Journalists From England

"[He is] one of the heroes of the struggle, one of the ablest men they had and the most courageous Member who had ever been returned. ... He had made sacrifices and had run risks which few realised in the part which he had taken in this struggle—the greatest that England had passed through, he thought, for a century."

"[I am delighted] that my native city is honouring itself today by conferring its highest distinction upon the greatest Liberal publicist of the day."

"Truth like everything else should be economised."

"Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it."

"I think the best thing the Manchester Guardian has done in my time was to oppose the Boer War... We were together there."

"A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred."

"Free Trade in the sense in which we have always understood it is either a sound economic policy or it is not. Judging by results in national prosperity I should have thought it would take a lot of disproving, but the Tories are ready to play fast and lose with it and some of our own people who ought to know far better seem ready to back them up. If there is any future for the Liberal party it surely rests on the rock of Free Trade."

"Since war is a vulgar business it was right that the leading unofficial recruiter should have been the greatest vulgarian of the day. Horatio Bottomley, editor of John Bull, was sufficiently moved by the spirit of 1914 to inform his friends that he was making a complete break with his 'sordid past'. His ambition was to be Director of Recruiting, preferably with a seat in the Cabinet, but he was tactfully assured by Asquith that he would be more use to the country in an unofficial capacity. The public who cheered the patriotic speeches of the People's Tribune were unaware of the high fees he received for delivering them (between £50 and £100 a meeting, sometimes more)."

"When Harriet Martineau, a reformer of the 1830s, wrote Society in America, one reviewer suggested it be kept away from women: "Such reading will unsettle them for their true station and pursuits, and they will throw the world back again into confusion.""

"Well, damn it all, it's only sixpence, I know, but I suppose he has to begin somewhere."

"Lord Brougham remarked that the works of Harriet Martineau upon Political Economy were not excelled by those of any political writer of the present time. The first few chapters of her "Society in America," her views of a Republic, and of government generally, furnish evidence of woman's capacity to embrace subjects of universal interest."

"Women's position has variously been likened to that of the slaves, oppressed ethnic or racial minorities, or economically deprived groups. But these comparisons quickly prove inadequate. The slave comparison obviously was a rhetorical device rather than a factual statement even at the time when Harriet Martineau first made it."

"We talked over many things and persons. She is a heroine, or to speak more truly her fine sense and her lofty principles, with the sincerest religion, give her a fortitude that is noble to the best height of heroism."

"I have not had your advantages, gentlemen. What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life."

"Only a little over a quarter of a century ago women were allowed to enter very few remunerative occupations. In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country to study its institutions, that she might be able to forecast the type of civilization to be evolved from them, she especially investigated the position of women in the young republic. She was surprised to find the occupying a very subordinate position in a country calling itself free, and to find they had entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed to teach, to be seamstresses, which included tailoring, dress-making, and millinery; they could keep boarding-houses, enter domestic service, become operatives in factories, compositors in printing offices, and folders and stitchers in book binderies."

"He [Hans Christian Andersen] met a deaf lady with a long ear-trumpet at a garden party; she wrote "political things," and after talking to her he had to lie down the whole afternoon; it was the redoubtable Miss Martineau."

"I think I neglected to record that I saw Miss Martineau, a few weeks since. She is a large, robust (one might almost say bouncing) elderly woman, very coarse of aspect, and plainly dressed; but withal, so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face, that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is of a decided gray; and she does not shrink from calling herself an old woman. She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook; and very lively and sensible too;—and all the while she talks, she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself. The ear-trumpet seems like a sensitive part of her, like the feelers of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you. All her talk was about herself and her affairs; but it did not seem like egotism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbidness. And this woman is an Atheist, and thinks, I believe, that the principle of life will become extinct, when her great, fat, well-to-do body is laid in the grave. I will not think so, were it only for her sake;—only a few weeds to spring out of her fat mortality, instead of her intellect and sympathies flowering and fruiting forever!"

"I hope you have contradicted the story of my writing to Miss Martineau. I cannot understand how it originated except in some communication of yours to Miss M. which you intended to be serviceable to me. You must have made this communication in a moment of hallucination as to Miss M's character. Amongst her good qualities we certainly cannot reckon zeal for other people's reputation. She is sure to caricature any information for the amusement of the next person to whom she turns her ear-trumpet."

"No, reaping."

"Miss Martineau had been extremely kind to me... Well, she is the sort of woman that would have made a good matron in an hospital."

"After all, she is a trump—the only Englishwoman that possesses thoroughly the art of writing."

"M——, having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, "Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock, and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay.""

"Fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can be only a false modesty which can be thus endangered."

"What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honourable, than that of teaching?"

"For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen … than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe."

"If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power."

"What a visitation! Miss Martineau is the more formidable friend, however—Mrs. Jameson will be contented with a little confidence, you see, and ask no questions—but I doubt if you arrange matters so easily with the newcomer. Because no great delicacy can be kept alive with all that conceit—and such conceit! A lady told me a few weeks ago that she had seen a letter in which Miss M. gave as her reason for not undertaking then, during the London season, this very journey which empty London is to benefit from now, "that at such a time she should be mobbed to death": whereupon the lady went on to comment, "Miss M. little knows what London is, and how many nearly as notable objects may be found to divert its truculence from herself"—Tom Thumb, and Ibrahim Pacha, to wit."

"Of all these ornamented human creatures the one I take most delight in is Harriet Martineau. The horrid picture in Fraser with the cat looking over its shoulder was not a bit like; and the Artist deserved to have been hanged and quartered for so vile a calumny. Neither does the idea generally formed of the woman merely from her reputation as a Political Economist do her more justice than that picture! They may call her what they please, but it is plain to me and to everybody of common sense (as my Uncle Robert said) that she is distinctly good-looking, warm-hearted even to a pitch of romance, witty as well as wise, very entertaining and entertainable in spite of the deadening and killing appendage of an ear-trumpet, and finally, as "our Mother" used to finish off a good character, "very fond of ME.""

"Bottomley...was a genial rascal and took the line that people who were fools enough to be duped by his swindles deserved all they got."

"Members rise from CMG (known sometimes in Whitehall as "Call Me God") to KCMG ("Kindly Call Me God") to GCMG ("God Calls Me God")."

"Once you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble."

"In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation."

"The Buddhas who have been and who shall be, of these am I and what they did, I do."

"Below the highest sphere four Regents sit Who rule our world, and under them are zones Nearer, but high, where saintliest spirits dead Wait thrice ten thousand years, then live again; And on Lord Buddha, waiting in that sky, Came for our sakes the five sure signs of birth So that the Devas knew the signs, and said "Buddha will go again to help the World." "Yea!" spake He, "now I go to help the World. This last of many times; for birth and death End hence for me and those who learn my Law. I will go down among the Sakyas, Under the southward snows of Himalay, Where pious people live and a just King.""

"We are the voices of the wandering wind, Which moan for rest and rest can never find; Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life, A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife."

"Birthless and deathless and changeless remainaineth the spirit forever; Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!"

"He who died at Azan sends This to comfort all his friends:— Faithful friends! It lies I know Pale and white and cold as snow; And ye say, 'Abdallah’s dead!' Weeping at the feet and head. I can see your falling tears, I can hear your sighs and prayers; Yet I smile and whisper this: I am not the thing you kiss. Cease your tears and let it lie; It was mine—it is not I."

"Now, when our Lord was come to eighteen years, The King commanded that there should be built Three stately houses, one of hewn square beams With cedar lining, warm for winter days; One of veined marbles, cool for summer heat; And one of burned bricks, with blue tiles bedecked, Pleasant at seed-time, when the champaks bud-- Subha, Suramma, Ramma, were their names. Delicious gardens round about them bloomed, Streams wandered wild and musky thickets stretched, With many a bright pavilion and fair lawn In midst of which Siddartha strayed at will, Some new delight provided every hour; And happy hours he knew, for life was rich, With youthful blood at quickest; yet still came The shadows of his meditation back, As the lake's silver dulls with driving clouds."

"It may be we shall know in the hereafter Why we, begetting hopes, give birth to fears, And why the world's too beautiful for laughter, Too gross for tears."

"He is the happy wanderer, who goes, Singing upon the way, with eyes awake To every scene, with ears alert to take The sweetness of all sounds; who loves and knows The secrets of the highway, and the rose Holds fairer for the wounds that briars make."

"Like everything the British poet Edwin Arnold wrote, The Light of Asia was quickly written: a poem in eight books of about five hundred lines each, mostly in blank verse, composed over a period of several months when Arnold was busy with other concerns. Immediately upon its publication in the summer of 1879, the poem began to sell copies and win attention. It was a life of Siddhartha Gautama, told from the point of view of “an Indian Buddhist” (so read the title page) in high English style. The immediate sensation surrounding The Light of Asia was remarkable: for some time on both sides of the Atlantic, newspapers and dining rooms were charged with discussion about the Buddha, his teaching, and Arnold’s presentation of Buddhism. The book’s success was also sustained. By 1885 the authorized English version had gone through thirty editions. Pirated editions, which went for as little as three cents in the U.S., make a count of the book’s circulation impossible, but it has been estimated at a million copies (not far short of Huckleberry Finn). After thirty years it had become one of the undisputed bestsellers of Victorian England and America, had been translated into a number of languages (German, Dutch, French, Czech, Italian, Swedish, Esperanto), and had inspired a stage version and even an opera."

"We shall lodge at the sign of the Grave, you say; Well, the road is a long one we trudge, my friend, So why should we grieve at the break of the day? Let us sing, let us drink, let us love, let us play,-- We can keep our sights for the journey's end."

"Arnold’s great project was a blank verse poem based loosely on the Lalitavistara Sutra. It ran for forty-one thousand words and was composed in eight volumes and published in 1879 as the Light of Asia: the Great Renunciation. The Light of Asia was an instant success and would capture the English speaking imagination. It would be reprinted numerous times in England and the United States. The best estimate I could find was sixty editions in England and another eighty in the US. The Light has also been translated into many languages, including Hindi. But, most importantly, it is generally credited as the first book to bring the life and teachings of Gautama Siddhartha broadly to the attention of the English speaking public."

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

"And where is now that palace gone, All the magical skill'd stone, All the dreaming towers wrought By Love as if no more than thought The unresisting marble was? How could such a wonder pass? Ah, it was but built in vain Against the stupid horns of Rome, That pusht down into the common loam The loveliness that shone in Spain. But we have raised it up again! A loftier palace, fairer far, Is ours, and one that fears no war. Safe in marvellous walls we are; Wondering sense like builded fires, High amazement of desires, Delight and certainty of love, Closing around, roofing above Our unapproacht and perfect hour Within the splendours of love's power."

"The glory of the king of all the kings. You with the golden power on your brows, You kings, I think you know not what you are. First you shall learn yourselves: for neither light Understandeth itself, nor darkness light."

"Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh Sodden of infants: and no hope alive Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish Until Assyrian swords drown it in death."

"The media, I tell pedants in the Government, is like an oil painting. Close up, it looks like nothing on earth. Stand back and you get the drift."

"Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory."

"Blood sport is brought to its ultimate refinement in the gossip columns."