Women Authors From England

"It is a stern fact of history that no nation that rushed to the abyss ever turned back. Not ever, in the long history of the world. We are now on the edge of the abyss. Can we, for the first time in history, turn back? It is up to you."

"You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide."

"Learning … should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of noble and learned men, not a conducted tour through a jail. So its surroundings should be as gracious as possible, to complement it."

"I am the only major best-selling novelist in the United States who is not tainted by "liberalism" and Communism, and who has never belonged to a Communist front. As a result, the press, which is mainly "liberal", has been furiously attacking me for years in their alleged "reviews."... In our bitterness, we are beginning to wonder what protection an antiCommunist has in the United States now, had we been Communists we'd have had the enthusiastic support of the press and would now be very wealthy, for, as liberal writers told me in New York, with contempt, that had we been "liberals" we'd not have had to pay any taxes, or only token payments."

"If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me ye women if you can."

"Anne Bradstreet's sweet-tempered moderation can be read as ironic or conformist, but the significant fact is that she persisted all her life in working and publishing as a poet. At what cost to herself and her art can only be surmised. As Adrienne Rich observed: "To have written poems, the first good poems in America, while rearing eight children, lying frequently sick, keeping house at the edge of wilderness, was to have managed a poet's range and extension within confines as severe as any American poet has confronted.""

"Anne Bradstreet wrote seven thousand lines of verse and most of it is derivative, unremarkable, sometimes even soporific, although her best is very good indeed; and her real achievements in poetry have not been duly recognized for almost three hundred years. But in greatness of spirit, generosity of outlook, love for learning as a path toward truth; in their quick responsive delight in the everyday wonder of the world and their deeply devout faith in the goodness of God, Anne Bradstreet and Juana Inés de la Cruz-the one a Puritan, the other a Roman Catholic-were very close akin. Remarking upon the brevity of human life, Anne Bradstreet wrote, "And though thus short, we shorten many ways, / Living so little while we are alive"; and Sor Juana said, "Angels are higher than men because they understand more.""

"Fire hath its force abated by water, not by wind; and anger must be allayed by cold words, and not by blustering threats."

"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."

"Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish."

"Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending."

"The principal might yield a greater sum, Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb;"

"Leave not thy nest, thy dam and sire, Fly back and sing amidst this choir."

"Such cold mean flowers the spring puts forth betime, Before the sun hath thoroughly heat the clime."

""Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on Nothing but Meditation?"

"A Spring returns, and they more youthful made; But Man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid."

"What to my Saviour shall I give Who freely hath done this for me? I'll serve him here whilst I shall live And Loue him to Eternity"

"If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none; And for thy Mother, she alas is poor, Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door."

"If to be great means to be good, then Denis Diderot was a little man. But if to be great means to do great things in the teeth of great obstacles, then none can refuse him a place in the temple of the Immortals."

"It is by character and not by intellect the world is won."

"For the first time he looked into his heart and wrote, and thus for the first time he touched the hearts of others; the cold style took fire, and beneath the clumsy periods welled tears."

"He who has lost only those of whose faith and truth he is sure, has not yet reached the depth of human desolation."

"Hopeless, filthy, degraded, superstitious with the craven superstition which made them the easy prey of their unscrupulous clergy and left them wholly sensual and stupid; as animals, without the animals' instinctive joy of life and fearlessness of the morrow ; with no ambitions for themselves or the children who turned to curse them for having brought them into such a world; with no time to dream or love, no time for the tenderness which makes life, life indeed — they toiled for a few cruel years because they feared to die, and died because they feared to live. Such were the people Turgot was sent to redeem."

"All men now allow that if any human power could have stemmed the avalanche of the French Revolution, it would have been the reforms of Turgot."

"'What a fuss about an omelette!' he had exclaimed when he heard of the burning. How abominably unjust to persecute a man for such an airy trifle as that! "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," was his attitude now."

"There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring."

"A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible when one or other of the Platonists is in love with a third person."

"It is as the father of the Encyclopedia that Denis Diderot merits eternal recognition. Guilty as he was in almost every relation of life towards the individual, for mankind, in the teeth of danger and of infidelity, at the ill-paid sacrifice of the best years of his exuberant life, he produced that book which first levelled a free path to knowledge and enfranchised the soul of his generation."

"In his home-life Turgot remained most frugal and laborious, treating his servants with a benevolence then accounted contemptible, and working out his quiet schemes with an infinite patience and thoroughness. When he was offered the richer Intendancy of Lyons, he would not take it. Here, as he said of himself, though he was 'the compulsory instrument of great evil,' he was doing a little good. Only a little, it might be. But if every man did the little he could — what a different world!"

"The cheerful light, the vital air, Are blessings widely given; Let nature's commoners enjoy The common gifts of heaven.The well-taught philosophic mind To all compassion gives; Casts round the world an equal eye, And feels for all that lives.If mind, as ancient sages taught, A never dying flame, Still shifts thro' matter's varying forms, In every form the same, Beware, lest in the worm you crush A brother's soul you find; And tremble lest thy luckless hand Dislodge a kindred mind."

"If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd, And spurn'd a tyrant's chain, Let not thy strong oppressive force A free-born mouse detain."

"Oh! hear a pensive captive's prayer, For liberty that sighs; And never let thine heart be shut Against the prisoner's cries."

"This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars."

"With Thee in shady solitudes I walk, With Thee in busy, crowded cities talk, In every creature own Thy forming power, In each event Thy providence adore."

"I read his awful name, emblazon'd high With golden letters on th' illumin'd sky."

"Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew, In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew.[…] Gay without toil, and lovely without art, They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart."

"It is to hope, tho' hope were lost."

"We may think all religions beneficial, and believe of one alone that it is true."

"Man is the nobler growth our realms supply, And souls are ripen'd in our northern sky."

"Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?"

"Let us confess a truth, humiliating perhaps to human pride;—a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association—in short, by prejudice."

"It is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him."

"O gently guide my pilgrim feet To find thy hermit cell; Where in some pure and equal sky Beneath thy soft indulgent eye The modest virtues dwell."

"If an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect."

"It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays."

"So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o’er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore."

"Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear,;br>Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good morning."

"So when destruction lurks unseen, Which men like mice may share, May some kind angel clear thy path, And break the hidden snare."

"Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot My soul's full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute Love that endures, from life that disappears!"

"Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame."