Quotes · page 1614

If all India stands up and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesimal part of that which you are doing to us.

Beware of endeavouring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: these are fearful odds.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.

The centre of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are …

One cannot live in society and be free from society.

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and …

Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him.

Kings are ambitious; the nobility haughty; and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable.

These Revelations were shewed to a simple creature unlettered, the year of our Lord 1373, the Thirteenth day of May. Which creature afore desired three gifts of God. The First was mind of His Passion; the Second was bodily sickness in …

I know not whether this book is worth anything, nor what the world will do with it, or misdo, or entirely forbear to do, as is likeliest; but this I could tell the world: You have not had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct …

being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice, And wake from ignorance the Western World.

They say the religion of your fathers is good enough. Why should a father object to your inventing a better plow than he had? They say to me, do you know more than all the theologians dead? Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do.

If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority.

I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

1978. If thou art wise, thou knowest thy own Ignorance; and thou art ignorant if thou knowest not thy self.

Thou, Poetry, in absence wert a chain, Binding our hearts together: where so well As in thy numbers, could I pour my soul, In soothing tenderness? 'twas bliss, to make Thought visible to those of whom I thought.

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.

Beware of, Had I wist.

What about my Soul? That's all right. The essence of such service is unselfishness. My first thought has to be of others, of the relationship of Crown and people: there will be no room to think of money or of my own career.

No man is entirely free from weakness and imperfection in this life. Men of the most exalted genius and active minds are generally most perfect slaves to the love of fame. They sometimes descend to as mean tricks and artifices in pursuit …

Poor little foal of an oppressèd race! I love the languid patience of thy face.

Absence from whom we love is worse than death, And frustrate hope severer than despair.

Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, If juster battles are enacted now Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?