attributed to ALEXANDER HAMILTON

1 Concordia discors.

2 Semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum.

The written word, unpublished, can be destroyed, but the spoken word can never be recalled.—HORACE, Ars Poetica [c. 8 B.C.E.], l. 389

It is as easy to recall a stone thrown violently from the hand as a word which has left your tongue.—MENANDER, Fragment 1092K

Four things come not back: the spoken word; the sped arrow; time past; the neglected opportunity.—OMAR IBN AL-HALIF, Aphorism

A word once spoken revoked cannot be.—ALEXANDER BARCLAY [c. 1475–1552], The Ship of Fools [1509]

Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead; / But God Himself can’t kill them when they’re said.—WILL CARLETON [1845–1912], The First Settler’s Story [1881], st. 21

3 Atque inter silvas Academi quaerere verum.

4 Genus irritabile vatum.

5 Grammatici certant et adhuc sub iudice lis est.

6 Sesquipedalia verba.

7 Si vis me flere, dolendum est / Primum ipsi tibi.

8 Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

9 Ab ovo.

Helen, the cause of the Trojan War, sprang from an egg engendered by Leda and the Swan (Zeus).

10 In medias res.

11 Laudator temporis acti.

12 Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.

Homer himself, in a long work, may sleep.—ROBERT HERRICK, Hesperides. To the Generous Reader

13 Ut pictura poesis.

1 Quintili Vare, legiones redde!

2 A Greek proverb, a familiar rendering of which is the Latin Festina lente.

3 A Latin proverb: Sat celeriter fieri quidquid fiat satis bene.

See Publilius Syrus, and Anonymous: Latin.

4 The two reasons for writing a history.

5 Translated by AUBREY DE SÉLINCOURT.

6 Potius sero quam numquam.

It is better to learn late than never.—PUBLILIUS SYRUS, Maxim 864

7 In conspectu Alpes habeant, quarum alterum latus Italiae sit.

Au-delà des Alpes est l’Italie.—NAPOLEON [1797]

8 Translated by HENRY BETTENSON.

9 Commonly called Publius, but spelled Publilius by Pliny in his Natural History, bk. 35, sec. 199. Translated mainly by DARIUS LYMAN. The numbers are those of the translator.

10 It is impossible to love and be wise.—FRANCIS BACON, Essays. Of Love

11 Honesta turpitudo est pro causa bona.

12 Strike while the iron is hot.—FRANÇOIS RABELAIS, Gargantua and Pantagruel, bk. II, ch. 31

When the iron is hot, strike.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 2

Nothing like striking while the iron is hot.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. II, bk. IV, ch. 71

13 Marius said, “I see the cure is not worth the pain.”—PLUTARCH, Lives, Caius Marius

The remedy is worse than the disease.—FRANCIS BACON, Essays. Of Seditions

I find the medicine worse than the malady.—BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, Love’s Cure [1647], act III, sc. ii

1 Every cock is proud on his own dunghill.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 2

2 Treat your friend as if he will one day be your enemy, and your enemy as if he will one day be your friend.—LABERIUS [105–43 B.C.E.], Fragment

See Sophocles.

3 Iudex damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur.—Motto adopted for the Edinburgh Review

4 Practice makes perfect.—Proverb

The saying “Practice is everything” is Periander’s.—DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Periander, sec. 6

5 The rolling stone never gathereth mosse.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 2

The stone that is rolling can gather no moss.—THOMAS TUSSER, A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry. Housewifely Admonitions

6 It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause.—BLAISE PASCAL, Pensées, sec. 2, ch. 82

7 When men are arrived at the goal, they should not turn back.—PLUTARCH, Morals, Of the Training of Children

8 No man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, The Rambler [1750–1752]

9 Did thrust as now in others’ corn his sickle.—DU BARTAS, Divine Weeks and Works, Second Week, pt. 2

Not presuming to put my sickle in another man’s corn.—NICHOLAS YONGE [d. 1619], Musica Transalpina, Epistle Dedicatory [1588]

10 Good wine needs no bush.—SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It, epilogue, l. 4

Good wine needs neither bush nor preface / To make it welcome.—WALTER SCOTT, Peveril of the Peak [1822], ch. 4

Bush…archaic: a bunch of ivy formerly hung outside a tavern to indicate wine for sale.—Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) [1998]

I.e., good wine needs no advertising.

11 Simonides said that “he never repented that he held his tongue, but often that he had spoken.”—PLUTARCH, Morals, Rules for the Preservation of Health

1 Quod si deficiant vires, audacia certe / Laus erit: in magnis et voluisse sat est.

2 Absenti nemo non nocuisse velit.

3 Semper in absentes felicior aestus amantes.

4 Our souls survive this death.—OVID, Metamorphoses, bk. XV, l. 158

5 Te spectem, suprema mihi cum venerit hora. / Te teneam moriens deficiente manu.

6 Periuria ridet amantum Iupiter.

Also in OVID, Ars Amatoria, bk. I, l. 633

And Jove but laughs at lovers’ perjury.—JOHN DRYDEN, Palamon and Arcite [1680], bk. II, l. 758, and Amphitryon, act I, sc. ii

7 Cetera quis nescit?

8 Love is a kind of warfare.—OVID, Ars Amatoria, bk. II, l. 233

A batallas de amor campo de pluma [A field of feathers for the strife of love].—LUIS DE GÓNGORA Y ARGOTE, Soledad [1613], pt. I

9 At si, quem malis, Cephalum complexa teneres, / Clamares “lente currite noctis equi.”

See Christopher Marlowe.

10 Procul hinc, procul este, severi!

11 Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum.

12 Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.

And for to se, and eek for to be seye.—CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, l. 552

To see and to be seen.—BEN JONSON, Epithalamion, st. 3, l. 4

13 See Voltaire.

14 Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.

15 Rudis indigestaque moles.

1 Medio tutissimus ibis.

2 Actaeon ego sum, dominum cognoscite vestrum!

3 Causa latet, vis est notissima.

4 Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.

I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue.—

PETRARCH, sonnet 225, canzone 21, To Laura in Life

5 Sunt superis sua iura.

6 Tempus edax rerum.

7 Qui finem quaeris amoris / Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.

8 Bene qui latuit, bene vixit.

This was adopted by Descartes as his motto.

9 See Matthew 7:12, Confucius, Aristotle, and The Earl of Chesterfield.

10 Translated by ISRAEL W. SLOTKIN.

11 Translated by JACOB NEUSNER.

12 Translated by HENRY THOMAS RILEY.

13 “To treat a thing as the dogs do the Nile” was a common proverb, signifying superficial treatment.

14 Non semper ea sunt quae videntur.

15 Translated by R. M. GUMMERE, J. W. BASORE, W. H. D. ROUSE, and F. J. MILLER (Loeb Classical Library).

1 Tanta stultitia mortalium est.

2 Non amittuntur, sed praemittuntur.

Not dead, but gone before.—SAMUEL ROGERS, Human Life

3 The mariner of old said thus to Neptune in a great tempest, “O God! thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if thou wilt, thou mayest destroy me; but whether or no, I will steer my rudder true.”—MONTAIGNE, Essays, bk. II, ch. 16

4 Veritatem dies aperit. Omnia tempus revelat [Time reveals all].—TERTULLIAN, Apologeticum, sec. 7

Time reveals all things.—ERASMUS, Adagia

5 It is human nature to hate those whom you have injured.—TACITUS, Agricola, sec. 42

Chi fa ingiuria non perdona mai [He never pardons those he injures].—Italian proverb

The offender never pardons.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

Forgiveness to the injured does belong; / But they ne’er pardon who have done the wrong.—JOHN DRYDEN, The Conquest Of Granada, pt. II, act I, sc. ii

6 An ancient commonplace, which Seneca says he quotes from ARISTOTLE, Problemata, 30, 1: “No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.” It is also in PLATO, Phaedrus, sec. 245-A.

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.—CESARE LOMBROSO [1836–1909], The Man of Genius [1891], preface

7 Jason’s pilot.

8 Venient annis / Saecula seris, quibus Oceanus / Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens / Pateat tellus, Tiphysque novos / Detegat orbes nec sit terris / Ultima Thule.

Translated by S. E. MORISON.

As one much addicted to prophecies, and who had already voyaged beyond Thule (Iceland), Columbus was much impressed by the passage in Seneca’s Medea.—S. E. MORISON, Admiral of the Ocean Sea [1942], vol. I, ch. 6

Next to these lines from Medea in an early edition of Seneca’s tragedies that belonged to Columbus’s son Ferdinand, there is this annotation in the son’s hand: Haec profetia impleta est per patrem meum… almirantem anno 1492 [The prophecy was fulfilled by my father the Admiral in the year 1492].—S. E. MORISON, Admiral of the Ocean Sea [1942], vol. I, ch. 6

1 Cur imbres ruerent, ventosque causa moveret pervidit, solvitque animis miracula rerum eripuitque Jovi fulmen viresque tonandi et sonitum ventis concessit, nubibus ignem.

2 Translated by G. P. GOULD (Loeb Classical Library).

3 Ita feri ut se mori sentiat.

Translated by J. C. ROLFE (Loeb Classical Library).

4 Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet.

5 Why does pouring oil on the sea make it clear and calm? Is it for that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves?—PLUTARCH, Morals, Natural Questions, sec. 9

Bishop Adain [651] gave to a company about to take a journey by sea “some holy oil, saying, ‘I know that when you go abroad you will meet with a storm and contrary wind; but do you remember to cast this oil I give you into the sea, and the wind shall cease immediately.’ ”—BEDE, Ecclesiastical History, bk. III, ch. 14

6 To man the earth seems altogether / No more a mother, but a stepdame rather.—DU BARTAS, Divine Weeks and Works, First Week, Third Day

7 He is born naked, and falls a-whining at the first.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 10

8 It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces there should be none alike.—THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici, pt. II, sec. 2

Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.—SAMUEL JOHNSON [1777]; from BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, vol. II, p. 120 (Everyman edition)

9 Ex Africa semper aliquid novi.

Quoted as a Greek proverb.

10 Compare the modern proverb: Rats desert a sinking ship.

11 Cum grano salis.

Pompey’s antidote against poison was “to be taken fasting, a grain of salt being added.”

1 The god delights in an odd number.—VIRGIL, Eclogues, no. VIII, l. 75

2 Magister artis ingenique largitor venter.

Necessity, mother of invention.—WILLIAM WYCHERLEY, Love in a Wood [1671], act III, sc. iii

Art imitates Nature, and necessity is the mother of invention.—RICHARD FRANCK [c. 1624–1708], Northern Memoirs [written 1658, published 1694]

Sheer necessity—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.—R. B. SHERIDAN, The Critic, act I, sc. ii

3 Venienti occurrite morbo.

A stitch in time saves nine.—Proverb

4 Abiit ad plures.

5 Epigraph to The Waste Land by T. S. ELIOT. Translated from the Latin and Greek as per Eliot’s original footnote.

This sibyl of Greek myth asked Apollo to let her live for years equal in number to the grains of sand she could hold in her hand. She forgot, however, to ask for enduring youth.

6 Horatii curiosa felicitas.

7 Seize the opportunity, I beg, and make a virtue of necessity [fac de necessitate virtutem].—SAINT JEROME, Letter 54

Thus maketh vertue of necessitee.—CHAUCER, Troilus and Criseyde, bk. IV, l. 1586

Make a virtue of necessity.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 3, member 4, subsec. I

8 He who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.—MONTAIGNE, Essays, bk. I, ch. 9, Of Liars

Il faut bonne mémoire, après qu’on a menti [You must have a good memory after you have lied].—PIERRE CORNEILLE, Le Menteur, act IV, sc. v

Liars ought to have good memories.—ALGERNON SIDNEY, Discourses on Government, ch. 2, sec. 15

9 Pectus est enim, quod disertos facit.

10 A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge.—WILLIAM COWPER, Conversation, l. 298

11 Translated by WILLIAM WHISTON.

1 Qualis artifex pereo!

2 Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni.

3 Stat magni nominis umbra.

4 The reference is to Caesar.

5 Plus est quam vita salusque / Quod perit.

6 Clarum et venerabile nomen / Gentibus.

Cato’s tribute to the fallen Pompey.

7 Etiam periere ruinae.

The reference is to Troy.

8 Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba.

9 Translated by DUDLEY FITTS.

10 See Tom Brown.

11 Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.—FRANCIS BACON, Historia Vitae et Mortis [1623], Sylva Sylvarum, cent. I, exper. 100

I saw a fly within a bead/Of amber cleanly buried.—ROBERT HERRICK, Hesperides. The Amber Bead

12 Nobis pereunt et imputantur.

13 Difficilis facilis iucundus acerbus es idem:/Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te.

14 Rus in urbe.

1 Amici, diem perdidi.

2 Translated by ROBIN WATERFIELD.

3 So geographers, in Afric maps,/With savage pictures fill their gaps,/And o’er unhabitable downs/Place elephants for want of towns.—JONATHAN SWIFT, On Poetry, A Rhapsody

4 The wearer knows where the shoe wrings.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

I can tell where my own shoe pinches me.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. I, bk. IV, ch. 5

5 Closed lips hurt no one, speaking may.—CATO, On Agriculture, bk. I, distich 12

6 Better one bird in hand than ten in the wood.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 2

One bird in the hand is worth two in the wood.—THOMAS LODGE, Rosalynde

A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. I, bk. IV, ch. 4

A feather in hand is better than a bird in the air.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

7 A saying attributed to Heraclitus.

8 When all candles be out, all cats be gray.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 5

9 Like rowers, who advance backward.—MONTAIGNE, Essays, Of Profit and Honor, bk. III, ch. I

Like the watermen that row one way and look another.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, Democritus to the Reader

10 I am the things that are, and those that are to be, and those that have been. No one ever lifted my skirts; the fruit which I bore was the sun.—PROCLUS [c. 411–485], On Plato’s Timaeus (inscription in the temple of Neith at Sais, in Egypt)

1 Though in a wilderness, a man is never alone.—THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici, p. 82 (Everyman edition)

2 Translated by W. A. OLDFATHER (Loeb Classical Library).

2 Translated by W. A. OLDFATHER (Loeb Classical Library).

3 Difficile est saturam non scribere.

Translated by G. G. RAMSAY (Loeb Classical Library).

4 Probitas laudatur et alget.

5 Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum.

6 Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.

7 Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.

Translated by GILBERT HIGHET.

8 Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se/Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.

9 Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno.

10 Hoc volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.

11 Nunc patimur longae pacis mala, saevior armis/Luxuria incubuit victumque ulciscitur orbem.

12 Sed quis custodiet ipsos/Custodes?

What an absurd idea—a guardian to need a guardian!—PLATO, The Republic, bk. III, 403–E

1 Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori,/Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.

2 Panem et circenses.

3 Mens sana in corpore sano.

4 Maxima debetur puero reverentia.

5 Translation from the Talboys edition.

6 Translated by J. C. YARDLEY.

7 Elegantiae arbiter [Arbiter of taste].

8 See Milton.

9 Deos fortioribus adesse.

10 Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.

11 Calgacus, addressing the Britons at the battle of the Grampians, referring to the Romans.

12 Et maiores vestros et posteros cogitate.

13 It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition—OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 10

14 Paterfamilias.

1 Dolce far niente [Sweet doing-nothing].—Italian proverb

2 The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.—THOMAS CARLYLE, On Heroes and Hero Worship. The Hero as Prophet

3 Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutamus.

4 Animula vagula blandula,/Hospes comesque corporis,/Quae nunc abibis in loca/Pallidula rigida nudula,/Nec ut soles dabis iocosi.

Amelette Ronsardelette,/mignonelette doucelette,/très chère hostesse de mon corps,/tu descens là bas foibelette,/pasle, maigrelette, seulette,/dans le froid Royaulme des mors.—PIERRE DE RONSARD, A son âme [dictated on his deathbed, December 27, 1585]

5 Edited by WILLIAM THEODORE DE BARY.

6 From this derived the proverb: Poeta nascitur, non fit (The poet is born, not made).

7 Translated by F. E. ROBBINS (Loeb Classical Library).

8 Translated by MORRIS HICKEY MORGAN, with some adaptations.

1 Translated by ARTHUR J. BROCK (Loeb Classical Library).

2 Translated by KENNETH SAUNDERS.

3 Often cited as: As above, so below.

1 As quoted by JORGE LUIS BORGES in Other Inquisitions, translated into English by RUTH L. C. SIMMS.

2 Tertullian is sarcastically repeating what the enemies of Christianity are saying.

3 Plures efficimur, quoties metimur a vobis; semen est sanguis christianorum.

This is often rendered as: The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

The Church of Christ has been founded by shedding its own blood, not that of others; by enduring outrage, not by inflicting it. Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned it.—SAINT JEROME, Letter 82

The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.—LAURENS BEYERLINCK [1578–1627], Magnum Theatrum Vitae Humanorum [1665]

The seed of the Church, I mean the blood of primitive martyrs.—THOMAS FULLER [1608–1661], Church History of Britain [1655], pt. IV, bk. I

4 Domina mater ecclesia.

5 Veritas non erubescit.

6 Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est.

7 Certum est, quia impossible est.

This is called Tertullian’s rule of faith. It is sometimes rendered as: Credo quia impossible [I believe because it is impossible]. Saint Augustine expresses the same idea in Confessions, bk. VI, ch. 5, sec. 7.

8 De calcaria in carbonarium.

Leap out of the frying pan into the fire.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. II, ch. 5

9 Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?

10 Translated and edited by BERNARD P. GRENFELL and ARTHUR H. HUNT, who also discovered the papyri.

1 Habere non potest deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem.

2 Salus extra ecclesiam non est.

Quoted by Saint Augustine in De Baptismo, hence sometimes attributed to him.

3 Translated by A. H. ARMSTRONG (Loeb Classical Library).

4 In hoc signo vinces.

The alleged words of Constantine’s vision before his battle with Maxentius at Saxa Rubra, near Rome [312].

5 Vicisti, Galilaee.

The Latin translation of the alleged dying words of the emperor.

6 Cum fueris Romae, Romano vivito more;/Cum fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi.

My mother, having joined me at Milan, found that the church there did not fast on Saturdays as at Rome, and was at a loss what to do. I consulted Saint Ambrose, of holy memory, who replied, “When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Follow the custom of the church where you are.”—SAINT AUGUSTINE, Epistle to Januarius (epistle 2), sec. 18. Also Epistle to Casualanus (epistle 36), sec. 32

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.—Proverb

7 Works of Jerome translated by W. H. FREMANTLE unless otherwise noted.

8 This was addressed to Jerome in a dream by Christ the Judge, censuring him for loving the classics more than the Fathers.

9 A Greek proverb frequently quoted by Jerome.

10 Cur ergo haec ipse non facis?

1 Translated by F. A. WRIGHT (Loeb Classical Library).

2 This is a Greek proverb.

Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits/Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.—SHAKESPEARE, Love’s Labour’s Lost, act I, sc. i, l. 26

3 Translated by F. A. WRIGHT (Loeb Classical Library).

4 Venerationi mihi semper fuit non verbosa rusticas sed sancta simplicitas.

5 Romanus orbis ruit.

6 Fiunt, non nascuntur Christiani.

7 Privilegia paucorum non faciunt legem.

8 Noli equi dentes inspicere donati.

9 No one is injured save by himself.—ERASMUS, Adagia

10 Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.

11 Tolle lege, tolle lege.

What the bell seemed to say to Augustine at the moment of his conversion. When he opened the Bible, his eyes fell on Romans 13:12–14.

1 Audi partem alteram.

2 Roma locuta est; causa finita est.

3 Translated by ARTHUR WALEY.

4 Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est.

The definition of the traditional articles of faith.

5 Saint Clotilda, wife of Clovis.

6 Clovis defeated the Alemanni in 496, and following his vow was baptized with three thousand followers by Saint Remy at Rheims.

7 Translated by H. F. STEWART and E. K. RAND, unless otherwise noted.

8 Translated by SAMUEL JOHNSON, and used as motto to The Rambler, no. 7 [1750].

1 Often quoted “Non Angli sed angeli” (Not Angles but angels), these are by tradition the words of Pope Gregory when he beheld two English slaves in a Roman slave market.

2 The Talmud is a collection of rabbinic discourses concerning Jewish law, customs, and history. Its two main sections are the Mishna and the Gemara.

3 Ali ibn-Abi-Talib, son-in-law of Muhammad and fourth caliph, who was called the Lion of God, was murdered in 661.

4 Also spelled Qur’an, Quran. Muslims believe the Koran was revealed by God to the prophet Muhammad [c. 570–632].

The word Koran, derived from karaa, to read, signifies in Arabic “the reading,” or rather, “that which ought to be read.”… The Koran is divided into 114 larger portions of very unequal length, which we call chapters, but the Arabians sowar, in the singular sura.—GEORGE SALE, The Koran [1734], Preliminary Discourse, sec. III

Translated by A. J. ARBERRY [1955].

5 “Surrender” is the literal translation of the word Islam.

1 In Arabic: Inshallah.

2 Adapted.

3 Translated by J. M. RODWELL.

4 The message conveyed in the Koran.

1 Translated by W. R. PATON (Loeb Classical Library).

2 Translated by ARTHUR WALEY.

3 See Augustus Caesar, and Publilius Syrus.

4 It takes more than a hood and sad eyes to make a monk.—Albanian proverb

1 Abbreviated DMS.

2 That is: Even in Arcadia there am I [Death].

3 Literally: From the claw a lion.

See Herodotus.

4 Also familiar as: Fiat justitia et ruant coeli [Let justice be done though the heavens fall].

And as: Fiat justitia et pereat mundus [Let justice be done though the world perish].

5 The person of the accused.

6 Also quoted as: Ne quid nimis.

See The Seven Sages, Terence, Horace, and Lucan.

7 That is: Not quantity but quality.

8 Abbreviated RIP.

9 Motto of Virginia.

10 Abbreviated STTL.

1 That is: Extreme legal justice.

2 Also quoted by RAPHAEL HOLINSHED [1529–1580] in Chronicles of England [1578].

3 Rome.

4 Translated by the JAPANESE CLASSICS TRANSLATION COMMITTEE.

5 Translated by LEO SHERLEY-PRICE.

6 This is the most frequently quoted definition of God in the Middle Ages. It is based on SAINT GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS [c. 330–390], Oration 38.

7 Translated by BURTON WATSON.

1 Translated by BURTON WATSON.

2 Translated by ROBERT PAYNE.

3 Vox populi vox Dei.

4 Translated by HELEN WADDELL.

5 Translated by GARY SNYDER.

6 Translated by F. VOS.

7 Translated by DONALD KEENE.

8 Translated by SHIO SAKANISHI.

9 Translated by ARTHUR WALEY.

1 The earliest of the Russian chronicles or annals, begun in 1040 and continued through 1118 by various annalists, gives the record of Russian history since 852. It was copied several times and incorporated into later chronicles. These quotations are from the Laurentian version, copied in 1377, translated by SAMUEL CROSS.

2 This is commonly referred to as the ontological argument for the existence of God, and derives from Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, bk. I, ch. 7. It is also to be found in René Descartes, Third Meditation.

3 Translated by A. C. GRAHAM.

4 O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata,/Quae semper celebrat superna curia.

Translated by JOHN MASON NEALE.

5 Liberavi animam meam.

6 Hell is full of good meanings and wishings.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum, no. 170

Hell is paved with good intentions.—JOHN RAY [1627–1705], English Proverbs [1670]

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones.—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman. Maxims for Revolutionists

1 Translated by W. S. MERWIN.

2 By tradition, a biblical image in a stained-glass window in the cathedral of Chartres inspired these words.

See Isaac Newton.

Translation based on Clement Webb’s Latin edition.

A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, Democritus to the Reader

A Dwarf on a Giant’s shoulder sees farther of the two.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giant’s shoulders to mount on.—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, The Friend, issue 15 [November 30, 1809]

3 Thomas à Becket.

4 Translated by M. FRIEDLANDER.

5 Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum.

Hyt is not al gold that glareth.—CHAUCER, The House of Fame, bk. I, l. 272

But al thyng which that shineth as the gold/Nis nat gold, as that I have herd it told.—CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales, The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, l. 962

All is not gold that outward showeth bright.—JOHN LYDGATE [c. 1370–c. 1451], On the Mutability of Human Affairs

Non omne quod fulget est aurum.—GABRIEL BIEL [c. 1420–1495], Expositio Canonis Messe, lecture 77, derived from WILLIAM OF AUVERGNE [d. 1249]

All that glisters is not gold—/ Often have you heard that told.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice, act II, sc. vii, l. 65

1 Translated by DONALD KEENE.

2 Dô der sumer komen was,/Und die blumen dur daz gras/Wünneclâchen sprungen,/Aedâ die vogele sungen.

3 Translated by JETHRO BITHELL.

4 Familiar as: First come first served.

A rule to determine the order by which a miller would grind corn.

5 Translated by LEO SHERLEY-PRICE.

6 Attributed to ARNAUD by the Cistercian writer Caesarius of Heisterbach [c. 1180–c. 1240]: Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

7 Translated by JOHN MOYNE and COLEMAN BARKS.

1 Exemplum de simia, quae, quanto plus ascendit, tanto plus apparent posteriora eius.

Translated by the REV. WALTER J. BURGHARDT, S.J.

2 Translated by ROBERT BURKE.

3 Translated by J. H. JACKSON.

4 Pange, lingua, gloriosi/Corporis mysterium/Sanguinisque pretiosi,/Quem in mundi pretium/Fructus ventris generosi/Rex effudit gentium.

Translated by EDWARD CASWALL.

Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certáminis [Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle].—SAINT VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS [c. 530–c. 610], bishop of Poitiers

5 Translated by J. D. CHAMBERS.

6 Probably the origin of the phrase: beatific vision.

7 Translated by FATHERS OF THE ENGLISH DOMINICAN PROVINCE.

1 Translated by OLIVER DAVIES.

2 Translated by RAYMOND BERNARD BLAKNEY.

3 Translated by FRANK TOBIN.

4 Translated by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

5 Translated by CHARLES LYELL.

The first line is also in The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, canto II, l. 112.

6 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,/Che la diritta via era smarrita.

7 Translated by JOHN D. SINCLAIR unless otherwise noted.

8 Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.

Traditional translation.

9 Translated by JOHN AITKEN CARLYLE.

10 Di qua, di là, di giù, di su li mena.

1 Translated by JOHN AITKEN CARLYLE.

2 Nessun maggior dolore/Che ricordarsi del tempo felice/Nella miseria.

Translated by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

3 Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse:/Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante.

4 E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

5 Translated by CHARLES ELIOT NORTON unless otherwise noted.

6 Translated by JOHN D. SINCLAIR.

6 Translated by JOHN D. SINCLAIR.

1 Men che dramma/Di sangue m’è rimaso, che no tremi;/Conosco i segni dell’ antica fiamma.

2 Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.

3 Translated by JOHN D. SINCLAIR.

4 E’n la sua volontade e nostra pace.

5 L’esperienza di questa dolce vita.

6 L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle.

7 Translated by JAMES SCHUYLER.

8 Translated by DONALD KEENE.

1 Translated [seventeenth century] by JOHN PONCE of Cork.

The axiom became known as Occam’s Razor.

