Journalists From England

"A pompous man easily sweeps away the suggestions of those beneath him."

"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. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others."

"A constitutional sovereign must in the common course of government be a man of but common ability. I am afraid, looking to the early acquired feebleness of hereditary dynasties, that we must expect him to be a man of inferior ability. Theory and experience both teach that the education of a prince can be but a poor education, and that a royal family will generally have less ability than other families."

"But the Queen has no such veto; She must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her."

"The masses of Englishmen are not fit for an elective government."

"The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations."

"Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm."

"Cabinet governments educate the nation; the presidential does not educate it, and may corrupt it."

"A cabinet is a combining committee,—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other."

"No orator ever made an impression by appealing to men as to their plainest physical wants, except when he could allege that those wants were caused by some one’s tyranny. But thousands have made the greatest impression by appealing to some vague dream of glory, or empire, or nationality."

"An ancient and ever-altering constitution is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness clothes in the fashion of his youth: what you see of him is the same; what you do not see is wholly altered."

"In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too."

"But the mass of the old electors did not analyse very much: they liked to have one of their "betters" to represent them; if he was rich they respected him much; and if he was a lord, they liked him the better. The issue put before these electors was, which of two rich people will you choose? And each of those rich people was put forward by great parties whose notions were the notions of the rich—whose plans were their plans. The electors only selected one or two wealthy men to carry out the schemes of one or two wealthy associations."

"A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them."

"A new Constitution does not produce its full effect as long as all its subjects were reared under an old Constitution, as long as its statesmen were trained by that old Constitution. It is not really tested till it comes to be worked by statesmen and among a people neither of whom are guided by a different experience."

"... Satan is made interesting. This has been the charge of a thousand orthodox and even heterodox writers against Milton."

"... Nothing is so simple as the subject matter of his works. The two greatest of his creations, the character of Satan and the character of Eve, are two of the simplest—the latter probably the very simplest—in the whole field of literature. On this side, Milton's art is classical. On the other hand, in no writer is the imagery more profuse, the illustrations more various, the dress altogether more splendid; and in this respect the style of his art seems romantic and modern. In real truth, however, it is only ancient art in a modern disguise: the dress is a mere dress, and can be stripped off when we will.—we all of us do perhaps in memory strip it off for ourselves."

"... For ancient heroes the exhaustive method is possible: all that can be known of them is contained in a few short passages of Greek and Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said about every one of these; the result would not be unreasonably bulky, though it might be dull. But in the case of men who have lived in the thick of the crowded modern world, no such course is admissible; overmuch may be said, and we must choose what we will say. Biographers, however, are rarely bold enough to adopt the selective method consistently. They have, we suspect, the fear of the critics before their eyes."

"... The fame of Gibbon is highest among writers; those especially who have studied for years particular periods included in his theme (and how many those are; for in the East and West he has set his mark on all that is great for ten centuries!) acutely feel and admiringly observe how difficult it would be to say so much, and leave so little untouched ; to compress so many telling points; to present in so few words so apt and embracing a narrative of the whole."

"... Practical people have little idea of the practical ability required to write a large book, and especially a large history. Long before you get to the pen, there is an immensity of pure business: heaps of material are strewn every where; but they lie in disorder, unread, uncatalogued, unknown. It seems a dreary waste of life to be analysing, indexing, extracting works and passages, in which one per cent of the contents are interesting, and not half of that per centage will ultimately appear in the flowing narrative."

"Whatever may be the defects of Gibbon's history, none can deny him a proud precision and a style in marching order."

"The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling."

"Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us."

"The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum."

"Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known."

"I can think of a number of poets who have written great poetry, only of a very few whom I should call great verse writers. And unless I am mistaken, Kipling's position in this class is not only high but unique."

"An immense gift for using words, an amazing curiosity and power of observation with his mind and with all his senses, the mask of the entertainer, and beyond that a queer gift of second sight, of transmitting messages from elsewhere, a gift so disconcerting when we are made aware of it that thenceforth we are never sure when it is not present: all this makes Kipling a writer impossible wholly to understand and quite impossible to belittle."

"His poems in their quantity, their limitation to one feeling at a time, have the air of brilliant tactical improvisations to overcome sudden unforeseen obstacles, as if, for Kipling, experience were not a seed to cultivate patiently and lovingly, but an unending stream of dangerous feelings to be immediately mastered as they appear."

"Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story."

"... it's always best to tell the truth."

"... scandals are only increased by hushing them up."

"I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all; to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert, or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them."

"That's the secret. '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 walk down a street."

"Boots—boots—boots—boots—movin' up and down again! There's no discharge in the war!"

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

"Who hath desired the Sea?—the sight of salt water unbounded— The heave and the halt and the hurl and the crash of the comber wind-hounded?"

"God gave all men all earth to love, But since our hearts are small, Ordained for each one spot should prove Belovèd over all."

"Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end; Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise, Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice."

"And what did ye look they should compass? Warcraft learned in a breath, Knowledge unto occasion at the first far view of Death? So? And ye train your horses and the dogs ye feed and prize? How are the beasts more worthy than the souls, your sacrifice? But ye said, “Their valour shall show them”; but ye said, “The end is close.” And ye sent them comfits and pictures to help them harry your foes: And ye vaunted your fathomless power, and ye flaunted your iron pride, Ere—ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men who could shoot and ride! Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented your souls With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals."

"“True. True talk,” said Kim solemnly. “Fools speak of a cat when a woman is brought to bed, for instance. I have heard them.”"

"It was our fault, and our very great fault—and now we must turn it to use. We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse."

"Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should, We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good."

"Take up the White Man's burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need."

"A Nation spoke to a Nation, A Queen sent word to a Throne: ‘Daughter am I in my mother's house, But mistress in my own. The gates are mine to open, As the gates are mine to close, And I set my house in order,' Said our Lady of the Snows."

"When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre, He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea; An' what he thought 'e might require, 'E went an' took—the same as me!"

"We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low. Will you never let us go?"

"When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors."

"Ever the wide world over, lass, Ever the trail held true, Over the world and under the world, And back at the last to you."

"Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; 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.""

"If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine."