Non Fiction Authors From England

"He terrified us also, and certainly I did not dare, and I think none of us dared, to speak our admiration for book or picture he condemned, but he made us feel always our importance, and no man among us could do good work, or show the promise of it, and lack his praise."

"He was most human—human, I used to say, like one of Shakespeare's characters—and yet pressed and pummelled, as it were, into a single attitude, almost into a gesture and a speech, as by some overwhelming situation. I disagreed with him about everything, but I admired him beyond words."

"He founded a school, and has survived all his disciples. He has always thought too much about himself, which is wise; and written too much about others, which is foolish. His prose is the beautiful prose of a poet, and his poetry the beautiful poetry of a prose-writer. His personality is insistent. To converse with him is a physical no less than an intellectual recreation. He is never forgotten by his enemies, and often forgiven by his friends. He has added several new words to the language, and his style is an open secret. He has fought a good fight, and has had to face every difficulty except popularity."

"It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is both conciliatory and receptive."

"Henley's talk was animated above all by the intense and virile love of life that I was so conscious of in him personally, that reveals itself in every line he wrote, and that is what I liked best about him. He was so alive, so exhilarated with the sense of being alive. The tremendous vitality of the man, that should have found its legitimate outlet in physical activity, seemed to have gone instead into his thought and his expression of it as if the very fact that fate forced him to remain a looker-on had made him the more sensitive to the beauty, the joy, the challenge in everything life gave him to look at. He could wrest romance even out of the drear, drab hospital."

"Of Henley the talker, at least, one portrait remains. He was the original of Stevenson's Burly the talker who would roar you down, bury his face in his hands, undergo passions of revolt and agony, letting loose a spring torrent of words. There was always a wild flood and storm of talk wherever Henley might be."

"A people, haggard with defeat, Asks if there be a God; yet sets its teeth, Faces calamity, and goes into the fire Another than it was. And in wild hours A people, roaring ripe With victory, rises, menaces, stands renewed, Sheds its old piddling aims, Approves its virtue, puts behind itself The comfortable dream, and goes, Armoured and militant, New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps To those great altitudes, whereat the weak Live not. But only the strong Have leave to strive, and suffer, and achieve."

"All over the world, the nation, in a dream Of money and love and sport, hangs at the paps Of well-being, and so Goes fattening, mellowing, dozing, rotting down Into a rich deliquium of decay."

"Into a land Storm-wrought, a place of quakes, all thunder-scarred, Helpless, degraded, desolate, Peace, the White Angel, comes. Her eyes are as a mother's. Her good hands Are comforting, and helping; and her voice Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring Falls on the World, and there is no more pain."

"Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb. Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire. Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire.So man and woman will keep their trust, Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.Yea, each with the other will lose and win, Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in.For the strife of Love's the abysmal strife, And the word of Love is the Word of Life.And they that go with the Word unsaid, Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead."

"Life — life — life! 'Tis the sole great thing This side of death, Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!"

"My songs were once of the sunrise: They shouted it over the bar; First-footing the dawns, they flourished, And flamed with the morning star.My songs are now of the sunset: Their brows are touched with light, But their feet are lost in the shadows And wet with the dews of night."

"What have I done for you, England, my England? What is there I would not do, England, my own?"

"Life — give me life until the end, That at the very top of being, The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, Out of the reddest hell of the fight I may be snatched and flung Into the everlasting lull, The immortal, incommunicable dream."

"Life — life — let there be life! Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flight From the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnesses And wild waste places of the world!"

"Dear, was it really you and I? In truth the riddle's ill to read, So many are the deaths we die Before we can be dead indeed."

"You played and sang a snatch of song, A song that all-too well we knew; But whither had flown the ancient wrong; And was it really I and you? O, since the end of life's to live And pay in pence the common debt, What should it cost us to forgive Whose daily task is to forget?"

"Time's right-hand man, the sea Laughs as in joy From his millions of wrinkles: Laughs that his destiny, Great with the greatness Of triumphing order, Shows as a dwarf By the strength of his heart And the might of his hands.Master of masters, O maker of heroes, Thunder the brave, Irresistible message: — 'Life is worth Living Through every grain of it, From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.'"

"Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, The scandal of unnatural strife, The slur upon immortal needs, The treason done to life:Arise! no more a living lie, And with me quicken and control Some memory that shall magnify The universal Soul."

"Some starlit garden grey with dew, Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, What matters where, so I and you Are worthy our desire?"

"Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die, While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?"

"East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease — (Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!) —Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire."

"We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law."

"Those incantations of the Spring That made the heart a centre of miracles Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours Arise no more — no more.Something is dead... 'Tis time to creep in close about the fire And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream Old dreams and faded, and as we may rejoice In the young life that round us leaps and laughs, A fountain in the sunshine, in the pride Of God's best gift that to us twain returns, Dear Heart, no more — no more."

"Madam Life's a piece in bloom Death goes dogging everywhere: She's the tenant of the room, He's the ruffian on the stair."

"There let it rest. It has fought and won, And is still the best That either has done. Each as he stands The work of its hands, Which shall be more As he was before? What is it ends With friends?"

