Journalists From Scotland

"[On government ministers falling out with "special interest" groups] Very few health secretaries are going to be toasted by doctors, very few educational secretaries are going to get apples from teachers and very few secretary of states in this role are going to get Fortnum & Mason hampers sent to them by the Home Builders Federation."

"In the end, the desolate age always turns instinctively to Classicism, which if nothing else legislates against certain kinds of disappointment."

"The audience will always feel far more generous if, as some point in the evening, a little time has been found for them to applaud themselves."

"I never fail to be mystified by those who regard the revision of a former opinion as a sign of weakness."

"Yes, I know Marcus Aurelius or Vauvenargues or Chesterton has already said this, and far better; but let’s face it—you weren’t listening then either."

"Postmodernism will soon be confirmed as the American academic orthodoxy because it permits, ultimately, the summary dismissal of that last great inconvenience to the free and democratic intellect: the primary text."

"My late friend hated book-jackets, and ripped them all off immediately. I think he felt, somehow, that the book was still trying to sell him its contents after he had paid for it (or turn him in, if he had stolen it). Dejacketed, the book is anonymous and valueless. To translate something immediately into this state is an unequivocal act of proprietorship. You remove a book-jacket just as you make a lover naked: before their complete possession, they must be removed from the currency."

"I’m always amused by those commentators who nervously insist that the working class’s constant use of the word fuck is really just “a form of punctuation.” It is, however, no more or less then what they dread: an inexhaustible river of smelted wrath, a Phlegethon of ancestral grievance."

"The so-called citizen journalism is the spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night. It is fantastic at times but it is not going to replace journalism. ... Most of the blogging is too angry and too abusive. Terrible things are said online because they are anonymous. People say things online that they wouldn't dream of saying in person."

"As the night wore on, it became clearer this was not just a simple Tories-out, Labour-in story. The more we look in detail, the more this seems like the night of the great insurgency – a multi-sided protest and revolt against politics as usual. The British public was sending the political class, Labour included, a message which could be summed up as: we, not you, are the masters now, and for a very long time to come."

"I'd very rarely quote George Galloway as an authority, but when he describes Rochdale as "tinder dry, waiting for a spark" I am afraid – very much afraid – he isn't wrong."

"In history, the arrival of a small man in a big hat is rarely good news."

"Business never rests."

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people."

"a brilliant journalist"

"Until my imprisonment I had believed that except for Albert Parsons, Dyer D. Lum, Voltairine de Cleyre, and a few others America was barren of idealists. Her men and women cared only for material acquisitions, I had thought. Swinton's account of the liberty-loving people who had been and still were in every struggle against oppression changed my superficial judgment. John Swinton made me see that Americans, once aroused, were as capable of idealism and sacrifice as my Russian heroes and heroines. I left the Swintons with a new faith in the possibilities of America."

"There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

"You did late review my lays, Crusty Christopher; You did mingle blame and praise, Rusty Christopher. When I learnt from whom it came, I forgave you all the blame, Musty Christopher; I could _not_ forgive the praise, Fusty Christopher."

"Music is the universal language of mankind."

"It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr. John, back to "plasters, pills, and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry."

"A singular relation...grew up between Carlyle and Lockhart. They lived in different circles; they did not meet often, or correspond often; but Carlyle ever after spoke of Lockhart as he seldom spoke of any man; and such letters of Lockhart's to Carlyle as survive show a trusting confidence extremely remarkable in a man who was so chary of his esteem."

"We thought it impossible any publication could raise Sir Walter Scott's talents or character in public opinion or in our private opinion more especially. And yet you certainly have raised high as ever biographer raised his hero — And you have done it without one word of puff or exaggeration or even full-faced eulogy. Sir Walter Scott himself would say — “Well done — my good son.”"

"Lockhart's Life of Walter Scott may be said to be the most admirable biography in the English language, after Boswell's Samuel Johnson."

"Here lies the peerless paper lord, Lord Peter, Who broke the laws of God and man, and metre."

"Barring drink and the girls, I ne'er heard of a sin – Many worse, better few, than bright, broken Maginn."

"It is an old belief That on some solemn shore Beyond the sphere of grief Dear friends shall meet once more."

"A male Horace Walpole."

"It is strange that no one seems to think it at all necessary to say a single word about another new school of poetry which has of late sprung up among us. This school has not, I believe, as yet received any name; but if I may be permitted to have the honour of christening it, it may henceforth be referred to by the designation of The Cockney School."

"The present moment is ever the critical time. The future is merely for intelligent forethought."

"Publishers are humane men, and rarely commit crimes. Authors, however, are a hardened set, who usually perpertrate a felony every time they issue a book."

"Of all evil-doers, the American is most to be feared. He uses more ingenuity in the planning of his projects and will take greater risks in carrying them out than any other malefactor on earth."

"Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate; Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate."

"And the difficultest job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that's the proper thing for you. It's a naked child against a hungry wolf; It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It's walking on a string across a gulf With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; But the thing is daily done by many and many a one. And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck."

"Seraphs and saints with one great voice Welcomed that soul that knew not fear. Amazed to find it could rejoice, Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer."

"My feet are heavy now but on I go, My head erect beneath the tragic years."

"That minister of ministers, Imagination, gathers up The undiscovered Universe, Like jewels in a jasper cup."

"Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair That went before me still and made the pace. The earth is full of graves, and mine was there Before my life began; my resting-place."

"Mere by-blows are the world and we, And time within eternity A sheer anachronism."

"One must become Fanatic – be a wedge – a thunder-bolt To smite a passage through the close-grained world."

"Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies: Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more In every branch becomes the sale of money."

"Andrew Lang's marvelous Tales of Troy and Greece...fired my imagination as a child, in an unforgettable way."

"Here’s a pot with a cot in a park In a park where the peach-blossoms blew, Where the lovers eloped in the dark, Lived, died and were changed into two Bright birds that eternally flew Through the boughs of the may, as they sang; ’T is a tale was undoubtedly true In the reign of the Emperor Hwang."

"There’s a joy without canker or cark, There’s a pleasure eternally new, ’T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that’s ancient and blue."

"Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-posts—for support rather than illumination."

"Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough, Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining."

"If indeed there be a god in heaven."

"They hear like ocean on a western beach The surge and thunder of the Odyssey."

"I loved the Andrew Lang books"

"The windy lights of Autumn flare; I watch the moonlit sails go by; I marvel how men toil and fare, The weary business that they play! Their voyaging is vanity, And fairy gold is all their gain, And all the winds of winter cry, “My Love returns no more again.”"

"I feel convinced that every man has given him of God much more than he has any idea of, and that he can help on the world's work more than he knows of. What we want is the single eye that will see what our work is, the humility to accept it, however lowly, the faith to do it for God, the perseverance to go on till death."