People From London

"What is wisdom? If you are a mystic you become totally empty and you are given whatever you need. For example, there is a plane where all the knowledge is, and you can go there. You can get whatever you need."

"As he sat alone at his corner table drinking a gin and Dubonnet, Ewing watched the stranger sitting on the barstool and examined his appearance for a while because there was no one else interesting or attractive to watch in Wayne's bar that evening."

"With an effort Ewing turned his gaze away from the far end of the bar. Slowly he spread out his hands on the table and examined them. Then he looked up at Wayne. His left eyelid had begun to quiver slightly like a leaf in a gentle breeze as he put the question, but the expression of his face remained unchanged. "Who's the new customer?" Ewing asked indolently."

"And when I compare with these pangs of remorse the feelings which must accompany my honorable friend from this house to his home, after the vote of this night shall have accomplished the object of his humane and unceasing labours, when he shall retire into the bosom of his delighted and happy family, and when he shall lay himself down on his bed, reflecting on the innumerable voices that will be raised in every quarter of the world to bless his name, how much more enviable his lot, in the consciousness of having preserved so many millions of his fellow creatures, than that of the man with whom I have compared him, on a throne to which he has waded through slaughter and oppression!"

"Who will not be proud to concur with my honored friend in promoting the greatest act of national benefit, and securing to the Africans the greatest blessing which God has ever put in the power of man to confer on his fellow creatures?"

"When I look at the man at the head of the French monarchy, surrounded as he is with all the pomp of power, and all the pride of victory, distributing kingdoms to his family, and principalities to his followers; seeming, as he sits upon his throne, to have reached the summit of human ambition, the pinnacle of earthly happiness; and when I follow him into his closet, or to his bed, and contemplate the anguish with which his solitude must be tortured, by recollections of the blood he has spilt, and the oppressions he has committed."

"Some women use their tongues—she look’d a lecture, Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily, An all-in-all sufficient self-director, Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly, The Law’s expounder, and the State’s corrector, Whose suicide was almost an anomaly— One sad example more, that “All is vanity” (The jury brought their verdict in “Insanity”)."

"Circumstantial evidence only raises a probability."

"Judges are philologists of the highest order."

"I remember Lord Eldon saying to counsel, " You have told us how far the cases have gone, will you now tell us where they are to stop?" I think it is now time that we should say where the cases are to stop."

"In criminal cases you always begin by proving the corpus delicti, and then connect the prisoner with it."

"International law, like the moral law, is part of the law of England, but only to the extent that the Courts will not help those that break it."

"The rule is this: that wherever there is a decision of a Court of concurrent jurisdiction, the other Courts will adopt that as the basis of their decision, provided it can be appealed from. If it cannot be appealed from, then they will exercise their own judgment."

"Arguments from the American statute are not of much force, because Englishmen are not bound to know it."

"You need not cite cases that are familiar."

"In a perfectly new case—a case altogether primae impressionis—I think the Judges are bound to hold fast to the principles of the common law—to remember the maxim, "Salus reipublicae suprema lex," and if the condition be really in principle against the public good, to pronounce it in their judgment void."

"The Crown cannot ever be prejudiced by the misconduct or negligence of any of its officers."

"You have no right, for the purpose of justifying a libel, to inquire into a man's life and opinions."

"I wanted to find out why Shelley could write better-sounding poetry than I."

"[It's] not our decision to make. It's up to the people themselves."

"My immediate answer was, 'I don't have a singing butler and three maids who sing, but I will tell you what I can as an assistant professor.'"

"It was really [David] Whitteridge who taught me to be a scientist."

"He did extensive linguistic fieldwork on a scale it had not been done before, and when he brought it back from the field he found ways to use sophisticated laboratory equipment to analyze his recordings."

"The International Phonetic Association is like the Episcopal church. One can hold almost any theoretical position as long as one gets the symbols right."

"I always want to try to understand why things work. I’m not interested in getting a formula without knowing what it means. I always try to dig behind the scenes, so if I have a formula, I understand why it’s there. And understanding is a very difficult notion. People think mathematics begins when you write down a theorem followed by a proof. That’s not the beginning, that’s the end. For me the creative place in mathematics comes before you start to put things down on paper, before you try to write a formula. You picture various things, you turn them over in your mind. You’re trying to create, just as a musician is trying to create music, or a poet. There are no rules laid down. You have to do it your own way. But at the end, just as a composer has to put it down on paper, you have to write things down. But the most important stage is understanding. A proof by itself doesn’t give you understanding. You can have a long proof and no idea at the end of why it works. But to understand why it works, you have to have a kind of gut reaction to the thing. You’ve got to feel it."

"Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician. The devil says: `I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul: give up geometry and you will have this marvellous machine.'"

"This 'Hodge conjecture' has by now achieved a considerable status, almost on a par with the Riemann hypothesis or the Poincaré conjecture."

"My own supervisor, William Hodge, the creator of the fertile theory of harmonic forms, was not a genius like Ramanujan but resembled Lefschetz."

"Music and Poetry have ever been acknowledged Sisters, which walking hand in hand support each other; As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes; and as poetry is a rise above prose and oratory, so is music the exaltation of poetry. Both of them may excel apart, but sure they are most excellent when they are oined, because nothing is then wanting to either of their perfections."

