All Quotes

"I mean, I don’t judge you. You know, Charlie. And what do you do that’s so wonderful? You ever kill anybody, Charlie?"

"Yeah, I had a dream, Charlie, but now I’m awake. And I hate my dream."

"Everything you learned in the neighbourhood, every instinct you’ve got won’t do anything but get you killed!"

"I know how this dream ends, Charlie. It isn’t in paradise. It ends with me carrying you into Sutton Emergency Room at three o’clock in the morning. And standing there, crying like an idiot... while your shoes fill with blood and you die."

"My name is Benny Blanco from the Bronx."

"You’re over, man. You’re fuckin’ in the history books. That’s where you are, man. So you might as well fuckin’ kill me now, ‘cause if I ever see you again, swear to god, I’m gonna fucking kill you."

"Hey, remember me? Benny Blanco From The Bronx?"

"Pachanga: Carlito, man, Death Valley out here, man. You know me, I take to the street with any of these Motherfuckers, man. But these new kids nowadays, man, they got no respect for human life. They shotgun you just to see you fly up in the air. You’re better off in jail."

"How slow the Shadow creeps: but when 'tis past, How fast the Shadows fall. How fast! How fast!"

"[N]othing is worthwhile on this unhappy earth except the fulfilment of a man's desire."

"And what is there else but pleasure, and to what else does beauty move on?"

"[A]lways keep a-hold of Nurse For fear of finding something worse"

"Physicians of the Utmost Fame Were called at once; but when they came They answered, as they took their Fees, "There is no Cure for this Disease.""

"Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea Are all the Human Frame requires."

"Matilda told such Dreadful Lies, It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes; Her Aunt, who from her Earliest Youth, Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth, Attempted to Believe Matilda: The effort very nearly killed her."

"Of courtesy it is much less Than courage of heart or holiness Yet in my walks it seems to me That the Grace of God is in courtesy."

"From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends."

"The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground.A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds."

"Child! Do not throw this book about; Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure."

"I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replied: "Right as a Ribstone Pippin!" But it lied."

"When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside which is like the cold of space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly. Absolute dereliction is the death of the soul."

"[M]an knows his own nature, and that which he pursues must surely be his satisfaction? Judging by which measure I determine that the best thing in the world is flying at full speed from pursuit, and keeping up hammer and thud and gasp and bleeding till the knees fail and the head grows dizzy, and at last we all fall down and that thing (whatever it is) which pursues us catches us up and eats our carcasses. This way of managing our lives, I think, must be the best thing in the world—for nearly all men choose to live thus."

"Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold, Exceedingly bold indeed; And the masses of doubt that are floating about Would smother a mortal creed. But we that sit in a sturdy youth, And still can drink strong ale, Oh—let us put it away to infallible truth, That always shall prevail.  [semi-chorus:] And thank the Lord For the temporal sword, And howling heretics too; And all good things Our Christendom brings, But especially barley brew!"

"Then he added, as men will who are of infinite imagination and crammed with desires, 'My wants are few.'"

"May all good fellows that here agree Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me, And may all my enemies go to hell! Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël! May all my enemies go to hell! Noël! Noël!"

"There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this—to consider chiefly from now onwards those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea."

"I recognised that I was (and I confessed) in that attitude of the mind wherein men admit mortality; something had already passed from me—I mean that fresh and vigorous morning of the eyes wherein the beauty of this land had been reflected as in a tiny mirror of burnished silver. Youth was gone out apart; it was loved and regretted, and therefore no longer possessed."

"I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully, and drew little lines, considering my theme. But I would not long hesitate in this manner, for I knew that all creation must be chaos first, and then gestures in the void before it can cast out the completed thing."

"The Barbarian hopes — and that is the very mark of him — that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is for ever marvelling that civilisation should have offended him with priests and soldiers."

"In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true. We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile."

"There is already something like a Jewish monopoly in high finance. (...) There is the same element of Jewish monopoly in the silver trade, and in the control of various other metals, notably lead, nickel, quicksilver. What is most disquieting of all, this tendency to monopoly is spreading like a disease."

"The Economic definition of Wealth is subtle and difficult to appreciate, but it is absolutely essential to our study to get it clear at the outset and keep it firmly in mind."

"It is this worth, that is, this ability to get other wealth in exchange, which constitutes true Economic Wealth."

"Wealth, for the purposes of economic study, is confined to those values attaching to material objects through the action of man, which values can be exchanged for other values."

"The Science of Economics does not deal with true happiness nor even with well-being in material things. It deals with a strictly limited field of what is called "Economic Wealth," and if it goes outside its own boundaries it goes wrong."

"You shall receive me when the clouds are high With evening and the sheep attain the fold. This is the faith that I have held and hold, And this is that in which I mean to die."

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet, But his books were read'."

"Of three in One and One in three My narrow mind would doubting be Till Beauty, Grace and Kindness met And all at once were Juliet."

"Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician's corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged."

"The accursed power which stands on Privilege (And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge) Broke — and Democracy resumed her reign: (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne)."

"In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night."

"The profound thing which Cardinal Manning said to me was this: all human conflict is ultimately theological.[…]This saying of his (which I carried away with me somewhat bewildered) that all human conflict was ultimately theological: that is, that all wars and revolutions, and all decisive struggles between parties of men arise from a difference in moral and transcendental doctrine, was utterly novel to me. To a young man the saying was without meaning: I would almost have said nonsensical, save that I could not attach the idea of folly to Manning. But as I grew older it became a searchlight: with the observation of the world, and with continuous reading of history, it came to possess for me a universal meaning so profound that it reached to the very roots of political action; so extended that it covered the whole.It is, indeed, a truth which explains and co-ordinates all one reads of human action in the past, and all one sees of it in the present.[…] All tragedy is the conflict of a true right and a false right, or of a greater right and a lesser right, or, at the worst, of two false rights. Still more do men pretend in this time of ours, wherein the habitual use of the human intelligence has sunk to its lowest, that doctrine is but a private individual affair, creating a mere opinion. Upon the contrary, it is doctrine that drives the State; and every State is stronger in the degree in which the doctrine of its citizens is united. Nor have I met any man in my life, arguing for what should be among men, but took for granted as he argued that the doctrine he consciously or unconsciously accepted was or should be a similar foundation for all mankind. Hence battle."

"I have noticed that this kind of fanatic, like every other kind, is in two species: the species which too clearly thinks out its own insane theory, and the species which remains perfectly muddle-headed."

"[P]rofessional politics is a trade in which the sly outweigh the wise."

"It is in the irony of Providence that the more man comes to control the material world about him, the more does he lose control over the effects of his action; and it is when he is remaking the world most speedily that he knows least whither he is driving."

"It is a consolation to remember that corruption pushed beyond a certain point provides its own remedy, and that this sort of thing cannot indefinitely continue; but it is less consoling to remember another truth, to wit, that the correction of political and social evil may come in the form of irremediable catastrophe, and that the innocent, who are the greater number, would then suffer most. It is still less consoling to remember the universal human experience that when evil is redressed by the only partly conscious force of reaction, it is not succeeded by a corresponding good, but by some other new and unexpected evil."

"The object of a religion or a philosophy is not to make men wealthy or powerful, but to make them, in the last issue, happy: that is, to fulfil their being."

"Even where the Faith is preserved men pursue wealth and power inordinately. Where the Faith is lost they pursue nothing else."

"For the line of cleavage does not fall between the various groups, Catholic, Agnostic, Evangelical, or what not, but between the Catholic Church and all else. She is unique, and at issue with the world."

"It is not insignificant that the Church, in the rare places and times when she had power to do so, did not compel the mind. During all that intense intellectual life of the thirteenth century instruction was by choice: endowed—so that the poorest could reach the highest inspiration, but at the choice of the individual or family will, to be taken or left."