People From London

"In about four years his multifarious studies began to converge towards one focus—the intellectual progress and civilization of mankind. ...[I]ts fulfilment became the object of his life."

"The extracts from the Scotch divines that fill so large a space in the notes of Mr. Buckle's second volume, are atrocious enough to prove that Torquemada and St. Dominic were not better disposed to rack and burn their fellow men than the Gillespies, the Guthries, the Halyburtons, and the Rutherfords..."

"[H]e sinned the sin of excessive generalization. It may be true that in certain cycles or shorter periods of time the sums of human acts are strangely alike. It may be true also that statistics afford to history one of its most sure and instructive auxiliaries. But it is no less certain that such tabular records are not only in their infancy, but as regards former times, either do not exist, or are most scanty and precarious aids to truth. At the best, also, they represent a few only of the elements of social life, and probably centuries of exact observation must elapse before they can be permitted to supersede the other grounds, moral, intellectual, and religious, on which history hitherto as been constructed."

"[H]is book [History of Civilization]... must always be regarded as an extraordinary proof of a mind at once sanguine and persevering."

"Of all the various ways which the imagination has distorted truth, there is none which has worked so much harm as an exaggerated respect for past ages. This reverence for antiquity is repugnant to every maxim of reason, and is merely the indulgence of a poetic sentiment in favour of the remote and unknown."

"[I]n the year 1857—that is to say, about twenty years after the idea of a History of Human Progress in England first dawned upon him—committed the result of his steady ten-hours-a-day labour to the press, and followed the first volume with a second, published in 1861."

"For some years after his death, his writings were held in huge esteem, and shaped the prose of England. That time has passed. New models have captured the public ear; and at this day Johnson's noble prose is perhaps studied chiefly by his parodists."

"The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground."

"The Dictionary, great work though it be, might have been successfully carried through by a merely mechanical genius."

"A reporter remembers what he understands, and sets down what his readers will appreciate. The genius of Boswell appears not least in this, that that he was willing, on occasion, to record Johnson's most whimsical and irresponsible remarks. But he must have omitted or neglected by far the greater number. Those that he has preserved are perhaps the most delightful and convincing things in his book."

"Because he had seen much of life, his last and greatest work, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, is more than a collection of facts: it is a book of wisdom and experience, a treatise on the conduct of life, a commentary on human destiny."

"Over and against the plays of Shakespeare and his fellows, as their natural counterpart, must be set the Voyages of Hakluyt; he who would understand the Elizabethan age, and what it meant for England, must know them both."

"The sense of liberty and power, and of belief in the capacity and destiny of man, which was quickened by the new discoveries, distinguishes the literature of the Elizabethan age from the great backward-looking periods of romance. It is a literature of youth and hope, with none of the subtle and poignant flavours that are to be tasted in a literature of regret and memory."

"It is one of Boswell's greatest merits that he is careful of his background; wherever it is possible he gives us a full and true account of the persons present, and the incidents and remarks that prompted Johnson's speech."

"The topics of The Rambler are many, but the great majority of them are drawn from the graver aspects of life, and it is when he treats of fundamental duties and inevitable sorrows, bereavement, and disease, and death, that Johnson rises to his full stature."

"The stalwart honesty and simplicity of the character and writings of Davis give a singular charm to his name and story. He was a man after Hakluyt's own heart, a fearless explorer, an ardent student and professor of the science of navigation."

"... these men, though there was little of saintliness in their character, had a religion, and fought and suffered for it. It was a religion not wholly unlike that of the later Orangeman, a Protestant compound, made up of fervid patriotism, a varied assortment of hates, a rough code of morals, and an unshaken trust in the providence of God. To the heathen they brought not peace but a sword. To the Pope, whom they named with the Turk and the Devil, they wished destruction. For Queen and Country they would go anywhere and attempt anything."

"The late Mr. Froude, with a poet's instinct for unity, chose to regard the whole story of the English Voyages as an aspect of the Protestant Reformation."

"Like Napoleon's Italian campaign, the achievements of Drake on the Spanish Main show a master at work, unburdened and unfettered as yet by responsibility and reputation, adapting himself solely to his material, and inventing at every stroke."

"The Dictionary was finished in 1755, and Johnson, compelled to find some new means of livelihood, returned to Shakespeare. ... The Proposals for Printing the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare, which he issued in 1756, are magnificent in their range and discernment. The whole duty of a Shakespearian commentator and critic is here, for the first time, expounded. The complete collation of the early editions; the tracing of Shakespeare's knowledge to its sources; the elucidation of obscurities by a careful study of the language and customs of Shakespeare's time; the comparison of Shakespeare's work with that of other great poets, ancient and modern—all this and more is promised in the Proposals."

"I wish I loved the human Race, I wish I loved its silly face, I wish I liked the way it walks, I wish I liked the way it talks, And when I'm introduced to one, I wish I thought "what jolly fun"!"

"The actions that move the world have been prompted and inspired by dreams and visions. The search for the philosopher's stone laid the foundations of modern chemistry; modern travel and geography owe their chief advances to the search for the fabled realm of Cathay."

"Of all the notable Elizabethans, Sir Walter Raleigh is perhaps the most difficult to understand. He has the insolent imagination of Marlowe, and the profound melancholy of Donne."

"Definition and division are the watchwords of science, where art is all for composition and creation."

"Almost all men are less humorous than Shakespeare; but most men are more humorous than Milton, and these, it is to be feared, having suffered themselves to be dragooned by the critics into professing a distant admiration for Paradise Lost, have paid their last and utmost tribute to the genius of its author."

"God's most candid critics are those of his children whom he has made poets."

"Those Elizabethan authors whose lives are fairly well known to us were always something other than mere authors—men of noble family, it may be, or distinguished in politics and war. We know more of Sir Walter Raleigh's career than of Shakespeare's, and more of Essex than of Spenser. On the other hand, while the works of Shakespeare and Spenser have come down to us almost in tact, most of the poems of Raleigh and Essex are lost. Men of position held professional authorship in some contempt, and wrote only for the delectation of their private friends."

"These Lives are the maturest and strongest of Johnson's work. It ought be a comfort to men past middle life to find Johnson, like Dryden, wrote his best prose in his latest years."

"As a half-resident of Wiltshire I feel very loyal to the county."

"Poetry is like time travel, and poems take us to the heart of the matter"

"There are lots of things I do feel strongly about, but if I speak about them I will be on my best behaviour."

"Being a friendly neighbour has always been the keystone of community life and just saying “hello” can sometimes make a huge difference"

"Oh, oh, very badly. I would love to start again but maybe I’m too old"

"In a world where so many things have changed for the better, there are –sadly - still many vulnerable, forgotten and neglected children. Each one of them has a unique story"

"English students don't spend much time on their studies. They're more interested in partying and having fun."

"What I have learned from my travels is that by listening at least as much as we speak, and by trying to understand before we act, we perhaps stand a better chance of coming up with the right answers…"

"Oh, it's quite all right, we curse quite a lot around here."

"My grandfather, P Morton Shand, […] declared that ‘A woman who cannot make soup should not be allowed to marry’. You might not agree with his rants, but there was no doubting his passion for proper food"

"Reading is exciting. Reading is fun. Reading is cool. There is nothing quite like the thrill of opening a book and being drawn into another world to meet new people and to discover their stories - it’s like making new friends"

"I admired and liked him most before he became a Bishop, and before he leant so much to those High Church views which did harm."

"Shabby, word-eating, pocket-picketing, sacrilegious villains."

"Modern liberalism: a heartless steam engine."

"A resolution to attend theatres or operas is an absolute disqualification for Holy Orders."

"He was the first of the Bishops of the Victorian age to show what the duties of a bishop were. He may truly be said to have recast the whole idea of the Episcopate, and to have successfully raised the tone of clerical life."

"Is it on your grandmother’s or grandfather’s side that you are descended from an ape?"

"I do not quite like hearing you, for you make me cry."

"The bench of Bishops has in its time contributed much to the eloquence, as well as to the appearance and dignity of the Upper House. During the last half century its most noted orator was Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and Winchester, whose eloquence was of a very high order and, like his character, suggested the great ecclesiastical statesman rather than the divine. He leaped into fame by a speech on the Corn Laws in June, 1846, of which his biographer says that it ought to have been heard rather than read."

"The Bishop was the Holy Terror of his time; he shows up on the wrong side of every dispute."

"The trouble is, Richard, that you always think you can alter people. You say, Oh, yes, he's a little weak and I can't stand the way he hums to himself when he's shaving but when we live together I'll change that, we'll grow together, but you never do. All that happens is that the little things are symptomatic of bigger things and they become more and more important."

"I really am interested but I find it hard to make the proper helpful noises. I'm terrible inadequate when it comes to sympathy. I feel things but I can't express them in words."