diarists

"Hallie Eustace Miles ... The daughter of the of , Hallie Killick married the sportsman and writer in 1906. Together with her husband, she ran a vegetarian restaurant and pioneering health food centre, and counted AC Benson, among other literary luminaries, as customers and friends. As the centenary of the first world war approaches, her diary of their life during the , originally published in 1930, is definitely worth seeking out."

"Besides the darkness of the night, many minor shadows cross our paths, making the hues of Life obscure. These are not always caused by sorrow. There are clouds brought by misunderstanding, sharp words and thoughtless speeches. Want of thought throws many shadows."

"Many argue that the is inhumane, that meat is expensive, that it contains uric acid, that it may be tubercular, and so on. All this is too true; but I do not think that the scientific case for meat is sufficiently explained, or given its due as a body-builder and repairer, as a stimulant and appetizer, which is why, when most people go without it, they must have a substitute."

"In a certain sense, many of us mutilate the mind and render it impotent, for there is in the nature of man an irresistible tendency to religion; it is founded in our wants and passions, in the extent of our faculties, in the quality of mind itself. 's description of the untired soul darting from world to world, is a noble image of the restless longing of the mind after God and immortality. The stronger his sensibility, the more exalted his imagination, the more pious will every man be. And in this inherent and essential quality of our minds can we alone account for the various absurd and demonstrably false dogmas believed so honestly and zealously by some. Men run headlong into superstition in the same way as young boys and girls run into matrimony."

"Dined at Gooden’s, where I met among others , the Secretary of the . He surprised me by saying that he knew Goethe only as a botanist, in which character he thought most highly of him, he being the author of the New System of Botany; and that this is now the opinion of the most eminent botanists both in France and England. I rejoice at this unexpected intelligence."

"Lamb was the first English writer of eminence whom Crabb Robinson tried to convince of the excellence of Goethe."

"Lamb had written to Coleridge about one of their old masters, who had been a severe disciplinarian, intimating that he hoped Coleridge had forgiven all injuries. Coleridge replied that he certainly had; he hoped his soul was in heaven, and that when he went there he was borne by a host of cherubs, all face and wing, and without anything to excite his whipping propensities!"

"Since the Restoration of Taiwan, we have suffered the buffeting of adverse international political tides and economic upheavals. But we have never been worried or apprehensive. We have followed the course of our principles. We have striven to fulfill our national responsibility with one will and one heart, and have carried out political, economic, social and cultural development step by step. We have regarded the great devotion shown by our mainland compatriots in recovering Taiwan 33 years ago as our spiritual lodestar for the national recovery today. We have built a psychological Great Wall and persisted in our confident waging of the struggle against Com­munism with total sincerity and the fortitude essential to success."

"To talk peace with the Chinese Communists is to invite death. This is an agonizing, bloodstained lesson that we and many other Asian countries have learned."

"'To the Communists, peace talks are another form of warfare. Although the two look different, the aim is identical."

"Dear fellow countrymen: Our beautiful land is still stained with blood by the Communists, and the turbulent Yangtze and Yellow Rivers still flow day and night toward the vast seas in the east. Like the continuing flow of the Yangtze, our goal of anti-Communism and for national recovery will never change. The "helm of history," so crucial to the destiny of our people, is in our hands."

"As long as we can uphold democracy, remain firm on the side of the free world, work hard for self-reliance without laxity, unite as one, and take the implementation and glorification of the Three Principles of the People as our personal responsibility, we are sure to succeed in laying a firm foundation for national renaissance and win the great undertaking of resisting Communism and national recovery."

"Our progress toward democracy should be evolutionary and not imprudent; democracy must be adapted to our own national environment so it can strike root in our own soil."

"I shall from now on try my best and most sincerely and call on all my wisdom and ability to face the challenge of reality with fortitude and determination in company with all my compatriots of the nation. I shall make careful plans and seek judicious judgments to attain the goals of national construction. I shall make every sacrifice to de­monstrate my loyalty and give myself to the service of winning the final victory for national recovery and reconstruction together with all the people of the country"

"We must have determination to eliminate violent elements if we want to bring peace and prosperity to the citizenry. The violent elements are few, but if we don't eliminate them, we cannot bring prosperity and peace to the millions of people."

"Asia is an issue for the world. The issue with Asia is China. China’s problem is the existence of the Chinese Communist Party, which is a snake that has turned its back on the wishes of the Chinese people and causes pain for the rest of the world."

"We must enlarge political participation, safeguard freedom and human rights, and assure that democracy and freedom are based on the will of all the people."

"At this moment, every one of us greets the new era with matchless excitement, joy, optimism and hope. And all of us are convinced that the seventies of the Republic is bound to be an era for the reign of the Three Principles of the People and the recovery of the Chinese mainland."

"In this historic course, the Chinese Communists staged a nationwide insurgency, resulting in the fall of the mainland into Communist hands. The Communist rule of the last more than 30 years has brought a catastrophe to the Chinese people and has testified to the fiasco of the Communist system. Although the Chinese Communists are plagued by ideological contradictions, political corruption, economic destitution and military disintegration, their power struggle has never stopped. As long as this tyrannical Communist rule is allowed to go on, millions upon millions of our compatriots on the mainland will remain in the crucible of poverty and darkness."

"Facts are more eloquent than words. The certainty of the reign of the Three Principles of the People was affirmed long ago by the contrast between the political stability, economic prosperity, social harmony, and educational popularization evidenced in the free area of China and the totalitarian dictatorship, impoverished life, bleak backwardness, and widespread uncertainty found on the Chinese mainland. The unanimous aspirations of the Chinese across the world today are to remove Communist evils from Chinese soil, to save the people on the mainland from the deep waters, and to restore to the Chinese mainland the benevolent rule of the Three Principles of the People at an early date. This historic task lies squarely on the shoulders of every Chinese living in freedom."

"We must make use of every minute, value every unit of our material power and pool the wisdom and talent of all so that we can accentuate both our visible national defense combat capability and our invisible political, social and cultural vitality, and combine these into a powerful, compact and undivided force."

"We can say positively and clearly that the Republic of China will never change its determination to remain in the democratic camp and oppose Communism. We shall never change our position of not negotiating or compromising with the Communist enemy. Our fundamental policy and attitude in international politics is to strengthen friendly and moral relations with free nations and fulfill all of our obligations and responsibilities under the preconditions of anti­ Communism and national recovery."

"During the last 69 years, the Republic of China has lived in suspense, shocks, disturbances and uncertainty. The people have endured various ordeals and suffered from all sorts of humiliations in their struggle for national independence, freedom, prosperity and happiness. They have sweated themselves and shed their blood heroically. They have never shown the white feather under any challenge, surrendered to any force, or bowed to any enemy. This immortal record registered by the Republic of China in modern history for national independence, freedom and equality will shine eternally in the world."

"The fierce conflict confronting us will decide our fate - whether it is to be "glory or humiliation, freedom or slavery."

"The seventies of the Republic of China is an era of crucial test to see whether we are up to this historic task. All Chinese must treat one another with love and sincerity, unite as one for the common cause, and march forward courageously and hand in hand on the avenue of victory in carrying out this sacred task."

"I use the word smile for lack of a better word, but how to convey the beauty of the indefinable expression that transfigured that time-worn face? Tender triumph: gentle joy: rapturous reverence. What mystery did I witness? It was like iron frost yielding to sunshine — the thawing of grief in the dawn-radiance of some unsurmisable redemption."

"I am beginning to rub my eyes at the prospect of peace. I think it will require more courage than anything that has gone before. ... One will have to look at long vistas again, instead of short ones, and one will at last fully recognise that the dead are not only dead for the duration of the war."

"Oh why was I born for this time? Before one is thirty to know more dead than living people."

"A fat, fair and fifty card-playing resident of the Crescent."

"You ask what is the most important thing in my life, I'll tell you: death and love - both."

"What to do? I have to get drunk on a bottle of ambrosia, What's left of my youthful banquets. I leave with a rose in my hand, with the moon under my armpit, And I leave the rest for new poets."

"A night with you - this is one thing that works like hashish, Only one thing you can believe in unconsciously. And I don't know if there is love apart from your body And I know you don't love me, that you will forget about me."

"I know now: it's as bright as the sun in the sky, And the heart must die under heavy mourning, Because I will never take you to myself for eternity. You will never be me and I will never be you."

"And in spring - let me see spring, not Poland."

"I feel very bad today, I feel very sad, My thoughts are withered, sick, like flowers on a grave, Outside the windows, the sky hangs like a gray canvas. I can't love you or think about you today."

"One gender to walk the wide world in Is the feminine, A plight that — softly to a friend — I can recommend."

"I had a perfect confidence, still unshaken, in books. If you read enough you would reach the point of no return. You would cross over and arrive on the safe side. There you would drink the strong waters and become addicted, perhaps demented — but a Reader."

"Whenas in perfume Julia went, Then, then, how sweet was the intent Of that inexorable scent."

"It seems an odd idea to my students that poetry, like all art, leads us away from itself, back to the world in which we live. It furnishes the vision. It shows with a sudden intense clarity what is already there."

"Victor Hugo was a passionate observer, partial to death scenes. He had an appetite for extinction, a man sure to be on hand at the sound of a death rattle or the passing of a funeral procession."

"No matter what kind of verse a woman writes, nobody alive or dead deserves to be called a poetess."

"The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes."

"Sunday last a soldier of Co. "A" died and was buried with military honors. ... Everything went on as usual in camp as if nothing had happened, for death is so common that little sentiment is wasted. It is not like death at home."

"Daylight showed a strange scene. Men, horses, artillery, pontoons, and wagons are stuck in the mud. ... Rebels put up a sign, says "Burnside's stuck in the mud." ... We can fight rebels, but not in the mud."

"If we were under any other General except Grant I should expect a retreat, but Grant is not that kind of a soldier, and we feel that we can trust him."

"The glorious fourth has come again, and we have had quite a celebration with guns firing shot and shell into Petersburg to remind them of the day. This day makes four 4th of Julys that I have passed in the Army. The first at Camp Clark near Washington, the second at Harrisons Landing, the third at Gettysburg and today at Petersburg."

"Sally Reynolds told a short story of a negro pet of Mrs. Kershaw's. The little negro clung to Mrs. Kershaw and begged her to save him. The negro mother, stronger than Mrs. Kershaw, tore him away from her. Mrs. Kershaw wept bitterly. Sally said she saw the mother chasing the child before her as she ran after the Yankees, whipping him at every step. The child yelled like mad, a small rebel blackamoor."

"Every day regiments pass by. The town is crowded with soldiers. These new ones are running in, fairly. They fear the war will be over before they get a sight of the fun."

"Our battle [summer]]. May it be our first and our last. So-called. After all, we have not had any of the horrors of war."

"Woe to those who began this war, if they were not in bitter earnest."