Satirists From England

"The clog of all pleasure, the luggage of life, Is the best can be said for a very good wife."

"But oh, how slowly minutes roll When absent from her eyes, That feed my love, which is my soul: It languishes and dies."

"Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame, False to my passion, fatal to my fame, Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?"

"Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms, I filled with love, and she all over charms; Both equally inspired with eager fire, Melting through kindness, flaming in desire. With arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace."

"Farewell, woman! I intend Henceforth every night to sit With my lewd, well-natured friend, Drinking to engender wit."

"On thy wither'd lips and dry, Which like barren furrows lie, Brooding kisses I will pour, Shall thy youthful heart restore. (Such kind showers in autumn fall, And a second spring recall); Nor from thee will ever part, Ancient Person of my Heart."

"Lest, once more wandering from that heaven, I fall on some base heart unblest, Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven, And lose my everlasting rest."

"See the kind seed-receiving earth To every grain affords a birth: On her no showers unwelcome fall, Her willing womb retains 'em all, And shall my Caelia be confined? No, live up to thy mighty mind, And be the mistress of Mankind!"

"Thus, Statesman-like, I'll saucily impose, And, safe from Danger, valiantly advise; Sheltered in Impotence, urge you to Blows, And, being good for nothing else, be Wise."

"So, when my Days of Impotence approach, And I'm by Pox and Wine's unlucky chance Driv'n from the pleasing Billows of debauch On the dull Shore of lazy Temperance;My Pains at least some Respite shall afford While I behold the Battles you maintain When Fleets of Glasses sail about the Board, From whose Broad-sides Volleys of Wit shall rain."

"Then talk not of Inconstancy, False Hearts, and broken Vows; If I, by Miracle, can be This live-long Minute true to thee, 'Tis all that Heav'n allows."

"Angels listen when she speaks: She 's my delight, all mankind's wonder; But my jealous heart would break Should we live one day asunder."

"For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose, The best good man with the worst-natured muse."

"A merry monarch, scandalous and poor."

"Born to myself, I like myself alone, And must conclude my judgment good, or none: For could my sense be naught, how should I know Whether another man's were good or no? Thus I resolve of my own poetry, That 'tis the best; and there's a fame for me. If then I'm happy, what does it advance, Whether to merit due, or arrogance? Oh, but the world will take offence hereby! Why then the world shall suffer for 't, not I. Did eer this saucy world and I agree, To let it have its beastly will on me? Why should my prostituted sense be drawn To every rule their musty customs spawn? But men may censure you; 'tis two to one, Whene'er they censure, they'll be in the wrong. There's not a thing on Earth, that I can name, So foolish, and so false, as common fame. It calls the courtier knave, the plain man rude, Haughty the grave, and the delightful lewd, Impertinent the brisk, morose the sad, Mean the familiar, the reserv'd-one mad. Poor helpless woman is not favour'd more, She's a sly hypocrite, or public whore. Then who the Devil would give this — to be free From th' innocent reproach of infamy These things consider'd, make me (in despite Of idle rumour) keep at home and write."

"It is a good world to live in, To lend, or to spend, or to give in; But to beg or to borrow, or to get a man's own, It is the very worst world that ever was known."

"Dead we become the lumber of the world."

"The world appears like a great family, Whose lord, oppressed with pride and poverty, (That to the few great bounty he may show) Is fain to starve the numerous train below."

"If you have a grateful heart (which is a miracle amongst you statesmen), show it by directing the bearer to the best wine in town, and pray let not this highest point of sacred friendship be performed slightly, but go about it with all due deliberation and care, as holy priests to sacrifice, or as discreet thieves to the wary performance of burglary and shop-lifting. Let your well-discerning palate (the best judge about you) travel from cellar to cellar and then from piece to piece till it has lighted on wine fit for its noble choice and my approbation."

"But a meek humble Man of modest Sense, Who, Preaching Peace, does practice Continence; Whose pious life's a proof he does believe, Mysterious Truths, which no Man can conceive. If upon Earth there dwell such God-like Men, I'll here Recant my Paradox to them; Adore those Shrines of Virtue, homage pay, And, with the rabble world, their Laws obey. If such there are, yet grant me This at least, Man differs more from Man, than Man from Beast."

"Most Men are Cowards, all Men should be Knaves. The Difference lies, as far as I can see, Not in the thing it self, but the Degree."

"For all Men would be Cowards if they durst: And Honesty's against all common Sense."

"For Wits are treated just like Common Whores; First they're enjoy'd, and then kickt out of Doors."

"Then Old Age, and Experience, hand in hand, Lead him to death, and make him understand, After a Search so painful, and so long, That all his Life he has been in the wrong."

"Whilst the misguided Follower climbs with Pain, Mountains of Whimsies, heapt in his own Brain, Stumbling from Thought to Thought, falls headlong down Into Doubt's boundless Sea, where like to drown, Books bear him up a-while, and make him try To swim with Bladders of Philosophy."

"Reason, an Ignis fatuus of the Mind, Which leaves the light of Nature, Sense, behind."

"Were I, who to my Cost already am One of those strange, prodigious Creatures Man, A Spirit free, to choose for my own Share, What sort of Flesh and Blood I pleas'd to wear, I'd be a Dog, a Monkey, or a Bear, Or any thing, but that vain Animal, Who is so proud of being Rational."

"When my young master's worship comes to town, From pedagogue and mother just fit free, The heir and hopes of a great famiiy; Who with strong beer and beef the country rules, And ever since the Conquest have been fools; And now, with careful prospect to maintain This character, lest crossing of the strain Should mend the booby breed, his friends provide A cousin of his own to be his bride..."

"Love, the most generous passion of the mind The softest refuge innocence can find"

"Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories."

"Here lies our sovereign lord the king, Whose word no man relies on; He never says a foolish thing, Nor ever does a wise one."

"Science has toiled too long forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand."

"In fact, the real problem with the thesis of A Genealogy of Morals is that the noble and the aristocrat are just as likely to be stupid as the plebeian. I had noted in my teens that major writers are usually those who have had to struggle against the odds -- to "pull their cart out of the mud," as I put it -- while writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate -- or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems."

"In a talk at Oxford provocatively titled ‘Liberal Fascism,’ [Wells] called for liberalism to be ‘born again.’ After his customary denunciation of parliamentary politics as an anachronism, he let out his frustrations, calling for fascist means to serve liberal ends by way of a liberal elite as ‘conceited’ and as power-hungry as its rivals. ‘I suggest that you study the reinvigoration of Catholicism by Loyola,’ Wells said. ‘I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti.’ It was also to Communism that ‘we shall have to turn—we outsiders, that is, the young people with foresight for enlightened Nazis; I am proposing that you consider the formation for a greater Communist Party; a western response to Russia.’"

"It was Wells who made it respectable, even before World War I, for liberals in England and America to demean their own native democratic culture in the name of an imagined antidemocratic World State."

"It's silly for young men to announce themselves as new types of humanity. . .and then give you nothing but stale communism. Old H.G. Wells has more new ideas than the lot of them."

"To say that The Invisible Man is a young writer's novel is not to belittle it. It has much of the attractiveness of youth."

"The only political organisation Wells seems to have worked with successfully was PEN, for which he was International President between 1933 and 1936, and even then he was responsible for overseeing the expulsion of the German and Italian branches of the organisation due to their lack of respect for the free speech of non-fascist writers."

"In spite of an awareness of possible world catastrophe that underlay much of his earlier work and flared up again in old age, Wells in his lifetime was regarded as the chief literary spokesman of the liberal optimism that preceded World War I. No other writer has caught so vividly the energy of this period, its adventurousness, its feeling of release from the conventions of Victorian thought and propriety. Wells's influence was enormous, both on his own generation and on that which immediately followed it. None of his contemporaries did more to encourage revolt against Christian tenets and accepted codes of behaviour, especially as regards sex, in which, both in his books and in his personal life, he was a persistent advocate of an almost complete freedom. Though in many ways hasty, ill-tempered, and contradictory, Wells was undeviating and fearless in his efforts for social equality, world peace, and what he considered to be the future good of humanity."

"H.G. Wells, a great artist, was my favourite writer when I was a boy. The Passionate Friends, Ann Veronica, The Time Machine, The Country of the Blind, all these stories are far better than anything Bennett, or Conrad, or, in fact, any of Wells' contemporaries would produce. His sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, of course, but his romances and fantasies are superb."

"I have no hestitation whatever in saying that Wells, as he is, entertains me far more agreeably than Dickens. I know very well that the author of David Copperfield was a greater artist than the author of Mr. Polly, just as I know that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a more virtuous man than my good friend, Fred the Bartender, ; but all the same, I prefer Wells and Fred to Dickens and the Archbishop."

""Progress" is for the convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and technicism. This charming but dull vision was always the pseudoreligious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman. Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells's, "Of Things to Come," the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy."

"What a debt every intelligent being owes to Bernard Shaw! What a debt also to H. G. Wells, whose mind seems to have grown up alongside his readers', so that, in successive phases, be has delighted us and guided our imaginations from boyhood to maturity."

"Whatever Wells writes is not only alive, but kicking."

"Wells' faith in knowledge and reason, in brief, excluded too large, too central a portion of human experience. He was for all that a very great figure of his epoch, a formative influence upon the minds and imagination of countless men and women, of society itself, and our debt to him cannot but be sincerely and gratefully acknowledged at this fateful moment of history in which we live and in some measure he foresaw."

"Both have spoken and written a great deal in the last thirty-odd years; neither possesses what one could call a style, though each has a distinct idiom: that of Mr Wells being more like a durable boiler suit, and that of Mr. Churchill more like a court dress of rather tarnished grandeur from a theatrical costumier's."

"Since the beginning of this war two men, whom we had thought of as slowly and unwillingly retiring from public life, have emerged into a glare of prominence. I mean Mr. Churchill and Mr. Wells. They must be nearly contemporary; they were both men of celebrity, I remember, when I was a freshman."

"The influence of H. G. Wells on other science fiction writers is immeasurable. His work is widely known far beyond the boundaries of the genre, and to a great extent the creators of all novels and films of alien invasions, time travel, or invisibility are at least partly in his debt."

""H. G." in his lifetime inspired countless thousands of the eager self-immolatory young with the faith that freedom-with-democracy-and-Socialism could be realised "in our time," as the ILP used to say...He was the leaven – the anarchic, human leaven – which prevented, and still prevents, our movement from becoming a soulless organisation."

"In 1933, Einstein's works were among those burned in the book bonfires organized by the Nazis throughout Germany, together with those of such different anti-fascist writers as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Freud, Proust, Hemingway, H. G. Wells, Gide, Upton Sinclair, etc."