2 Qui m’aime me suive.

3 Translated by J. M. RIGG.

4 Translated by FRANZ ROSENTHAL.

1 Translated by GEOFFREY BRERETON.

2 The identity of this woman writer is unknown. She is known by this name, taken from St. Julian’s Church, Norwich, England.

3 Sin is Behovely…—T. S. ELIOT, Four Quartets. Little Gidding, pt. III

4 Works by Chaucer edited by F. N. ROBINSON.

5 John Bartlett quoted this line at the head of his preface to the ninth edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations [1891].

6 Commonly quoted: In one ear and out the other.

1 All is uneven,/And everything is left at six and seven.—SHAKESPEARE, Richard II, act II, sc. ii, l. 120

Things going on at sixes and sevens.—OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Good-Natur’d Man, act I

2 The proverb is: Fair and softly goes far.

3 See François Villon.

4 Off with you down where you want to go.—HORACE, Epistles, bk. I, epistle xx, l. 5

Little book, you will go without me—I don’t mind—to the city.—OVID, Tristia, bk. I, poem i, l. 1

Vade salutatum pro me, liber [Go forth, my book, to bear my greetings].—MARTIAL, Epigrams, bk. I, no. 70

Go now, my little book, to every place/Where my first pilgrim has but shown his face.—JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Apology

Go, little Book! From this my solitude/I cast thee on the Waters—go thy ways.—SOUTHEY, Lay of the Laureate [1815], L’Envoi

These lines of Southey’s and the next two were quoted by BYRON in Don Juan, canto I, st. 222: The four first rhymes are Southey’s, every line:/For God’s sake, reader! take them not for mine!

Go, little book, and wish to all/Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall.—R. L. STEVENSON, Underwoods. Envoy

1 In allusion to the proverb: An honest miller hath a golden thumb.

2 The proverb also occurs in the Latin form: Campus habet lumen, et habet nemus auris acumen [The field has sight, and the wood a sharp ear].

Wode has erys, felde has sigt.—King Edward and the Shepherd, MS [c. 1300]

Fields have eyes and woods have ears.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. II, ch. 5

Walls have ears.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. II, ch. 48

Woods have tongues/As walls have ears.—TENNYSON, Idylls of the King. Balin and Balan, l. 522

1 Through thick and thin.—DU BARTAS, Divine Weeks and Works, Second Week, Fourth Day

2 Call him bounteous Buckingham,/The mirror of all courtesy.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry VIII, act II, sc. i, l. 52

3 Proverbial.

Fryeth in her own grease.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 11

The best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merry Wives of Windsor, act II, sc. i, l. 69

1 Proverbial.

2 Proverbial.

He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.—SHAKESPEARE, The Comedy of Errors, act IV, sc. iii, l. 64

3 Proverbial.

How easily murder is discovered!—SHAKESPEARE, Titus Andronicus, act II, sc. iii, l. 287

Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice, act II, sc. ii, l. 86

Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/With most miraculous organ.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, act II, sc. ii, l. 630

Murder will out.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. I, bk. III, ch. 8

Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, sec. I, member 2, subsec. 5

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.—JOHN WEBSTER, The Duchess of Malfi, act IV, sc. ii

4 The proverb goes back to Saint Augustine.

Many small make a great.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 11

1 Translated by E. J. RICHARDS.

2 Translated by RYUSAKU TSUNODA and DONALD KEENE.

On the aesthetic principle of Noh.

3 O sancta simplicitas!

4 These words are used in the crowning of the pope.

5 Homo proponet et Deus disponit.—WILLIAM LANGLAND, The Vision of Piers Plowman, l. 13,994 [1550 edition]

Man appoints, and God disappoints.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. II, bk. IV, ch. 55

6 Fer from eze, fer from herte,/Quoth Hendyng.—HENDYNG [1272–1307], Proverbs, MS

Out of sight, out of mind.—BARNABE GOOGE [1540–1594], Eglogs [1563], title of poem

And out of mind as soon as out of sight.—FULKE GREVILLE, Sonnet 56

I do perceive that the old proverbs be not always true, for I do find that the absence of my Nath. doth breed in me the more continual remembrance of him.—LADY ANN BACON [1528–1610], letter to Lady Jane Cornwallis

7 Je meurs de soif auprès de la fontaine.

8 Le temps a laissé son manteau/De vent, de froidure et de pluie.

9 Translated by NORBERT GUTERMAN.

Thou shalt make castels thanne in Spayne,/And dreme of joye, all but in vayne.—JEAN DE MEUN [13th cent.], The Romaunt of the Rose [c. 1277], fragment B, l. 2573, translated by CHAUCER

10 A great cry, but little wool.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. II, bk. III, ch. 13

All cry and no wool.—SAMUEL BUTLER [1612–1680], Hudibras, pt. I, canto I, l. 852

1 Translated by JOHN R. SPENCER.

2 The Holy Grail.

3 The reference is to the ceremony of excommunication, performed with bell, book, and candle.

4 Hé Dieu! si j’eusse étudié/Au temps de ma jeunesse folle.

5 Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

Translated by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

See Chaucer.

6 Il n’est bon bec que de Paris.

1 Je connais tout, fors que moi-même.

2 Translated by RICHARD WILBUR.

3 Translated by EDITH GROSSMAN.

4 BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS [1474–1566] made an abstract of Columbus’s Journal of the First Voyage (El Libro de la Primera Navegación), which is the nearest thing to an original journal that we have.

Translated by SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON.

5 Likely the first certain reference in history to smoking tobacco.

6 This letter, among the oldest documents depicting the Americas, describes the scenery and the native people of what came to be called Hispaniola.

7 Columbus is returning from the Indies as a prisoner.

8 Translated by MILTON ANASTOS.

9 Translated by EDWARD MACCURDY.

1 Translated by G. T. NORTHUP.

This, and a letter of Vespucci to his friend Pier Soderini [1504], led geography professor Martin Waldseemüller to credit Vespucci with discovering “a fourth part of the world” and to issue a map [1507] with a bold AMERICA on the continent now called South America. Vespucci had invented a voyage of 1497, a year before Columbus’s Third Voyage, which reached the mainland of South America.

2 Rule the rost.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. I, ch. 5

Rules the roast.—JONSON, CHAPMAN, MARSTON, Eastward Ho [1605], act II, sc. ii

Her that ruled the rost.—THOMAS HEYWOOD, History of Women [ed. 1624]

3 To keep the wolf from the door.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. II, ch. 7

4 It is a foul bird that filleth his own nest.—JOHN HEYWOOD, Proverbs, pt. II, ch. 5

5 Translated by ELIZABETH LIVERMORE FORBES.

1 Fear of Death troubles me.

2 Makers, meaning poets.

3 O reverend Chaucer, rose of rhetoricians all,/as in our tongue a flower imperial/that rose in Britain ever, who reads aright,/thou bearest of poets the triumph royal.

4 In regione caecorum rex est luscus.

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king; I passed for a good teacher, because the rest in town were bad.—JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, Confessions, pt. I, bk. 5

5 Every Country hath its Machiavel.—THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici, pt. I, sec. 20

Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.—THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, On Machiavelli [1827]

6 Translated by W. K. MARRIOTT.

7 Translated by LESLIE J. WALKER, S.J.

1 Translated by WILLIAM MARTIN CONWAY.

2 Translated by JOHN F. DOBSON.

3 Natura il fece, e poi ruppe la stampa.

4 Canonized [1935] by Pope Pius XI.

1 Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen.

Inscribed on his monument at Worms.

Also translated as: Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. And: God helping me, I can do no other.

2 Ein’ feste burg is unser Gott,/ein gute wehr und waffen./Er hilft uns frei aus aller not,/die uns itzt hat betroffen.

Translated by FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE.

Great God! there is no safety here below;/Thou art my fortress, thou that seem’st my foe.—FRANCIS QUARLES, Divine Poems [1633]

3 Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 4, member I, subsec. 1

No sooner is a temple built to God but the Devil builds a chapel hard by.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

4 As recorded by Cortés’s secretary, Francisco López de Gómara, in his Istoria de la Conquista de Mexico.

1 J’estime mieux que autrement, que c’est la terre que Dieu donna à Caïn.

Upon discovering the bleak shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, today’s Labrador and Quebec [summer 1534].

2 Compiled by the Hungarian Jesuit GABRIEL HEVENSI.

Translated by ALAN G. MCDOUGALL.

3 Translated by HENRY M. PACHTER.

4 Tout est perdu fors l’honneur.

The actual words written were: De toutes choses ne m’est demeuré que l’honneur et la vie qui est sauvé. The letter is in JACQUES-ANTOINE DULAURE [1755–1835], Histoire Civile, Physique, et Morale de Paris [1821–1825].

5 Translated by SIR THOMAS URQUHART and PETER ANTHONY MOTTEUX [1653–1694].

6 Pour ce que rire est le propre de l’homme.

7 My appetite comes to me while eating.—MONTAIGNE, Essays, bk. III, ch. 9

8 He is most powerful who has power over himself.—SENECA, Epistles, letter 90, l. 34

9 Fais ce que voudras.

10 We could manage this matter to a T.—LAURENCE STERNE, Tristram Shandy, bk. II, ch. 5

You see they’d have fitted him to a T.—SAMUEL JOHNSON; from BOSWELL, Life of Johnson [1791]

You will find it shall echo my speech to a T.—THOMAS MOORE, Address for the Opening of the New Theatre of St. Stephen

1 The will for deed I do accept.—DU BARTAS, Divine Weeks and Works, Second Week, Third Day, pt. 2

You must take the will for the deed.—JONATHAN SWIFT, Polite Conversation, Dialogue 2

2 While you live, tell truth and shame the devil!—SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV, pt. I, act III, sc. i, l. 62

I’d tell the truth, and shame the devil.—OLIVER GOLDSMITH; from BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, vol. I, p. 460 (Everyman edition)

Truth being truth,/Tell it and shame the devil.—ROBERT BROWNING, The Ring and the Book, bk. III, The Other Half-Rome

3 As clear and as manifest as the nose in a man’s face.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 3, member 4, subsec. 1

4 They were suffered to have rope enough till they had haltered themselves.—THOMAS FULLER [1608–1661], The Historie of the Holy Warre [1639], bk. 5, ch. 7

Give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself.—Proverb

5 As like as one pease is to another.—JOHN LYLY, Euphues

They say we are/Almost as like as eggs.—SHAKESPEARE, The Winter’s Tale, act I, sc. ii, l. 130

As one egg is like another.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. II, bk. III, ch. 14

6 Je m’en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.

His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, “a great Perhaps.”—THOMAS CARLYLE, Essays, Burns [1828]

The grand perhaps.—ROBERT BROWNING, Bishop Blougram’s Apology

7 The earliest known of the “willow” songs (see Shakespeare, Othello, and Sir W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado).

8 In wikked haste is no profit.—CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales, Melibee, sec. 2240

9 John Heywood’s Proverbs, first printed in 1546, is the earliest collection of English colloquial sayings. The selection here given is from the edition of 1874 (a reprint of 1598), edited by JULIAN SHARMAN.

10 Thou shouldst have looked before thou hadst leapt.—JONSON, CHAPMAN, MARSTON, Eastward Ho [1605], act V, sc. i

11 Between two stools one sits on the ground.—Les Proverbes del Vilain, MS Bodleian [c. 1303]

12 Time nor tide tarrieth no man.—ROBERT GREENE, Disputations [1592]

Hoist up sail while gale doth last,/Tide and wind stay no man’s pleasure.—ROBERT SOUTHWELL, St. Peter’s Complaint [1595]

Nae man can tether time or tide.—ROBERT BURNS, Tam o’ Shanter

13 It is this proverb which Henry V is reported to have uttered at the siege of Orléans: Shall I beat the bush and another take the bird?

14 Hanging and wiving go by destiny.—The Schole-hous for Women [1541]

Marriage and hanging go by destiny; matches are made in heaven.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 2, member 5, subsec. 5

15 Qui est près de l’église est souvent loin de Dieu [He who is near the Church is often far from God].—Les Proverbes Communs [c. 1500]

16 Rather to bow than break is profitable:/Humility is a thing commendable.—The Moral Proverbs of Cristyne [1390]

1 Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit [If the end is good, all will be good].—Gesta Romanorum (Deeds of the Romans) [1472], tale 67

2 Quant le cheval est emblé dounke ferme fols l’estable [When the horse has been stolen, the fool shuts the stable].—Les Proverbes del Vilain, MS Bodleian [c. 1303]

3 Ewyl weed ys sone y-growe.—MS Harleian [c. 1490]

Great weeds do grow apace.—SHAKESPEARE, Richard III, act II, sc. iv, l. 13

An ill weed grows apace.—GEORGE CHAPMAN, An Humorous Day’s Mirth [1599]

4 Give not Saint Peter so much, to leave Saint Paul nothing.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum “To rob Peter and pay Paul” is said to have had its origin in the reign of Edward VI when the lands of St. Peter at Westminster were appropriated to raise money for the repair of St. Paul’s in London.

The French form of the proverb is: Découvrir saint Pierre pour couvrir saint Paul.

5 You may bring a horse to the river, but he will drink when and what he pleaseth.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

6 Two strings to his bow.—RICHARD HOOKER, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. V [1597], ch. 80

7 Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, Democritus to the Reader

8 Old recipe books advised that an inebriate should drink sparingly in the morning some of the same kind of liquor which he had drunk to excess the night before.

9 Brend child fur dredth,/Quoth Hendyng.—HENDYNG [1272–1307], Proverbs, MS

10 There is no fool like an old fool.—JOHN LYLY, Mother Bombie, act IV, sc. ii, and in frequent use thereafter

11 This is a corruption of Tant pour tant.

12 Two may keep counsel when the third’s away.—SHAKESPEARE, Titus Andronicus, act IV, sc. ii, l. 145

Three can hold their peace if two be away.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

13 Pitchers have ears.—SHAKESPEARE, The Taming of the Shrew, act IV, sc. iv, l. 52, and Richard III, act II, sc. iv, l. 37

Little pitchers have wide ears.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

14 Thou shalt come out of a warm sun into God’s blessing.

—JOHN LYLY, Euphues

Thou out of Heaven’s benediction com’st/To the warm sun.

—SHAKESPEARE, King Lear, act II, sc. ii, l. 168

15 There can no great smoke arise, but there must be some fire.

—JOHN LYLY, Euphues

16 More water glideth by the mill/Than wots the miller of.

—SHAKESPEARE, Titus Andronicus, act II, sc. i, l. 85

The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 3, member 4, subsec. 1

1 They would make me believe that the moon was made of green cheese.—JOHN FRITH [1503–1533], A Pistle to the Christian Reader [1529]

2 Except wind stands as never it stood,/It is an ill wind turns none to good.—THOMAS TUSSER, A Description of the Properties of Winds

Falstaff. What wind blew you hither, Pistol?

Pistol. Not the ill wind which blows no man to good.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV, Part II, act V, sc. iii, l. 87

3 Give an inch, he’ll take an ell.—THOMAS DEKKER and JOHN WEBSTER, The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat [1607]

4 Wouldst thou both eat thy cake and have it?—GEORGE HERBERT, The Temple. The Size l. 18

5 Every man for himself, his own ends, the Devil for all.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. III, sec. 1, member 3

6 For buying or selling of pig in a poke.—THOMAS TUSSER, A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry. September Abstract

7 Je parle espagnol à Dieu, italien aux femmes, français aux hommes, et allemand à mon cheval.

8 Ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Motto of the Society of Jesus.

9 Translated by HENRY BEVERIDGE.

1 On Michelangelo’s David.

Translated by JULIA CONAWAY BONDANELLA and PETER BONDANELLA.

2 Thirty days hath September,/April, June, and November;/All the rest have thirty-one,/Excepting February alone,/Which hath but twenty-eight, in fine,/Till leap year gives it twenty-nine.—Common in the New England states

Compare the old Latin class mnemonic:

In March, July, October, May,/The Ides are on the fifteenth day, / The Nones the seventh: all other months besides/Have two days less for Nones and Ides.

3 Un homme avec Dieu est toujours dans la majorité.

See Wendell Phillips.

4 Translated by J. M. COHEN.

5 Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage.

1 Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle,/Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,/Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant:/“Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.”

Translated by HUMBERT WOLFE.

See the adaptation by Yeats: When you are old and gray and full of sleep.

2 Mignonne, allons voir si la rose/Qui, ce matin, avoit déclose/Sa robe de pourpre au soleil,/A point perdu, cette vesprée/Les plis de sa robe pourprée/Et son teint au vôtre pareil.

Translated by CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE.

3 Tel maître, tel valet.—Attributed to PIERRE TERRÀIL, SEIGNEUR DE BAYARD [c. 1473–1524], known as the CHEVALIER BAYARD

4 Qui s’excuse, s’accuse.

5 Dieu mesure le froid à la brebis tondue.

6 Mary, Queen of Scots [1542–1587].

1 Answer on being asked her opinion of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament.

2 Je veux qu’on m’y voit en ma façon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans étude et artifice; car c’est moi que je peins… Je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre.

3 Books I and II of the Essays were published in 1580; republished [1588] with the addition of book III and with many interpolations in books I and II; the whole republished posthumously [1595], incorporating material based on Montaigne’s marginal annotations in the 1588 edition.

Translated by DONALD M. FRAME unless otherwise noted.

4 Certes, c’est un subject [sic] merveilleusement vain, divers, et ondoyant, que l’homme. Il est malaisé d’y fonder jugement constant et uniforme.

5 C’est de quoi j’ai le plus de peur que la peur.

6 Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.

7 I have taught you, my dear flock, for above thirty years how to live, and I will show you in a very short time how to die.—SIR EDWIN SANDYS [1561–1629], Anglorum Speculum

Teach him how to live,/And, oh still harder lesson! how to die.—BEILBY PORTEUS [1731–1808], Death [1759], l. 316

8 Plutôt la tête bien faite que bien pleine.

9 Parce que c’était lui; parce que c’était moi.

Translated by CHARLES COTTON, revised by WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT.

10 Il se faut réserver une arrière boutique toute notre.

11 La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi.

12 C’est une épineuse entreprise, et plus qu’il ne semble, de suivre une allure si vagabonde que celle de nôtre esprit; de pénétrer les profondeurs opaques de ses replis internes; de choisir et arrêter tant de menus de ses agitations.

13 Mon métier et mon art, c’est vivre.

14 Que sais-je?

Translated by E. J. TRECHMANN.

This phrase appeared on a medal of Montaigne’s, which showed also his coat of arms and the collar of the order of Saint Michael, and on the reverse side a pair of scales in perfect balance, the date [1576], his age (forty-two), and the Skeptics’ motto Eπεχω (see Montaigne).

15 L’homme est bien insensé. Il ne saurait forger un ciron, et forge des Dieux à douzaines.

1 Quelle vérité que ces montagnes bornent, qui est mensonge qui se tient au delà?

2 Ceux qui ont apparié notre vie à un songe ont eu de la raison… Nous veillons dormants et veillants dormons.

Translated by E. J. TRECHMANN.

3 Translated by CHARLES COTTON, revised by WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT.

I myself have loved a lady and pursued her with a great deal of under-age protestation, whom some three or four gallants… would have been glad to have been rid of. ’Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within… fear they shall never get out.—JOHN WEBSTER, The White Devil, act I, sc. ii

Wedlock, indeed, hath oft comparèd been/To public feasts, where meet a public rout—/ Where they that are without would fain go in,/And they that are within would fain go out.—SIR JOHN DAVIES [1569–1626], A Contention [1602]

4 Translated by CHARLES COTTON, revised by WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT.

5 Translated by CHARLES COTTON, revised by WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT.

John Bartlett used this passage as an epigraph for the fourth edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations [1864].

I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men’s stuff, at my best value.—SIR HENRY WOTTON [1568–1639], The Elements of Architecture [1624], preface

6 Si, avons nous beau monter sur des échasses, car sur des échasses encore faut-il marcher de nos jambes. Et au plus élevé trône du monde, si ne sommes assis que sur notre cul.

Translated by WALTER KAISER.

7 Mon Dieu, ayez pitié de mon âme et de mon pauvre peuple.

1 The way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distance.—SIR THOMAS MORE, Utopia

Gilbert called out these words from his pinnace, the Squirrel, to the captain of another vessel during their return voyage from Newfoundland to England. Gilbert held a book, likely More’s Utopia and the inspiration for his utterance. The Squirrel and all on board were lost at sea that night [August 1583].

“Do not fear! Heaven is as near,”/He said, “by water as by land!”—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Sir Humphrey Gilbert [1849], st. 6

2 Que bien se yo la fonte que mana y corre/aunque es de noche.

Translated by JOHN FREDERICK NIMS.

3 The title is taken from the previously quoted poem, “Song of the Soul Whose Pleasure Is in Knowing God by Faith.”

4 O noche que juntaste/Amado con amada/Amada en el amado transformada.

Translated by JOHN FREDERICK NIMS.

5 O Domine Deus! speravi in te;/O care mi Jesu! nunc libera me. / In dura catena, in misera poena,/Disidero te./Languendo, gemendo, et genuflectendo,/Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me!

Translated by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.

6 Adolphe Thiers adopted the epigram as the motto for his journal Le National.

7 This poem became popular as a song, altered thus:

My mind to me a kingdom is;/Such perfect joy therein I find,/As far exceeds all earthly bliss/That God and Nature hath assigned./Though much I want that most would have,/Yet still my mind forbids to crave.—WILLIAM BYRD [1543–1623], Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadness and Piety [1588]

8 Much like a subtle spider which doth sit/In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;/If aught do touch the utmost thread of it / She feels it instantly on every side.—SIR JOHN DAVIES [1569–1626], The Immortality of the Soul [1599]

Our souls sit close and silently within,/And their own webs from their own entrails spin;/And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such/That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch.—JOHN DRYDEN, Marriage à la Mode [1673], act II, sc. i

The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!/Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.—ALEXANDER POPE, An Essay on Man, epistle I, l. 217

1 Translated by P. F. MOTTELAY.

2 Translated [1700–1703] by PETER ANTHONY MOTTEUX. Page numbers are those of the Modern Library Giant edition.

3 Do you think you could keep people from talking?—MOLIÈRE, Tartuffe, act I, sc. viii

Take wife, or cowl; ride you, or walk:/Doubt not but tongues will have their talk.—JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, The Miller, His Son, and the Donkey [1694]

4 El Caballero de la Triste Figura.

Translated by TOBIAS SMOLLETT.

5 No pie was baked at Castlewood but her little finger was in it.—WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, The Virginians, ch. 5

6 An old proverb.

You are no better than you should be.—BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, The Coxcomb [1647], act IV, sc. iii

7 Often rendered: Least said soonest mended.

1 Cervantes’s left hand was maimed for life by gunshot wounds in the battle of Lepanto.

2 When the head is not sound, the rest cannot be well.—DU BARTAS, Divine Weeks and Works

For let our finger ache, and it indues/Our other healthful members ev’n to that sense/Of pain.—SHAKESPEARE, Othello, act III, sc. iv, l. 145

3 A needle in a haystack.

4 But patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards, till our hand is a stronger one.—WALTER SCOTT, Quentin Durward [1823], ch. 8

Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards.—MARGARET FULLER, Letter to the Reverend W. H. Channing [February 21, 1841]

5 I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.—GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address [1796]

6 Great wits jump.—LAURENCE STERNE, Tristram Shandy, vol. III, ch. 9

7 “God’s blessing,” said Sancho Panza, “be upon the man who first invented this self-same thing called sleep; it covers a man all over like a cloak.”—LAURENCE STERNE, Tristram Shandy, vol. IV, ch. 15

1 Translated by J. B. HALLE.

2 Translated by DOROTHEA SINGER.

3 Equi et poetae alendi, non saginandi.

4 One’s home is the safest refuge to everyone.—Pandects (Digest of Roman Law) [533], lib. II, tit. IV, De in Ius Vocando

I in mine own house am an emperor/And will defend what’s mine.—PHILIP MASSINGER, The Roman Actor, act I, sc. ii

5 Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven;/Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.—SIR WILLIAM JONES [1746–1794]

1 An answer to CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.

2 Under this Queen Elizabeth wrote, “If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”—THOMAS FULLER [1608–1661], Worthies of England [1662]

3 Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi [The deepest rivers flow with the least sound].—QUINTUS CURTIUS [first century C.E.], Life of Alexander the Great, bk. VII, ch. 4, sec. 13

Where the stream runneth smoothest, the water is deepest.—JOHN LYLY, Euphues and His England

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI, Part II, act III, sc. i, l. 53

Take heed of still waters, the quick pass away.—GEORGE HERBERT, Jacula Prudentum

4 And moralized his song.—ALEXANDER POPE, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, l. 340

1 These lines are cut on Joseph Conrad’s gravestone at Canterbury.

2 See The Wisdom of Solomon 2:8, Horace, Ronsard, and Herrick.

3 The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.—Book of Common Prayer, Psalter, Psalm 110:3

4 Jockey of Norfolk, be not too bold,/For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.—SHAKESPEARE, Richard III, act V, sc. iii, 1. 305

Forbear, said I: be not too bold./Your fleece is white but ’Tis too cold.—RICHARD CRASHAW, Hymn of the Nativity, l. 50

Write on your doors the saying wise and old,/“Be bold! be bold!” and everywhere—“Be bold;/Be not too bold!”—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Morituri Salutamus

5 The last, not least in honor or applause.—ALEXANDER POPE, The Dunciad, bk. IV, l. 577

6 Take Time by the forelock.—THALES [one of the SEVEN SAGES; c. 640–c. 546 B.C.E.]

7 Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,/Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.—T. S. ELIOT, The Waste Land, pt. III

1 Paris vaut bien une messe.

2 Attributed also to Henri’s minister, Duc de Sully.

3 Periculum in mora.—Latin proverb

All delays are dangerous in war.—JOHN DRYDEN, Tyrannic Love [1669], act I, sc. i

4 Many strokes, though with a little axe,/Hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.—SHAKESPEARE, Henry VI, pt. III, act II, sc. i, l. 54

5 To rise with the lark and go to bed with the lamb.—NICHOLAS BRETON [c. 1553–c. 1625], Court and Country [1618]

6 The rose is fairest when ’tis budding new.—WALTER SCOTT, The Lady of the Lake, canto III, st. I

7 Les mariages se font au ciel, et se consomment sur la terre.—French proverb

If marriages/Are made in heaven, they should be happier.—THOMAS SOUTHERNE [1660–1746], The Fatal Marriage [1694]

1 More often quoted as: Thy need.

2 Tichborne was beheaded for an attempt on Queen Elizabeth’s life.

3 Quoted by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN in Poor Richard’s Almanac [1735], June.

4 By Chapman, Jonson, and Marston.

5 Usually quoted: Speed the plow.

1 First known literary reference to Shakespeare.

2 If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,/The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.—ALEXANDER POPE, Essay on Man, epistle IV, l. 281

3 Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Rasselas, ch. 13

4 A translation of the Italian proverb Di danari, di senno, e di fede, / C’è ne manco che non credi.

5 “The New Organon,” referring to Aristotle’s Organon, which lays out his system of logic.

1 As aromatic plants bestow/No spicy fragrance while they grow; / But crushed or trodden to the ground,/Diffuse their balmy sweets around.—OLIVER GOLDSMITH, The Captivity [1764], act I

2 Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes;/Men would be angels, angels would be gods./Aspiring to be gods if angels fell,/Aspiring to be angels men rebel.—ALEXANDER POPE, Essay on Man, epistle I, l. 125

3 A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion.—THOMAS FULLER [1608–1661], The Holy State and the Profane State. The True Church Antiquary

4 Gardens were before gardeners, and but some hours after the earth.—THOMAS BROWNE, The Garden of Cyrus, ch. 1

1 He that is master of the sea, may, in some sort, be said to be Master of every country; at least such as are bordering on the sea. For he is at liberty to begin and end War, where, when, and on what terms he pleaseth, and extend his conquests even to the Antipodes.—JOSEPH GANDER [fl. c. 1703], The Glory of Her Sacred Majesty Queen Anne in the Royal Navy [1703]

2 Solo del amor queda el veneno.

3 No hay calle con piedras mudas, ni alto cigarral sin ecos.

4 Translated by ANGEL FLORES and MURIEL KITTEL.

1 Translated by STILLMAN DRAKE and C. D. O’MALLEY.

2 E pur si muove!

Alleged to have been whispered by Galileo after recanting before the Inquisition his claim that the earth revolved around the sun.

3 Translated by HENRY CREW and ALFONSO DE SALVIO.

4 Also given as: Hills and valleys, dales, and fields.

5 To shallow rivers, to whose falls/Melodious birds sing madrigals;/There will we make our peds of roses,/And a thousand fragrant posies.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merry Wives of Windsor, act III, sc. i, l. 17

1 Here lyeth muche rychnesse in lytell space.—JOHN HEYWOOD, The Foure PP [1521–1525]

2 Quoted in SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It, act III, sc. v, l. 82.

None ever loved but at first sight they loved.—GEORGE CHAPMAN, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria [1598]

3 Was this fair face the cause, quoth she,/Why the Grecians sacked Troy?—SHAKESPEARE, All’s Well That Ends Well, act I, sc. iii, l. 75

4 Once he drew/With one long kiss my whole soul through/My lips.—TENNYSON, Fatima [1833], st. 3

5 See Ovid.

1 From the text edited by W. J. CRAIG. For the dating and sequence of the plays and poems see E. K. CHAMBERS, William Shakespeare, and JAMES G. MCMANAWAY, “Recent Studies in Shakespeare’s Chronology.”

1 Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride a gallop.—ROBERT BURTON, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. II, sec. 2, member 2

Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll outride the Devil.—HENRY GEORGE BOHN [1796–1884], Foreign Proverbs, German [1855]

2 Proud setter up and puller down of kings.—King Henry VI, Part III, act III, sc. iii, l. 157

1 A little too wise, they say, do ne’er live long.—THOMAS MIDDLETON, The Phoenix [1603–1604], act I, sc. i

2 For every why he had a wherefore.—SAMUEL BUTLER [1612–1680], Hudibras, pt. I, canto 1, l. 132

1 Some villain hath done me wrong.—King Lear, act I, sc. ii, l. 186

1 I have heard of reasons manifold/Why Love must needs be blind,/But this the best of all I hold/His eyes are in his mind.—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Reason for Love’s Blindness [1828]

1 I see the beginning of my end.—PHILIP MASSINGER, The Virgin Martyr [1622], act III, sc. iii

1 My dancing days are done.—BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, The Scornful Lady, act V, sc. iii

2 Huncamunca: O Tom Thumb! Tom Thumb! wherefore art thou Tom Thumb?—HENRY FIELDING, Tom Thumb, act II, sc. iii

3 It’s as full of good-nature as an egg’s full of meat.—RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, A Trip to Scarborough [1777], act III, sc. iv

1 I’ll tell the world.—Measure for Measure, act II, sc. iv, l. 154

Ay, tell the world!—ROBERT BROWNING, Paracelsus [1835], pt. II

1 It showed discretion the best part of valor.—BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, A King and No King, act II, sc. iii

2 That hee shall be called a Nazarite.—The Geneva Bible [1557–1560], Matthew 2:23

The Geneva version of the Bible is the one Shakespeare was familiar with.

1 Scylla to port, and on our starboard beam Charybdis, dire gorge of the salt sea tide.—HOMER, Odyssey, bk. XII, l. 232

Scylla guards the right side; implacable Charybdis the left.—VIRGIL, Aeneid, bk. III, l. 420

Incidis in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim [You fall into Scylla in seeking to avoid Charybdis].—PHILIPPE GUALTIER [fl. c. 1300], Alexandreis [c. 1300], bk. V, l. 301

2 Clown: What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?/Malvolio: That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.—Twelfth-Night, act IV, sc. ii, l. 55

3 He is young, but take it from me, a very staid head.—THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD [1593–1641], Letter commending the Earl of Ormond to Charles I for appointment as councilor

1 As ill luck would have it.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. I, bk. I, ch. 2

1 Sleep, most gentle sleep.—OVID, Metamorphoses, bk. II, l. 624

1 Sometimes rendered: idle.

1 The windy side of the law.—Twelfth-Night, act III, sc. iv, l. 183

2 We know your drift.—Coriolanus, act III, sc. iii, l. 114

3 Let care kill a cat,/We’ll laugh and grow fat.—Shirburn Ballads [1585], no. 91

Hang sorrow, care’ll kill a cat.—BEN JONSON, Every Man in His Humour, act I, sc. i

1 This geare is Greeke to me.—GEORGE GASCOIGNE [c. 1525–1577], Supposes [1566], act I, sc. i

1 So wags the world.—WALTER SCOTT, Ivanhoe, ch. 37

2 The world’s a theater, the earth a stage,/Which God and Nature do with actors fill.—THOMAS HEYWOOD, Apology for Actors [1612]

The world’s a stage on which all the parts are played.—THOMAS MIDDLETON, A Game of Chess [1624], act V, sc. i

1 “A poor thing but mine own” is the popular version.

1 Alternative readings are “sallied” and “sullied.”

1 Wel oghte a preest ensample for to yive./By his clennesse, how that his sheep shold live.—CHAUCER, The Canterbury Tales, The Prologue, l. 504

And may ye better reck the rede,/Than ever did th’ adviser.—ROBERT BURNS, Epistle to a Young Friend

2 And makes night hideous.—ALEXANDER POPE, The Dunciad, bk. III, l. 166

1 In some editions: good.

2 The hawk was a basic tool of the plasterer and the handsaw a basic tool of the carpenter.—Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins [1977]

1 Ophelia is quoting a version of a poem by Walter Ralegh.

2 One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,/So fast they follow.—Hamlet, act IV, sc. vii, l. 164

Thus woe succeeds a woe, as wave a wave.—ROBERT HERRICK, Sorrows Succeed [1648]

Woes cluster; rare are solitary woes;/They love a train, they tread each other’s heel.—EDWARD YOUNG, Night Thoughts, Night III, l. 63

1 Is not music the food of love?—RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, The Rivals, act II, sc. i

1 A play on “a horse of a different color.”

1 The music of the spheres.—Pericles, act V, sc. i, l. 231

A reference to the Pythagorean idea (sixth century B.C.E.) that the stars and planets in movement created music, since their motion is governed by mathematical equations that correspond to musical tones.

2 Parodied by the Fool in King Lear, 211:31.

3 Though I be poor, I’m honest.—THOMAS MIDDLETON, The Witch [c. 1627], act III, sc. ii

1 “Mariana in the moated grange.”—Motto used by TENNYSON for the poem Mariana.

2 This song occurs in act V, sc. ii, of JOHN FLETCHER’S Bloody Brother [c. 1616], with an additional stanza:

Hide, O hide those hills of snow,/Which thy frozen bosom bears,/On whose tops the pinks that grow/Are of those that April wears!/But first set my poor heart free,/Bound in those icy chains by thee.

1 See John Heywood.

1 See Twelfth-Night, V, i, l. 404.

2 The Devil is a gentleman.—PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Peter Bell the Third, pt. II, st. 2

3 Child Roland to the dark tower came.—WALTER SCOTT, The Bridal of Triermain [1813]

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,/And blew.—ROBERT BROWNING, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came [1855], st. 34

1 Inscribed on the drinking fountain in the market square of Stratford-on-Avon.

1 The thunder of your words has soured the milk of human kindness in my heart.—RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, The Rivals, act III, sc. iv

1 Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane/I cannot taint with fear.—Macbeth, act V, sc. iii, l. 2

1 One of the soldiers seeing her, angrily said unto her: is that well done Charmian? Very well said she again, and meet for a princess descended of so many noble kings.—PLUTARCH, Lives; translated [1579] by THOMAS NORTH

2 See Marcus Manilius, and Benjamin Franklin.

1 Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small.—ALGERNON SIDNEY, Discourses on Government, ch. 2, sec. 18

2 Most of the sonnets were written before 1598, according to the Palladis Tamia [1598] of Francis Meres [1565–1647]. They were published [1609] by THOMAS THORPE [c. 1569–1635?], who may have written the dedication:

TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF

THESE INSUING SONNETS

MR. W. H., ALL HAPPINESSE

AND THAT ETERNITIE

PROMISED

BY

OUR EVER-LIVING POET

WISHETH

THE WELL-WISHING

ADVENTURER IN

SETTING

FORTH

T.T.

1 As in the nature of things, those which most admirably flourish, most swiftly fester or putrefy, as roses, lilies, violets, while others last: so in the lives of men, those that are most blooming, are soonest turned into the opposite.—PLINY THE ELDER, Natural History, bk. XVI, ch. 15

1 Perhaps the most famous stage direction in English.

1 The last three lines are inscribed on P. B. Shelley’s gravestone.

2 It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no partitions, no occupation but idle; no respect of kindred, but common, no apparel but natural, no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal.—MONTAIGNE, Essays, bk. I, ch. 30, Of the Cannibals

3 Thought is free.—Twelfth-Night, act I, sc. iii, l. 73

1 Written by SHAKESPEARE and JOHN FLETCHER.

2 ’Tis a cruelty/To load a falling man.—King Henry VIII, act V, sc. iii, l. 76

1 Had I served God as well in every part/As I did serve my king and master still,/My scope had not this season been so short,/Nor would have had the power to do me ill.—THOMAS CHURCHYARD [c. 1520–1604], Death of Morton [1593]

1 “Cherry-ripe” was a familiar street cry of the time. See Robert Herrick.

2 Translated by GRANT MCCOLLEY.

3 In a letter to Velserus [1612], Wotton says that this “merry definition of an ambassador… I had chanced to set down at my friend’s, Mr. Christopher Fleckmore, in his Album.”

4 Translated by PATRICIA KIRKWOOD.

1 John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.—Letter to his wife [1602], quoted in The Life of Dr. John Donne by IZAAK WALTON [1675 edition]

The poems we quote from were published, for the first time unless otherwise noted, in Donne’s posthumous Poems [1633; further editions 1635–1669]. The general composition dates are: Songs and Sonnets (through Farewell to Love) about 1593–1601, with some considerably later; Elegies about 1593–1598; and Holy Sonnets about 1609–1611, 1615–1617.

1 Included by Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler, ch. 12, as “made by Dr. Donne, and made to shew the world that he could make soft and smooth verses, when he thought smoothness worth his labor.”

1 “Anniversary” of the death of Elizabeth Drury [c. 1595–1610].

2 First published in 1899.

1 Called by His Majesty’s household the Doctor’s Own Funeral Sermon.—Preface to the first edition [1632]

2 O rare Ben Jonson!—Epitaph

Which was done at the charge of Jack [Sir John] Young, who, walking there when the grave was covering, gave the fellow 18 pence to cut it.—JOHN AUBREY, Brief Lives [1669–1696]

See also William Drummond.

1 Drink to me with your eyes alone.… And if you will, take the cup to your lips and fill it with kisses, and give it so to me.—PHILOSTRATUS [c. 181–250], Letter 24

2 They never taste who always drink;/They always talk who never think.—MATTHEW PRIOR, Upon this Passage in the Scaligerana

1 Seven cities strive for the learned root of Homer:/Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Ithaca, Pylos, Argos, Athens.—Anonymous epigram, translated by J. W. MACKAIL

Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,/Through which the living Homer begged his bread.—THOMAS SEWARD [1708–1790], On Homer [1788]

2 Many scholars now attribute The Revenger’s Tragedy to THOMAS MIDDLETON [1580–1627].

3 The exception proves the rule.—Proverb

1 Every man thinks his own geese swans.—CHARLES DICKENS, The Cricket on the Hearth [1845], Chirp the Second

2 A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, in HESTER PIOZZI, Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson [1786]

3 A very ancient proverb, sometimes attributed to Homer.

There is many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.—PALLADAS [fl. 400], Epigram, translated by J. W. MACKAIL

Though men determine, the gods do dispose; and ofttimes many things fall out between the cup and the lip.—ROBERT GREENE, Perimedes the Blacksmith [1588]

4 And hold their farthing candle to the sun.—EDWARD YOUNG, Love of Fame, satire VII, l. 99

And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun.—GEORGE CRABBE, The Parish Register [1807], pt. I, introduction

5 Translated by ROBERT WILLIS.

1 Three merry men be we.—GEORGE PEELE, Old Wives’ Tale [1595]

2 This expression is a kind of common property, being the motto, we believe, of a Scottish family.—WALTER SCOTT, review of Thomas Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming [1809], where it appears (pt. III, l. 37): Tomorrow let us do or die!

3 If the worst comes to the worst.—Discovery of the Knights of the Poste [1597]

4 My understanding has forsook me, and is gone a-woolgathering.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. II, bk. IV, ch. 38

5 We will feather our nests ere time may us espy.—ANONYMOUS, A Merry Interlude Entitled Respublica [1553], act III, sc. vi

6 Cowritten with William Rowley

7 The thousand doors that lead to death.—THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici, pt. I, sec. 44

Death hath so many doors to let out life.—JOHN FLETCHER AND PHILIP MASSINGER, The Custom of the Country [1647], act II, sc. ii

Death hath a thousand doors to let out life.—PHILIP MASSINGER, A Very Woman [1665], act V, sc. iv

1 Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.—THOMAS WYATT, Sonnet, Whoso List to Hunt

2 Of whose partnership John Aubrey said: “There was a wonderful consimility of fancy. They lived together not far from the playhouse, had one wench in the house between them, the same clothes and cloak, &c.”

3 Also familiar as: Till the cows come home.

4 Translated by WILLIAM SCOTT WILSON.

5 Behold, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.—AXEL OXENSTIERNA [1583–1654], in a letter [1648] to his son

1 Ut pareret geminos, meque metumque simul.

Literally: She [my mother] gave birth to twins, myself and fear together.

Hobbes’s mother, by his account, gave birth to him prematurely due to her anxiety over the impending invasion of the Spanish Armada.

1 It was owing to this passage, first printed in 1669, that the Mayflower’s company came eventually to be called the Pilgrim Fathers.

1 See The Wisdom of Solomon 2:8, Horace, Ronsard, and Spenser.

2 The longest way round is the shortest way home.—Proverb

3 That many people read a song/Who will not read a sermon.—WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED [1802–1839], The Chant of the Brazen Head [1826], st. 1

4 And he that does one fault at first,/And lies to hide it, makes it two.—ISAAC WATTS, Divine Songs, no. 15

1 See John Keats.

1 Sir, Hell is paved with good intentions.—SAMUEL JOHNSON [1775]; from BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, vol. I, p. 555 (Everyman edition)

2 People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.—Proverb

3 Stand like an anvil when it is beaten upon.—SAINT IGNATIUS THEOPHORUS, bishop of Antioch [fl. c. 100]

When you are the anvil, bear—/When you are the hammer, strike.—EDWIN MARKHAM, Preparedness [1928]

4 There is certainly something in angling… that tends to produce a gentleness of spirit, and a pure serenity of mind.—WASHINGTON IRVING, The Sketch-Book. The Angler

1 Translated by ROBERT STOOTHOFF.

2 Cogito, ergo sum.

Je pense, donc je suis.

3 Translated by JOHN COTTINGHAM.

1 Les bêtes ne parlent point comme nous, est qu’elles n’ont aucune pensée, et non point que les organes leur manquent.

2 Warts and all.—Saying

3 Que es la pequeño:/Que toda la vida es sueño,/y los sueños sueños son.

Translated by EDWARD and ELIZABETH HUBERMAN.

4 Fermat’s last theorem. Restated in modern terms: The equation xn + yn = zn, where x, y, and z are nonzero integers, has no solution for n greater than 2. Mathematician Andrew Wiles (b. 1953) proved Fermat’s theorem in 1994.

5 Adapted from the translation of JOSEPH JACOBS.

1 Translated by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

2 The course of Nature is the art of God.—EDWARD YOUNG, Night Thoughts, Night IX, l. 1267

1 Sub rosa.

In strict confidence. The origin of the phrase is obscure but the story is that Cupid gave Harpocrates (the god of silence) a rose, to bribe him not to betray the amours of Venus. Hence the flower became the emblem of silence and was sculptured on the ceilings of banquet-rooms, to remind the guests that what was spoken sub vino was not to be repeated sub divo. In the sixteenth century it was placed over confessionals.—Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 14th ed. [1989]

2 Il n’y avoit point de héros pour les valets de chambre.

1 That thirst [for applause], if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones; and on the whole, the strongest impulsive influence of average humanity.—JOHN RUSKIN, Sesame and Lilies [1865], Of Kings’ Treasuries, sec. 3.

See Tacitus.

1 Still rule those minds on earth/At whom sage Milton’s wormwood words were hurled:/“Truth like a bastard comes into the world/Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth”?—THOMAS HARDY, Lausanne [1897]

1 Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air.—THOMAS GRAY, The Bard, sec. I, st. 2, l. 6

1 Hot and cold, and moist and dry.—DU BARTAS, Divine Weeks and Works. Second Day

2 God’s first creature, which was light.—FRANCIS BACON, The New Atlantis [1626]

Light, the prime work of God.—MILTON, Samson Agonistes, l. 70

1 Ye little stars! hide your diminished rays.—ALEXANDER POPE, Moral Essays, epistle III, l. 282

1 See Socrates.

1 Translated by RICHARD LANE.

1 Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit.—Quoted by SAMUEL JOHNSON [1778]; from BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, vol. II, p. 218 (Everyman edition)

The bashful stream hath seen its God and blushed.—AARON HILL [1685–1750], The Miracle at Cana [published 1753]

The water hears thy faintest word,/And blushes into wine.—JOHN SAMUEL BEWLEY MONSELL [1811–1875], Mysterious Is Thy Presence, Lord [1866], st. 1

1 The Mind lives on the Heart/Like any Parasite.—EMILY DICKINSON, The Mind lives on the Heart [c. 1876]

1 “That was excellently observed,” say I when I read a passage in another where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, then I pronounce him to be mistaken.—JONATHAN SWIFT, Thoughts on Various Subjects

2 Maxim 583 is one of the “maximes supprimées” discarded before the 1678 edition.

In all distresses of our friends/We first consult our private ends;/While Nature, kindly bent to ease us,/Points out some circumstance to please us.—JONATHAN SWIFT, a paraphrase of Rochefoucauld’s maxim in On the Death of Dr. Swift [1731]

3 Usual version: Bless the bed that I lie on./Four corners to my bed,/Four angels round my head.

4 It is said that God is always for the big battalions.—VOLTAIRE, Letter to M. le Riche [February 6, 1770]

Providence is always on the side of the last reserve.—Attributed to NAPOLEON

1 Stone walls a prisoner make, but not a slave.—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Humanity [1829]

2 La vieillesse est l’enfer des femmes.

3 Ventre affamé n’a point d’oreilles.

1 King Charles I.

2 Couvrez ce sein que je ne saurais voir:/Par de pareils objets les âmes sont blessées.

1 Vous l’avez voulu, George Dandin, vous l’avez voulu.

2 Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?

Que diable aller faire aussi dans la galère d’un Turc? d’un Turc! [What the deuce did he want on board a Turk’s galley? A Turk!]—CYRANO DE BERGERAC [1619–1655], Le Pédant Joué [1654], act II, sc. iv

The saying of Molière came into his head: “But what the devil was he doing in that galley?” and he laughed at himself.—LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace, bk. IV, ch. 6

3 Sigismund [1368–1437], Holy Roman emperor, at the Council of Constance [1414] said to a prelate who had objected to His Majesty’s grammar: Ego sum rex Romanus, et supra grammaticam [I am the Roman king, and am above grammar].

4 Manus haec, inimica tyrannis,/Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.

The second line is the motto of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.

1 Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue parceque je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.—HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Letter to Mr. B [November 16, 1857]

2 Qu’est-ce que l’homme dans la nature? Un néant a l’égard de l’infini, un tout a l’égard du néant, un milieu entre rien et tout.

3 Condition de l’homme: inconstance, ennui, inquiétude.

4 Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.

5 On mourra seul.

6 Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.

7 L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant.

8 L’homme n’est ni ange ni bête; et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête.

1 Se moquer de la philosophie, c’est vraiment philosopher.

2 Le moi est haïssable.

3 Founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers).

4 Translation from Bulletin of The New York Academy of Medicine, vol. IV [1928]. Original work in Latin: Observationes Medicinae.

1 Every tub must stand upon its bottom.—CHARLES MACKLIN, The Man of the World [1781], act I, sc. ii

2 See Theodore Roosevelt.

1 Remembrance and reflection how allied!/What thin partitions sense from thought divide!—ALEXANDER POPE, An Essay on Man, epistle I, l. 225

2 In collaboration with NAHUM TATE. See Nahum Tate.

3 There is a pleasure in poetic pains/Which only poets know.—WILLIAM COWPER, The Task, bk. II, The Timepiece, l. 285

4 Cited in the play text as a proverb.

5 Thomas Shadwell [c. 1642–1692].

1 The precious porcelain of human clay.—LORD BYRON, Don Juan, canto IV, st. 11

2 Whistling aloud to bear his courage up.—ROBERT BLAIR [1699–1746], The Grave [1743], l. 58

3 See Virgil.

1 And love the offender, yet detest the offense.—ALEXANDER POPE, Eloisa to Abelard, l. 192

2 God had sifted three kingdoms to find the wheat for this planting.—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, The Courtship of Miles Standish, pt. IV

3 Translated by SAMUEL HOOLE.

4 By education, then, I mean goodness in the form in which it is first acquired by a child… the rightly disciplined state of pleasures and pains whereby a man from his first beginnings on will abhor what he should abhor and relish what he should relish.—PLATO, Laws, bk. II

In educating the young we use pleasure and pain as rudders to steer their course.—ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. X

5 Ein Gottbetrunkener Mensch [A God-intoxicated man].—NOVALIS (FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG), Fragmente und Studien 1799–1800

The Lord blot out his name under heaven. The Lord set him apart for destruction from all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament which are written in the Book of the Law.… There shall no man speak to him, no man write to him, no man show him any kindness, no man stay under the same roof with him, no man come nigh him.—Amsterdam synagogue’s excommunication of Spinoza [1656]

1 Translated by ANDREW BOYLE.

2 To me, avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness.—THOMAS BROWNE, Religio Medici, pt. 2, sec. 13

3 See E. C. Bentley.

1 The time of the Great Plague.

1 Translated by JOHN DRYDEN.

2 L’état c’est moi.

3 Dieu a donc oublié tout ce que j’ai fait pour lui?

4 J’ai failli attendre.

5 Ce n’est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée:/C’est Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée.

1 See Bernard of Chartres.

2 Translated by ANDREW MOTTE.

3 In modern terms, acceleration is directly proportional to applied force.

4 Translated by DONALD KEENE.

5 Edited by WILLIAM THEODORE DE BARY.

6 Translated by DANA B. YOUNG.

7 Translated by HAROLD G. HENDERSON.

1 By tradition, it is said this epitaph was written on the bedchamber door of Charles II. Upon seeing it, the king remarked, “This is very true, for my words are my own, and my actions are my ministers’.”

2 Translated by WILLIS and ALICKI BARNSTONE.

1 Translated by EDITH GROSSMAN.

2 Translated by RACHEL PHILLIPS.

3 Translated by DONALD KEENE.

4 For his play Appius and Virginia [1709], Dennis had invented a new species of thunder. “The tragedy however was coldly received, notwithstanding such assistance, and was acted but a short time. Some nights after, Mr. Dennis, being in the pit at the representation of Macbeth, heard his own thunder made use of; upon which he rose in a violent passion, and exclaimed, with an oath, that it was his thunder. ‘See,’ said he, ‘how the rascals use me! They will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder!’ ”—Biographia Britannica, vol. V, p. 103

5 See Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

1 Bread is the staff of life.—JONATHAN SWIFT, A Tale of a Tub

Corn, which is the staff of life.—EDWARD WINSLOW [1595–1655], Good News from New England [1624]

2 Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas;/Je n’en saurois dire la cause,/Je sais seulement une chose;/C’est que je ne vous aime pas.—ROGER DE BUSSY-RABUTIN [1618–1693], Maximes d’Amours [1666]

See Martial.

3 As early as 1691, Benjamin Harris of Boston advertised the forthcoming second impression of the New England Primer. The oldest known copy extant is dated 1727.

4 The first record of this prayer is found in the Enchiridion Leonis [1160]. The early editions of the Primer give the first line of the prayer as: Now I lay me down to take my sleep. The familiar version of the line appeared in the edition of 1784. In the edition of 1814 the second line reads: I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep.

5 Under this stone, Reader, survey/Dead Sir John Vanbrugh’s house of clay./Lie heavy on him, Earth! for he/Laid many heavy loads on thee!—ABEL EVANS [1679–1737]. Vanbrugh was the architect of Blenheim Palace.

1 Better the last smile than the first laughter.—JOHN RAY [1627–1705], Proverbs [1670]

2 It is good to live and learn.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote, pt. II, ch. 32

Live and learn,/Not first learn and then live.—ROBERT BROWNING, Parleyings with Certain People [1887]. With Christopher Smart, sec. IX

1 He who makes two blades of grass grow in place of one renders a service to the state.—VOLTAIRE, Letter to M. Moreau [1765]

2 By tradition, a mock certificate dashed off by Swift when he hastily married a couple under an oak tree during a rainstorm.

3 What a sight for sore eyes that would be!—WILLIAM HAZLITT, Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen [1826]

1 See William Butler Yeats.

2 Translated by JULES MICHELET.

3 Pay the piper: phrase for settling the score. He who pays the piper calls the tune.—Proverb

1 See Proverbs 9:17, and Leigh Hunt.

2 Origin of the saying: He who hesitates is lost.

3 Give me, kind Heaven, a private station,/A mind serene for contemplation!/Title and profit I resign;/The post of honor shall be mine.—JOHN GAY, Fables, pt. II, The Vulture, the Sparrow, and Other Birds

1 Hoyle published a Short Treatise on Whist [1742], which in subsequent editions added rules for playing piquet, backgammon, chess, and other games. His Laws [1760] for whist were not superseded until 1864; hence the saying, “according to Hoyle.”

2 See Lewis Carroll.

1 Set to music by FRANCIS HOPKINSON [1737–1791]; one of the earliest American songs.

2 Westward the star of empire takes its way.—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, Oration at Plymouth [1802]

3 See Alexander Pope’s Epitaph on Gay.

1 O’er the hills and far away.—THOMAS D’URFEY [1653–1723], Pills to Purge Melancholy [1719]

2 Ambrose Phillips… who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby.—THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, Review of Aikin’s Life of Addison

1 When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng?—RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON, The Kasîdah of Haji Abdû El-Yazdi, pt. VIII, st. 29

2 See John Gay.

3 Bolingbroke.

1 Trees and fields tell me nothing: men are my teachers.—PLATO, Phaedrus

La vraie science et la vraie étude de l’homme, c’est l’homme [The true science and the true study of man is man].—PIERRE CHARRON [1541–1603], Traité de la Sagesse [1601], bk. I, preface

Das eigentliche Studium der Menschheit ist der Mensch [The proper study of mankind is man].—GOETHE, Elective Affinities, bk. II, ch. 7

1 See Pindar, and Horace.

2 Frederick, Prince of Wales.

1 Referring to Alexander Pope’s imitation.

2 See Thomas Carlyle.

3 See Matthew 7:12, Confucius, Aristotle, and Hillel.

4 William Lowndes [1652–1724], Secretary of the Treasury in the reigns of William III, Queen Anne, and George I. See Lewis Carroll.

1 See Jeremy Bentham.

2 Let it be, let it pass.

The phrase is not readily translatable, and also appears as: Laissez faire, laissez aller. It has also been attributed to PIERRE LE PESANT BOISGUILLEBERT [1646–1714] and JEAN CLAUDE GOURNAY [1712–1759]. It was widely used by the Physiocrats in urging freedom from government interference, and was adopted by Adam Smith.

3 Translated by LEONARD TANCOCK.

4 Dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles… tout est au mieux.

The best of all possible worlds.—GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ [1646–1716], Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil [1710]

5 Translated by ROBERT M. ADAMS.

6 Pour encourager les autres.

The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to relieve Minorca.

1 Le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux, l’ennui, le vice, et le besoin.

2 Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

3 Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l’infâme, et aimez qui vous aime.

4 Celui qui a des extases, des visions, qui prend des songes pour des réalités, et ses imaginations pour des prophéties, est un enthousiaste; celui qui soutient sa folie par le meurtre, est un fanatique.

5 Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

6 Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste.

7 L’histoire n’est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs.

8 See Ovid.

9 L’Embarras des Richesses.—ABBÉ D’ALLAINVAL [1700–1753], title of play [1726]

10 Qui n’a pas l’esprit de son âge,/De son âge a tout le malheur.

11 Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître;/Il l’est—le fut—ou le doit être.

12 This sentence is not Voltaire’s, but was first used in quoting a letter from Voltaire to Helvétius in The Friends of Voltaire [1906] by S. G. Tallentyre (E. Beatrice Hall). She claims it was a paraphrase of Voltaire’s words in the Essay on Tolerance: Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

Norbert Guterman, in A Book of French Quotations [1963], suggests that the probable source for the quotation is a line in a letter to M. le Riche [February 6, 1770]: “Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”

1 Hocus was an old cunning attorney.—DR. JOHN ARBUTHNOT [1667–1735], Law Is a Bottomless Pit; or, History of John Bull [1712], ch. 5

The words of consecration, “Hoc est corpus,” were travestied into a nickname for jugglery, as “Hocus-pocus.”—JOHN RICHARD GREEN [1837–1883], A Short History of the English People [1874], ch. 7

2 See Robert Lowell.

1 Handel used this in his oratorios Judas Maccabaeus [April 1, 1747] and Joshua [March 9, 1748], the libretti of which were written by Morell.

2 Eripuit coelo fulmen mox sceptra tyrannis [He snatched the thunderbolt from heaven, then the scepter from tyrants].—Attributed to BARON TURGOT [1727–1781]

This line was inscribed on Houdon’s bust of Franklin in 1778.

Antiquity would have raised altars to this mighty genius, who, to the advantage of mankind, compassing in his mind the heavens and the earth, was able to restrain alike thunderbolts and tyrants.—MIRABEAU, Address upon the Death of Franklin [June 11, 1790]

See Marcus Manilius, and Shakespeare.

I succeed him; no one could replace him.—THOMAS JEFFERSON (to Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes, who had remarked, “You replace Mr. Franklin” as envoy to France)

3 See Socrates.

1 Do not let your chances like sunbeams pass you by,/For you never miss the water till the well runs dry.—ROWLAND HOWARD [fl. 1876], You Never Miss the Water [1876]

2 We reckon hours and minutes to be dollars and cents.—SAM SLICK [T. C. HALIBURTON, 1796–1865], The Clockmaker [1836]

1 The British minister had proposed a toast to George III, in which he likened him to the sun, and the French minister had toasted Louis XVI, comparing him with the moon.

2 I cease not to advocate peace; even though unjust it is better than the most just war.—CICERO, To Atticus, bk. VII, letter 14

It hath been said that an unjust peace is to be preferred before a just war.—SAMUEL BUTLER [1612–1680], Butler’s Remains [1759], Speeches in the Rump Parliament

3 Letter to the Journal de Paris advocating Daylight Saving Time.

4 In Philadelphia, a Mrs. Powel “asked Dr. Franklin, Well, Doctor, what have we got a republic or a monarchy? A republic, replied the Doctor, if you can keep it.” Recorded by James McHenry, one of Washington’s aides, in his diary; published in the American Historical Review, vol. XI [1906], p. 618.

5 The Autobiography, begun in 1771, was first published (unauthorized, mangled, and in French) in 1791, and in complete form in 1868.

6 Le style c’est l’homme même.

7 Le génie n’est qu’une plus grande aptitude à la patience.

Hérault de Séchelles, in Voyage à Montbard, first attributed this to Buffon. It is quoted by Matthew Arnold in “A French Coleridge” [Essays in Criticism, 1865]. There is also a popular proverb: Genius is patience.

Genius is an intuitive talent for labor.—JOHANNES WALAEUS [JAN VAN WALE, 1604–1699]

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.—BENJAMIN DISRAELI, The Young Duke [1831]

Genius involves… an infinite capacity for taking trouble.—LESLIE STEPHEN [1832–1904], English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II [1876]

See Thomas Carlyle, and Jane Ellice Hopkins.

8 The Roast Beef of Old England.—RICHARD LEVERIDGE [c. 1670–1758], title of poem

1 It’s of three jovial huntsmen, and a-hunting they did go;/And they hunted, and they holloed, and they blew their horns also;/Look ye there!—The Three Jovial Huntsmen (old English ballad), st. 1

2 Amiable weaknesses of human nature.—EDWARD GIBBON, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, bk. I, ch. 14

It was an amiable weakness.—RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, The School for Scandal [1777], act V, sc. i

3 Natura non facit saltus.

4 Translated by BENJAMIN DAYDON JACKSON.

5 GEORGE WHITEFIELD [1714–1770] altered lines 1 and 2, 7 and 8, from Wesley’s original: Hark, how all the welkin rings,/“Glory to the King of kings.”…/Universal nature say,/“Christ the Lord is born today.”

1 By some accounts, Samuel Johnson claimed authorship of this speech: “That speech I wrote in a garret, in Exeter Street.”—ARTHUR MURPHY [1727–1805], An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson [1792]

2 Indemnity for the past and security for the future.—JOHN RUSSELL, Life and Times of Charles James Fox [1859–1860], vol. III, p. 345, letter to the Honorable T. Maitland

3 Three years later Johnson wrote, “Mere unassisted merit advances slowly, if—what is not very common—it advances at all.”

4 Thomas De Quincey quotes with approval, but without naming him, the criticism of a writer who contends that this couplet amounts in effect to this: “Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind extensively.”—Rhetoric [1828]

1 For the Rambler motto, see Johnson’s translation of Boethius.

2 It was pleasant to me to find, that “oats,” the “food of horses,” were so much used as the food of the people in Dr. Johnson’s own town.—JAMES BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, vol. I, p. 628 (Everyman edition)

I own that by my definition of oats I meant to vex them [the Scots].—JOHNSON, in BOSWELL, Life of Johnson, vol. II, p. 434 (Everyman edition)

3 The first casualty when war comes is truth—HIRAM WARREN JOHNSON [1866–1945], remark in U.S. Senate [1918]. Attributed.

1 Hester Thrale Piozzi [1741–1821]. See Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi [Mrs. Thrale].

2 Elsewhere found: I put my hat.

3 A parody on Thomas Percy’s [1729–1811] ballad The Hermit of Warkworth [1771].

4 When asked by a lady why he defined “pastern” as the “knee” of a horse in his Dictionary.

5 Keep your friendships in repair.—RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Uncollected Lectures: Table-Talk [1864]

1 I do not find that the age or country makes the least difference; no, nor the language the actor spoke, nor the religion which they professed—whether Arab in the desert, or Frenchman in the Academy. I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion of well-doing and daring.—RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Lectures and Biographical Sketches [1883], The Preacher

2 Sir John Hawkins [1719–1789], author.

3 Of Oliver Goldsmith’s apology in the London Chronicle for beating Evans the bookseller.

4 Upon being asked by Lord Elphinstone if he had read a new book through.

5 Of Lady Diana Beauclerk, divorced.

1 Following this remark, Johnson quoted (not quite correctly):

Whoe’er has traveled life’s dull round,/Whate’er his various tour has been,/May sigh to think how oft he found/His warmest welcome at an inn.—WILLIAM SHENSTONE [1714–1763]; written on a window of an inn at Henley

Robert Leighton [1611–1684], archbishop of Glasgow, often said that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn.—JOHNSON, Works, vol. I, p. 76

2 Chapter XLII is still shorter: “There are no owls of any kind in the whole island.”

1 Translated by M. W. CALKINS.

1 See William Prescott.

2 Ihr Racker, wollt ihr ewig leben?

Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?—World War I American battle cry attributed to Marine Sergeant DANIEL DALY [1874–1937] at the battle of Belleau Wood, June 1918.

3 L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.

4 See Daniel Defoe.

1 Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

This remark is usually attributed to Marie Antoinette after her arrival in France in 1770, but the sixth book of the Confessions was written two or three years earlier.

2 Frederick the Great.

3 See Adam Smith.

4 Translated by JACQUES BARZUN and RALPH H. BOWEN.

5 Translated by ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER.

6 The witty retort thought of only after the conversation is finished and one is on one’s way downstairs.

1 But that is another story.—RUDYARD KIPLING, Plain Tales from the Hills. Three and—an Extra

2 Voltaire, when he read De l’Esprit, wrote the author: “Your book is dictated by the soundest reason. You had better get out of France as quickly as you can.” The book was condemned by the parlement and burned.

1 Shakespeare.

1 Milton.

2 Translated by HAROLD G. HENDERSON.

3 See Thomas Macaulay.

1 The attribution to Madame de Pompadour is made in Mémoires de Madame de Hausset [1824]; others attribute the saying to the king. It is actually an old French proverb.

2 The phrase was adopted by the town of Lexington as a legend for the town seal.

1 Quoted in Carlo Botta, History of the War of Independence of the United States of America [1809, translated in 1820].

2 The favorite phrase of their law is “a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not back to the contrary.”—RALPH WALDO EMERSON, English Traits [1856]

1 Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers.—BERTRAND BARÈRE [1755–1841], Speech [June 11, 1794]

But it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman in the Duke of Wellington’s army paid his way. The remembrance of such a fact surely becomes a nation of shopkeepers.—WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, Vanity Fair, vol. I, ch. 28

See Josiah Tucker.

2 Translated by EMANUEL GOERWITZ.

3 Translated by H. B. NISBET.

1 Translated by THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

2 Translated by A. D. LINDSAY.

3 Tah-gah-jute. Leader of the Mingo Indians.

4 See Patrick Henry, 332:1. Henry drafted Article 16, on religious freedom.

5 Translated by STEPHEN SARTARELLI and SOPHIE HAWKES.

6 Translated by WILLARD TRASK.

7 Translated by ARTHUR MACHEN et al.

8 Newton wrote his own epitaph: John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the Faith he had long labored to destroy.

1 This is a paraphrase of Newton’s original words: Unlimited power, instigated by revenge, and where the heart, by a long familiarity with the sufferings of slaves, is become callous and insensible to the pleadings of humanity, is terrible!

2 [Otis arguing] was a flame of fire… the seeds of patriots and heroes were then and there sown.—JOHN ADAMS, Works [1850–1856], vol. II

3 This maxim was the guide and watchword of all the friends of liberty. Otis actually said: No parts of His Majesty’s dominions can be taxed without their consent.—OTIS, Rights of the Colonies [1764], p. 64

4 Also attributed to ISRAEL PUTNAM [1718–1790].

See Frederick the Great.

5 Sir Walter Scott in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border says that The Flowers of the Forest was written to an ancient tune and that the last line, the refrain, is indisputably ancient. The air was also used for verses by Alison Cockburn [1713–1794].

6 Olivarii Goldsmith, Poetae, Physici, Historici, qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit, Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit [To Oliver Goldsmith, Poet, Naturalist, Historian, who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn].—SAMUEL JOHNSON, quoted in JAMES BOSWELL, Life of Johnson [1791], June 22, 1776

1 The British.

2 England.

3 See T. S. Eliot.

4 Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners: it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things, and they call it being merry. In my mind there is nothing so illiberal and so ill-bred as audible laughter.—EARL OF CHESTERFIELD, Letters [March 9, 1748]

5 Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie.—RUDYARD KIPLING, A Smuggler’s Song [1906], st. 6

1 You could not stand five minutes with that man [Burke] beneath a shed while it rained, but you must be convinced you had been standing with the greatest man you had ever seen.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Johnsonian Miscellanies [1897], vol. I, p. 290

2 De Sapienta Veterum (The Wisdom of the Ancients)—FRANCIS BACON, title of work [1609]

The phrase is also in Burke’s Discussion on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill [1793].

1 Vigorous searches have failed to locate this quotation anywhere in Burke’s writings. It may be a paraphrase of Burke. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.—Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents [April 23, 1770].

2 A Creek.

3 President Jackson.

4 Representing a black man in chains, with one knee on the ground and both hands lifted up to heaven. This was adopted as a seal by the Anti-Slavery Society of London.

1 England, with all thy faults I love thee still,/My country!—WILLIAM COWPER, The Task, bk. II, The Timepiece, l. 206

1 The Royal George was an English man-of-war of 108 guns, which suddenly heeled over, under the strain caused by the shifting of guns, while being refitted at Spithead, August 29, 1782. The commander, Admiral Kempenfeldt, and eight hundred of the sailors, marines, and visitors on board were drowned.

2 Here the grandfather of Charles Darwin announces his own early theory of organic evolution.

3 Gates was later defeated by Cornwallis at Camden, South Carolina [August 16, 1780], and was relieved of his command.

4 Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d’être obligé d’en pleurer.

5 United we stand, divided we fall.—A watchword of the American Revolution

6 See John Adams.

7 The Father of your Country.—HENRY KNOX [1750–1806], Letter to Washington [March 19, 1787]

I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it [the cherry tree] with my hatchet.—Attributed to WASHINGTON as a child; MASON LOCKE WEEMS [1759–1825], The Life of George Washington [1800]

1 He is as disinterested as the being who made him: he is profound in his view; and accurate in his judgment, except where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment.—THOMAS JEFFERSON [January 30, 1787]

2 Cf. Facts are stupid things.—RONALD REAGAN in a slip of the tongue at the 1988 Republican National Convention.

3 Adams credits this formulation to JAMES HARRINGTON [1611–1677]. Adams’s use of the phrase gave it wide circulation in America.

4 See Richard Henry Lee.

5 On July 2, 1776, the resolution for independence, drafted by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, was adopted by a committee including John Adams. On July 4 the Declaration of Independence was agreed to, engrossed, signed by John Hancock, and sent to the legislatures of the States.

1 Written the day after Adams moved into the new Presidential Mansion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had it inscribed on the mantelpiece of the State Dining Room.

2 Jefferson at Monticello died the same day—the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

1 Le Congrès ne marche pas, il danse [said of the Congress of Vienna].

2 See Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

1 See George Mason. Mason drafted Articles 1, 3, and 12.

2 Ah, might we read in America’s signs/The Age restored of the Antonines.—HERMAN MELVILLE, Timoleon [1891], The Age of the Antonines, st. 3

1 See Barry Goldwater.

2 Commandant at Fort Ticonderoga, New York [May 10, 1775].

1 See also excerpts from BOSWELL, Life of Johnson.

2 Translated by RICHARD SEAVER and AUSTRYN WAINHOUSE.

3 Music by THOMAS HASTINGS [1784–1872].

4 L’amour, tel qu’il existe dans la société, est l’échange de deux fantaisies et le contacte de deux épidermes.

Translated by W. S. MERWIN.

5 Sois mon frère ou je te tue.

A rephrasing of the revolutionary watchword: Fraternity or death.

1 Reproduced in The Waste Books [1990], translated by R. J. HOLLINGDALE

2 Translated by FRANZ MAUTNER and HENRY HATFIELD unless otherwise noted.

3 Translated by R. J. HOLLINGDALE.

4 Frequently quoted as “inalienable.”

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights.—Constitution of Massachusetts [1780]

1 John Adams died the same day.

2 Translated by J. LIPETZ, D. E. GERSHENSON, and D. A. GREENBERG.

3 Translated by D. MCKIE.

4 Pseudonym of the author of a series of letters [1769–1771] in the London Public Advertiser (published in book form, 1772). They have been attributed to, among others, Sir Philip Francis, Lord Shelburne, Lord George Sackville, and Lord Temple.

1 The first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.

1 Had she lived to the age of the Patriarchs… every day of her life would have been filled with clouds of goodness and love.—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, Memoirs, vol. IV, 157–158, 202

1 Translated by HUGH ELLIOT.

2 Habit is a second nature and it destroys the first.—BLAISE PASCAL, Pensées, no. 376

3 Translated by PHILIP HOFER.

4 Translated by HILDA HARRIS.

In plate 43 the artist rests, his head in his arms, on a desk inscribed with the Spanish title of the plate: El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.

This text accompanied the plate: Imagination abandoned by Reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of their wonders.

5 See Francis Hutcheson.

6 J’ai vécu.

1 See William Makepeace Thackeray.

2 Ich singe, wie der Vogel singt/Der in den Zweigen wohnet.

3 Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?

4 Translated by ELISABETH STOPP.

5 In der Kunst ist das Beste gut genug.

6 Translated by JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

1 Translated by ELISABETH STOPP.

2 Ich die Baukunst eine erstarrte Musik nenne.

Since it [architecture] is music in space, as it were a frozen music.—FRIEDRICH VON SCHELLING [1775–1854], Philosophie der Kunst [1802–1803], p. 576

3 Das Klassische nenne ich das Gesunde, und das Romantische das Kranke.

4 Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.

5 Da stehe ich nun, ich armer Thor!/Und bin so klug als wie zuvor.

Translated by BAYARD TAYLOR.

6 Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint.

7 Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,/Den können wir erlösen.

8 Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

9 Translated by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

1 Translated by NORBERT GUTERMAN.

2 Translated by BAILEY SAUNDERS.

3 Amerika, du hast es besser—als unser Kontinent, das alte.

4 Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we shall need no other light.—GOETHE, Elective Affinities, pt. II, ch. 3

5 Translated by ELISABETH STOPP.

6 Reply to Napoleon Bonaparte’s remark upon receiving a copy of Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.

7 Attributed also to THOMAS JEFFERSON.

Commonly quoted: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.—DEMOSTHENES, Philippic 2, sec. 24

1 Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib und Gesang,/Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.

The couplet has also been attributed to Luther, apparently on no better authority than an eighteenth-century jingle in which “Luther” is needed to rhyme with “Futter.”

1 See William Wordsworth.

2 This is from the poems of “Thomas Rowley,” an imaginary fifteenth-century Bristol poet invented by Chatterton. Editions of the poems appeared in 1778 and 1782, and were exposed [1777–1778] by Thomas Tyrwhitt.

3 When Prussia hurried to the field,/And snatched the spear, but left the shield.—WALTER SCOTT, Marmion, canto III, introduction

4 Translated by RICHARD LEBRUN.

1 The first known use of this term for Ireland.

2 Translated by PAUL AUSTER.

3 Noir comme le diable,/Chaud comme l’enfer,/Pur comme un ange,/Doux comme l’amour.

This appears as an inscription on many old coffeepots.

4 Ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié.

5 Voilà le commencement de la fin.

6 Pas de zèle!

7 La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires. Sometimes quoted as: War is much too serious to leave to the generals.

Quoted by Aristide Briand to David Lloyd George during World War I; also attributed to GEORGES CLEMENCEAU.

1 Translated by M. F. K. FISHER unless otherwise noted.

2 Translated by FAYETTE ROBINSON.

3 Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un moment,/Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie.

4 At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about “a public debt being a public blessing.”—THOMAS JEFFERSON, Letter to John W. Epps [November 6, 1813]

5 At which the Constitution was written. The convention took place May 14–September 17, 1787.

1 L’exactitude est la politesse des rois.

2 In response to Marshall’s decision, Andrew Jackson remarked, “John Marshall has made his decision: now let him enforce it.”

3 Based on resolutions presented to the House of Representatives a week earlier. In the resolutions, the statement ends with “fellow-citizens.”

1 This poem was written and etched by Blake [1790–1791] as a “Song of Experience” linked with The Divine Image in Songs of Innocence, but in the published Songs of Experience it was replaced by The Human Abstract.

1 We are led to believe a lie/When we see not through the eye.—BLAKE, Auguries of Innocence, l. 125

2 The Bank of England.

3 Philosophia biou kybernetes. The name Phi Beta Kappa is from the Greek initial letters in the phrase.

4 This famous sentence is thus first reported: Say to the fleet, England confides that every man will do his duty. Captain Pasco, Nelson’s flag lieutenant, suggested substituting “expects” for “confides,” which was adopted. Captain Blackwood, who commanded the Euryalus, says that the correction suggested was from “Nelson expects” to “England expects.”

1 Seneca chief.

2 Translated by LAURA MASON.

1 The famous tea clipper Cutty Sark, built in 1869, had the story of Tam o’ Shanter carved upon bow and counter. Nannie, with flying locks and scanty shift, was the figurehead.

2 Il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace.

1 Alle Menschen werden Brüder,/Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

Translated by THEODORE SPENCER (adapted).

Music by LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

2 Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht.

3 Why should the brave Spanish soldier brag the sun never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shineth on one part or other we have conquered for our king?—JOHN SMITH [1580–1631], Advertisements for the Unexperienced, etc. [1631]

It may be said of them [the Hollanders] as of the Spaniards, that the sun never sets on their dominions.—THOMAS GAGE [d. 1656], New Survey of the West Indies [1648], Epistle Dedicatory

The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.—WALTER SCOTT, Life of Napoleon [1827]

His Majesty’s dominions, on which the sun never sets.—JOHN WILSON [CHRISTOPHER NORTH, 1785–1854], Noctes Ambrosianae, no. 20 [April 1829]

4 Translated by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

5 Der Krieg ernährt den Krieg.

1 Composed in the garrison at Strasbourg and originally called Chant de Guerre de l’Armée du Rhin, the Marseillaise took its name from the patriots of Marseille, who first made it known in Paris.

2 C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute.

3 The origin of a certain personification of the British character.

1 Literally, world pain.

2 Translated by HAROLD G. HENDERSON.

3 In 1797 a secret agent from Talleyrand told Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, minister to the French republic, that the American commissioners who were in Paris to protest French attacks on U.S. shipping would be received only if they paid a $50,000 bribe and made a large loan to the French government. Pinckney’s reply was: “Not a sixpence, sir.” Later, Harper’s remark was attributed to him.

4 Quoted by John Quincy Adams in the Committee Report on the Smithson Bequest [March 5, 1840].

5 Also attributed to JAMES HOGG.

1 L’amour est l’histoire de la vie des femmes, c’est un episode dans celle des hommes.

2 Tout comprendre rend très indulgent.

Attributed to GERMAINE DE STAËL are similar phrases: Comprendre c’est pardonner [To understand is to forgive]. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner [To know everything is to forgive everything].

3 Inscribed on one of the portals of the United First Parish Church Unitarian (Church of the Presidents), Quincy, Massachusetts.

4 Ma-ke-tai-me-she-kia-kiak.

Chief of the Sauk and Fox Indians.

1 The Black Hawk War [1832].

2 On ne peut pas régner innocent.

The epigraph for Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon [1940].

3 Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté.

4 Le bonheur est une idée neuve en Europe.

5 Say’s so-called law of markets, popularly rephrased as “Supply creates its own demand.”

6 J’ai pleuré et j’ai cru.

7 L’écrivain original n’est pas celui qui n’imite personne, mais celui que personne ne peut imiter.

1 As cited by Jacques Barzun in Romanticism and the Modern Ego [1947].

2 Edited by RICHARD CROUTER.

3 Chief of the Shawnees.

4 He remembered the belligerent ants, who claimed their boundaries, and the pacific geese, who did not.… All those puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes had lived together peacefully, preserving their own kinds of civilization without war—because they claimed no boundaries.—T. H. WHITE [1906–1964], The Once and Future King [1939], bk. IV, ch. 14

5 Tecumseh was killed in the battle of the Thames River [October 5, 1813].

6 Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.

The saying has been attributed also to TALLEYRAND.

7 Il faut laver son linge sale en famille [One should wash one’s dirty linen at home].—Saying current since about 1720

1 Le courage de l’improviste.

2 Attributed by C.-A. SAINTE-BEUVE.

3 No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.—WILLIAM COWPER BRANN [1855–1898], The Iconoclast, Old Glory [July 4, 1893]

4 Tout soldat français porte dans sa giberne le bâton de maréchal de France.

5 L’Angleterre, ah! la perfide Angleterre.—JACQUES BÉNIGNE BOSSUET, Premier Sermon sur la Fête de la Circoncision [1654]

6 Tête d’armée.

1 La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas.

Probably the invention of a French journalist; Cambronne denied ever having said it. “Merde!,” a more likely reply also attributed to him, has been euphemized as “Le mot de Cambronne.”

The finest word, perhaps, that a Frenchman ever uttered.… To speak that word, and then to die, what could be more grand! for to accept death is to die, and it is not the fault of this man, if, in the storm of grape, he survived.—VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables, Cosette, bk. I, ch. 15

2 Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.—Attributed to CLAUDE LOUIS HECTOR, DUC DE VILLARS [1653–1734], when taking leave of Louis XIV

3 Translated by T. M. KNOX.

4 Translated by J. SIBREE.

Quoted by G. B. Shaw in The Revolutionist’s Handbook, an appendix to Man and Superman.

1 Translated by RICHARD SIEBURTH.

2 The music, generally attributed to PHILIP PHILE [c. 1734–1793], was Washington’s inaugural march. Hopkinson supplied verses at a singer’s request, and the song won instant acclaim.

3 In the first edition the line is: A simple child, dear brother Jim. It was reduced to the current text in the 1815 edition of Wordsworth’s poems.

1 He lived amidst th’ untrodden ways/To Rydal Lake that lead;/A bard whom there were none to praise,/And very few to read./Unread his works—his “Milk White Doe”/With dust is dark and dim;/It’s still in Longmans’ shop, and oh!/The difference to him!—Parody by HARTLEY COLERIDGE [1796–1849]

1 The last three lines are the epigraph for Intimations of Immortality.

2 See Thomas Chatterton.

3 Robert Burns.

1 Two voices are there: one is of the deep;…/And one is of an old half-witted sheep/Which bleats articulate monotony,/And indicates that two and one are three.…/And, Wordsworth, both art thine.—JAMES KENNETH STEPHEN [1859–1892], Sonnet, Wordsworth [1891]

2 This will never do.—FRANCIS JEFFREY [1773–1850], opening sentence, review of WORDSWORTH, Excursion, Edinburgh Review [1814]

1 The verses beginning with this line were set to music by JAMES SANDERSON [1769–c.1841]. The march has become traditionally attached to the president of the United States.

1 “Right,” quoth Ben, “that will do for the marines.”—LORD BYRON, The Island, canto II, last line “That will do for the marines, but the sailors won’t believe it” is an old saying.

2 Generally accepted as the origin of the phrase: A square peg in a round hole.

3 We are the two halves of a pair of scissors, when apart, Pecksniff, but together we are something.—CHARLES DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. 11

1 A note by Coleridge in Sibylline Leaves [1817] says: “For [these] lines I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth.”

1 A phrase which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople.—COLERIDGE’S footnote

2 The poem of the act of the mind.—WALLACE STEVENS, Of Modern Poetry

1 “Character,”—says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms—“character is destiny.”—GEORGE ELIOT, The Mill on the Floss, vol. 3, bk. 6

2 Translated by RALPH MANHEIM.

3 The gentleman [Quincy] cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, “Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.”—HENRY CLAY, Speech [January 8, 1813]

4 Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too.—A. C. ROSS [fl. c. 1840], Presidential campaign song [1840]

The iron-armed soldier, the true-hearted soldier,/The gallant old soldier of Tippecanoe.—GEORGE POPE MORRIS [1802–1864], campaign song for Harrison [1840], sung to the tune of The Old Oaken Bucket

1 Of several parodies of this poem, the one by Lewis Carroll is probably better known than the original.

2 A rock in the North Sea, off the Firth of Tay, Scotland, dangerous to navigators because it is covered with every tide. There is a tradition that a warning bell was fixed on the rock by the Abbot of Aberbrothok, which was stolen by a sea pirate, who perished on the rock a year later.

3 [Miss Austen] had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.—WALTER SCOTT, Journal [March 14, 1826]

1 The mountains too, at a distance, appear airy masses and smooth, but seen near at hand they are rough.—DIOGENES LAERTIUS [fl. c. 200 C.E.], Pyrrho, sec. 9

2 My Old Dog Tray—STEPHEN C. FOSTER, title of song

3 Often do the spirits/Of great events stride on before the events,/And in today already walks tomorrow.—JOHANN FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER, Death of Wallenstein, act V, sc. iii

Translated by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

4 Said when told that his defense of the Compromise of 1850 would endanger his chances for the presidency.

1 Translated by IDRIS PARRY.

2 Emmet left no written version of his speech from the docket. Various versions exist.

3 See Thomas Carlyle.

1 I hope to find my country in the right: however, I will stand by her, right or wrong.—JOHN JORDAN CRITTENDEN [1787–1863], On the Mexican War

2 Niles’ Weekly Register [Baltimore; April 20, 1816] gives a slightly different reading: Our Country—In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.

1 The jar will long keep the fragrance of what it was once steeped in when new.—HORACE, Epistles, bk. I, no. ii, l. 69

The image was frequently used in the classical period; unglazed ware is more absorbent than glazed.

1 Der Krieg ist nichts anderes als die Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln.

2 Translated by J. J. GRAHAM.

3 Often cited as the source of the concept of “the fog of war.”

4 First published in Luzerne Federalist [September 7, 1810]. Because of the similarity of the title to Poor Richard, the phrase “an ax to grind” has often been attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

5 Usually quoted as “Don’t give up the ship”; Captain Lawrence’s final order as he was carried below, fatally wounded, before the capture of his ship by the British frigate Shannon.

1 From this speech comes the phrase: Cohesive power of public plunder.

2 Later popularized by EDWARD HICKSON [1803–1870] in his Moral Songs [1857] and often attributed to him or cited as a proverb.

3 See Lewis Carroll.

4 Live or die, sink or swim.—GEORGE PEELE, Edward I [c. 1584]

5 On the day of his [John Adams’s] death, hearing the noise of bells and cannon, he asked the occasion. On being reminded that it was “Independent Day,” he replied, “Independence forever.”—DANIEL WEBSTER, Works [1903], vol. I

6 Generally misquoted as “Massachusetts, there she stands.”

1 Our sovereign, the people.—CHARLES JAMES FOX, toast [1798], for which his name was erased from the Privy Council

See Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Parker.

2 Natural rock formation in the shape of a human profile, in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains; it collapsed in 2003. It gave Nathaniel Hawthorne the theme of his story The Great Stone Face [1850].

1 The first use of Gotham as a moniker for New York City.

2 Translated by NORBERT GUTERMAN.

3 For this reference to the Prince Regent, Hunt was imprisoned.

4 See Proverbs 9:17, and Colley Cibber.

1 Jenny was Jane Welsh Carlyle [1801–1866], who kissed Hunt when he brought Carlyle good news.

1 We have met the enemy and he is us.—WALT KELLY [1913–1973], 1970 Pogo cartoon, used in 1971 Earth Day poster. In its original form: We shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.—The Pogo Papers [1953], introduction

2 Crockett’s motto in the War of 1812.

3 Chief of the Suquamish and Dowamish tribes of Puget Sound. The city of Seattle was named after him.

Translated and published by HENRY A. SMITH [1830–1915] more than thirty years [1887] after the speech, whose date and location are uncertain. Smith’s version reflects the then-current idea that American Indians were destined to die out entirely and contains many anachronisms and other errors of fact. Later versions (such as a TV documentary and a popular picture book) are highly embellished. The speech’s authenticity is disputed.

4 Enrichissez-vous!

5 A French proverb.

1 Such lips would tempt a saint; such hands as those/Would make an anchorite lascivious.—JOHN FORD, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, act I, sc. iii, l. 196

2 War even to the knife!—JOSÉ DE PALAFOX Y MELZI [1775–1847]

Palafox, governor of Saragossa, had been summoned by the besieging French to surrender the city [1808].

3 This was the passage Sir Winston Churchill quoted to President Franklin D. Roosevelt when both agreed to substitute the term United Nations for Associated Powers in the pact that the two leaders wished all the free nations to sign. [In a conference at the White House, January 1942]

1 The saying of the ancient pilgrims, quoted from Bede by EDWARD GIBBON in History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 71.

1 From isles of Greece/The princes orgulous, their high blood chaf’d,/Have to the port of Athens sent their ships.—SHAKESPEARE, Troilus and Cressida, prologue

2 Le vrai peut quelquefois n’être pas vraisemblable [Truth may sometimes be improbable].—BOILEAU, The Art of Poetry, canto III l. 48

Truth is stranger than fiction, but not so popular.—Anonymous

1 Let Aristotle and all your philosophers say what they like, there is nothing to be compared with tobacco.—MOLIÈRE, Dom Juan; ou Le Festin de Pierre [1665], act I, sc. i

Translated by CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE.

2 The publisher John Murray sent Byron a Bible in acknowledgment of a favor, and the poet returned it with the word “robber” changed to “publisher.”

3 According to The Story of Mary’s Little Lamb [1928], the first three stanzas of the poem are by John Roulstone [1805–1822]; Sarah Josepha Hale’s “genius completed the poem in its present form” (six stanzas); “Mary” was Mary Elizabeth Sawyer [1806–1889] of Sterling, Massachusetts; and the events of the poem are true.

4 Translated by R. J. HOLLINGDALE.

5 Translated by T. BAILEY SAUNDERS.

1 Translated by PHYLLIS PENN KOHLER.

2 Home is home, be it never so homely.—English proverb [c. 1300]

1 Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!

Music by FRANZ GRÜBER [1787–1863].

1 Lift not the painted veil which those who live/Call Life.

—SHELLEY, Sonnet [1818]

2 George III [1738–1820].

3 Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh [1769–1822].

1 Morning star, you shone among the living; and now in death you shine, evening star, on the dead.—PLATO, Aster (Star), epigraph (in Greek) for Shelley’s Adonais

1 Giacomo Casabianca, whose father, Louis, at the battle of the Nile [1798], commanded the flagship Orient. It took fire and blew up, the commander was mortally wounded, and when most of the crew fled, Giacomo, according to tradition, remained aboard to help his father.

2 The stately homes of England,/How beautiful they stood/Before their recent owners/Relinquished them for good.—E. V. KNOX [1881–1971], The Stately Homes [Punch, July 21, 1920]

See Quentin Crisp.

See Virginia Woolf.

1 [Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.—CARLYLE, On Heroes and Hero Worship [1841], The Hero as Man of Letters

See William Hazlitt.

2 Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.—CARLYLE, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Sir Walter Scott [1838] [Carlyle] loves silence somewhat platonically.—GIUSEPPI MAZZINI [1805–1872]; from JANE WELSH CARLYLE, Letter to Mrs. Stirling [October 1843]

1 History is the essence of innumerable biographies.—CARLYLE, On History [1830]

2 Mammon is like fire: the usefulest of all servants, if the frightfulest of all masters!—CARLYLE, Past and Present, bk. IV, ch. 7

3 Referring to political economy and social science, Carlyle also in his Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question [1849] speaks of “What we might call, by way of eminence, the Dismal Science.”

4 See Georges Buffon, and Jane Ellice Hopkins.

5 Carlyle identifies this as “Montesquieu’s aphorism.”

1 If asked who said “Beauty is truth, truth beauty!” a great many readers would answer “Keats.” But Keats said nothing of the sort. It is what he said the Grecian Urn said, his description and criticism of a certain kind of work of art, the kind from which the evils and problems of this life, the “heart high sorrowful and cloyed,” are deliberately excluded. The Urn, for example, depicts, among other beautiful sights, the citadel of a hill town; it does not depict warfare, the evil which makes the citadel necessary.—W. H. AUDEN, The Dyer’s Hand. Robert Frost

See George Herbert.

1 Printed in the Examiner [February 23, 1817].

2 Title of a French poem by ALAIN CHARTIER [c. 1385–c. 1433].

First printed by Leigh Hunt in the Indicator [May 10, 1820].

3 From want of regular rests, I have been rather narvus, and the passage in Lear—“Do you not hear the sea?”—has haunted me intensely.—KEATS, Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds [April 17, 1817] Edgar:… Hark! do you hear the sea?—SHAKESPEARE, King Lear, act IV, sc. vi, l. 4

4 Written on a blank page in Keats’s copy of Shakespeare’s Poems.

1 Among the many things he has requested of me tonight, this is the principal—that on his gravestone shall be this inscription.—Letter from JOSEPH SEVERN [1793–1879], in RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES [1809–1885], Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats [1848]

2 Wie es eigentlich gewesen ist.

3 From this summit [Popocatépetl, 17,887 feet] could be seen the great city of Mexico, and the whole of the lake, and all the towns which were built in it.—BERNAL DÍAZ DEL CASTILLO [c. 1492–c. 1581], Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España, pt. IV, ch. 53

4 A Shaker song.

1 Auf Flügeln des Gesanges,/Herzliebchen, trag ich dich fort.

Translated by LOUIS UNTERMEYER.

2 Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,/Dass ich so traurig bin;/Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,/Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

Translated by LOUIS UNTERMEYER.

3 Du bist wie eine Blume,/So hold und schön und rein;/Ich schau dich an, und Wehmut/Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.

Translated by LOUIS UNTERMEYER.

4 A collection of newspaper articles Heine had published on French culture and politics.

5 Bien sûr, il me pardonnera; c’est son métier.

6 Kennen Sie eine lustige Musik? Ich nicht!

1 J’aime le son du cor, le soir, au fond des bois.

2 Dieu! que le son du cor est triste au fond des bois!

3 Il n’y a, au fond, de réel que l’humanité.

4 Le nouveau est très ancien, on peut même dire que c’est toujours ce qu’il y a de plus ancien.

5 Translated by WALTER PACH.

1 Translated by JOHN HEATH-STUBBS.

2 Translated by EAMON GRENNAN.

3 Translated by JAMES THOMSON.

4 Translated by IRIS ORIGO and JOHN HEATH-STUBBS.

5 Translated by GIOVANNI CECCHETTI.

6 Translated by RICHARD HOWARD.

1 Translated by LINDA ASHER.

2 J’ai travaillé horriblement et mes débauches sont des volumes.

3 Translated by MARION AYTON CRAWFORD.

4 Translated by JAMES WARING.

5 Je casse tout obstacle.

1 Translated by CHARLES JOHNSTON.

2 Peter I (the Great) [1672–1725].

3 Translated by OLIVER ELTON.

4 Who knows but that hereafter some traveler like myself will sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, where now, in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eyes are too slow to take in the multitude of sensations? Who knows but he will sit down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep a people inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name?—CONSTANTIN DE VOLNEY [1757–1820], Ruins [1791], ch. 11

See Horace Walpole.

1 Erst wägen, dann wagen.

2 Translated by T. E. HOLLAND.

3 The white lawyer Thomas R. Gray wrote the pamphlet The Confessions of Nat Turner, reportedly assembling the text from Turner’s oral jailhouse account of the 1831 slave rebellion.

1 An adapted version of this text appears in the Book of Common Prayer [1979].

1 Take away time is money, and what is left of England? take away cotton is king, and what is left of America?—VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables [1862], Marius, bk. IV, ch. 4

2 Cherchons la femme.

The phrase “Cherchez la femme” is attributed to JOSEPH FOUCHÉ [1759–1820].

3 On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées. (Literally, one can resist the invasion of armies, but not the invasion of ideas.)

4 Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo! Morne plaine!

5 Vous créez un frisson nouveau.

6 Translated by NORMAN DENNY.

1 Slogan of expansionist Democrats in the 1844 presidential campaign, in which the Oregon boundary definition was a pressing issue. The new Democratic President, James K. Polk, compromised [1846] with Great Britain on the 49th parallel.

2 See Charles Schulz.

3 On August 10, 1831, a large American flag was presented to Driver, captain of the Charles Doggett, by a band of women in recognition of his bringing the British mutineers of the ship Bounty from Tahiti back to their former home, Pitcairn Island.

1 See The Upanishads.

1 If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.—Attributed to EMERSON (in a lecture) by SARAH S. B. YULE and MARY S. KEENE, Borrowings [1889]. Often cited as: Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

2 All things come round to him who will but wait.—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Tales of a Wayside Inn, The Student’s Tale [1863]

1 Old age is an incurable disease (senectus enim insanabilis morbus est).—SENECA, Epistles, no. 108, sec. 28

1 What matters what anybody thinks? “It will be all the same a hundred years hence.” That is the most sensible proverb ever invented.—GEORGE DU MAURIER, Peter Ibbetson [1891]

2 See Henry David Thoreau.

1 There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.—PIERRE BAYLE [1647–1706], Dictionnaire Historique et Critique [1697–1702]

2 A popular phrase throughout Cornwall since the imprisonment in the Tower of London [1688] of Sir Jonathan Trelawny [1650–1721] with six other prelates for refusing to recognize the Declaration of Indulgence issued by James II.

3 After FRIEDRICH RUECKERT [1788–1866].

4 The gentleman will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting the wild boar in the forests of Silesia, mine were the princes of the earth.—JUDAH P. BENJAMIN [1811–1884], reply to a senator; from BEN PERLEY POORE [1820–1887], Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis [1886]

1 Property has its duties as well as its rights.—THOMAS DRUMMOND [1797–1840; inventor of the Drummond light], Letter to the Land-lords of Tipperary [May 22, 1838]

2 Collected in The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales [1851]

1 Vigny, plus secret,/Comme en sa tour d’ivoire, avant midi, rentrait.

—Alfred [Victor] de Vigny [1797–1863]

Origin of the term “ivory tower.”

The poet, retired in his Tower of Ivory, isolated, according to his desire, from the world of man, resembles, whether he so wishes or not, another solitary figure, the watcher enclosed for months at a time in a lighthouse at the head of a cliff.—JULES DE GAULTIER [1858–1942], La Guerre et les Destinées de l’Art

2 Translated by JEAN HERSHOLT.

1 On March 6, 1836, five days after Texas declared independence from Mexico, President Antonio López de Santa Anna attacked the Alamo, the fortified mission at San Antonio; captured it after every Texan had been killed or wounded; and put the wounded to death. He was defeated at San Jacinto [April 21, 1836] by the Texas army, commanded by Samuel Houston. Sidney Sherman was a colonel in the army.

2 The Henry Reeve text, as revised by Francis Bowen, corrected and edited by Phillips Bradley [1945], unless otherwise noted.

1 Translated by ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER.

2 Translated by STUART GILBERT unless otherwise noted.

3 Translated by ALAN KAHAN.

4 See Edward FitzGerald.

1 See Paul Revere.

2 Two lives that once part are as ships that divide.—EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON, A Lament [1853]

As vessels starting from ports thousands of miles apart pass close to each other in the naked breadths of the ocean, nay, sometimes even touch in the dark.—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Professor at the Breakfast-Table [1860]

3 See Suetonius, 111:n1.

4 By tradition attributed to Longfellow.

5 This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the “compromise,” and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it.—WHITTIER’S Note

1 See Arthur Guiterman.

2 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

3 J’y suis, j’y reste.

4 Translated by RICHARD SIEBURTH.

1 Je suis le ténébreux, le veuf, l’inconsolé,/Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie.

T. S. Eliot quotes the second line in The Waste Land, l. 429.

2 Some transcriptions interpret Darwin’s handwritten journals to read “melted” rather than “netted.”

3 See Herbert Spencer.

4 The perpetual struggle for room and food.—THOMAS MALTHUS, Essay on the Principle of Population, ch. 3

1 I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.—WILLIAM CONGREVE, Letter to Dennis [1695]

1 Translated from the Persian of OMAR KHAYYÁM [died c. 1133] in four editions, 1859, 1868, 1872, and 1879. The fourth edition is used here, unless otherwise stated.

1 Translated by VLADIMIR NABOKOV.

2 This poem roused such popular feeling that it is generally credited with saving the frigate Constitution, now preserved in Boston Harbor, from being dismantled as unfit for service.

1 Sometimes paraphrased as “Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” Often attributed to William James.

2 They have seen in his [Douglas’s] round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices, land offices, marshalships and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.—LINCOLN, Second campaign speech against Douglas, Springfield, Illinois [July 17, 1858]

1 The Emancipation Proclamation was issued one hundred days later [January 1, 1863].

2 See Daniel Webster, and Theodore Parker.

3 From Letters of John Hay and Extracts from His Diary [published 1939]. John Hay [1838–1905] served as an assistant private secretary to President Lincoln.

1 The five sons of Lydia Bixby did serve in the Union army, but it was later discovered that only two died in the war.

1 Poe’s epigraph for the poem: And the angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.—Koran

1 Perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.—POE, The Black Cat

1 La propriété c’est le vol!

2 See Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III, i, l. 279.

1 In memory of Arthur Henry Hallam [1811–1833].

1 Say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved.—WILLIAM CONGREVE, The Way of the World, act II, sc. vi

Better to love amiss than nothing to have loved.—GEORGE CRABBE, Tales. The Struggles of Conscience ’Tis better to have fought and lost/Than never to have fought at all.—ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, Peschiera [1849]

2 See Pierre Bosquet.

1 The United States—bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the precession of the equinoxes, on the east by the primeval chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment.—JOHN FISKE [1842–1901], Manifest Destiny [1880]

2 C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre.

See Tennyson.

3 As recorded in the journal of RALPH WALDO EMERSON [October 20, 1837].

1 By God! she’d better.—Thomas Carlyle’s reported comment

2 Song to help raise volunteers for the Union Army.

3 Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.

4 On Ne Badine Pas avec l’Amour.

5 Parker used the same phrase in a speech delivered in Boston [May 31, 1854] and in a sermon in the Music Hall, Boston [July 4, 1858]. William H. Herndon visited Boston and on his return to Springfield, Illinois, took with him some of Parker’s sermons and addresses. In his Abraham Lincoln, vol. II, p. 65, Herndon says that Lincoln marked with pencil this portion of the Music Hall address: “Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, by all the people, for all the people.”

See Abraham Lincoln, and Daniel Webster.

6 Speech at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston.

1 Tout passe—L’art robuste/Seul a l’éternité;/Le buste/Survit à la cité.

2 See John Babsone Lane Soule.

3 So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, on meeting the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin [November 25, 1862]. Attributed

1 I should like to see any kind of a man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, The Professor at the Breakfast-Table [1860]

The whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women.—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman, epistle dedicatory

2 The Rake’s Progress.—WILLIAM HOGARTH [1697–1764], title of series of paintings and engravings [1735]

1 Often assumed to refer to William Wordsworth.

2 And did you once find Browning plain?/And did he really seem quite clear?/And did you read the book again?/How strange it seems, and queer.—CHARLES WILLIAM STUBBS [1845–1912], Memorabile! [1899]

1 A favorite aphorism of the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe [1886–1969].

1 Life is with such all beer and skittles;/They are not difficult to please/About their victuals.—CHARLES STUART CALVERLEY [1831–1884], Contentment [1872]

Life ain’t all beer and skittles, and more’s the pity.—GEORGE DU MAURIER, Trilby, pt. I

See Thomas Hughes.

1 Not only humble but umble, which I look upon to be the comparative, or, indeed, superlative degree.—ANTHONY TROLLOPE, Doctor Thorne [1858], ch. 4

2 “King Charles’s head” has passed into common use in the English language as a phrase meaning some whimsical obsession.—G. B. STERN [1890–1973], Monogram [1936]

1 Translated by HENRY COPLEY GREENE.

2 Bernard attributes this formulation to an unnamed “contemporary poet.”

3 Translated by J. M. D. OLMSTEAD.

4 Translated by VICTOR PRICE.

1 Translated by HOWARD V. HONG and EDNA H. HONG.

2 Translated by SYLVIA WALSH.

3 Translated by WALTER LOWRIE.

4 Translated by ALISTAIR HANNAY.

5 Henry David Thoreau cites this motto in the opening of Civil Disobedience.

1 See Karl Marx.

2 Translated by C. M. BOWRA.

3 Eisen und Blut.

4 Die Politik ist Keine exacte Wissenschaft.

5 Die Politik ist die Lehre von Möglichen.

1 Dixie comes from the ten-dollar notes issued by the Citizens’ Bank in bilingual Louisiana before the Civil War and bearing the French word dix, ten, on the reverse side. Soon New Orleans, then Louisiana and the entire South were called “the land of Dixie.”—STUART BERG FLEXNER [1928–1990], I Hear America Talking [1976]

There are other stories of this term’s origin as well.

2 Horace Greeley used the expression in an editorial in the New York Tribune. As the saying “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country” gained popularity, Greeley printed Soule’s article, to show the source of his inspiration.

See Horace Greeley.

3 See Thomas Jefferson.

4 Referring to resolutions she had introduced at the tenth National Woman’s Rights Convention [May 10, 1860], declaring that under certain circumstances divorce was justifiable.

1 Music by PIERRE DEGEYTER [1848–1932].

2 Sauntering… derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer.”—THOREAU, Walking [1862]

3 No year in Thoreau’s dateline.

1 Originally published under the title Resistance to Civil Government.

1 Motto of the Wilderness Society.

See John Muir.

2 Music by HENRY J. GAUNTLETT [1805–1876].

3 Better know nothing than half-know many things—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Thus Spake Zarathustra, pt. IV, ch. 64

1 Inscribed on Marx’s tomb in Highgate Cemetery, London.

Translated by LOYD D. EASTON and KURT H. GUDDAT.

2 Napoleon was twice defeated, and the Bourbons twice expelled. By repetition that which at first appeared merely a matter of chance and contingency, becomes a real and ratified existence.—G. W. F. HEGEL, Lectures on the Philosophy of History [1837], pt. III, sec. 2

3 Translated by SAUL K. PADOVER.

4 Abridged edition prepared by JULIAN BORCHARDT, translated by STEPHEN L. TRASK.

1 Abridged edition prepared by JULIAN BORCHARDT, translated by STEPHEN L. TRASK.

2 This phrase is in quotation marks, and it is believed that Marx is quoting or paraphrasing either Louis Blanc [1811–1882] or Morelly [fl. 1773]:

Let each produce according to his aptitudes and his force; let each consume according to his need.—LOUIS BLANC, Organisation du Travail [1840]

Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work. Every citizen will make his particular contribution to the activities of the community according to his capacity, his talent and his age; it is on this basis that his duties will be determined, in conformity with the distributive laws.—MORELLY, Le Code de la Nature [1755]

See Mikhail Bakunin.

3 Translated by DONNA TORR.

4 Translated by SAMUEL MOORE.

5 By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor.—ENGELS, notes to The Communist Manifesto [1888 edition]

6 By proletariat [is meant] the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.—ENGELS, notes to The Communist Manifesto [1888 edition]

1 More familiar as: Workers of the world, unite!

2 All policy’s allowed in war and love.—SUSANNAH CENTLIVRE [c. 1667–1723], Love at a Venture [1706], act I

3 Translated by HARRY STEVENS.

4 The first line echoes WILLIAM WORDSWORTH’s Where Lies the Land to Which Yon Ship Must Go? [1806].

1 Translated by PETRA TEN-DOESSCHATE CHU.

2 There is not enough of love and goodness in the world to throw any of it away on conceited people.—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, Human, All Too Human, sec. 129

1 The cruel crawling foam.—CHARLES KINGSLEY, The Sands of Dee, st. 4

1 The first edition of Leaves of Grass, published anonymously by its author in July 1855, contained a long preface and twelve untitled poems. Over the next four decades Whitman revised and enlarged his book. The texts and sequence of the verse quotations here are those of the so-called Deathbed Edition [Philadelphia, 1891–1892].

1 Willa Cather’s 1913 novel O Pioneers! alludes to this poem. See Cather.

1 La nostalgie de la boue.

2 See Hippocrates.

3 Kentucky, from its history as a hunting and burial territory for warring Indian tribes.

4 Soon the men of the column began to see that though the scarlet line was slender, it was very rigid and exact.—A. W. KINGLAKE [1809–1891], Invasion of the Crimea [1863–1887], vol. III, p. 455

It’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll.—RUDYARD KIPLING, Tommy, st. 3

5 He actually said: “Hold out. Relief is coming.” General Corse replied: “I am short a cheekbone and an ear, but am able to whip all hell yet.”

