Non Fiction Authors From England

"Go, then, young men, where glory waits you. The field is the world. Go where the abjects wander, and gather them into the fold of the sanctuary. Go to the lazarettos where the moral lepers herd, and tell them of the healing balm. Go to the haunts of crime, and float a gospel message upon the feculent air. Go wherever there are ignorant to be instructed, timid to be cheered, and helpless to be succored, and stricken to be blessed, and erring to be reclaimed. Go wherever faith can see, or hope can breathe, or love can work, or courage can venture. Go and win the spurs of your spiritual knighthood there."

"Do not mourn the past, my brother; it has given place to better times. Do not dread the coming of the future; it shall dawn in brighter and safer glory. Come, and upon the altars of the faith be anointed as the Daniels of to-day, at once the prophet and the worker — the brow bright with the shining prophecy, the hands full of earnest and of holy deeds."

"Though to us — the toilers — it is night still, to Him — the Master who watcheth our labor, and to them — our fellows whose labor is done — "there is light with a clear sky." Though to us, down below, there is but the deafening roar, the shriek of discord, the wail of pain, blent in one jargon of strange sounds which have no chime; to them, above in the high, calm silence, there are heard only the striking of the hour which tells of the sure speed of time, and the voice of the joy-bells already ringing for the world's great bridal."

"Ye are born, all of you, to a royal birthright. Scorn not the poor, thou wealthy — his toil is nobler than thy luxury. Fret not at the rich, thou poor — his beneficence is comelier than thy murmuring. Join hands, both of you, rich and poor together, as ye toil in the brotherhood of God's great harvest-field — heirs of a double heritage — thou poor, of thy kingly labor — thou rich, of thy queenly charity — and let heaven bear witness to the bridal."

"Not only do we witness on the Holy Mount the installation of the royal lawgiver, but of the great high-priest. It is a grand valedictory service in which He is re-ordained to duty — as the banners are blessed before the army marches to the field. And the voice speaks from heaven as a sovereign gives audience to a chosen commander, and cheers him with the encouragement of royal favor. With what reverence, brethren, should we, sinners, look upon the scene! As we see Him standing alone upon the mountain — fresh from His ordination of glory — calm and kingly in His heaven-imparted strength; and then as we see Him, with firm step, treading the dark avenue which, through desertion, agony, insult, abandonment, terminates in His death upon the cross — surely our distrust should vanish, and in reliance on such a champion we should have "joy in believing." Surely our indignation against the vile sin which made all this suffering necessary should be roused within us. Surely our hearts should bound with a fervor of devotion and gratitude which the obedience of a lifetime can only inadequately express."

"We may not substitute charity for godliness; but there is room for the Divine love in the heart which has been touched by the human."

"God has taught in the Scriptures the lesson of a universal brotherhood, and man must not gainsay the teaching. Shivering in the ice-bound or scorching in the tropical regions; in the lap of luxury or in the wild hardihood of the primeval forest; belting the globe in a tired search for rest, or quieting through life in the heart of ancestral woods; gathering all the decencies around him like a garment, or battling in fierce raid of crime against a world which has disowned him, there is an inner humanness which binds me to that man by a primitive and indissoluble bond. He is my brother, and I cannot dissever the relationship. He is my brother, and I cannot release myself from the obligation to do him good."

"I agree with you, that he was a Man of Erudition, and a very polite Writer; he has display'd a copious Imagination, and a fine Turn of thinking, in courtly Language and nervous Expressions: But as, on the one hand, it must be confess'd, that his Sentiments on Liberty and Humanity are noble and sublime, and that there is nothing trite or vulgar in the Characteristicks; so, on the other, it cannot be denied, that the Ideas he had form'd of the Goodness and Excellency of our Nature, were as romantick and chimerical as they are beautiful and amiable; that he labour'd hard to unite two Contraries that can never be reconcil'd together, Innocence of Manners and worldly Greatness; that to compass this End he favour'd Deism, and, under Pretence of lashing Priestcraft and Superstition, attack'd the Bible it self; and lastly, that by ridiculing many Passages of Holy Writ, he seems to have endeavour'd to sap the Foundation of all reveal'd Religion, with Design of establishing Heathen Virtue on the Ruins of Christianity."

"A Right Mind, and Generous Affection, [has] more Beauty and Charm, than all other Symmetrys in the World besides."