"And, forgive and forget Or canker and fret, We can be no more As we were before. When it ends it ends With friends."

"Friends.. old friends... One sees how it ends. A woman looks Or a man tells lies, And the pleasant brooks And the quiet skies, Ruined with brawling And caterwauling, Enchant no more As they did before; And so it ends With friends."

"As dust that drives, as straws that blow, Into the night go one and all."

"I captain an army Of shining and generous dreams."

"Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon, And you were a Christian slave."

"So be my passing! My task accomplish'd and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gather'd to the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death."

"Night with her train of stars And her great gift of sleep."

"Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."

"Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, And something of the Shorter-Catechist."

"Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn."

"From the winter's gray despair, From the summer’s golden languor, Death, the lover of Life, Frees us for ever."

"Far in the stillness a cat Languishes loudly. A cinder Falls, and the shadows Lurch to the leap of the flame."

"Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame."

"Hark how the Trumpet, The mistress of mistresses, Calls, silver-throated And stern, where the tables Are spread, and the work Of the Lord is in hand! Driving the darkness, Even as the banners And spears of the Morning; Sifting the nations, The slag from the metal, The waste and the weak From the fit and the strong; Fighting the brute."

"Ho! then, the splendour And sheen of my ministry, Clothing the earth With a livery of lightnings! Ho! then, the music Of battles in onset And ruining armours, And God's gift returning In fury to God! Glittering and keen As the song of the winter stars, Ho! then, the sound Of my voice, the implacable Angel of Destiny!— I am the Sword."

"Plainly Hugo was the greatest man of letters of his day. It has been given to few or none to live a life so full of effort and achievement, so rich in honour and success and fame. Born almost with the century, he was a writer at fifteen, and at his death he was writing still; so that the record of his career embraces a period of more than sixty years. There is hardly a department of art to a foremost place in which he did not prove his right. From first to last; from the time of Chateaubriand to the time of Zola, he was a leader of men; and with his departure from the scene the undivided sovereignty of literature became a thing of the past like Alexander's empire."

"In the early 1930s he predicted, as Anthony Trythall wrote, “future armies would be surrounded by swarms of motorized guerillas, irregulars or regular troops making use of the multitude of civilian motorcars that would be available.” Fuller also mused that one day “a manless flying machine” would change the face of war. Early on he was intrigued by the development of radio, not only for communication but also as a way to control robot weapons. He also thought then-primitive rocket technology would one day lead to the development of superb anti-aircraft weapons. And as early as the 1920s, Fuller was a proponent of amphibious warfare. He envisioned a naval fleet “which belches forth war on every strand, which vomits forth armies as never did the horse of Troy.” Indeed, he foresaw future navies as being entirely submersible. On the negative side of the balance sheet, Fuller also championed the military use of poison gas, particularly when spread by airplanes. Even as late as 1961, with the publication of his book The Conduct of War, he blamed resistance to chemical warfare on “popular emotionalism.” If Fuller had a fatal flaw as a tactician, it was that he derided the importance of putting infantry “boots on the ground.” To him, combat was simply a matter of wool uniforms versus steel armor—and that seemed to him a no-brainer. Of course, Fuller had failed to consider the development of portable, shoulder-fired and helicopter-borne antitank weaponry."

"Fuller’s finest wartime moment was the promulgation of his Plan 1919. Believing World War I would continue into 1919, he suggested victory with a single penetrating, surprise, mass tank attack aimed not at killing lots of German soldiers but at reaching and killing the enemy “brain”—the rear-area command-and-communications infrastructure—and thus paralyzing the body. But Fuller’s most meaningful tactical concept came to naught, as the war ended in November 1918. Had it continued, Fuller today might be as widely known as Guderian, Montgomery and Patton."

"Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller was, during World War I and through the early 1930s, the British army’s tank warfare go-to guy. He was the man who taught the Wehrmacht how to blitzkrieg, George Patton how to rumble and the Israelis how to kill Syrians."

"It might have been the greatest lost weapon of World War II. Major-General JFC Fuller, the man credited with developing modern armored warfare in the 1920s, called failure to use it "the greatest blunder of the whole war." He even suggested that British and American tank divisions could have overrun Germany before the Russians – if it had been deployed, that is."

"The good news for Liddell Hart was that his work was hugely influential. The bad news was that it was hugely influential not in Britain but in Germany. With the notable exception of Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, senior British commanders like Field Marshal Earl Haig simply refused to accept that 'the aeroplane, the tank [and] the motor car [would] supersede the horse in future wars', dismissing motorized weapons as mere 'accessories to the man and horse'."

"Everyone was talking and chatting, when slowly came into sight the first tank I ever saw. Not a monster but a very graceful machine with beautiful lines.…Here was the missing tool of penetration, the answer to the dominance on the battlefield of small-arms fire."

"The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both internal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the first the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind—men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh — who founded the English colonies in America."

"What thrust us into war were not Hitler's political teachings: the cause, this time, was his successful attempt to establish a new economy. The causes of the war were: envy, greed, and fear."