Hold the fort, for I am coming!—PHILIP PAUL BLISS [1838–1876], Hold the Fort, refrain of a hymn dedicated to Sherman [1875]

1 The familiar version is: If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve.

2 See Charles Darwin.

3 On her first escape from slavery [1845].

4 Translated by MARY A. WARD.

1 Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées/Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;/Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,/Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

2 Les parfums, les couleurs, et les sons se répondent.

3 Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,/Luxe, calme et volupté.

Translated by RICHARD WILBUR.

4 J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans.

5 Je suis la plaie et le couteau!/Je suis le soufflet et la joue!/Je suis les membres et la roue,/Et la victime et le bourreau!

6 Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel;/Il vient comme un complice, à pas de loup.

7 Quelle est cette île triste et noire?—C’est Cythère,/Nous dit-on, un pays fameux dans les chansons,/Eldorado banal de tous les vieux garçons./Regardez! après tout, c’est une pauvre terre.

8 Ô Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l’ancre!

9 Sois charmante et tais-toi!

10 Que m’importe que tu sois sage?/Sois belle! et sois triste!

11 Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade est possédé du désir de changer de lit.

Translated by KEITH WALDROP.

12 Il n’existe que trois êtres respectables: le prêtre, le guerrier, le poète. Savoir, tuer, et créer.

13 Il faut épater le bourgeois.

14 Blackfoot warrior and orator.

1 Translated by DAVID MCDUFF.

2 Translated from the Russian by KYRIL FITZLYON.

3 Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT.

4 Translated by RICHARD PEVEAR and LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY.

5 “Do you remember the passage where he [Rousseau] asks the reader what he would do if he could make a fortune by killing an old mandarin in China by simply exerting his will, without stirring from Paris?” “Yes.” “Well?” “Bah! I’m at my thirty-third mandarin.” “Don’t play the fool. Look here, if it were proved to you that the thing was possible and you only needed to nod your head, would you do it?” “Is your mandarin well stricken in years? But, bless you, young or old, paralytic or healthy, upon my word—The devil take it! Well, no.”—HONORé DE BALZAC, Le Père Goriot

1 This statement, traditionally attributed to Dostoyevsky, appears in Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé [1848–1910], Le Roman Russe [1886], ch. 3: “The more I read the Russians, the more I understand the observation one of them made to me: ‘We have all come out of Gogol’s Overcoat.’ ”

2 Translated by GEOFFREY O’BRIEN.

3 Translated by FRANCIS STEEGMULLER.

4 La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des melodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles.

5 Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.

1 Madame Bovary, c’est moi!

2 There are different versions of this statement. The most familiar one is catchy yet unverifiable: Git thar fustest with the mostest.

3 Translated by E. ATKINSON.

Helmholtz’s “force” is equivalent to the modern physicist’s “energy.”

1 This passage appeared only in the first appearance of the essay, in Cornhill Magazine [August 1864].

History is nothing more than the belief in the senses, the belief in falsehood.—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, The Twilight of the Idols, “Reason” in Philosophy, sec. I

History is more or less bunk.—HENRY FORD [1863–1947], interview with Charles N. Wheeler, Chicago Tribune [May 25, 1916]

1 Translated by WALTER D. BROWN.

Heat will of its own accord flow only from a hot object to a cold object.—JOSIAH WILLARD GIBBS [1839–1903], Scientific Papers [1906], The Second Law of Thermodynamics

1 See Charles Dickens.

2 Pseudonym of Olmsted and Vaux in submitting their plan.

3 Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.

4 Translated by I. BERNARD COHEN.

5 Why France has not found superior men at the moment of peril.

6 Pasteur popularized this sentence, but Mariano Semmola used the expression in an address to the International Medical Congress in 1887.

7 Mahpiua Luta, Oglala Sioux chief.

1 Nous n’irons plus aux bois,/Les lauriers sont coupés.

Adapted by A. E. HOUSMAN.

From an old nursery rhyme.

2 See Callimachus.

3 Glücklich ist, wer vergisst,/Was doch nicht zu ändern ist.

1 Les affaires, c’est bien simple, c’est l’argent des autres.

1 If anyone were to be willing to trace his descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother?—SAMUEL WILBERFORCE [1805–1873], at the British Association for the Advancement of Science [1860]

2 The poem was used as lyrics for the song The Lost Chord [1877]. Music by SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN [1842–1900].

3 Music by JOHN BACCHUS DYKES [1823–1876].

1 Sung for the first time by Nelson Kneass in Andrews’ Eagle Ice Cream Saloon, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [September 11, 1847]. It quickly became a worldwide hit.

2 Sung by Gilbert Hastings Macdermott (Farrell) [1845–1901], “the Great Macdermott.” The song gave the terms “jingo” and “jingoism” to the political vocabulary, though the phrase “by jingo” had been used earlier by Oliver Goldsmith and Thomas Hood.

2 Translated by WILLIAM ARCHER.

1 Translated by WILLIAM ARCHER.

2 Translated by A. G. CHATER.

3 Translated by EDMUND GOSSE and WILLIAM ARCHER.

1 Sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of Confederate dead in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S. C., 1866.

2 Translated by S. S. KOTELIANSKY and VIRGINIA WOOLF.

3 Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT.

1 Translated by LOUISE and AYLMER MAUDE.

2 Translated by JOEL CARMICHAEL.

3 Translated by AYLMER MAUDE.

4 At some points in the book, it is given in the incorrect form Mobilis in mobile.

1 All quotations are from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson [1960], edited by THOMAS H. JOHNSON. Dates are of composition, not publication.

1 Called Back.—HUGH CONWAY [Frederick John Fargus, 1847–1885], title of book [1883]

1 If you want a friend in Washington, go buy a dog.—Saying

2 Mark Hopkins [1802–1887], president of Williams College [1836–1872] and president of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions [1857–1881].

For Education is Making Men;/So is it now, so was it when/Mark Hopkins sat on one end of a log/And James Garfield sat on the other.—ARTHUR GUITERMAN [1871–1943], Education [1935]

3 Edward Sylvester Ellis [1840–1916] reported that after Custer’s fight with Black Kettle’s band of Cheyenne Indians, the Comanche Chief Toch-a-way (Turtle Dove) was presented to General Sheridan. The Indian said: “Me Toch-a-way, me good Indian.” The reply, as reported by Ellis but vehemently denied by Sheridan, is given in the text; the phrase is more often heard in the version: The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

4 Tatanka Yotanka, Sioux warrior.

1 See Isaac Watts.

2 See Robert Southey.

1 See Ann and Jane Taylor.

2 See the Earl of Chesterfield.

3 See Isaac Watts.

1 But answer came there none.—SIR WALTER SCOTT, The Bridal of Triermain [1813], canto III, st. 10

1 This collection of Ingersoll’s sayings—some from his writings, some attributed—have come to be known as his creed. There are other versions.

2 Music by SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN [1842–1900].

1 The Puritan’s idea of Hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.—Attributed to WENDELL PHILLIPS [1811–1884]

2 Translated by THEODORE REFF.

3 See Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Robert Lowell.

4 Frequently quoted: Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

See Sigmund Freud.

5 Translated by E. R. LANKESTER.

1 There’s nobbut three generations atween clog and clog.—Lancashire proverb, which Carnegie liked to quote

2 A pseudonym apparently derived from the Mississippi steamboating term signifying two fathoms (12 feet) of depth.

3 Frequently cited as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

1 Often cited as: Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.

1 Considerable contemporary evidence associates this quotation with Charles Dudley Warner (see 507). A variant version—“We all grumble about the weather but nothing is done about it”—appears in Robert Underwood Johnson’s recollections of Mark Twain (Remembered Yesterdays [1923]).

2 In a well-conducted man-of-war… everything is in its place, and there is a place for everything.—FREDERICK MARRYAT, Masterman Ready [1842]

3 Sir Arthur Sullivan’s music for these lines is familiar as the tune of the chorus “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” from the song “Alabama Jubilee” [1915].

1 Well, then o’er shoes, o’er boots. And in for a penny, in for a Pound.—EDWARD RAVENSCROFT [fl. 1671–1697], The Canterbury Guests; Or, A Bargain Broken [1695], act V, sc. i

2 See Cicero.

1 See Georges Buffon, and Thomas Carlyle.

2 Translated by FERNANDA SAVAGE.

3 “Public office is a public trust” was used by the Cleveland administration as its motto.

1 See Julian.

1 Music by ALFRED LEE.

2 See Henry David Thoreau.

3 J’ai trop pensé pour daigner agir!

4 Vivre? Les serviteurs feront cela pour nous.

5 Translated by JULIE LAWRENCE COCHRAN.

6 Translated by NORBERT GUTERMAN.

1 Translated from the French by CHRISTOPHER PEMBERTON.

2 Monet n’est qu’un oeil—mais quel oeil!

Translated by HAROLD L. VAN DOREN.

3 Responding to a letter from eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon: “Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”

4 Translated by WILLIAM L. GROSSMAN.

1 He’s kind iv a society f’r the previntion of croolty to money. If he finds a man misusing his money he takes it away fr’m him an’ adopts it.—FINLEY PETER DUNNE [1867–1936], Mr. Dooley Says [1910]

2 On being assigned [1876] as a police inspector to New York City’s district most notorious for vice, which thus acquired its name.

1 Hinmaton-Yalaktit: Thunder Rolling in the Mountains.

1 Often quoted as “A single carrot, freshly observed, will give birth to a revolution.”

2 See W. H. AUDEN, “New Year Letter” (1940): “Our news is seldom good: the heart, / As ZOLA said, must always start / The day by swallowing its toad / Of failure and disgust.”

3 Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix.

1 If only one were eighty!—COUNT FRIEDRICH VON WRANGEL [1784–1877], attributed

2 First published as Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, retitled in 1892.

3 First published as The Cynic’s Word Book, retitled in 1911.

1 Translated by ROSEMARY LLOYD.

2 La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres.

3 Tel qu’en Lui-Même enfin l’éternité le change.

4 Un coup de dés n’abolira jamais le hasard.

1 Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois-quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est fait peu à peu: le suggérer.

2 Tout au monde est fait pour aboutir dans un beau livre.

3 Ce n’est point avec des idées que l’on fait des vers, c’est avec des mots.

1 Translated by LAFCADIO HEARN.

2 First published in 1918, edited by Robert Bridges. Poem numbers are from the third edition [1948], edited by W. H. Gardner.

1 Translated by RONALD SPEIRS.

2 Translated by DAMON SEARLS.

3 Translated by ALEXANDER HARVEY.

1 Translated by WALTER KAUFMAN.

2 God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.—NIETZSCHE, The Gay Science, sec. 125

Dieu est mort! le ciel est vide—Pleurez! enfants, vous n’avez plus de père.—GÉRARD DE NERVAL, Les Chimères [1854], Le Christ aux Oliviers.

3 Translated by THOMAS COMMON.

4 Translated by HELEN ZIMMERN.

5 Translated by JUDITH NORMAN.

6 Translated by THOMAS COMMON.

1 Translated by ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI.

2 Canon Spooner, for many years warden of New College, Oxford, was famous for unintentional transposition of (usually initial) word sounds, giving rise to the term “spoonerism.”

3 Les sanglots longs/Des violons/De l’automne/Blessent mon coeur/D’une langueur/Monotone.

4 Il pleure dans mon coeur/Comme il pleut sur la ville.

5 Prends l’éloquence et tords-lui son cou!

1 Et tout le reste est littérature.

2 Beau… comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d’une machine à coudre et d’un parapluie.

Frequently quoted by the surrealists.

3 The first intelligible words transmitted by telephone.

4 Che gelida manina, se la lasci riscaldar.

5 Music by GIACOMO PUCCINI [1858–1924].

1 Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore, non feci male ad anima viva.

2 Music by GIACOMO PUCCINI [1858–1924].

3 D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?

4 Translated by JOHN HOWARD.

1 British naturalist Philip Henry Gosse [1810–1888], who opposed the uniformitarian geological theory of Charles Lyell [1797–1875].

2 Set to music by IRVING BERLIN for Miss Liberty [1949].

3 Address at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore [February 22, 1905]. This address caused much discussion and misquotation. It was headlined in the press: OSLER RECOMMENDS CHLOROFORM AT SIXTY.

1 Address at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore [February 22, 1905]. This address caused much discussion and misquotation. It was headlined in the press: OSLER RECOMMENDS CHLOROFORM AT SIXTY.

1 Treasure Island came out of Kingsley’s At Last, where I got the Dead Man’s Chest—and that was the seed.—R. L. STEVENSON, Letter to Sidney Colvin [May 1884]

We were crawling slowly along, looking out for Virgin Gorda; the first of those numberless isles which Columbus, so goes the tale, discovered on St. Ursula’s day, and named them after the saint and her eleven thousand mythical virgins. Unfortunately, English buccaneers have since given to most of them less poetic names. The Dutchman’s Cap, Broken Jerusalem, The Dead Man’s Chest, Rum Island, and so forth, mark a time and race more prosaic.—CHARLES KINGSLEY, At Last [1870], ch. 1

1 On the bronze memorial to Stevenson in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Scotland.

2 Music by LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK [1829–1869].

3 Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j’attaque.

1 Inspired by Jean-François Millet’s painting.

2 A man to match his mountains, not to creep/Dwarfed and abased below them.—JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, Among the Hills [1869], prelude

Bring me men to match my mountains.—SAM WALTER FOSS [1858–1911], The Coming American [1894]

3 Quoted in part by President Barack Obama in a speech on American relations with Cuba [December 17, 2014].

1 Abridged one-volume edition. The original appeared in twelve volumes [1890–1915].

2 What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.—FRANKLIN P. ADAMS [1881–1960]

3 Translated by G. B. HALSTED.

4 Je dis qu’il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens.

5 Je est un autre.

6 Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe.

7 Plus léger qu’un bouchon j’ai dansé sur les flots.

8 Je me suis baigné dans le Poème/De la Mer…/Dévorant les azurs verts.

9 Je regrette l’Europe aux anciens parapets!

10 J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles/Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au voyageur:/Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dors et t’exiles,/Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur?

11 A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,/Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latantes!

12 Elle est retrouvée,/Quoi?—L’Éternité./C’est la mer allée/Avec le soleil.

13 O saisons, O châteaux/Quelle âme est sans défauts?

1 Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.—THOMAS GOLD APPLETON [1812–1884]; from OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, ch. 6

1 Mellon’s advice to Secretary of the Treasury Herbert Hoover, following the stock market crash of 1929.

2 Carson McCullers’s 1940 novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter takes its title from this poem.

3 See E. Y. Harburg, and Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf.

4 In 1888 JAMES B. UPHAM [1845–1905] wrote a draft that Bellamy, chairman of a national celebration of the 400th anniversary of America’s discovery, helped put in this form.

More than thirty years later, “my flag” was changed to “the flag of the United States of America”; in 1954 an act of Congress added “under God.”

5 Often quoted as “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”; similar sayings are used in advertisements as early as 1903.

1 Translated by M. MEYER.

Apparently Freud’s first published use of the root term “psychoanalytic.”

2 Translated by JAMES STRACHEY.

3 Translated by ERIC MOSBACHER and JAMES STRACHEY.

4 See Ernst Heinrich Haeckel.

1 The phrase “dark continent” appears in English in the original German text.

2 Translated by JAMES STRACHEY.

3 Translated by J. A. UNDERWOOD.

4 Translated by JOAN RIVIERE.

5 Was will das Weib?

6 Lieben und arbeiten.

1 At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, Andrew S. Rowan was sent to communicate with General Calixto Garcia. He landed in an open boat near Turquino Peak in Cuba [April 24, 1898], executed the mission, and brought back information regarding the insurgent army.

2 Ils ne passeront pas.

The inscription on the Verdun medal is: On ne passe pas.

1 The play upon which the musical My Fair Lady is based. See Alan Jay Lerner.

1 Often attributed to W. C. Fields, who uttered it in the Broadway musical Poppy [1923]. He made the quote famous.

1 “Heart of Darkness” is experience… but it is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the readers.… That somber theme had to be given a sinister resonance, a tonality of its own, a continued vibration that, I hoped, would hang in the air and dwell on the ear after the last note had been struck.—CONRAD,Youth: A Narrative, author’s preface

2 For two hundred years, the Judges of England sat on the Bench, condemning to the penalty of death every man, woman, and child who stole property to the value of five shillings; and, during all that time, not one Judge ever remonstrated against the law. We English are a nation of brutes, and ought to be exterminated to the last man.—JOHN BRIGHT [1880]; in HENRY ADAMS, The Education of Henry Adams, ch. 12

1 Tous les jours, à tous les points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.

2 Translated by ROY HARRIS.

1 See Homer.

1 To the memory of my brother Francis George Fowler… who shared with me the planning of this book, but did not live to share the writing.—H. W. FOWLER, preface to the first edition

2 Translated by W. A. BRADLEY.

3 Translated by EZRA POUND.

4 La commedia è finita.

5 Santee Dakota.

1 See John Bunyan.

1 Translated by KURT H. WOLFF.

2 Music by SAMUEL A. WARD [1848–1903].

3 Translated by CLOUDESLEY BRERETON and FRED ROTHWELL.

4 Translated by R. ASHLEY AUDRA and CLOUDESLEY BRERETON.

1 I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.—HOUSMAN, autobiographical note written for a French translation of his poems

1 See Milton.

2 The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning on August 24, 1914.

3 See Sappho.

4 These three lines are on the tablet over Housman’s grave in the parish church at Ludlow, Shropshire, England.

1 Lafayette, nous voilà!

2 Inscribed on Thompson’s tombstone in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

3 This saying, popular among progressives, did not originate with Addams. It appears, for example, in The Encyclopedia of Social Reform of 1897.

1 Patterned on the toast given at the twenty-fifth anniversary dinner of the Harvard Class of 1880, by a Westerner:

Here’s to old Massachusetts,/The home of the sacred cod,/Where the Adamses vote for Douglas,/And the Cabots walk with God.

2 I shall not help crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. I shall not aid in pressing down upon the bleeding brow of labor this crown of thorns.—BRYAN, speech in the House of Representatives [December 22, 1894]

3 The original list includes eight conditions.

4 Translated by SIMON KARLINSKY.

1 Translated by SIMON KARLINSKY.

2 A fuller version: If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on a wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.—FATHER SERGIUS SHCHUKIN, memoir of Chekhov published in Russian Thought [1911]

3 Translated by RONALD HINGLY.

4 Translated by S. S. KOTELIANSKY and LEONARD WOOLF.

5 Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT.

6 The phrase, in variant forms, is commonly attributed to Daugherty, presidential campaign manager for Senator Warren G. Harding.

1 Translated by BERYL DE ZOETE.

2 Confessions of Zeno and Zeno’s Conscience are translations of the same book, La coscienza di Zeno. Zeno’s Conscience was translated by WILLIAM WEAVER.

1 First Pomp and Circumstance march by SIR EDWARD ELGAR [1857–1934].

2 Music by CHARLES B. LAWLOR [1852–1925].

1 On the anniversary of a lynching [August 12, 1911] in Coatesville.

2 Also in A Madison Square Arabian Night, A Night in New Arabia, and What You Want.

3 Also in A Midsummer Knight’s Dream, Past One at Rooney’s, and The Rubber Plant’s Story.

4 I’m Afraid to Go Home in the Dark.—HARRY H. WILLIAMS [1879–1922], title of song [1907]

1 Translated by EDMUND KEELEY and GEORGE SAVIDIS.

2 Translated by W. H. AUDEN and MARGUERITE YOURCENAR.

3 Translated by ROBERT LIDDELL.

4 Translated from the Greek by EDMUND KEELEY and PHILIP SHERRARD.

5 Translated by EDMUND KEELEY

6 Translated by EDMUND KEELEY and PHILLIP SHERRARD.

7 Hearst always denied sending such a telegram, and there is no proof that he ever did, even though it accurately reflects his views at the time.—JOYCE MILTON, The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism [1989]

See Mankiewicz and Welles.

1 Santayana’s aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it. — ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR., The Inscrutability of History [1968]

2 Translated by J. J. ROBBINS.

3 Translated by ELIZABETH REYNOLDS HAPGOOD.

1 Hayden’s text for a march, A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight [1886], by THEODORE AUGUST METZ [1848–1936], later a favorite of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in Cuba, and still later Roosevelt’s campaign song.

2 Swagman: tramp. Billabong: waterhole. Coolibah: eucalyptus. Billy: container used for brewing tea. Matilda: a bundle containing personal belongings.

Music by MARIE COWAN [d. 1919].

3 L’horreur des bourgeois est bourgeoise.

4 Pour nous punir le notre paresse, il y a, outre nos insuccès, les succès des autres.

1 Translated by H. H. GERTH and C. WRIGHT MILLS.

1

2 The point about the melting pot… is that it did not happen.—NATHAN GLAZER [b. 1925] and DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, Beyond the Melting Pot [1963]

See Michel de Crèvecoeur.

3 Ghostwritten by RUBY ROSS WOOD [1881–1950].

4 As reported by Buckingham Palace. As reported in the diary of LORD DAWSON, the king’s physician, however, George’s last words were “God damn you.”

1 He may well win the race that runs by himself.—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Poor Richard’s Almanac [1757]

2 Music by WALTER DAMROSCH [1862–1950].

3 Music by OLEY SPEAKS [1874–1948].

1 Pile on the brown man’s burden/To gratify your greed.—Response to Kipling’s poem published in London Truth [1899] and much reprinted; variously attributed to HENRY LABOUCHÈRE [1831–1912] and JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD [1827–1904].

1 See W. H. Auden.

2 I had still the ambition, formed in Sligo in my teens, of living in imitation of Thoreau on Innisfree, a little island in Lough Gill, and when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem Innisfree.—YEATS, The Trembling of the Veil [1926]

3 See Pierre de Ronsard.

1 Source of In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, the title of a short story and a book by Delmore Schwartz.

1 Title of book [1958] by Chinua Achebe [b. 1930].

1 I have read somewhere that in the Emperor’s palace at Byzantium was a tree made of gold and silver, and artificial birds that sang.—YEATS’S note

1 See Jonathan Swift.

1 The last three lines are inscribed on Yeats’s gravestone.

2 Translated by DOUGLAS AINSLIE.

1 On Steffens’s return from revolutionary Russia in 1919. Its more familiar form is: I have seen the future, and it works.—STEFFENS, letter to Marie Howe [April 3, 1919].

2 From Sources of Chinese Tradition [1960], edited by WILLIAM THEODORE DE BARY.

3 La trahison des clercs.

1 See Cole Porter, and Horace.

2 See Horace.

1 Translated by RICHARD and CLARA WINSTON.

2 Translated by WILLIAM WEAVER.

3 Translated by MARK MUSA.

4 Explaining his 1929 decision, as Secretary of State, to close down the department’s codebreaking agency (the American “black chamber”).

1 Gorki, “the bitter one,” was the writer’s pseudonym for his first sketch in a Tiflis newspaper [1892].

2 This became a rallying cry of the revolutionaries.

3 The censor forbade this line to be spoken on the stage.

4 Attributed to Joseph Stalin in conversation with Gorki [October 26, 1934].

5 Translated by BRIAN HOOKER.

6 Inscribed on the memorial to Captain Scott and his companions, Waterloo Place, London.

7 Found by search party [November 1912]. First published [1913] as Scott’s Last Expedition: Journals.

8 Chief of the Oglala Tribe of the Sioux Nation.

1 Title of book [2004] by THOMAS FRANK [b. 1965].

2 Mahatma: Great Soul.

3 See Martin Luther King, Jr.

4 Familles, je vous hais! foyers clos; portes refermées; possessions jalouses du bonheur.

1 C’est avec de beaux sentiments qu’on fait de la mauvaise littérature.

2 A T-shirt slogan [1973] compatible with Goldman’s ideas but with no supporting source in her speeches or writings. See ALIX KATES SHULMAN, “Dances with Feminists,” The Women’s Review of Books [December 1991].

3 Translated by JACK D. FLAM.

4 Translated by ALEXANDER ROMM.

1 The phrase was first used by Baruch in 1947.

2 Translated by MAX EASTMAN.

3 The quote is sometimes misattributed to Gustav Klimt.

1 Adapted from verses by WALLACE SAUNDERS. Music by EDDIE NEWTON [1869–1915].

Of the many versions of this traditional ballad, the most familiar is printed in CARL SANDBURG, The American Songbag [1927]. It begins: Come all you rounders, for I want you to hear/The story of a brave engineer./Casey Jones was the rounder’s name,/On a big eight-wheeler of a mighty fame.

“For I’m going to run till she leaves the rail—or make it on time with the southbound mail.”—Inscription on monument to JOHN LUTHER “CASEY” JONES [1864–1900], in Calvary Cemetery, Jackson, Tennessee

1 Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart [1990] is a novel by JOYCE CAROL OATES [b. 1938].

2 Likely written by Dreiser but credited to his songwriter brother, PAUL DRESSER.

1 Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure.

2 À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, translated by C. K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF unless otherwise noted.

3 Du côté de chez Swann.

4 Sodome et Gomorrhe.

5 La Fugitive.

1 Translated by FREDERICK A. BLOSSOM.

2 Translated by C. K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF and TERENCE KILMARTIN.

3 Edited and translated by JUSTIN O’BRIEN.

4 Translated by SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER.

5 May the grass grow at your door and the fox build his nest on your hearthstone. May the light fade from your eyes, so you never see what you love. May your own blood rise against you, and the sweetest drink you take be the bitterest cup of sorrow. May you die without benefit of clergy; may there be none to shed a tear at your grave, and may the hearthstone of hell be your best bed forever.—Traditional Wexford curse

6 Translated by THOMAS MCGREEVY.

1 La bêtise n’est pas mon fort.

2 La mer, la mer toujours recommencée!

3 Le vent se lève… il faut tenter de vivre.

4 Le goût est fait de mille dégoûts.

5 Translated by STUART GILBERT.

1 Title of autobiography [1969] by MAYA ANGELOU [b. 1928].

2 Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, white commander of the 54th Massachusetts regiment (first enlisted black regiment in the Civil War), died with many others of the regiment at Fort Wagner [July 18, 1863].

See Charles W. Eliot, and Robert Lowell.

1 See Walt Whitman.

2 Inscribed on Willa Cather’s gravestone in Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire.

3 Translated from the French by STANLEY APPELBAUM.

4 Translated by ROGER SENHOUSE.

5 Translated by DAVID LE VAY.

1 World War I slang version of Il n’y a plus, fini.

2 First line attributed to IVOR NOVELLO [1893–1951], who composed the music.

3 Music by JEROME KERN [1885–1945].

4 Translated by CYRIL CONNELLY and SIMON WATSON TAYLOR.

1 Tout commence en mystique et finit en politique.

2 Translated by JULIEN GREEN and ANNE GREEN.

3 He is the Happy Warrior of the political battlefield.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, nominating speech, Democratic National Convention [June 26, 1924]. See William Wordsworth.

1 See Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Churchill.

2 On the escape of the German warship Goeben to Constantinople, contributing to the Ottoman Empire’s entry into World War I on the side of the Central Powers.

3 Of Stanley Baldwin’s policies.

4 He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.—WILLIAM SCARBOROUGH [fl. c. 1875], Chinese Proverbs [1875], no. 2082

5 Mollify it with thy tears, or sweat, or blood.—JOHN DONNE, An Anatomy of the World, I, 430–431

Year after year they voted cent per cent,/Blood, sweat, and tear-wrung millions—why? for rent!—LORD BYRON, The Age of Bronze, st. 14

Their sweat, their tears, their blood bedewed the endless plain.—CHURCHILL, The Unknown War [1931], referring to the armies of the czar before the Russian Revolution.

Churchill alluded to his promise of blood, toil, tears, and sweat in subsequent speeches on October 8, 1940; May 7 and December 2, 1941; and January 27 and November 10, 1942.

1 Vidkun Quisling, head of the Nasjonal Samling party in Norway, who cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis when Germany invaded Norway [April 9, 1940]. Quisling was executed [October 23, 1945].

1 Eleutherios Venizelos [1864–1936], Greek statesman.

2 The eight thousand paratroopers of the First British Airborne Division who landed in Arnhem, Holland, behind the German lines and held the area for nine days and nights, with a loss of six thousand [September 1944].

3 An iron curtain had dropped between him and the outer world—H. G. WELLS, The Food of the Gods [1904]

France… a nation of forty millions with a deep-rooted grievance and an iron curtain at its frontier.—GEORGE WASHINGTON CRILE [1864–1943], A Mechanistic View of War and Peace [1915]

With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian history.—VASILI ROZANOV [1856–1919], Apocalypse of Our Time [1918]

We were behind the “iron curtain” at last.—ETHEL ANNAKIN SNOWDEN [1881–1951], Through Bolshevik Russia [1920]

The Nazi minister of enlightenment and propaganda, Paul Joseph Goebbels, used the phrase “iron curtain” in reference to the USSR in Das Reich [February 23, 1945].

Churchill used it in a top-secret telegram to President Truman [May 12, 1945].

1 See George Herbert.

1 Read first before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at William and Mary College [December 5, 1941], later at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy [January 20, 1961].

1 Cited in ELIZABETH S. SERGEANT, Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence [1960], ch. 18.

2 Das alles ist geheim, so viel geheim. / Und man ist dazu da, dass man’s ertragt. / Und in dem “Wie” da liegt der ganze Unterschied.

3 Music by RICHARD STRAUSS [1864–1949].

1 Hoover popularized but did not coin this phrase: While I can make no claim for having introduced the term “rugged individualism,” I should be proud to have invented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life.—HOOVER, The Challenge to Liberty [1934], ch. 5

2 Aphorisms translated by HARRY ZOHN.

1 Ernest Hemingway stated that the remark was originally made by a garage owner in the Midi to Gertrude Stein in reference to his young mechanics, who were “une génération perdue.”

2 Music by VIRGIL THOMSON [1896–1989].

1 The funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.—W. C. FIELDS on Bert Williams

2 Often quoted as: It’s no disgrace to be colored, but it’s awfully inconvenient.

It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s very often inconvenient.—JAMES WELDON JOHNSON, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man [1912]

3 A humorous quatrain in the form Bentley popularized is known as a clerihew.

1 Me Tarzan, you Jane.—Johnny Weissmuller [1904–1984] did not utter these words in the movie Tarzan the Ape Man [1932]. The actor jokingly said them in an interview: I didn’t have to act in Tarzan the Ape Man—just said “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”—Photoplay magazine [June 1932]

2 See François Rabelais.

1 Translated by ALAN S. TRUEBLOOD.

2 Translated by DAVID LUKE.

3 Translated by H. T. LOWE-PORTER.

4 Translated by JOHN E. WOODS.

1 Later adapted in the song The Little Man Who Wasn’t There [1939].

2 Translated by JANE BARNARD GREENE and M. D. HERTER NORTON.

3 Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr. Translated by C. F. MACINTYRE.

4 Translated by STEPHEN MITCHELL.

5 Translated by EDWARD SNOW.

6 Translated by JOHN LINTON.

7 Translated by J. B. LEISHMAN and STEPHEN SPENDER.

1 Translated by STEPHEN MITCHELL.

2 Translated by M. D. HERTER NORTON.

3 Translated by REGINALD SNELL.

1 Les théories sont des échantillons sans valeur. Ce n’est que l’action humaine qui compte.

2 In reference to his role as mayor of Jersey City [1917–1947].

3 C’est au moment où l’on triche pour le beau que l’on est artiste.

4 In an earlier speech at the League [September 5, 1935] during the Italian preparations for the invasion, Litvinov used a similar phrase: “The thesis of the indivisibility of peace… It has now become clear to the whole world that each war is the creation of a preceding war and the generator of new present or future wars.”

5 Translated by DOUG THOMSON.

1 Music by ISHAM JONES [1894–1956]. Often cited as “You’re in the Army Now.”

2 Constructed from notes in a copy book.

3 Hart Crane uses this sentence as an epigraph in his 1930 poem The Bridge.

4 Translated by STANLEY APPELBAUM.

5 Translated by HILDA ROSNER.

6 Translated by THOMAS WAYNE.

3 Translated by WALTER KAUFMANN.

2 Translated by RONALD GREGOR SMITH.

3 Archy, a cockroach, is unable to use the shift key on the typewriter for capitals and punctuation.

Published later with other works by archy as the lives and times of archy and mehitabel [1943].

1 Suppose They Gave a War, and No One Came.—CHARLOTTE KEYES [1914–1980], article in McCall’s [October 1966]

1 The saying that Russia is a prison of nations.—VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN, On the Question of a National Policy [1914] (and elsewhere)

2 Translated by CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON.

3 Pseudonym of the actors T. Wigney Percyval, Horace Hodges, and Edward Irwin.

1 Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

The original statement is: If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c².—EINSTEIN, Ist die Tragheit eines Korpers von Seinem Energieghalt Abhangig? [1905]

2 Often quoted as: The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

3 Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht.

4 Einstein’s letter was published in the New York Times [June 12, 1953]. Frauenglass had been subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

1 The 1st Battalion of the 5th Field Artillery relieved the 2nd Battalion in the Philippines [April 1908]. Gruber, then a lieutenant in the 5th, was asked to write a song to symbolize the spirit of the reunited regiment. There are many variant wordings.

2 Translated by PIERRE B. SCHNEIDER, R. Y. ZACHARY, and MAX KNIGHT.

3 Translated by NORBERT GUTERMAN.

1 John Chapman [1774–1845].

Remember Johnny Appleseed,/All ye who love the apple;/He served his kind by word and deed,/in God’s grand greenwood chapel.—WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE [1836–1920], Johnny Appleseed, st. 25

2 Music by ALBERT VON TILZER [1878–1956].

3 Rogers was part Cherokee.

1 Ellipses are in the original text.

1 Mejor morir a pie que vivir en rodillas.

Later a Republican watchword in the Spanish Civil War [1936–1939], especially identified with a speech at Madrid [July 18, 1936] by La Pasionaria [Dolores Ibarruri].

See Franklin D. Roosevelt.

2 That great dust-heap called “history.”—AUGUSTINE BIRRELL [1850–1933], essay on Thomas Carlyle [1884]

3 Translated by MAX EASTMAN.

4 Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin.

5 Translated by WILLIAM MEREDITH.

6 Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine.

7 Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure/Les jours s’en vont je demeure.

8 J’ai hiverné dans mon passé.

Translated by ROGER SHATTUCK.

9 Anyone who hates babies and dogs can’t be all bad.—LEO C. ROSTEN [1908–1997], in tribute to Fields at a banquet [1939]

The quip has become more familiar in the form attributed to Fields.

1 See Anonymous: Old soldiers never die; / They only fade away.

2 Often cited as: A democracy cannot fight a Seven Years War.

1 Often misquoted as: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American People.

2 Translated by EITHNE WILKINS and ERNST KAISER.

1 The Four Horsemen refers to the four allegorical horses in Revelation 6:1–8. The football players are Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden. Their coach was Knute Rockne.

2 Translated by CHARLES FRANCIS ATKINSON.

1 Joe Tinker (shortstop), Johnny Evers (second baseman), and Frank Chance (first baseman) of the Chicago Cubs.

2 Translated by SALVATOR ATTANASIO.

1 Translated by NORMAN DENNY.

See Flannery O’Connor.

2 Translated by BERNARD WALL.

3 Sometimes cited as: No woman was ever ruined by a book.

4 Music by JEROME KERN [1885–1945]. BUDDY DE SYLVA may have contributed lyrics.

1 Translated by STANLEY APPLEBAUM.

1 Goldwynisms—as his colorful misuses of English were popularly referred to—abounded. With so many gag writers working for him, hardly a lunch in Hollywood went by without somebody’s concocting a malapropism and passing it off as something Sam Goldwyn had just said to him.—A. SCOTT BERG [b. 1949], Goldwyn: A Biography [1989]

1 Ayenbite of Inwyt [remorse of conscience].—Title of treatise on the seven deadly sins by DAN MICHEL OF NORTHGATE [fourteenth century]

2 The origin of the physicist Murray Gell-Mann’s name [1964] for one of the elementary particles of matter.

1 See Walter Lippmann.

2 All honor to the one that in this hour/Cries to the world as from a lighted tower—/Cries for the Man Forgotten.—EDWIN MARKHAM, The Forgotten Man [1932]

3 It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.—MARK TWAIN, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, ch. 13

4 I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.—HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Civil Disobedience

1 The “Quarantine the Aggressors” speech.

2 Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano had just notified the French ambassador that Italy considered herself at war with France beginning June 11.

1 See Roosevelt and Churchill.

2 See Emiliano Zapata.

3 President Roosevelt died on April 12, at Warm Springs, Georgia.

1 See Felicia Hemans, 405:7 and note.

1 Translated by MIKE MITCHELL.

2 Translated by MARTIN GREENBERG with HANNAH ARENDT.

1 When I read the line I thought to myself I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories.—GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Paris Review interview [1981]

2 Translated by WILLA and EDWIN MUIR.

3 Translated by MIKE MITCHELL.

4 Translated by WILLA and EDWIN MUIR.

5 Translated by CARL WILDMAN.

6 Translated by P. A. BIEN.

1 Music by CHARLES A. ZIMMERMAN [1861–1916].

1 Translated by HIROAKI SATO.

1 Translated by PETER COLE.

2 Translated by MARIA JOLAS.

1 She would rather light candles than curse the darkness and her glow has warmed the world.—ADLAI E. STEVENSON [November 7, 1962]

It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness.—Motto of the Christopher Society

2 One of these days in your travels a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and that guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet that man, for as sure as you stand there you are going to wind up with an earful of cider.—FRANK LOESSER, JO SWERLING, and ABE BURROWS. Guys and Dolls: A Musical Fable of Broadway [1951], act I, sc. i

1 See Theodore Roosevelt 536:7.

1 Based on a draft by JAN CHRISTIAN SMUTS [1870–1950].

2 Known as “The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas” from the title of a song by JACK YELLEN [1892–1991], which she introduced in 1928.

1 Music by GEORGE [1898–1937] and IRA GERSHWIN [1896–1983].

1 Music by WALTER DONALDSON [1893–1947].

1 Lewis became a member of the Institute in 1935.

2 A drop of sweat on the drill ground will save many drops of blood on the battlefield.—AUGUST WILLICH [1810–1878], The Army: Standing Army or National Army? [1866]

3 See Anonymous: Sumer is icumen in.…

1 Ellipses are in the original text.

1 Translated by MICHAEL HOFMANN.

1 See Rupert Brooke.

1 See Ogden Nash.

2 Translated by W. S. MERWIN.

2 This version of the quotation is often attributed to Weston; however, the original text is this: Photography has certain inherent qualities which are only possible with photography—one being the delineation of detail—So why not take advantage of this attribute? Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have such an opportunity to extend your vision?

2 See Frances Cornford.

1 Sung to the tune of John Brown’s Body.

1 Une maison est une machine-à-habiter.

1 Mola, one of Franco’s generals, boasted that he had four columns of troops to lead against Madrid and a fifth column of sympathizers inside Madrid.

2 Omissions are not accidents.—MARIANNE MOORE, Complete Poems [1967], author’s note

3 MOORE’S note: Edmund Burke, in Burke’s Life, by James Prior: “Throw yourself into a coach,” said he. “Come down and make my house your inn.”

1 Translated by CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON.

2 Music by KURT WEILL [1900–1950].

3 Musical based on the novel Cry, the Beloved Country [1948] by ALAN PATON [1903–1988]. Music by KURT WEILL [1900–1950].

1 From the phrase “to the brink” developed “brinkmanship.”

1 DANTE, Inferno, canto III, ll. 55–57.

2 DANTE, Inferno, canto IV, ll. 25–27.

3 See Oliver Goldsmith.

4 GUIDO CAVALCANTI [c. 1255–1300], Perch’io Non Spero.

1 Also in ELIOT’S Four Quartets. Burnt Norton, pt. I.

1 See Milton.

2 See Psalm 46:10.

3 Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu.—STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ, Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe

1 See Julian of Norwich.

2 Music by J. FRED COOTS [1897–1985].

3 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.—Anonymous rejoinder

4 At Alamogordo, New Mexico [July 16, 1945]. See J. Robert Oppenheimer.

1 Lawrence changed his name to T. E. Shaw in 1927.

2 See Proverbs 9:1.

3 Made famous in the movie version [1930] as the silent-film star Greta Garbo’s first speech in a talkie.

1 Translated by RICHARD ZENITH.

2 Translated by ALFRED MACADAM.

3 More familiar version: Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.

1 According to tradition, the football player George Gipp [1895–1920] made a deathbed request that Rockne spur Notre Dame to victory, on one occasion, especially for him.

2 Translated by GEORGE SCHWAB.

3 Translated by JOSEPH CARY.

4 Translated by STANLEY KUNITZ with MAX HAYWARD.

1 Orson Welles is credited with developing the idea for the film.

2 Trouver d’abord, chercher après.

I don’t seek, I find.—PABLO PICASSO, as quoted in ALFRED H. BARR, Picasso [1946]

3 Les choses que je conte/Sont des mensonges vrais.

1 Translated by GREGORY FRIED and RICHARD POLT.

2 Translated by ALBERT HOFSTADTER.

3 Translated by WILLIAM LOVETT.

4 Brennt Paris?

1 La poésie est dans ce qui n’est pas.

2 Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.

3 Translated by D. F. PEARS and B. F. MCGUINNESS.

1 Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

2 The term “robot” came into English through Čapek’s play.

3 Translated from the Czech by MARIE and ROBERT WEATHERALL.

4 Suggested by Roark Bradford’s stories, Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun [1928].

5 Dans les lettres, comme en tout, le talent est un titre de responsabilité.

1 Also attributed (in a variant form) to sports columnist RED [WALTER WELLESLEY] SMITH [1905–1982].

1 Wenn ich Kultur höre… entsichere ich meinen Browning.

Often attributed to HERMANN GOERING.

2 Basis of the popular World War II song [1942] of that title by FRANK LOESSER [1910–1969].

2 Translated by MAX HAYWARD.

2 Translated by MAX HAYWARD and MANYA HARARI.

3 The Poems of Yurii Zhivago translated by BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY.

4 Translated by ELENA LEVIN.

5 Stengel said this often, and it is inscribed on his grave marker.

1 See John Huston.

2 When Bulgakov’s novel, left unfinished at his death, was published in Moscow in the late 1960s, this line achieved proverbial status among Russian intellectuals.

3 This song is by ADA HABERSHON and CHARLES GABRIEL. Carter’s arrangement made it famous.

4 Music by HARRY WARREN.

5 Other, uncredited screenwriters contributed to the screenplay: Oliver H. P. Garrett, Ben Hecht, Jo Swerling, John Van Druten. The lines do not appear in Margaret Mitchell’s novel.

1 Harambee [Swahili for “Let’s pull together”].—National motto of Kenya

1 Translated by MICHAEL HAMBURGER.

2 Translated by MICHAEL ROLOFF.

3 He sought sanctions against Italy, which had invaded Ethiopia.

4 All railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in the state shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.—Louisiana Acts of 1890, no. III, p. 152; quoted by Mr. Justice HENRY B. BROWN in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 [1896]

5 In a later implementation of the same case (349 U.S. 294 [1955]), the Supreme Court asked that desegregation proceed “with all deliberate speed.”

1 Translated by HARRY ZOHN.

2 Benjamin is enlarging on Jules Michelet’s statement: Every epoch dreams the one to follow.

1 Often quoted as:… an inordinate fondness for beetles.

1 I burned my candle at both ends, / And now have neither foes nor friends.—SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN, Songs of Fairly Utter Despair, 8

2 Later this became “the little old lady from Dubuque.”

1 Translated by ELAINE FEINSTEIN.

2 Yo nací un día / que Dios estuvo enfermo.

3 Translated by THOMAS MERTON.

1 With music by MILTON AGER [1893–1979], this song was played at the 1932 Democratic presidential convention and became a campaign song for Franklin D. Roosevelt.

2 Music by RAY HENDERSON.

1 Translated by GEORGE REAVEY.

2 Translated by MAX HAYWARD.

3 This poem was found in Mayakovski’s pocket after his suicide.

4 The last three lines serve as the motto for Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem (Op. 66), which uses the Latin text of the Mass for the Dead and some of the poems of Wilfred Owen.

1 Often quoted as: Retreat, hell! We’re just attacking in another direction.

2 In reply to “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!”

Also the title of her autobiography [1959].

3 Frequently misquoted as “Come up and see me sometime.”

4 Often attributed to Robert Benchley, who spoke a similar line in The Major and the Minor [1942]. See Benchley.

1 Translated by WALTER MORISON.

2 Translated by MAX HAYWARD.

1 Also in the film Casablanca [1943].

1 Neither the original nor the translation of the last two sentences appeared in either Pravda or the New York Times, which carried the rest of the text. Another possible translation of the last sentence is: We shall be present at your funeral; i.e., we shall outlive you; but the above is the familiar version.

2 Adapted for the campaign slogan “You Never Had It So Good.”

3 Tout le monde a ses raisons.

1 Translated by NORMAN DENNY.

2 See Robert Louis Stevenson.

3 Subsequently popularized by and associated with Casey Stengel, who used it as a conversation clincher.

1 Apparently written for Edward by Winston Churchill. See SARAH BRADFORD, George VI [1989], p. 202.

2 Translated by HÉLÈNE ISWOLSKY.

1 Je suis né pour te connaître/Pour te nommer/Liberté.

2 Adieu tristesse/Bonjour tristesse.

3 See Emily Dickinson, and A. E. Housman.

4 Based on the novel Show Boat [1926], by EDNA FERBER. Music by JEROME KERN.

5 Music by JEROME KERN.

1 Music by RICHARD RODGERS.

2 Based on Tales of the South Pacific [1947], by JAMES A. MICHENER. Music by RICHARD RODGERS.

1 See Emiliano Zapata.

2 End of radio speech [July 18, 1936] calling on the women of Spain to help defend the Republic.

3 Often attributed to Yogi Berra.

4 Le bonheur écrit à l’encre blanche sur des pages blanches.

Often quoted as “Happiness writes white.”

1 Music by THOMAS [FATS] WALLER and HARRY BROOKS.

2 Referring to Sandburg’s six-volume biography, Abraham Lincoln [1926–1939].

1 Translated by RICHARD SEAVER and HELEN R. LANE.

2 Translated by BILL ZAVATSKY and ZACK ROGOW.

1 See Ernest Hemingway.

1 Music for all the lyrics is by GEORGE GERSHWIN.

2 Porgy and Bess.—Title of play [1927] by DUBOSE HEYWARD [1885–1940] and DOROTHY HEYWARD [1890–1961], and of opera [1935] by GEORGE GERSHWIN

3 Music by VERNON DUKE.

4 Music by KURT WEILL.

1 Music by JAY GORNEY.

2 Music by HAROLD ARLEN. Lyrics co-written with BILLY ROSE.

3 Music by HAROLD ARLEN.

See L. Frank Baum.

5 Music by HAROLD ARLEN.

5 Music by BURTON LANE.

6 Translated by ARCHIBALD COLQUHOUN.

7 See PAULINE KAEL.

1 This quip is widely attributed to Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, but may have originated with the socialite Babe Paley in 1969 or with an even earlier source.

1 Ellipses are in the original text.

1 Translated by MICHAEL HOFMANN.

2 Music by KURT WEILL. Translated by MARC BLITZSTEIN. Based on the libretto of The Beggar’s Opera by JOHN GAY.

3 Music by KURT WEILL.

4 Translated by JOHN WILLETT.

1 Translated by H. R. HAYS.

3 Translated by JOHN WILLETT.

3 Translated by DEREK BOWMAN.

4 Translated by STEPHEN SPENDER and JOAN GILI.

5 Translated by STEPHEN SPENDER and J. L. GILI.

6 Translated by A. L. LLOYD.

1 Translated by STEPHEN SPENDER and JOAN GILI.

2 Translated by STEPHEN SPENDER and J. L. GILI.

3 If the myth gets bigger than the man, print the myth.—DOROTHY JOHNSON, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (short story) [1949].

3 Although the screenplay is credited to Bennett and Harrison, these lines were in fact contributed by Ben Hecht.

3 Translated by ALFRED MACADAM.

3 Translated by ALASTAIR REID.

4 Translated by RACHEL PHILLIPS.

1 Translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER.

2 The line appears in the 1930 film adaptation as “Mother of mercy—is this the end of Rico?”

1 See Edgar Allan Poe.

2 Originally titled “What Do You Think of the Air Corps Now?”, the song was soon retitled “The Army Air Corps.” In 1947, “U.S. Air Force” replaced “Army Air Corps” in the title and lyrics.

3 Music by DUKE ELLINGTON, lyrics by IRVING MILLS. “Bubber [Miley] was the first man I heard use the expression, ‘it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.’ ”—Duke Ellington in Jazz Journal, December 1965

1 See Ecclesiastes 1:5.

1 After skiing with the Hemingways in 1926, Gerald Murphy was “absolutely elated” when Hemingway praised his courage in venturing down the slopes for the first time as “grace under pressure.” See HONORIA MURPHY DONNELLY with RICHARD N. BILLINGS, Sara & Gerald [1982].

2 In original publication, “poor Scott Fitzgerald” [Esquire, August 1936].

3 In 1936 Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor of Fitzgerald and Hemingway at Charles Scribner’s Sons, lunched with Hemingway and the critic Mary Colum. When Hemingway announced, “I am getting to know the rich,” Mary Colum replied, “The only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.”—MATTHEW J. BRUCCOLI [1931– ], Scott and Ernest [1978]

See F. Scott Fitzgerald.

1 Translated by HOWARD S. HIBBETT.

2 Translated by MAX HAYWARD.

1 HARRY BEHN [1898–1973] and HOWARD ESTABROOK [1884–1978] were the principal writers on the film, but March is generally credited with this line of dialogue.

1 Lady, if you got to ask you ain’t got it.—THOMAS [FATS] WALLER [1904–1943], when asked to explain rhythm

1 Mi último suspiro.

2 Translated by X. J. KENNEDY.

3 See Salman Rushdie.

1 Lemkin coined the word (by combining a Greek and a Latin root) and introduced it in this passage.

2 In the 1939 film adaptation, Vivien Leigh says “As God is my witness—as God is my witness—they’re not going to lick me! I’m going to live through this, and, when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again—no, nor any of my folks!—if I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill! As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

3 Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.—SIDNEY HOWARD [1891–1939], screenplay for Gone with the Wind [1939]

4 Music by FRANK PERKINS.

5 See Anita Loos.

Music by JULE STYNE.

1 Translated by KATHERINE WOODS.

2 Translated by EDMUND KEELEY and PHILIP SHERRARD.

1 Music by HOAGY CARMICHAEL.

2 Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle.”

1 Translated by BRUCE FINK.

2 Eric Maschwitz is often credited as Holt Marvell.

3 Music by JACK STRACHEY and HARRY LINK.

1 Written with VICTOR YOUNG and JOE YOUNG.

2 Music by LEIGH HARLINE.

1 Translated by ELIZABETH BISHOP.

2 Translated by IRVING WEISS.

1 See Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton.

1 In the spring of ’27, something bright and alien flashed across the sky. A young Minnesotan [Lindbergh] who seemed to have had nothing to do with his generation did a heroic thing, and for a moment people set down their glasses in country clubs and speakeasies and thought of their old best dreams.—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

2 See Joyce Kilmer.

1 Popper is “varying and generalizing” Einstein’s statement “In so far as the statements of mathematics speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not speak about reality.”

1 Song by JOHN LAIR.

2 Translated by ROBERT HULLOT-KENTOR.

1 The poem was made into a song, most famously performed by Billie Holiday.

2 There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.—JOHN F. KENNEDY, after the debacle at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba [April 21, 1961]

3 Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.—KINGSLEY AMIS [1922–1995], One Fat Englishman [1963]

4 Published under the pseudonym PALINURUS.

1 Also the title of Reagan’s autobiography [1965].

1 This quotation comes from a longer sentence of CAMPBELL’s: If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

1 Rendered by Orville Schell in 1984 as: To get rich is glorious.

2 Translated by ROSS TERRILL.

Deng identified this as “a saying from Sichuan Province.”

1 Translated by Hugh MacDiarmid and Elspeth Harley Schubert.

2 Translated by ROBERT BLY.

3 Translated by DONALD D. WALSH.

4 Translated by NATHANIEL TARN.

5 Translated by HARDIE ST. MARTIN.

1 Oppenheimer also recalled another line from the Bhagavad Gita, “If the radiance of a thousand suns.…”.

Now we are all sons of bitches.—KENNETH TOMPKINS BAINBRIDGE [1904–1996]. Oppenheimer later remarked that this was “the best thing anyone said after the test.”

2 Translated by ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER and DOROTHEA STRAUS.

1 Paix impossible, guerre improbable.

2 Translated by JOEL AGEE.

1 Garbo maintained that her most famous remark was always misquoted.…“I only said, ‘I want to be let alone!’ ”—JOHN BAINBRIDGE, in Life [January 24, 1955]

1 Translated by DAPHNE HARDY.

1 Translated by FORREST WILLIAMS and ROBERT KIRKPATRICK.

2 Translated by LLOYD ALEXANDER.

3 Translated by STUART GILBERT.

4 L’enfer, c’est les Autres.

5 Translated by CHRIS TURNER.

6 Translated by JEFFREY MEHLMAN.

1 Translated by PHILIP MAIRET.

2 Translated by BERNARD FRECHTMAN.

3 Translated by RICHARD PHILCOX.

4 “Sayre’s Law” is sometimes cited as: “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.” Often but mistakenly attributed to HENRY A. KISSINGER.