"The Taste of Beauty, and the Relish of what is decent, just, and amiable, perfects the Character of the Gentleman, and the Philosopher. And the Study of such a Taste or Relish will, as we suppose, be ever the great Employment and Concern of him, who covets as well to be wise and good, as agreeable and polite."

"'Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper which must form the Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, 'tis not a Head merely, but a Heart and Resolution which must compleat the real Philosopher."

"Truly … as accidental as my Life may be, or as that random Humour is, which governs it; I know nothing, after all, so real or substantial as My-Self. Therefore if there be that Thing you call a Substance, I take for granted I am one. But for anything further relating to this Question, you know my Sceptick Principles: I determine neither way."

"Never did any Soul do good, but it came readier to do the same again, with more Enjoyment. Never was Love, or Gratitude, or Bounty practis'd but with increasing Joy, which made the Practiser still more in love with the fair Act."

"'Tis the hardest thing in the world to be a good Thinker, without being a strong Self-Examiner."

"The most natural Beauty in the World is Honesty, and Moral Truth. For all Beauty is Truth. True Features make the Beauty of a Face; and true Proportions the Beauty of Architecture; as true Measures that of Harmony and Musick."

"True courage…has so little to do with Anger, that there lies always the strongest Suspicion against it, where this Passion is highest. The true Courage is the cool and calm. The bravest of Men have the least of a brutal bullying Insolence; and in the very time of Danger are found the most serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can make a Coward forget himself and fight. But what is done in Fury, or Anger, can never be plac’d to the account of Courage."

"All Politeness is owing to Liberty. We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Mens Understandings."

"Truth, 'tis suppos'd, may bear all Lights: and one of those principal Lights or natural Mediums, by which Things are to be view'd, in order to a thorow Recognition, is Ridicule it-self, or that Manner of Proof by which we discern whatever is liable to just Raillery in any Subject."

"We may have an excellent Ear in Musick, without being able to perform in any kind. We may judg well of Poetry, without being Poets, or possessing the least of a Poetick Vein: But we can have no tolerable Notion of Goodness, without being tolerably good."

"Gravity is of the very Essence of Imposture. It does not only make us mistake other Things, but is apt perpetually almost to mistake it-self."

"How comes it to pass then, that we appear such Cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the Test of Ridicule?"

"Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance."

"'Twas the saying of [Georgias Leontinus apud Arist. Rhetor. lib. 3. cap. 18… which the Translator renders, Seria Risu, Risum Seriis discutere] an ancient sage that humour was the only test of gravity, and gravity of humour. For a subject which would not bear raillery was suspicious; and a jest which would not bear a serious examination was certainly false wit."

"Through certain humors or passions, and from temper merely, a man may be completely miserable, let his outward circumstances be ever so fortunate."

""Have we discovered our Galaxy yet?" And I think the answer to this question is "No, not quite". There is plenty of work ahead for the next generation of astronomers."

"But there are still many unanswered questions. The halo that surrounds our Galaxy is one mystery region... The centre of the Galaxy hides even more secrets."

"If John Logie Baird had been born in 1971 would he have been a genius? The only thing we know with any certainty is that he wouldn't have invented the television. Some people believe he would have still established his genius; that he would have simply found another arena in which to work. I disagree. I think he would have been distracted from such brainy pursuits by all that television."

"Mr. Surtees, a well-known country gentleman, who was passionately devoted to the healthy sport of fox-hunting, and gifted with a keen spirit of manly humour of a Rabelaisian tinge."

"On the one hand, Surtees was a man of the eighteenth century—hence Thackeray's understanding of him; on the other, he was an amateur who dealt almost entirely with background figures, the great Jorrocks excepted. He was deeply knowing about English sporting life, the squirearchy and the law, but he did not construct the melodramas and elaborate plots of the other Victorian novelists, nor did he issue their moralisings. He often excelled them in the recording of ordinary speech and day-to-day incident. He is fresher than the masters, but he is artless. A good deal of his humour is the humour of shrewd sayings which, later on, we find in Kipling. His original contribution is in the field of invective. Surtees has a truly Elizabethan power of denunciation."

"The recent volume of Siegfried Sassoon's Diaries finds him making a doomed effort to convert his fellow-guests at Garsington: but he tells us elsewhere how ‘when I mentioned him to Arnold Bennett, he merely enquired “Can he ... really be perused?” Whereupon I went straight to a bookseller's near the Reform Club and ordered Sponge and Romford to be sent to him. A few days later I received a postcard. “Many thanks for putting me right on Surtees. Romford is the real thing.”’"

"I am reading Ask Mamma by Surtees... Despite my hatred of blood sports, I find him highly amusing (and he always lets the hares escape, have you noticed?)."

"At last he was driven to paw over a few score books in a panelled room called the library... He opened and thrust them back, one after another, till crude coloured illustrations of men on horses held his eye. He began at random and read a little, moved into the drawing-room with the volume, and settled down by the fire still reading. It was a foul world into which he peeped for the first time—a heavy-eating, hard-drinking hell of horse-copers, swindlers, matchmaking mothers, economically dependent virgins selling themselves blushingly for cash and lands: Jews, tradesmen, and an ill-considered spawn of Dickens-and-horsedung characters (I give Midmore's own criticism), but he read on, fascinated."

"How often those of us for whom Surtees, in blue or in red, is an old and often visited friend have seen a film of obstinate resistance cross the faces of people to whom we sought to introduce him! "Hm, Facey Romford and all that interminably tedious ‘huntin’' stuff"—so, in their wicked innocence, they say. Here and there, brave, curious spirits among them have been persuaded to go picknicking on the seaside downs in the sweltering summer of the year of the Comet and to attend Mr. O'Dicey's little dinner in Plain or Ringlets. They have travelled in a real coach (with no Dickensian romantic nonsense about it) through the opening chapter of Ask Mamma. With Mr. Sponge they have watched now vanished sights from the Jermyn Street of the cigar divans to Lord Scamperdale's lair. And they have been amused, in the company of Mr. Jorrocks, by more things than fox-hunting."

"Surtees was himself a country squire from the deep North... He had all the prejudices of his kind. He hated the fashionable places and people and smart society, he was suspicious of any kind of cleverness. He was prickly and hard, he had little compassion except for dogs and horses... Surtees prefers crooks to fools, because they are hard, because, as he thinks, they have no illusions... He has no self-consciousness, as man or writer. He is not afraid of anybody and rolls no logs. To read him is to escape for an hour or two from eye-wash and cant into an atmosphere as brisk as one of his hunting mornings, sharp and raw, highly unflattering to everything in sight, faces, hedges, trees, nibbled pasture and greasy plough, but thoroughly bracing."

"What is remarkable is the portrait not only of Sponge, but of the whole society in which he moves. It is an extraordinarily tough society, without any of that self-consciousness which belongs to Hemingway's heroes. The men are tough as a matter of course... Probably Surtees owes this success to that observant eye and candour of speech which is his chief force as a writer. He has no cant of any kind; he is sucking up to nobody and no class. He has his moral standards, but he is not trying to preach them; there is none of that sense that we have, even in Trollope, of the moralizer... He writes of what he sees and knows, with a reckless sincerity especially refreshing in these self-conscious times."

"When at length they rose to go to bed, it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs that the one before him walked very crookedly."

"No man rides harder than my Lord Scamperdale – always goes as if he had a spare neck in his pocket."

"It is best to let the horse go his way, and pretend it is yours. There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse."

"He was a gentleman who was generally spoken of as having nothing a-year, paid quarterly."

"Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting."

"Thus attired, with smiles assumed at the door, the young ladies entered the drawing-room in the full fervour of sisterly animosity."

"It is an inwariable rule with the dealers to praise the bad points and let the good 'uns speak for themselves."

"'Untin' fills my thoughts by day, and many a good run I have in my sleep. Many a dig in the ribs I gives Mrs. J. when I think they're runnin' into the warmint…No man is fit to be called a sportsman wot doesn't kick his wife out of bed on a haverage once in three weeks!"

"I am a sportsman all over, and to the back-bone – 'Unting is all that's worth living for – all time is lost wot is not spent in 'unting – it is like the hair we breathe – if we have it not we die – it's the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty per cent of its danger."

"Life would be very pleasant if it were not for its enjoyments."

"Better be killed than frightened to death."

"The supply of good fellows is by no means in excess of the demand. A man has only to hoist the flag of hospitality to insure a very considerable amount of custom."

"There may be said to be three sorts of lawyers, able, unable, and lamentable."

"The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one."

"More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice."