Essayists From England

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.'"

"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."

"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!"

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

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

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

"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."

"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 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."

"[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.""

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

"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."

"I'm tired of Love; I'm still more tired of Rhyme. But money gives me pleasure all the time."

"It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation."

"Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative."

"Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have left the vulgar stuff alone."

"It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them."

"In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell."

"Every trouble in life is a joke compared to madness."

"[Of Guizot] A Puritan born in France by mistake."

"Honor sinks where commerce long prevails."

"You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits."

"Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not."

"It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations."

"To a great experience one thing is essential — an experiencing nature."

"The purse strings tie us to our kind."

"The name ‘London Banker’ had especially a charmed value. He was supposed to represent, and often did represent, a certain union of pecuniary sagacity and educated refinement which was scarcely to be found in any other part of society."

"A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature — a good bit, of course, but a bit only — in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence."

"The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend."

"The best way for the bank or banks who have the custody of the bank reserve to deal with a drain arising from internal discredit, is to lend freely. The first instinct of everyone is the contrary. There being a large demand on a fund which you want to preserve, the most obvious way to preserve it is to hoard it—to get in as much as you can, and to let nothing go out which you can help. But every banker knows that this is not the way to diminish discredit. This discredit means, 'an opinion that you have not got any money,' and to dissipate that opinion, you must, if possible, show that you have money: you must employ it for the public benefit in order that the public may know that you have it."

"The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair."