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
“Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National Policy Committee on Pockets of Poverty (13 Dec 1963)
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 (18 Dec 1963).
- This material was reworked into an article "Let us begin: An invitation to action on poverty," in Harper's (March 1964), 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 (6 Jul 2002)]
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)
(Source)
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)
(Source)
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)
It is in the depths of conscience that God speaks, and if we refuse to open up inside and look into those depths, we also refuse to confront the invisible God who is present within us.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) French-American religious and writer [a.k.a. Fr. M. Louis]
“Creative Silence,” Love and Living (ed. N Stone, P. Hart) (1985)
What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they’ve taken away?
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) American-English essayist, editor, anthologist
All Trivia, “Last Words” (1933)
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty … But I am too busy thinking about myself.
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) English poet
(Attributed)
Quoted in The Observer (30 April 1950)
Frame constitutions of government with what wisdom and foresight we may, they must be imperfect, and leave something to discretion, and much to public virtue.
Joseph Story (1779-1845) American lawyer, jurist, Supreme Court Justice (1811-1845)
Address to the Suffolk Bar, New York (4 Sep 1821)
There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Freeholder, ch. 5 (1716)
You know more of a road by having travelled it then by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.