"Who is England’s greatest composer? Britten and Elgar have their fans, but many say Vaughan Williams is greater than either, and still others would vote for one of our great Renaissance composers such as Thomas Tallis or William Byrd. For me it’s none of these. It’s a workaholic Londoner born 350 years ago who had a talent as wondrous as Mozart’s and, like him, died at the cruelly young age of 36."

"Many regard Henry Purcell as the greatest English composer of all time. Among his most influential works are the opera Dido and Aeneas and the semi-operas The Fairy Queen and King Arthur."

"Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love."

"We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior."

"I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross'. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering."

"In recent times Samuel Hollander has been lampooned rather than praised for seeing supply and demand mechanisms everywhere in the classical writers. Even Mark Blaug (1978:66) writes of Hollander as making Smith into more of a Léon Walras than a Ricardo, which I deem not to be a reductio ad absurdum but rather a merited compliment for Smith. (Given their respective dates, we might better compliment Walras for his Smith-like approach to general equilibrium.) Followers of Piero Sraffa or Marx, who are not identical sets, agree in their desire to reject mainstream equilibrium theory. In the sense of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), they want to regard the classical (i.e., the pre-1870) system as an alternative paradigm, a different and better paradigm to the modern ones. That is why they reproach Hollander for claiming to discern supply and demand content in the classical writers and why they prefer a Ricardo to a Smith."

"The free-market economist who devoted more time and effort than anyone else to dissecting Keynes was W. H. Hutt, Professor of Economics at the University of Cape Town. Unlike other market economists, he recognized from the beginning the revolutionary character of The General Theory and its threat to the free market. His "intense dissatisfaction" with Keynes's theory of unemployment caused him to write his first major work, The Theory of Idle Resources, in 1939."

"Jesus' disclosure shows that in his very nature God is self-effacing, whereas Christian orthodoxy has thought of him as the opposite; majestic, glorious and triumphal."

"Certainly in the gospels Jesus manifested love, but it was very different from what is generally supposed. It included a certain ruthlessness in his care and concern, a willingness to condemn not individuals but classes, a hatred of bigotry and pretence."

"Men usually remain unmarried for three reasons: either because they cannot afford to marry or there are no girls to marry (neither of these factors need have deterred Jesus); or because it is inexpedient for them to marry in the light of their vocation (we have already ruled this out during the ‘hidden years’ of Jesus’ life); or because they are homosexual in nature, in as much as women hold no special attraction for them. The homosexual explanation is one which me must not ignore."

"All the synoptic gospels show Jesus in close relationship with the ‘outsiders’ and the unloved. Publicans and sinners, prostitutes and criminals are among his acquaintances and companions. If Jesus were homosexual in nature (and this is the true explanation of his celibate state) then this would be further evidence of God’s self-identification with those who are unacceptable to the upholders of ‘The Establishment’ and social conventions."

"‘I don’t think he’d ever have made a strong king. He was weak as water. Can you imagine him smiting the enemy? Destroying them in battle? Having the guts to execute the opposition?’ ‘Perhaps it’s time we had a king who didn’t do that. Perhaps it’s time we had a king who had other values on his mind,’ I said, playing nervously with my dagger to calm the growing anxiety inside me. ‘Like what?’ ‘Reform of corruption. Civil order to prevent the abuses of power. Justice.’"

"‘These ambassadors are all the same. They have the eyes of Anubis. And they make me feel like a servant. Like a shabti in a tomb. “Here I am. I will do it!”’"

"'Come on, Rahotep. How do you think Royal Envoy Nakht gets his information about events in the north, and in the war? The army has its intelligence, and the palace has its own, too. The days when an invasion or an attack took place and no one heard about it for months are long gone. This war’s all about speed and information, and you can be sure Nakht has a very efficient system. The problem is, each system is always trying to infiltrate the other. And there’s always the danger of spies.’"

"I would much rather have a living husband with no job and no gold than a dead one."

"My dear friend, the world is really one vast marketplace. No one cares where a man is from as long as he has gold in his pocket, or something you want. And the remarkable thing is this: the wars have only encouraged demand, trade has actually boomed in these difficult years. The ships are full, everyone is happy. War and politics are irrelevant, unless the great flow of trade is disturbed."

"Can love communicate over great distance? I could only hope so."

"We need strong, educated women to help us build a better world."

"Conflict defines nations. Enemies justify armies. Wars glorify generals. Without his great enemy to give him purpose and meaning, he will be significantly diminished. He will have to come to terms with us."

"A little distance had opened between us, almost unnoticed, rarely acknowledged. We made love infrequently. The couch was for sleep at the end of exhausting days. I confided in her less often. Perhaps that is the fate of all marriages."

"‘I suspect you are intent upon some sort of revenge, in response to this dreadful tragedy?’ ‘And?’ I said. ‘Let me counsel you. In moments such as this, we are inclined to allow the animal aspect of our natures to take control. It is a mistake. ... Because revenge can destroy a man as surely as the plague. It seems like a god, so pure and true, and full of its sense of justice and entitlement. But it is truly a monster. It feeds perpetually upon its own pain, and upon any pain it can find. And it can never be satisfied until everything has been destroyed utterly.’"