WIST Quotations

Garfield, James A. -- Letter to Professor Demmon (16 Dec 1871)

Dave — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 16:32:04 +0000

The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) US President (1881), lawyer, lay preacher, educator
Letter to Professor Demmon (16 Dec 1871)

Lee, Harper -- To Kill a Mockingbird, ch. 20 (1960)

Dave — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 21:56:35 +0000

I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is an ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.

Harper Lee (1926–2016) American writer [Nellie Harper Lee]
To Kill a Mockingbird, ch. 20 (1960)

Tolkien, J.R.R. -- Notes on W. H. Auden’s review of Return of the King (1956)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

There are also conflicts about important things or ideas. In such cases I am more impressed by the extreme importance of being on the right side, than I am disturbed by the revelation of the jungle of confused motives, private purposes, and individual actions (noble or base) in which the right and the wrong in actual human conflicts are commonly involved.

J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
Notes on W. H. Auden’s review of Return of the King (1956)

Auden's review: "At the End of the Quest, Victory," New York Times Book Review (1956-01-22).

Tolkien never sent or shared these notes. Reprinted in Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #183 (1981).