For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse —
But all may be described in verse.T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, “The Ad-dressing of Cats” (1939)
What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
“The Cocktail Party” (1949)
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
The Mill on the Floss (1860)
(Source)
If you want a war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men are ever subject, because doctrines get inside a man’s reason and betray him against himself. Civilized men have done their fiercest fighting for doctrines. The reconquest of the Holy Sepulcher, “the balance of power,” “no universal dominion,” “trade follows the flag,” “he who holds the land will hold the sea,” “the throne and the altar,” the revolution, the faith — these are the things for which men have given their lives. What are they all? Nothing but rhetoric and phantasms.
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) American minister, sociologist, anthropologist.
“War” (1903), War and Other Essays [ed. A. Keller (1911)]
(Source)
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) American educator, management theorist
Peter’s Almanac, entry for 24 Sep. (1982).
Religious leaders too often think that if they just got the government to pay for their programs, they could do so much more good. But they should also know too well from bitter experience that big donors often have strings attached to their donations, and Uncle Sam is the biggest donor of all. Accept his money, even if he seems to be nodding in agreement with you, and sooner or later you’ll find you’ve compromised away your mission and become too dependent on his largesse to get it back. Churches should keep away from the state, not just for the good of the state, but for their own good as well.
Graham Ericsson (b. 1947) American writer, aphorist
Heaven and Earth (2002)
There’s always a temptation for the Church to try and take on the power of the state. There are all those souls to save, don’t you know, and all those rules to pass to make sure they are. But politics, statecraft, lawmaking, power brokering — those engines all run on compromise, and compromise is the worst enemy of principle, which is, after all, what the Church is supposed to be about to be about. It’s hard to be a moral compass when you keep turning from your course.
Graham Ericsson (b. 1947) American writer, aphorist
Heaven and Earth (2002)
Church and state are drawn to each other like moths and flame, and when they are, it’s always about power — power over the population, power over souls. power over votes. But religious and political leaders alike should remember what happens when the moth and flame finally get together.
Graham Ericsson (b. 1947) American writer, aphorist
Heaven and Earth (2002)
… I believe that, if a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. Thus each would ascribe to God its own attributes, would assume itself to be like God, and look on everything else as ill-shaped.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher
Letter to Hugo Boxel (1674) (Letter 60, Para. 4)
Source: http://home.earthlink.net/~tneff/let6056.htm
The establishment of religious freedom was no less momentous an achievement than the clearing of the great forest or the winning of independence, for the twin doctrines of separation of church and state and liberty of individual conscience are the marrow of our democracy, if not indeed America’s most magnificent contribution to the freeing of Western man.
Clinton Rossiter (1917-1970) American historian and political scientist [Clinton Lawrence Rossiter III]
The American Quest (1971)
Administrivia: So … what next?
So now that the dust has more or less settled on the WIST redesign comes the question, “what next?”
In particular, options include:
1. Continue to add more quotes.
2. Revisit existing quotes without decent citation and work on cleaning those up.
3. Improve the search speed.
4. Try to figure out a “quote of the day” functionality.
5. Come up with a good resources page with the current places I get or research quotes from.
Anything else you can think of? This site is for your use, after all.
Two previously-requested options are not likely:
1. Allow users to add quotes: Sorry, this isn’t Wikiquote (which is, in fact, a wonderful site). I’d rather not open things up to the world to break/spam the site. Though, that said, if you have a quote you want to see in here, leave it in a comment in some post (I’ll see it) or contact me by e-mail, and I’ll see what I can do. (If I don’t care for the quotation, I won’t use it, but there’s no accounting for my tastes).
2. Tag/categorize quotes: Not only would this be a massive task with the existing 5K-odd quotes at the moment, but I’ve always found such schemes and taxonomies to be somewhat arbitrary and rarely complete. Honestly, I find word searches a better way to find what one’s looking for. There may be ways of opening that up to the public — but that runs smack-dab into the spamming thing again.
if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is — excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it’d be better for his health.
Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) American writer, futurist, fabulist
“The Joy of Writing,” Zen & the Art of Writing and The Joy of Writing, Capra Chapbook No. 13 (1973)
(Source)
Reprinted in Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing (1990).
Those words, “temperate and moderate,” are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. 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 a species of vice.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
“Letter Addressed to the Addressers on the Late Proclamation” (1791)
(Source)
EARL OF SANDWICH: ‘Pon my honor, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die on the gallows or of the pox.
JOHN WILKES: That must depend my Lord, upon whether I first embrace your Lordship’s principles, or your Lordship’s mistresses.(Other Authors and Sources)
In Sir Charles Petrie, The Four Georges, ch. 4 (1935).
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 spurting out ink.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
“Politics and the English Language,” Horizon, (Apr. 1946)
You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.
Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) American engineer, bureaucrat, President of the US (1928-32)
Letter to Sen. George H. Moses (14 Jun. 1928)
On learning of his nomination to the presidency
Grab ’em by the throat and never let ’em go.
Billy Wilder (1906-2002) Austrian-American film producer, director, screenwriter [b. Samuel Wilder]
(Attributed)
In Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe
If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest?
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English poet
The Necessity of Atheism (1811)
Full text, 1813 ed. The text is followed by a citation of "Systeme de la Nature (1781)" (by Baron d'Holbach), but it's unclear whether, or what part of, this is being quoted by Shelley.
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which habitually acts.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Man and Superman, “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” “Religion” (1903)
(Source)
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.
Willa Cather (1873-1947) American author [Wilella Silbert Cather]
The Song of the Lark, Part VI, Ch. 11 (1915)
The last lesson a man ever learns is, that liberty of thought and speech is the right for all mankind; that the man who denies every article of our creed is to be allowed to preach just as often and just as loud as we ourselves. We have learned this, — been taught it by persecution on the question of slavery. No matter whose lips that would speak, they must be free and ungagged. Let us always remember that he does not really believe his own opinions, who dares not give free scope to his opponent. Persecution is really want of faith in our creed.
Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) American abolitionist, orator, social activist
“The Boston Mob,” speech, Antislavery Meeting, Boston (21 Oct 1855)
(Source)
"On the Twentieth Anniversary of the Mob of October 21, 1835."
Administrivia: An unexpected benefit
A previously unexpected benefit of my new database / layout / etc. here at WIST has come to my attention. I can see, if I Google around a bit, various folks who have wholesale copy-pasted huge swathes of the previous version of WIST pages to their own quote pages. (It’s not quite spotted by the same trick as dictionary publishers who put in false words — but it’s related, if uintentional.)
Now, I don’t mind sharing the wealth. By the very nature of a quotations database, that would be silly. And heaven knows I’ve garnered quotes from a lot of places, online and off.
But … there’s a reason I have a Creative Commons “By” license off in the margin. If you copy stuff from here — especially big chunks o’ stuff — I do ask and expect some sort of attribution or link-back or hat-tip. Because the work I’ve put into gathering this info is a lot more than just copying and pasting stuff. I’ve spent a lot of time sourcing material, updating it, arranging it, etc. A few props wouldn’t be out of line.
And, at any rate, that sort of mass copying won’t be as feasible. Previous iterations of WIST had whole letters of the alphabet’s authors, with their quotes, on a page. Now only a given author’s quote are on a page, and each one has the author citation at the page top. So someone who wants to borrow something has to do a little bit of work to do so. That’s not intended to discourage finding and using quotations that you like — but it’s a nice unintended consequence that many, many hours or work cannot be simply copied with a single swipe of the mouse and a few clicks.
For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. Soe 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 throughout the world.
John Winthrop (1588–1649) English Puritan, politician
“A Modell of Christian Charity” (1630)
Written aboard the Arbella during the voyage to Massachusetts.
There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutions — to cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
“Thoughts of Eric Hoffer,” New York Times Magazine (25 Apr 1971)
Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
“Thoughts of Eric Hoffer,” New York Times Magazine (25 Apr 1971)
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
Richard Bach (b. 1936) American writer
A Gift of Wings (1974)
Administrivia: WIST-by-Mail
Well, the site’s been up for a few weeks now, and all seems to be pretty stable. I’m enjoying plahying with the e-mail feed service from Feedburner, which provides a very nice daily e-mail of any quotations added to the database. Since I’m trying to add one or two every day, that’s not a bad deal. Check it out in the sidebar under “Subscribe by e-mail” …
It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.
Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) Roman general and statesman [Gaius Julius Caesar]
(Attributed)
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.Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American poet
“To Make a Prairie” (#1755)
There is a kind of courtesy in scepticism. It would be an offence against polite conventions to press our doubts too far and question the permanence of our estates, our neighbours’ independent existence, or even the justification of a good bishop’s faith and income. Against metaphysicians, and even against bishops, sarcasm was not without its savour; but the line must be drawn somewhere by a gentleman and a man of the world.
George Santayana (1863-1952) Spanish-American poet and philosopher [Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz de Santayana y Borrás]
The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress, Vol. 1 “Reason in Common Sense,” ch. 4 (1905-06)
(Source)
Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) French writer, aviator
Pilote de Guerre [Flight to Arras] (1942)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Carl Sagan (1934-1996) American scientist and writer
Cosmos (1980)
Parallels a comment by Marcello Truzzi, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
Orthodoxy, ch. 5 (1908)
Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood — we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.
Jean Rostand (1894-1977) French biologist, philosopher
Pensées d’un Biologiste (1939)
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
(Attributed) [tr.Wenckstern (1853)]
(Source)
An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings]
I believe that this Republic will endure for many centuries. If so there will doubtless be among its Presidents Protestants and Catholics, and very probably at some time, Jews. I have consistently tried while President to act in relation to my fellow Americans of Catholic faith as I hope that any future President who happens to be Catholic will act towards his fellow Americans of Protestant faith. Had I followed any other course I should have felt that I was unfit to represent the American people.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Letter to J.C. Martin (9 Nov. 1908)
To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any church, is an outrage against that liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Letter to J. C. Martin (9 Nov 1908)
(Source)
I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be nonsectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Knights of Columbus, New York City (12 Oct 1915)
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech, Washington, DC (1865)
Most commonly attributed to a speech in Washington (1865), but also recalled by Joseph Gillespie (author, long-time friend) regarding pardons for some deserters in the summer of 1864 (The Lincoln Memorial: Album-Immortelles, ed. O. Oldroyd, 1882)
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. To attain this I would put priests to work, also, and turn the temples into schools.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) Indian nationalist leader, politician, statesman, author
Quoted in Edgar Snow, Journey to the Beginning
If I had a message to my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success …. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted. If a university concentrates on producing successful people, it is lamentably failing in its obligation to society and to the students themselves.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) French-American religious and writer [a.k.a. Fr. M. Louis]
(Attributed)
quoted in Kiefer, Thomas Merton: Monk, Poet, Spiritual Writer
Suffering did not ennoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, mean, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things … it made them less than men.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
The Summing Up, ch. 19 (1938)
On his experiences as a medical student and the patients he observed.
Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
“A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” letter to the Virginia Assembly (20 Jun 1785)
On a proposed law to have the state financially support "Teachers of the Christian Religion." Full text.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“Hallam’s Constitutional History,” Edinburgh Review (Sep 1828)
(Source)
Review of Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England, from the Accession of Henry VII to George II (1827).
The care of souls cannot belong to the civil magistrate.
John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher
“A Letter Concerning Toleration” (1689)
Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.
Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966) Polish aphorist, poet, satirist
Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane] (1957) [tr. Gałązka (1962)]
(Source)
Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?
Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966) Polish aphorist, poet, satirist
(Attributed)
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White (1899-1985) American author, critic, humorist [Elwyn Brooks White]
Recalled on his death, Newsweek (14 Oct 1985)
Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.
Bill Cosby (b. 1937) American comedian
Fatherhood, ch. 1 (1986)
Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Jingo (1999)
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
(Spurious)
Frequently quoted, but does not appear in the record of Lincoln's writings or in any first person account.
It takes a clever man to hide his cleverness.
[C’est une grande habileté que de savoir cacher son habileté.]
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims], ¶245 (1678) [tr. Heard (1917), ¶253]
(Source)
In the 1665 edition, this read: Le plus grand art d’un habile homme est celui de savoir cacher son habileté.
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:
It is a Great Act of Wisdom to be able to Conceal one's being Wise.
[tr. Stanhope (1694), ¶246]
It requires no small degree of ability to know when to conceal it.
[pub. Donaldson (1783), "Ability," ¶4]
It is a great ability to be able to conceal one's ability.
[ed. Gowens (1851), ¶257]
There is great ability in knowing how to conceal one's ability.
[tr. Bund/Friswell (1871), ¶245]
It is the height of art to conceal art.
[tr. Stevens (1939), ¶245]
A very clever man will know how to hide his cleverness.
[tr. FitzGibbon (1957), ¶245]
It is exceedingly clever to know how to hide your cleverness.
[tr. Kronenberger (1959), ¶245]
To conceal ingenuity is ingenuity indeed.
[tr. Tancock (1959), ¶245]
It is great cleverness to know how to hide our cleverness.
[tr. Whichello (2016), ¶245]
I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.
Stanislaw Lec (1909-1966) Polish aphorist, poet, satirist
Unkempt Thoughts [Myśli nieuczesane] (1957) [tr. Gałązka (1962)]
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
[Al varón sabio más le aprovechan sus enemigos que al necio sus amigos.]
Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 84 (1647) [tr. Jacobs (1892)]
(Source)
See also Aristophanes. (Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:
The wise man draws more advantage from his Enemies, than the fool does from his Friends.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]
To a wise man, his enemies avail him more, than to a fool, his friends.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]
The wise person finds enemies more useful than the fool finds friends.
[tr. Maurer (1992)]
