When I’m not near the girl I love, I love the girl I’m near.
E. Y. "Yip" Harburg (1896-1981) American lyricist [Edgar Yipsel Harburg, b. Isidore Hochberg]
“When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love,” Finian’s Rainbow (1946)
But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Take no notice of his appearance or his height for I have rejected him; God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but Yahweh looks at the heart.”
The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
1 Samuel 16:7 [JB (1966)]
(Source)
God rejecting Eliab (and all of David's other brothers) to be the next king. Alternate translations:But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.
[KJV (1611)]But the Lord said to him, “Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is. I have rejected him, because I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”
[GNT (1976)]But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
[NRSV (1989)]
I have been surprised at the observations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an occult Power was moving the pen. The personage does or says something, and I ask, how the dickens did he come to think of that?
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) English novelist
(Attributed)
In A. Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self, ch. 12 (1988)
If there is such a thing as luck, then I must be the most unlucky fellow in the world. I’ve never once made a lucky strike in all my life. When I get after something I need, I start finding everything in the world I don’t need — one damn thing after another. I find ninety-nine things I don’t need, and then comes number one hundred , and that — at the very last — turns out to be just what I had been looking for.
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) American inventor and businessman
Remarks to M. A. Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” Harper’s (Sep 1932)
Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, “I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I am going to snow anyway.”
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“Maya Angelou: An Interview,” (Oct 1974) in Conversations with Maya Angelou (1989),
Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
Commencement Address, Dartmouth College (9 Jun 2002)
Full text.
I would not like them here or there.
I would not like them anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them Sam I Am.Dr. Seuss (1904-1991) American author, illustrator [pseud. of Theodor Geisel]
Green Eggs and Ham (1960)
For it is in the person’s choice that wickedness and the commission of injustice are found.
[ἐν γὰρ τῇ προαιρέσει ἡ μοχθηρία καὶ τὸ ἀδικεῖν]
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Rhetoric [Ῥητορική; Ars Rhetorica], Book 1, ch. 13, sec. 10 (1.13.10) / 1374a.11 (350 BC) [tr. Bartlett (2019)]
(Source)
Often given as "The intention makes the crime." (Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:For the criminality and injustice of the act stands essentially in the deliberate principle on which it is done.
[tr. Buckley (1850)]For vice and wrong-doing depend on the moral purpose.
[tr. Jebb (1873)]It is deliberate purpose that constitutes wickedness and criminal guilt.
[tr. Roberts (1924)]For vice and wrongdoing consist in the moral purpose.
[tr. Freese (1926)]For the immorality and wrongness of an act depend on intentional choice.
[tr. Waterfield (2018)]
Part of my function as a writer is to dream awake. And that usually happens. If I sit down to write in the morning, in the beginning of that writing session and the ending of that session, I’m aware that I’m writing. I’m aware of my surroundings. It’s like shallow sleep on both ends, when you go to bed and when you wake up. But in the middle, the world is gone and I’m able to see better.
Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
“Stephen King,” in N. Epel, ed. Writers Dreaming (1993)
Oh what lies there are in kisses!
And their guile so well prepared!
Sweet the snaring is; but this is
Sweeter still, to be ensnared.Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
The Home-coming, Poem 74
In a well regulated state it will be the business of the legislature to prevent sectaries of different denominations from molesting and disturbing each other; to ordain that no part of the community shall be permitted to perplex and harass the other for any supposed heresy, but that each individual shall be allowed to have and enjoy, profess and maintain his own system of religion, provided it does not issue in overt acts of treason against the state undermining the peace and order of society.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
The Yankee Spy (1794) [writing as Jack Nipps]
Some of them left a name behind them, so that their praises are still sung. While others have left no memory, and disappeared as though they had not existed, they are now as though they had never been, and so too, their children after them.
The Bible (The Old Testament) (14th - 2nd C BC) Judeo-Christian sacred scripture [Tanakh, Hebrew Bible], incl. the Apocrypha (Deuterocanonicals)
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 44:8-9 [JB (1966)]
(Source)
Alternate translations:There be some 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.
[KJV (1611)]They that were born of them have left a name behind them, that their praises might be related: And there are some, of whom there is no memorial: who are perished, as if they had never been: and are become as if they had never been born, and their children with them.
[DRA (1899)]Some of them left a reputation, and people still praise them today. There are others who are not remembered, as if they had never lived, who died and were forgotten, they, and their children after them.
[GNT (1976)]Some of them have left behind a name, so that others declare their praise. But of others there is no memory; they have perished as though they had never existed; they have become as though they had never been born, they and their children after them.
[NRSV (1989 ed.)]
When the hour and the real cause has come, the infection flashes like an electric spark over hundreds of miles. … The message goes through the air, and, in the one thing that counts all men are suddenly of one mind even if only in a blind conviction: Things must change.
Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (1818-1897) Swiss historian
“The Crises of History” (1869)
How many crimes committed merely because their authors could not endure being wrong?
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
The Fall [La Chute] (1956) [tr. O’Brien]
(Source)
One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (22 May 1925)
Published in Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1945).
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On The Spirit of Controversy,” The Atlas (30 Jan 1830)
The human race consists of the damned and the ought-to-be-damned.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook [ed. Paine (1935)]
The convictions of the mass of mankind run hand in hand with their interests or with their class feelings.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
“Reorganization of the Reform Party,” The London and Westminster Review (Apr 1839)
Often an idea would occur to me which seemed to have force. … I never let one of those ideas escape me, but wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it in that drawer. In that way I saved my best thoughts on the subject, and, you know, such things often come in a kind of intuitive way more clearly than if one were to sit down and deliberately reason them out. To save the results of such mental action is true intellectual economy.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Remarks to James F. Wilson (Jun 1862)
In G. Iles, ed., Autobiography, Greatest Americans (1924)
His was a life which lacked, perhaps, the sublimer emotions which raised Man to the level of the gods, but it was undeniably an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled, but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he died, would not live for ever in England’s annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live for ever in England’s annals. He was possibly as nearly contented a human being can be in this century of alarms and excursions.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Something Fresh (1915)
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning — in other words, of absurdity — the more energetically meaning is sought.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
Disturbing the Peace, ch. 5 “The Politics of Hope” (1986) [tr. P. Wilson (1990)]
Secular is whatever has reference to this life. Secular instruction is instruction respecting the concerns of this life. Secular subjects therefore are all subjects except religion. All the arts and sciences are secular knowledge. To say that secular means irreligious implies that all the arts and sciences are irreligious, and is very like saying that all professions except that of the law are illegal. […] To know the laws of the physical world, the properties of their own bodies and minds, the past history of their species, is as much a benefit to the Jew, the Mussulman, the Deist, the Atheist, as to the orthodox churchman; and it is as iniquitous to withhold it from them. Education provided by the public must be education for all, and to be education for all it must be purely secular education.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
“Speech on Secular Education,” undelivered (1849)
RICHARD: Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Richard III, Act 5, sc. 3, l. 327ff (5.3.327-329) (1592)
(Source)
A man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake (1757-1827) English poet, mystic, artist
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “A Memorable Fancy” (1790)
(Source)
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The Scarlet Letter, ch. 14 “Conclusion” (1850)
Somewhere over the rainbow,
Way up high,
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.E. Y. "Yip" Harburg (1896-1981) American lyricist [Edgar Yipsel Harburg, b. Isidore Hochberg]
“Over the Rainbow” in The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Mentally, fallow is as important as seedtime. Even bodies can be exhausted by overcultivation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism, ch. 81 (1928)
Opinions are made to be changed — or how is truth to be got at?
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Letter to John Murray (9 May 1818)
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
“Still I Rise,” And Still I Rise (1978)
(Source)
Of course, I get angry. Of course, I get sad. I have a full range of emotions. I also have a whole smorgasbord of ways of dealing with my feelings. That is what we should give children. Give them … ways to express their rage without hurting themselves or somebody else. That’s what the world needs.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
AP Interview
I thought I had a great idea today, but it never really took off. In fact, it didn’t even get on the runway. I guess you could say it exploded in the hangar.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin & Hobbes
The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people’s suffering for his principles.
E. L. Doctorow (1931-2015) American author, editor
Commencement address, Brandeis University (21 May 1989)
HAMLET: 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 pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 3, sc. 1, l. 91ff (3.1.91-96) (c. 1600)
(Source)
"Conscience" in this case is used in its archaic form, as consciousness, awareness.
There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
All Trivia, “Last Words” (1933)
If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise let men be free.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
The Connecticut Dissenters Strong Box, #1 (1802)
LONDO: Gentlemen, of all things in life, are females not the finest?
G’KAR: On that, Mollari, we can at least agree.Lawrence G. "Larry" DiTillio (1948-2019) American TV and film screenwriter
Babylon 5, “Born to the Purple” (9 Feb 1994)
It often happens that things come into the mind in a much more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Maxims], #101 (1665-1678) [tr. L. Tancock (1959)]
Be not the first by whom the New are try’d
Nor yet the last to lay the Old aside.Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
“An Essay on Criticism,” l. 335 (1711)
Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
The Making of Americans (1925; written 1903-11)
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“Common Places,” #1, The Literary Examiner (Sep-Dec 1823)
Administrivia: On vacation autopilot
After leaving off for the (US) Memorial Day holiday, I’m on vacation the rest of the week. I have, however, queued up the standard complement of quotations for Tuesday – Friday. The only difference my being away makes is that if there are any egregious formatting or spelling errors, I won’t see them until I return next week, and any comments left will (probably) stay unanswered until then.
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, shall not vanish from this earth.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
“Gettysburg Address,” closing words (19 Nov 1863)
I cannot help remarking how much less confidence professed Christians appear to have in the truth and power of their principles than infidels generally have in theirs. Disbelievers in Christianity almost always hail the advance of public intelligence as favourable to them; the more informed and exercised a mind is, the more likely they account it to adopt their opinions; but I cannot find a trace of similar confidence in most of the professedly religious.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
“Speech on Secular Education,” undelivered (1849)
And once again, Probability proves itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper-piece harlot.
Rich Burlew (b. 1974) American author, game designer, and graphic designer
Order of the Stick #584 [Vaarsuvius] (13 Aug 2008)
Full text.
It is a good lesson — though it may often be a hard one — for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The Scarlet Letter, Introduction, “The Custom House” (1850)
Lives of great men all remind us greatness takes no easy way.
All the heroes of tomorrow are the heretics of today.
Socrates and Galileo, John Brown, Thoreau, Christ, and Debs
Heard the night cry, “Down with traitors!” and the dawn shout, “Up the Reds!”
E. Y. "Yip" Harburg (1896-1981) American lyricist [Edgar Yipsel Harburg, b. Isidore Hochberg]
Poem read in an interview
Quoted in documentary "A Tribute to Yip Harburg: The Man Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz" (25 Nov 2004)
There is a difference between irreligious and not religious, however it may suit the purposes of many persons to confound it.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
“Speech on Secular Education,” undelivered (1849)
Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
(Attributed)
In A. Hock, Reason and Genius, 2.3.1 (1960)
Where there is a creed, there is a heretic around the corner or in his grave.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Adventures of Ideas, 4.3 (1933)
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, ch. 2 “Passports to Understanding” (1993)
(Source)
You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
In Fred Rogers: America’s Favorite Neighbor, television documentary (2003)
May I not be forgiven for thinking it is a wonderful testimony to my being made for art, that when in the midst of this trouble and pain I sit down to my book, some beneficent power shows it all to me and tempts me to be interested, and I don’t invent it — really do not — but see it and write it down?
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English writer and social critic
Letter to biographer, John Forster
in J. F. Nisbet, The Insanity of Genius, ch. 10 (1893)
A world without conscience: that is the horror of our condition.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Back to Methuselah, ch. 2 (1921)
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.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
Französische Bühne [The French Stage], ch. 9 (1837)
Is it the duty of a deist to support that which he believes to be a cheat and imposition? Is it the duty of the Jew to support the religion of Jesus Christ, when he really believes that he was an imposter? Must the papist be forced to pay men for preaching down the supremacy of the pope, whom they are sure is the head of the church? Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
The Yankee Spy (1794)
Under the pen name "Jack Nipps"
I am loathe to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
First Inaugural Address, final paragraph (4 Mar 1861)
A substantially revised version of the original text written by William Seward.
The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor. The man who has struck it rich in minerals, oil, or other bounties of nature is found explaining the debilitating effect of unearned income from the state. The corporate executive who is a superlative success as an organization man weighs in on the evils of bureaucracy. Federal aid to education is feared by those who live in suburbs that could easily forgo this danger, and by people whose children are in public schools. Socialized medicine is condemned by men emerging from Walter Reed Hospital. Social Security is viewed with alarm by those who have the comfortable cushion of an inherited income. Those who are immediately threatened by public efforts to meet their needs — whether widows, small farmers, hospitalized veterans, or the unemployed — are almost always oblivious to the danger.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) Canadian-American economist, diplomat, author
Speech (1963-12-13), “Wealth and Poverty,” National Policy Committee on Pockets of Poverty
(Source)
Galbraith used variations on this quote over the years.
- The above quotation was from a speech given, that was then entered into the Congressional Record, Vol. 109, Senate (1963-12-18).
- This material was reworked into an article "Let us begin: An invitation to action on poverty," in Harper's (1964-03), which was in turn again entered into the Congressional Record, Vol. 110 (1964).
- One of the last is most often cited: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor." ["Stop the Madness," Interview with Rupert Cornwell, Toronto Globe and Mail (2002-07-06)]
Conscience: the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Little Book in C Major, ch. 4, § 12 (1916)
(Source)
Variants:CONSCIENCE. The inner voice which warns us that someone is looking.
[A Book of Burlesques, "The Jazz Webster" (1924)]Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
[Chrestomathy, ch. 30 "Sententiae" (1949)]
Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
The Radcliffe Manuscripts, “Form and Intelligibility” (1949; written 1895)
Man is a make-believe animal — he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, ch. 16 (1824)
A civilization is to be judged by its treatment of minorities.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
Remark (Jul 1946)
In L. Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, ch. 43 (1950)
For any exam in history, here is the answer: all human history is the struggle between systems that attempt to shackle the human personality in the name of some intangible good on the one hand and systems that enable and expand the scope of human personality in the pursuit of extremely tangible aims. The American system is the most successful in the world because it harmonizes best with the aims and longings of human personality while allowing the best protection to other personalities.
Ben Stein (b. 1944) American actor, lawyer, economist, political writer [Benjamin Jeremy Stein]
“How to Ace an Exam,” The American Spectator (15 Dec 2004)
(Source)
If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
Comment (18 Feb 1831)
In P. Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, 1836-1848 [tr. J. Oxenford (1850)]
Routine is the death to heroism.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
“The Man Upstairs” (1914)
It is not true that people of high principles are ill-suited for politics. High principles have only to be accompanied by patience, consideration, a sense of measure and understanding for others. It is not true that only coldhearted, cynical, arrogant, haughty or brawling persons succeed in politics. Such people are naturally attracted by politics. In the end, however, politeness and good manners weigh more.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
In International Herald Tribune (29 Oct 1991)
The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul — BOOKS.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet
Letter
Quoted by R. Sweall, "In Search of Emily Dickenson," Extraordinary Lives: The art and Craft of American Biography [ed. W. Zinsser] (1988)
It’s always your moralist who makes assassination a duty.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Caesar and Cleopatra, Notes (“Julius Caesar”) (1899)
I have a very modulated way of dealing with my anger. I have always tried to understand the other person and invariably I’ve discovered that somebody who rubs you the wrong way has been rubbed the wrong way many times.
Fred Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host ["Mister Rogers"]
AP Interview
Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The Scarlet Letter, ch. 10 “The Leech and His Patient” (1850)
The Lord made Adam,
The Lord made Eve,
He made ‘em both a little bit naive.E. Y. "Yip" Harburg (1896-1981) American lyricist [Edgar Yipsel Harburg, b. Isidore Hochberg]
“The Begat” in Finian’s Rainbow (1946)
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope.
After you have pumped your brains for thoughts and verses, there is a better poetry hinted in whistling a tune on your walk.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1859, no date)
Consistency in regard to opinions is the slow poison of intellectual life.
Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) British chemist
(Attributed)
In Lord Acton, appendix (71) to Essays on Freedom and Power [ed. G. Himmelfarb] (1949)
It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value.
Am I a genius? I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I’m exceptional — a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional.
Daniel F. Keyes (1927-2014) American author
“Flowers for Algernon” (1959)
The strength or weakness of our conviction depends more on our courage than on our intelligence.
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715-1747) French moralist, essayist, soldier
Reflections and Maxims [Réflexions et maximes], #318 (1746) [tr. Stevens (1940)]
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.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
“Of Goodness, and Goodness of Nature,” Essays, No. 13 (1625)
(Source)
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 4 (1934)
(Source)
To say that religion cannot stand without a state establishment is not only contrary to fact (as has been proved already) but is a contradiction in phrase. Religion must have stood a time before any law could have been made about it; and if it did stand almost three hundred years without law it can still stand without it.
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
The Connecticut Dissenters Strong Box, #1 (1802)
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. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
“In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire,” Memorial Day address, Keene, New Hampshire (30 May 1884)
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Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and trancendent Godhead.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) English novelist, essayist and critic
The Perennial Philosophy, ch. 16 (1946)
The more men have to lose, the less willing they are to venture.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
Common Sense, “Of the Present Ability of America” (14 Feb 1776)
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols — it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“Common Places,” #76, The Literary Examiner (Sep-Dec 1823)
A man who does not possess himself enough to hear disagreeable things without visible marks of anger and change of countenance, or agreeable ones without sudden bursts of joy and expansion of countenance, is at the mercy of every artful knave or pert coxcomb.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #183 (22 May 1749)
KOSH: The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
David Gerrold (b. 1944) American author [b. Jerrold David Friedman]
Babylon 5, “Believers” (27 Apr 1994)
Where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no considerations of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be, “What course will save the life and liberty of the country?”
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Discourses on Livy, Book 3, ch. 41 (1517) [tr. Detmold (1882)]
“Work, the what’s-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what-d’you-call-it.”
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Psmith, Journalist (1915)
The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.
Václav Havel (1936-2011) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
Disturbing the Peace, ch. 2 “Writing for the Stage” (1986) [tr. P. Wilson (1990)]
When you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
“The Mind of Man,” A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Fortitude is the Guard and Support of the other Virtues; and without Courage a Man will scarece keep steady to his Duty, and fill up the Character of a truly worthy Man.
John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, #115 (1693)
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The Scarlet Letter, ch. 5 “Hester at Her Needle” (1850)
Without your love
It’s a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It’s a melody played in a penny arcade.
It’s a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn’t be make-believe
If you believed in me.E. Y. "Yip" Harburg (1896-1981) American lyricist [Edgar Yipsel Harburg, b. Isidore Hochberg]
“It’s Only a Paper Moon” (1933) (co-written with Billy Rose)
Good Master, how shall I recount this Thine inestimable charity?
What return can I make for this vast boon? […]
What reward shall I give my God,
except my heart’s obedience to His command?
And Thy command is this:
that we love one another.Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) British monk, theologian, archbishop, saint.
“A Prayer for Friends”
Attributed in Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm, selected and translated by a Religious of C.S.M.V. (1952)
To love one’s country above all others is in no way incompatible with respecting and wishing well to all others.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
“The Two Americas” (20 May 1901)
The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage to die decently, but to live manfully.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
“Boswell’s Life of Johnson,” Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827-1855)
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Originally published in Fraser's Magazine, Vol 5, # 28 (1832). Reviewing a new 1831 edition of James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson.
At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me [at the] given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
In Harijan (30 Sep 1939)
A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.
Georg Hegel (1770-1831) German philosopher
Enzyklopaedie der philosophischen Wissenschaften [Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences] (1816)
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Laurens van der Post (1906-1996) Afrikaner author, conservationist, statesman, humanitarian
The Lost World of the Kalahari, ch. 3 (1958)
Look at the process of deterioration which our Queen’s English has undergone at the hands of the Americans. Look at those phrases which so amuse us in their speech and books, at their reckless exaggeration and contempt for congruity, and the compare the character and history of the nation — its blunted sense of moral obligation and duty to man, its open disregard of conventional right where aggrandizement is to be obtained.
Henry Alford (1810-1871) English churchman, scholar, poet, hymnodist
Plea for the Queen’s English (1863)
How hard, oh, how hard it is to die and leave one’s country no better than if one had never lived for it.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Remark to William H. Herndon, quoted in letter from Herndon to Ward H. Herdon (6 Mar 1866)
In Emanuel Hertz (ed.), The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon, 1.2 (1940)