1 Based on the 1951 novel by HOWARD FAST.

2 To sum it all up, I must say I regret nothing.—[KARL] ADOLF EICHMANN [1906–1962], while awaiting trial in Israel

1 Nachfolge (German title)

1 See B. Traven.

2 Translated by ALPHONSO LINGIS.

1 See George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber.

1 Based on the novel Clean Break, by Lionel White.

1 Dates of composition follow Collected Poems, ed. EDWARD MENDELSOHN [London, 1991].

1 Translated by WILLARD R. TRASK.

1 Translated by ANGUS DAVIDSON. Also published as The Empty Canvas.

1 On ne naît pas femme, on le devient.

2 This was the American title; the French title was Images à la Sauvette [Images on the Run]. In his introduction, Cartier-Bresson cites CARDINAL DE RETZ [1614–1679]: “There is nothing in this life that does not have a decisive moment.”

3 See Felicia Hemans, 405:7.

1 Ellipses are in the original text.

1 Translated by JOHN RUSSELL.

2 Translated by CLAIRE JACOBSON and BROOKE GRUNDFEST SCHOEPF.

1 Translated by JOHN and DOREEN WEIGHTMAN.

1 Never contradict. Never explain. Never apologize. (Those are the secrets of a happy life!)—JOHN ARBUTHNOT FISHER [1841–1920], Letter to The Times of London [September 5, 1919]

2 Translated by WILLIAM ARROWSMITH.

1 Although Algren made these “rules” famous, they are adapted from advice in a letter to Algren from his friend Dave Peltz.

2 See Archilochus.

1 Play it!—Casablanca, spoken by Humphrey Bogart.

1 Translated by JACEK GALAZKA.

2 Music by HOAGY CARMICHAEL.

3 Music by HAROLD ARLEN.

4 Music by DAVID RAKSIN.

5 Music by SONNY BURKE and LIONEL HAMPTON.

1 Music by HENRY MANCINI.

1 Il faut aller voir.

1 Translated by BERNARD FRECHTMAN.

2 Music by HOAGY CARMICHAEL.

3 Translated by AUSTRYN WAINHOUSE.

1 Translated by RICHARD HOWARD.

2 The line may have originated with RING LARDNER, JR. [1915–2000], who worked on the screenplay but is not listed in the movie credits.

1 Published first in German as Biedermann und die Brandstifter.

2 See L. Frank Baum.

1 Translated from the Polish by CZESLAW MILOSZ and ROBERT HASS.

1 How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) was published in eight parts between 1965 and 1982. Cage recorded a spoken word edition of the diary in 1991.

1 Also attributed to economist ALVIN H. HANSEN [1887–1975].

1 Translated by DEREK PROUSE.

2 Translated by ROSMARIE WALDROP.

3 Red Smith called this “the greatest novel ever written in one sentence.”

1 See Anwar al-Sadat.

2 Music by JIMMY VAN HEUSEN.

1 Toute idée fausse finit dans le sang, mais il s’agit toujours du sang des autres. C’est ce qui explique que certains de nos philosophes se sentent à l’aise pour dire n’importe quoi.

2 Translated by CLAYTON ESHLEMAN and ANNETTE SMITH.

1 The title comes from the epigraph to William Butler Yeats’s 1914 book of poetry, Responsibilities, the epigraph to which includes this: “In dreams begins responsibility.”—Old Play

2 Translated by RUTH L. C. SIMMS.

2 Translated by ALIKI BARNSTONE and WILLIS BARNSTONE.

3 Originally published as Junkie under the pseudonym William Lee.

4 See also LAURIE ANDERSON [b. 1947], Language Is a Virus. [1986]

5 Translated by PAUL BLACKBURN.

1 Translated by GREGORY RABASSA.

1 Music by JEROME MOROSS.

1 Translated by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS.

2 Translated by RACHEL PHILLIPS.

3 Translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER.

1 Translated by CHARLES TOMLINSON.

2 Translated by LYSANDER KEMP.

3 Translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER.

1 This song was later recorded and popularized by JOHN LEE HOOKER [1917–2001].

2 Translated by ANNETTE LAVERS.

3 Translated by STEPHEN HEATH.

4 Sometimes quoted as “Literature is what gets taught.”

5 Translated by RICHARD MILLER.

1 Translated by RICHARD HOWARD.

1 Often slightly misquoted as “Luke, I am your father.”

2 The screenplay, by Carl Foreman, is closely based on John M. Cunningham’s 1947 short story “The Tin Star.”

1 In the 1958 screen version, “sons-of-bitches” was changed to “suckers.”

2 Sweet Smell of Success (screenplay) [1957], (musical) [2002].

1 It has been claimed that Sinatra’s interview for Playboy was drafted by a copywriter at Reprise Records and published with Sinatra’s approval.

1 The film in question was LOUIS MALLE’s Les Amants (The Lovers).

1 The phrase “clash of civilizations” was popularized by Samuel Huntington in his essay “A Clash of Civilizations?” [1993], published in Foreign Affairs and in the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order [1996].

1 Music by Jule Styne.

1 Written with AL FRASER.

2 Inscribed on her gravestone as “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

3 This language has subsequently been used by many politicians, notably Jack Kemp.

1 For, stripped of the temporary associations which gave rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR., Address Before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic [May 30, 1884]

As has often been said, the youth who loves his Alma Mater will always ask, not “What can she do for me?” but “What can I do for her?”—LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS [1855–1934], Routine and Ideals [1904], College Life

In the great fulfillment we must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation.—WARREN G[AMALIEL] HARDING [1865–1923], Republican National Convention, Chicago [June 7, 1916]

This thought had lain in Kennedy’s mind for a long time. As far back as 1945 he had noted down in a looseleaf notebook a quotation from Rousseau: “As soon as any man says of the affairs of the state, What does it matter to me? the state may be given up as lost.”—ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR., A Thousand Days [1965], prologue, footnote

1 In Moscow on July 25, Averell Harriman, Lord Hailsham, and Andrei Gromyko initialed the nuclear test ban treaty.

2 The words are displayed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

3 Cited in WILLIAM MANCHESTER, The Death of a President [1967].

4 Delivered at American Association for the Advancement of Science.

5 The quotation is from Henry James.

1 Ellipses are in the original text.

2 On the Saint-Gaudens monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

There on foot go the dark outcasts, so true to nature that one can almost hear them breathing as they march.—WILLIAM JAMES, Oration at Dedication of the Monument [May 31, 1897]

See Charles W. Eliot, and Paul L. Dunbar.

1 The third line is often sung as “Say, brother, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go.”

1 Music by FREDERICK LOEWE.

Musical based on GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S Pygmalion. See Shaw.

1 Also quoted by him on his release from prison [February 11, 1990].

2 See Menachem Begin.

3 Translated by THOMAS P. WHITNEY.

1 Translated by STUART WOOLF. First published as Se questo è un uomo (If This Is a Man).

1 See Anonymous: Coming through the rye.

2 Ellipses are in the original text.

1 Translated from the German, Todesfuge, by MICHAEL HAMBURGER.

2 Translated by MICHAEL HAMBURGER.

3 Translated from the German, Fadensonnen, by PIERRE JORIS.

4 Translated by Pierre Joris.

5 In testimony by housekeeper Elizabeth Baum at Helmsley’s trial for tax evasion.

1 A variation on the earlier catchphrase, “A conservative is a liberal who’s just been mugged.”

1 Exact attribution of this line is difficult; many writers worked on the Dragnet series.

1 Music by MILES DAVIS.

1 Basis for “Democracy dies in darkness,” the slogan adopted by the Washington Post, February 2017.

2 A man is beat whenever he goes for broke and wagers the sum of his resources on a single number; and the young generation has done that continually from early youth.—JOHN CLELLON HOLMES [1906–1988], “This Is the Beat Generation,” New York Times Magazine [November 16, 1952].

1 The episode was created in collaboration with the artist Jack Kirby (1917–1994).

2 Ellipses are in the original text.

1 Translated by STEPHEN SARTARELLI.

2 See Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

1 Translated by WILLIAM JOHNSTON.

1 Also quoted as: Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

1 Elsewhere in the book, Mailer attributes the sentence “Politics is property” to Murray Kempton.

1 The song may have been co-written with Moon Mullican.

1 Instantly he could see the town below now, coiling in a thousand fumes of homely smoke, now winking into a thousand points of friendly light its glorious small design, its aching passionate assurances of walls, warmth, comfort, food, and love.—THOMAS WOLFE, The Web and the Rock [1939]

1 Translated from the Polish by CZESLAW MILOSZ and PETER DALE SCOTT.

1 Translated by STANISLAW BARAŃCZAK and CLARE CAVANAGH.

1 Meaning politically acceptable to “Middle America.”

2 Translated by CONSTANCE FARRINGTON.

See Eugène Pottier.

1 Maya Angelou is often credited with a similar quotation: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Those words appear on a U.S. postage stamp.

1 La Historia me absolvera.

1 Translated by ALAN SHERIDAN.

2 Translated by ROBERT HURLEY.

1 Music by CY COLEMAN.

1 These words are inscribed on O’Hara’s gravestone.

1 It can be done!

2 Translated by GREGORY RABASSA.

3 Translated by RALPH MANHEIM.

1 Translated by AGNIESZKA KOŁAKOWSKA.

1 Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?—Title of song, WALT DISNEY film cartoon Three Little Pigs [1933]. Ellipses are in the original text.

1 Read at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton [January 20, 1993].

2 Sometimes quoted as: When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.

3 Illustrating how meaning and syntax are independent of each other.

1 Based on the book by CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD. Music by JOHN KANDER.

1 Often quoted as: Houston, we have a problem.

1 We told her [the typist of their article] that she was participating in perhaps the most famous event in biology since Darwin’s book.—WATSON, The Double Helix [1968].

2 Translated by STELLA RODWAY.

3 Translated by LILY EDELMAN and ELIE WIESEL.

1 Translated by JEROME ROTHENBERG.

2 Translated by B. M. MOOYART.

1 Carmichael had used the phrase “Black power” in a speech in Greenwood, Mississippi [June 17, 1966].

To demand these God-given rights is to seek black power—what I call audacious power—the power to build black institutions of splendid achievement.—ADAM CLAYTON POWELL, JR. [1908–1972], Baccalaureate address at Howard University [May 29, 1966]

See Langston Hughes.

1 King’s epitaph, South View Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia.

See Anonymous: Spirituals.

2 See Mohandas Gandhi.

1 Translated by MICHAEL HENRY HEIM.

1 Translated by MICHAEL HENRY HEIM.

2 Translated by LINDA ASHER.

3 The screenplay was co-written with FULVIO MORSELLA and LUCIANO VINCENZONI.

4 The screenplay was co-written with AGENORE INCROCCI, FURIO SCARPELLI, and LUCIANO VINCENZONI.

1 Moore’s early insights into the expanding capabilities of computer technology were later formulated as Moore’s Law.

1 Often cited as “States make war and war makes states.”

1 Il n’y a pas de hors-texte.

2 Translated from the French by GIACOMO DONIS.

3 Translated from the French by MICHAEL HUGHES.

4 Au cinéma, nous ne pensons pas, nous sommes pensés.

1 From the novel [1962] by CHARLES WEBB [1939– ].

1 From the novel [1962] by CHARLES WEBB [1939– ].

1 Music by LEONARD BERNSTEIN.

2 Music by JULE STYNE.

3 Music by STEPHEN SONDHEIM.

1 Translated by ROBIN FULTON.

2 See Ken Kesey.

1 Written with ROBERT LIPSYTE.

1 Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, who played his last Fenway Park game on September 28, 1960.

2 A Standing Rock Sioux.

1 Often attributed to Franz Kafka, whom Michaels is discussing.

1 The screenplay is based on Pileggi’s Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family [1986], which includes this passage: “At the age of twelve my ambition was to be a gangster. To be a wiseguy. To me being a wiseguy was better than being president of the United States.… To be a wiseguy was to own the world.”

2 An earlier version of this appeared in the comic strip Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves [1982]: Sure he [Fred Astaire] was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did… backwards and in high heels.

1 Often attributed to Auguste Comte.

1 Co-written with BRUCE TUCKER.

1 Sagan elaborated on this point in various interviews.

2 See Linklater: “You are stardust.”

1 Written with MICKEY ROSE.

1 The joke may have originated in a 1927 cartoon by Harry Hershfield (1885–1974) in Bronx Ballads: “‘You don’t like the eating at the Benjamin Arms, Mrs. Margolies?’ ‘No! It was terrible! Every mouthful was positively poison—and what small portions they give you of it.’”

2 Written with MARSHALL BRICKMAN [1941– ].

3 Giving canonical form to a quip already familiar on American college campuses for several decades.

1 The song was first recorded for Dare Records by ANN COLE; MUDDY WATERS recorded and popularized a slightly different version in 1957.

2 See Tom Wolfe.

3 Basis for the movie Field of Dreams [1989].

1 Written with MAE BOREN AXTON [1907–1997] and TOMMY DURDEN [1920–1999].

1 Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

1 Translated from the French by DAVID BELLOS.

2 No puedo hablar con mi voz sino con mis voces. Translated by YVETTE SIEGERT.

1 See also the Firesign Theatre’s 1971 comedy album I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus.

2 The reference is to a glove found at the scene of the crime. In A Lawyer’s Life, Cochran writes, “Not only was this the most memorable line in the entire trial, it’s the line that eventually will be cited by Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, the line endlessly quoted to me by people, the line by which I’ll be remembered, and I suspect it will probably be my epitaph.”

1 Love means never having to say you’re sorry.—Love Story (screenplay) [1970], spoken by Ali MacGraw.

1 John Ehrlichman added, “It’s a modified limited hang-out.”

1 Often summarized as: Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

1 Cf. Judge ROBERT H. JACKSON, in a dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago [1949]: The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

Cf. also Justice ARTHUR GOLDBERG in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, U.S. Supreme Court [1963]: The powers of Congress to require military service for the common defense are broad and far-reaching, for while the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact.

2 Music by GALT MACDERMOT.

1 Often quoted as: We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

2 See Charlie Chaplin.

1 Music by CLAUDE FRANÇOIS, JACQUES REVAUX, and GILES THIBAUT.

Signature song of FRANK SINATRA [1915–1998]. In November 1989 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced (through a Foreign Ministry spokesman) that “the Sinatra Doctrine” had replaced the “Brezhnev Doctrine” for the east bloc nations: “Hungary and Poland are doing it their way.”

1 Solanesque refers to VALERIE SOLANAS, who wrote the SCUM [Society for Cutting Up Men] Manifesto and who gained notoriety for shooting Andy Warhol.

1 Formerly Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.

1 In 1992 her [Wynette’s] name and best-known song entered the Presidential campaign when Hillary Rodham Clinton, stressing that her defense of her husband against charges of adultery was more than routine, said in a “60 Minutes” interview: “I’m not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.”—New York Times [April 8, 1998]

2 Based on a short story by GEORGE LANGELAAN.

3 The quotation originates with Blind Boy Fuller [Fulton Allen], whose 1936 album Truckin’ My Blues Away includes the line.

1 In a book he later published using this phrase as the title [1997], Hightower attributed it to “a farmer I knew from Deaf Smith County.”

1 Theme song of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.

1 often mistakenly attributed to Albert Einstein and others

1 Originally published in French as Comme un Roman [1992]. Translated by SARAH ADAMS.

2 Music by ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER.

3 Originally published in German as Die Ringe des Saturn [1995]. Translated by MICHAEL HULSE.

1 Ellipses are in the original text.

2 Translated by CLARE CAVANAGH.

3 From Black Consciousness in South Africa [1979], edited by MILLARD ARNOLD [1946–].

1 Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

1 Patti Smith’s “Gloria” is based on the 1964 song by VAN MORRISON.

1 Greed is all right.… Greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.—IVAN FREDERICK BOESKY [1937– ], commencement address at University of California, Berkeley [May 18, 1986].

1 See Alex Haley quotation from Roots.

1 Often quoted as: Leads are for closers. The scene in which this line appears is not in the play.

1 See Ruholla Khomeini.

1 Nous sommes tous Américains. This was the headline in Le Monde two days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

2 Often mischaracterized as a claim to have “invented the Internet.”

1 This quotation, often taken as original, is actually a translation of the Latin phrase Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

1 Translated by JAY RUBIN.

1 The song’s title is from the book We Almost Lost Detroit [1975] by John G. Fuller.

1 Lebowitz is quoting an otherwise unidentified “36-year-old writer.”

1 Translated by JEREMY LEGGATT.

1 Originally published in Turkish, as Benim Adım Kırmızı [1998]. English translation by ERDAĞ M. GÖKNAR.

1 Works published as by Eve Ensler prior to 2019.

1 Wir schaffen das.

1 Books published as by Luc Sante prior to 2021.

1 Ellipses in original.

1 Linus’s Law, after Linus Torvalds.

1 Cf. Philip K. Dick: Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

1 Translated by CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON.

2 Sometimes quoted as: Rap is black America’s CNN.

1 Compare Carl Sagan: “We’re made of star-stuff.”

2 See Ralph Waldo Emerson: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

1 Yates was replying to Senator John Cornyn’s criticism of her rejection, as Acting Attorney General, of President Trump’s executive order banning travel from certain Muslim-majority nations.

1 Cf. the slogan of United Farm Workers: Sí, se puede (Yes, it can be done).

1 Parodied by TINA FEY on Saturday Night Live as: I can see Russia from my house.

1 Charbonnier was the editor of Charlie Hebdo magazine and was assassinated in 2015.

2 Compare Emiliano Zapata: “Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

1 The 9/11 Commission Report indicates that “a passenger” yelled, “Roll it!” The passenger is not specifically identified as Beamer.

1 Translated by DON BARTLETT.

1 Series first shown on BBC television between 1969 and 1974. Written and conceived by GRAHAM CHAPMAN, JOHN CLEESE, TERRY GILLIAM, ERIC IDLE, TERRY JONES, and MICHAEL PALIN.

2 Character created by JEFFREY A. MOSS [1942–1998].

3 Words and music by JOE RAPOSO [1937–1989].

1 Translated by ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER.

1 In October 2017, Alyssa Milano posted a Tweet encouraging women who have experienced sexual harassment or assault to say “Me Too,” and the hashtag #MeToo went viral.

1 See Ezra Pound.

2 “I am of Ireland,/And the Holy Land of Ireland,/And time runs on,” cried she./“Come out of charity,/Come dance with me in Ireland.”—YEATS, The Winding Stair and Other Poems [1933], Words for Music Perhaps, no. 20, “I Am of Ireland,” refrain

3 An adage originating before Cicero, who quotes a version of it in De Amicitia 19, 67.

4 Another version is used by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, act IV, sc. v.

5 Liveryman Thomas Hobson [1544–1631] obliged customers “to take the horse which stood near the stable door,” according to RICHARD STEELE, The Spectator, no. 509 [October 14, 1712].

1 Richard Whittington, son of a London mercer, rose to be mayor of London three times [1423].

2 Attributed also to JOHN DONNE, and included in a variant form in the seventh edition of his poems [1669].

3 Translated by THEODORE BAKER.

Written by an unknown author in celebration of Dutch freedom from Spanish sovereignty at the end of the sixteenth century.—The Hymnal 1940 Companion

4 Prophecies ascribed to the fictitious Mother Shipton first appeared in 1641.

1 Gin a body meet a body/Coming through the rye;/Gin a body kiss a body,/Need a body cry?—ROBERT BURNS, Coming Through the Rye, st. 1

See J. D. Salinger.

2 Collected by THOMAS FULLER [1654–1734], in Gnomologia [1732].

3 This version was sufficiently popular in America in 1767 to be used in the ballad opera The Disappointment; or, The Force of Credulity by ANDREW BARTON.

Father and I went up to camp,/Along with Captain Goodwin;/And there we saw the men and boys,/As thick as hasty pudding./Yankee doodle do.—Version used by ROYALL TYLER [1757–1826], in The Contrast [1790]

4 An earlier version, signed by JAMES BOBART [December 8, 1697], begins “Think” rather than “Count.”

5 The motto of one, I believe, of the regicides of Charles I.—Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Everett [February 24, 1823]

Jefferson’s reference probably is to John Bradshaw [1602–1659].

1 [Meaning:] All is wonderful, 1866. Sometimes said to be from “The goose honks high,” referring to the fact that geese fly higher in good weather, but there is no evidence this is the origin of the term.—STUART BERG FLEXNER [1928–1990], Listening to America [1982]

2 Quoted as an old song by ANTHONY TROLLOPE in Barchester Towers [1857], ch. 46.

3 The classical American rural tune… steps around like an apple-faced farmhand… as American as Andrew Jackson, Johnny Appleseed, and Corn on the Cob.—CARL SANDBURG, The American Songbag [1927]

4 This saying has been attributed to many authors, most especially to STEPHEN GRELLET [Étienne de Grellet du Mabillier, 1773–1855], although it has not been found in any of Grellet’s writings.

1 The women and children were the first to be removed from the sinking ship Birkenhead.

2 The weasel was a hatter’s tool, and “pop” was a term meaning to pawn or “hock.” The Eagle was a music hall in the City Road. The song is attributed to W. R. MANDALE.

3 John Charles Frémont [1813–1890] was the party’s candidate for President.

4 A term applied (from about 1857) to the ideal of religious character exhibited in the writings of Charles Kingsley.—Oxford English Dictionary

His Christianity was muscular.—BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Endymion [1880], ch. 14

5 Charles Weller, a court reporter, originated this expression in…1867 to test the efficiency of the first practical typewriter which his friend Christopher Sholes had constructed.—Life [April 11, 1955]

6 As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.—JAMES A. FARLEY [1888–1976], statement to press [November 4, 1936], after predicting correctly that Franklin D. Roosevelt would carry all but two states in the presidential election

7 Also attributed to HARRY MCCLINTOCK.

8 Derived from cartoon caption by CLIFFORD K. BERRYMAN [1869–1949] in The Washington Post [April 3, 1898]: If the row comes, REMEMBER THE MAINE, and show the world how American sailors can fight.

9 Traditional ballad; there are innumerable versions and verses.

1 Three white feet and a white nose,/Rip off his skin and throw him to the crows.—New Hampshire version of last two lines

2 Often attributed, but without substantiation, to P. T. Barnum [1810–1891]; possibly derived from the line in a popular nineteenth-century song, “There’s a new jay [meaning, rube or mark] born every day.”—RALPH KEYES, Nice Guys Finish Seventh [1992]

3 There are variants for the less familiar last line, such as: And a silver sixpence in each shoe.

4 Proverbial lore current in several variant forms, the most familiar and recent of which is: The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings.—DANIEL JOHN COOK [1926– ], television newscast, San Antonio, Texas [April 1978]

5 “Undoubtedly the most popular poem in the black vernacular. In this version of events, the sole survivor of the Titanic is a black menial referred to as Shine, who turns out to be a champion swimmer.”—HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR., “Sudden Def,” The New Yorker [June 19, 1995]

6 See Douglas MacArthur.

7 Sometimes “forty” or “thirty” is heard instead of “fifty.” When Texas Guinan and her troupe were refused entry into France [1931], she was quoted as saying: “It goes to show that fifty million Frenchmen can be wrong.” She promptly renamed her show Too Hot for Paris, and toured the United States with it.

1 “One look is worth a thousand words.” Fred R. Barnard, in Printers’ Ink, 8 Dec., 1921, p. 96. He changed it to “One picture is worth a thousand words” in Printers’ Ink, 10 March, 1927, p. 114, and called it “a Chinese proverb, so that people would take it seriously.”—BURTON STEVENSON, ed., The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Familiar Phrases [1948]

2 A popular aphorism with the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the art historian Aby Warburg; attributed [Le bon Dieu est dans le détail] to GUSTAVE FLAUBERT but without verification; possibly derived from seventeenth-century humanist CASPAR BARLAEUS [1584–1648] [God hides in the smallest pieces].

3 This name, chosen for the soldier in LIEUTENANT DAVE BREGER’S comic strip for Yank, the Army weekly, first appeared in the issue of June 17, 1942. Writing in Time [February 26, 1945], Lieutenant Breger said: “I decided on ‘G.I. Joe,’ the ‘G.I.’ [Government Issue] because of its prevalence in Army talk, and the ‘Joe’ for the alliterative effect.”

4 From The Marines’ Hymn.

5 This poem, found on a scrap of paper in a slit trench in Tunisia during the battle of El Agheila, was printed in Poems from the Desert, by members of the British Eighth Army [1944].

6 Some of the published comics use “darkest night” rather than “blackest night.”

7 Included in Arthur Bloch’s collection of popular sayings, Murphy’s Law [1977]. In its original form [1949] by EDWARD ALOYSIUS MURPHY, JR. [1917–1990]: “If there is more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will end in disaster, then someone will do it that way.”—BRIAN BURRELL, The Words We Live By [1997], pp. 146–149

8 Compare: Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.—VINCE [VINCENT THOMAS] LOMBARDI [1913–1970], interview [1962]

1 Originating in pre–Civil War days, this song was adapted [c. 1900] by C. ALBERT TINDLEY as a Baptist hymn called “I’ll Overcome Some Day.” It became famous as a protest theme when sung by black workers on picket lines in Charleston, S.C. [1946].

2 We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.—DEAN RUSK [1909–1994], Conversation [October 24, 1962] during the Cuban missile crisis

3 Catchphrase based on a line from Star Trek scripts: Beam us up, Mr. Scott.

4 What a waste it is to lose one’s mind or not to have a mind is very wasteful.—DAN [J. DANFORTH] QUAYLE [1947– ], address to United Negro College Fund [May 1989]

5 Says Johnnie, “Fight on, my merry men all,/I’m a little wounded, but I am not slain;/I will lay me down for to bleed a while,/Then I’ll rise and fight with you again.”—Johnnie Armstrong’s Last Goodnight, st. 18; from DRYDEN’S Miscellanies [1702]

6 This very house was built by the blind beggar of Bednall Green, so much talked of and sung in ballads.—SAMUEL PEPYS, Diary [June 26, 1663]

1 BEN JONSON calls any virago Mary Ambree, and JOHN FLETCHER alludes to Mary Ambree in The Scornful Lady [1616].

2 Also familiar as: Oh, bang the drum slowly.

3 Possibly written by BREWSTER HIGLEY.

1 Friend, do you hear/The black flight—of our crows—on our plains…/Friend, do you hear/The faint cries—of the country—in chains.

2 By the light of the moon,/My friend Pierrot,/Lend me your pen/To write a word.

This song, with music by JEAN-BAPTISTE LULLY [1632–1687], has been popular since the time of Louis XIV [1638–1715].

3 Translated by HARRY HOIJER.

4 Translated by PLINY E. GODDARD.

5 Translated by WASHINGTON MATTHEWS.

1 Translated by JEROME ROTHENBERG.

2 Translated by ARMAND SCHWERNER.

1 Higgledy-piggledy my white hen,/She lays eggs for gentlemen;/She cannot be persuaded by gun or lariat/To come across for the proletariat.—DOROTHY PARKER

1 See Boris Pasternak.

1 See Martin Luther King, Jr.