All Quotes

"All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist."

"It may indeed be doubted, whether butcher's meat is any where a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butcher's meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet."

"If a workman can conveniently spare those three halfpence, he buys a pot of porter. If he cannot, he contents himself with a pint, and, as a penny saved is a penny got, he thus gains a farthing by his temperance."

"That of beaver skins, of beaver wool, and of gum Senega, has been subjected to higher duties; Great Britain, by the conquest of Canada and Senegal, having got almost the monopoly of those commodities."

"When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment."

"The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only."

"We are forced, in equity, to share the government with the working class by considerations which were made supreme by the awakening of political economy. Adam Smith set up two propositions—that contracts ought to be free between capital and labour, and that labour is the source, he sometimes says the only source, of wealth. If the last sentence, in its exclusive form, was true, it was difficult to resist the conclusion that the class on which national prosperity depends ought to control the wealth it supplies, that is, ought to govern instead of the useless unproductive class, and that the class which earns the increment ought to enjoy it. That is the foreign effect of Adam Smith—French Revolution and Socialism."

"[The Wealth of Nations gave a] scientific backbone to liberal sentiment."

"Mr. Burke talked in very high terms of Dr. Adam Smith; praised the clearness and depth of his understanding, his profound and extensive learning, and the vast accession that had accrued to British literature and philosophy from these exertions, and described his heart as being equally good with his head and his manners as peculiarly pleasing. Mr. Smith, he said, told him, after they had conversed on subjects of political economy, that he was the only man, who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did."

"Adam Smith, who has strong claim to being both the Adam and the Smith of systematic economics, was a professor of moral philosophy and it was at that forge that economics was made."

"[T]he simple fact is, of course, that in normal trade all parties gain; there exist mutual gains from trade. The great contribution of Adam Smith lay in his popularization of this simple point, but the full import of this conception for democratic political theory does not seem to have yet been appreciated."

"An excellent digest of all that is valuable in former Oeconomical writers with many valuable corrective Observations."

"I had by then re-read Wealth of Nations and, equally important, its companion volume, Theory of Moral Sentiments, and had begun to realize the enormity of the con trick which the Adam Smith Institute was seeking to play on the unsuspecting British people, now being dazzled by the self-certainties of the counter-revolutionaries. I had been put on to his track by my old friend Harold Lever... he expounded to me one of his favourite themes: Adam Smith was the most misquoted writer in history. Those who distorted his message for their own ends had never read him properly. Harold then juxtaposed two quotations: the first being the famous one in which Adam Smith declares that politicians mislead themselves when they imagine they can arrange the "different members of a great society" like pieces on a chess board to do their economic will. They will follow their own motivations – self-interest and self-love... But Harold's second quotation put a different light on things. "Government has a duty", Smith wrote, "of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions" vital to the running of "a great society", which would never be provided by individuals because "the profit would never repay the expense to an individual"."

"True, Smith was a firm believer in the market economy, but he was not a doctrinaire advocate of laissez-faire. His ideas for the role of government were obviously limited by the stage of development reached in the eighteenth century, when the state's activities comprised mainly defence, maintenance of the rule of law and the provision and construction of a transport system of roads, bridges and canals. But in one field he was prepared for the government to intervene to the point of being dictatorial – education. This sprang from his recognition of the social costs of the market economy. The growing phenomenon of the division of labour led, he maintained, to the mental mutilation of those condemned to spend their working lives on a few simple and repetitive operations, which bred "torpor of the mind". And he added, "In every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it." The discovery of these words came like a breath of fresh mountain air. This was William Morris and Ruskin all over again. Why were we socialists allowing the Thatcherites to disguise and distort these revelations of the dangers and inadequacies of the market economy? We were the real custodians of the "great society"."

"Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be Where air might wash and long leaves cover me; Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers, Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea."

"Marvellous mercies and infinite love."

"Our way is where God knows And Love knows where: We are in Love's hand to-day."

"From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no man lives forever, That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea."

"Though one were fair as roses His beauty clouds and closes."

"Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands."

"For in the days we know not of Did fate begin Weaving the web of days that wove Your doom."

"I remember the way we parted, The day and the way we met; You hoped we were both broken-hearted And knew we should both forget."

"And the best and the worst of this is That neither is most to blame, If you have forgotten my kisses And I have forgotten your name."

"O bitterness of things too sweet!"

"Gone deeper than all plummets sound."

"Ah that such sweet things should be fleet, Such fleet things sweet!"

"Those eyes the greenest of things blue The bluest of things grey."

"Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?"

"Till life forget and death remember, Till thou remember and I forget."

"Change lays not her hand upon truth."

"I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me."

"I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide."

"There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and ruin and gold There shone one woman, and none but she."

"Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be. Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain; Earth is not spoilt for a single shower; But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn."

"In the change of years, in the coil of things, In the clamour and rumour of life to be, We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me!"

"We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean. Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast Soul to soul while the years fell past; Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; Had the chance been with us that has not been. I have put my days and dreams out of mind, Days that are over, dreams that are done. Though we seek life through, we shall surely find There is none of them clear to us now, not one."

"The loves and hours of the life of a man, They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. Hours that rejoice and regret for a span, Born with a man's breath, mortal as he; Loves that are lost ere they come to birth, Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth. I lose what I long for, save what I can, My love, my love, and no love for me!"

"It is not much that a man can save On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in sight of the great third wave That never a swimmer shall cross or climb. Some waif washed up with the strays and spars That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars; Weed from the water, grass from a grave, A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme. There will no man do for your sake, I think, What I would have done for the least word said. I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink, Broken it up for your daily bread: Body for body and blood for blood, As the flow of the full sea risen to flood That yearns and trembles before it sink, I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead."

"I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew, You had grown strong as the sun or the sea. But none shall triumph a whole life through: For death is one, and the fates are three. At the door of life, by the gate of breath, There are worse things waiting for men than death; Death could not sever my soul and you, As these have severed your soul from me. You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you, Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer. But will it not one day in heaven repent you? Will they solace you wholly, the days that were? Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss, Meet mine, and see where the great love is, And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you; The gate is strait; I shall not be there."

"The pulse of war and passion of wonder, The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine, The stars that sing and the loves that thunder, The music burning at heart like wine, An armed archangel whose hands raise up All senses mixed in the spirit's cup Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder — These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife; Love that sings and hath wings as a bird, Balm of the wound and heft of the knife. Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep Than overwatching of eyes that weep, Now time has done with his one sweet word, The wine and leaven of lovely life."

"I shall go my ways, tread out my measure, Fill the days of my daily breath With fugitive things not good to treasure, Do as the world doth, say as it saith; But if we had loved each other — O sweet, Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet, The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure To feel you tread it to dust and death — Ah, had I not taken my life up and given All that life gives and the years let go, The wine and honey, the balm and leaven, The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low? Come life, come death, not a word be said; Should I lose you living, and vex you dead? I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven, If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?"

"Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives."

"O slain and spent and sacrificed People, the grey-grown speechless Christ."

"But God, if a God there be, is the substance of men which is man."

"Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things."

"It is long since Mr. Carlyle expressed his opinion that if any poet or other literary creature could really be "killed off by one critique" or many, the sooner he was so despatched the better; a sentiment in which I for one humbly but heartily concur."

"A blatant Bassarid of Boston, a rampant Maenad of Massachusetts."

"To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office."

"The more congenial page of some tenth-rate poeticule worn out with failure after failure and now squat in his hole like the tailless fox, he is curled up to snarl and whimper beneath the inaccessible vine of song."

"The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox."