‘Reginald’ (1904) ‘Reginald on Besetting Sins’
Women and elephants never forget an injury.
‘Reginald’ (1904) ‘Reginald on Besetting Sins’
I always say beauty is only sin deep.
‘Reginald’ (1904) ‘Reginald’s Choir Treat’
But, good gracious, you’ve got to educate him first. You can’t expect a boy to be vicious till he’s been to a good school.
‘Reginald in Russia’ (1910) ‘The Baker’s Dozen’
Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.
‘Reginald in Russia’ (1910) ‘Cross Currents’
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
‘The Square Egg’ (1924) ‘Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business’
Children with Hyacinth’s temperament don’t know better as they grow older; they merely know more.
‘Toys of Peace and Other Papers’ (1919) ‘Hyacinth’
We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart.
‘The Unbearable Bassington’ (1912)
7.8 J. D. Salinger 1919—
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it.
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (1951) ch. 1
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (1951) ch. 3
Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away.
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (1951) ch. 9
Take most people, they’re crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they’re always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that’s even newer. I don’t even like old cars. I mean they don’t even interest me. I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake.
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (1951) ch. 17
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all...I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye.
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ (1951) ch. 22.
A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn’t stink a little bit of the writer’s pride in having given up his pride.
‘Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction’ (1963) p. 195 ‘Seymour’ (1959)
7.9 John of Salisbury d. 1180
Siquidem vita brevis, sensus hebes, negligentiae torpor, inutilis occupatio, nos paucula, scire permittunt, et eadem iugiter excutit et avellit ab anime fraudatrix scientiae, inimica et infida semper memoriae noverca, oblivio.
The brevity of our life, the dullness of our senses, the torpor of our indifference, the futility of our occupation, suffer us to know but little: and that little is soon shaken and then torn from the
mind by that traitor to learning, that hostile and faithless stepmother to memory, oblivion.
‘Prologue to the Policraticus’ (ed. C. C. J. Webb) vol. 1, p. 12, l. 13; translation by Helen Waddell
7.10 Lord Salisbury (Robert Gascoyne, third Marquess of Salisbury) 1830-1903
English policy is to float lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid collisions.
Letter to Earl of Lytton, 9 March 1877, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol. 2, p. 130
A great deal of misapprehension arises from the popular use of maps on a small scale. As with such maps you are able to put a thumb on India and a finger on Russia, some persons at once think that the political situation is alarming and that India must be looked to. If the noble Lord would use a larger map—say one on the scale of the Ordnance Map of England—he would find that the distance between Russia and British India is not to be measured by the finger and thumb, but by a rule.
House of Commons, 11 June 1877
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Letter to Lord Lytton, 15 June 1877, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol. 2, ch. 4
The agonies of a man who has to finish a difficult negotiation, and at the same time to entertain four royalties at a country house can be better imagined than described.
Letter to Lord Lyons, 5 June 1878, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol. 2, p. 275
What with deafness, ignorance of French, and Bismarck’s extraordinary mode of speech, Beaconsfield has the dimmest idea of what is going on—understands everything crossways—and imagines a perpetual conspiracy.
Letter to Lady Salisbury from the Congress of Berlin, 23 June 1878, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury’ vol. 2, p. 287
We are part of the community of Europe and we must do our duty as such.
Speech at Caernarvon, 10 April 1888, in ‘The Times’ 11 April 1888
Where property is in question I am guilty...of erecting individual liberty as an idol, and of resenting all attempts to destroy or fetter it; but when you pass from liberty to life, in no wellgoverned State, in no State governed according to the principles of common humanity, are the claims of mere liberty allowed to endanger the lives of the citizens.
Speech in House of Lords, 29 July 1897; in ‘Hansard’
I rank myself no higher in the scheme of things than a policeman—whose utility would disappear if there were no criminals.
Comparing his role in the Conservative party with that of Gladstone, in Lady Gwendolen Cecil ‘Biographical Studies...of Robert, Third Marquess of Salisbury’ p. 84
By office boys for office boys.
Describing the Daily Mail, in H. Hamilton Fyfe ‘Northcliffe, an Intimate Biography’ (1930) ch. 4
7.11 Lord Salisbury (Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, fifth Marquess of Salisbury) 18931972
Too clever by half.
Of Iain Macleod, Colonial Secretary, ‘in his relationship to the white communities of Africa’; ‘Hansard’ (House of Lords) 7 March 1961, col. 307
7.12 Sallust c.86-c.35 B.C.
Alieni appetens, sui profusus.
Greedy for the property of others, extravagant with his own.
‘Catiline’ ch. 5
Quieta movere magna merces videbatur.
Just to stir things up seemed a great reward in itself.
‘Catiline’ ch. 21
Esse quam videri bonus malebat.
He preferred to be rather than to seem good.
‘Catiline’ ch. 54 (referring to Cato)
Punica fide.
With Carthaginian trustworthiness.
‘Jugurtha’ 108, 3 (meaning treachery)
7.13 Anthony Sampson 1926—
Members [of civil service orders] rise from CMG (known sometimes in Whitehall as ‘Call Me God’) to the KCMG (‘Kindly Call Me God’) to—for a select few governors and super- ambassadors—the GCMG (‘God Calls Me God’).
‘Anatomy of Britain’ (1962) ch. 18
7.14 Lord Samuel (Herbert Louis, first Viscount Samuel) 1870-1963
A library is thought in cold storage.
‘A Book of Quotations’ (1947) p. 10
Without doubt the greatest injury of all was done by basing morals on myth. For, sooner or later, myth is recognized for what it is, and disappears. Then morality loses the foundation on which it has been built.
‘Romanes Lecture’ (1947) p. 14
7.15 Carl Sandburg 1878-1967
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.
‘Chicago’ (1916)
When Abraham Lincoln was shovelled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...
in the dust, in the cool tombs.
‘Cool Tombs’ (1918)
The fog comes on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city on silent haunches
and then moves on.
‘Fog’ (1916)
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
‘Grass’ (1918)
Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away?
‘The Lawyers Know Too Much’ (1920)
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
‘Prairie’ (1918)
I am an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on the way.
‘Incidentals’ (1907) p. 8
Little girl...Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.
‘The People, Yes’ (1936); Charlotte Keyes wrote a piece for ‘McCall’s’ October 1966 called ‘Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came?’, and in 1970 an American film was entitled ‘Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?’.
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.
‘Atlantic Monthly’ March 1923 ‘Poetry Considered’
Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
‘Atlantic Monthly’ March 1923 ‘Poetry Considered’
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
In ‘New York Times’ 13 February 1959, p. 21
7.16 Henry ‘Red’ Sanders
Sure, winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.
In ‘Sports Illustrated’ 26 December 1955; often attributed to Vince Lombardi
7.17 Martha Sansom (nèe Fowke) 1690-1736
Foolish eyes, thy streams give over, Wine, not water, binds the lover: At the table then be shining,
Gay coquette, and all designing.
‘Song’ (written c.1726)
7.18 William Sansom 1926-76
A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or the evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all.
‘Blue Skies, Brown Studies’ (1961) ‘From a Writer’s Notebook’
7.19 George Santayana 1863-1952
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
‘Dialogues in Limbo’ (1925) ch. 3
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
‘The Life of Reason’ (1905) vol. 1, introduction
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
‘The Life of Reason’ (1905) vol. 1, ch. 10
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
‘The Life of Reason’ (1905) vol. 1, ch. 12
It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
‘The Life of Reason’ (1905) vol. 2, ch. 2
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
‘The Life of Reason’ (1905) vol. 4, ch. 3
Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends utility to its conditions.
‘The Life of Reason’ (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
‘Little Essays’ (1920) ‘Ideal Immortality’
England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies, hobbies, and humours.
‘Soliloquies in England’ (1922) ‘The British Character’
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
‘Soliloquies in England’ (1922) ‘War Shrines’
Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly is to share it.
‘Winds of Doctrine’ (1913) ch. 4
7.20 ‘Sapper’ (Herman Cyril MacNeile) 1888-1937
Hugh pulled out his cigarette-case. ‘Turkish this side—Virginia that.’
‘Bull-dog Drummond’ (1920) ch. 8
7.21 Sappho b. c.612 B.C.
That man seems to me on a par with the gods who sits in your company and listens to you so close to him speaking sweetly and laughing sexily, such a thing makes my heart flutter in my breast, for when I see you even for a moment, then power to speak another word fails me, instead my tongue freezes into silence, and at once a gentle fire has caught throughout my flesh, and I see nothing with my eyes, and there’s a drumming in my ears, and sweat pours down me, and trembling seizes all of me, and I become paler than grass, and I seem to fail almost to the point of death in my very self.
No. 199 in D. L. Page (ed.) ‘Lyrica Graeca Selecta’ (1968)
Just as the sweet-apple reddens on the high branch, high on the highest, and the apple-pickers missed it, or rather did not miss it out, but dared not reach it.
No. 224 in D. L. Page (ed.) ‘Lyrica Graeca Selecta’ (1968) (on a girl before her marriage).
7.22 John Singer Sargent 1856-1925
Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.
In N. Bentley and E. Esar ‘Treasury of Humorous Quotations’ (1951)
7.23 Leslie Sarony 1897-1985
Ain’t it grand to be blooming well dead?
Title of song (1932)
7.24 Nathalie Sarraute 1902—
Radio and television...have succeeded in lifting the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.
‘Times Literary Supplement’ 10 June 1960
7.25 Jean-Paul Sartre 1905-80
Quand les riches se font la guerre ce sont les pauvres qui meurent.
When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.
‘Le Diable et le bon Dieu’ (1951) act 1, tableau 1
L’ècrivain doit donc refuser de se laisser transformer en institution.
A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.
Refusing the Nobel Prize at Stockholm, 22 October 1964; in Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka (eds.) ‘Les Ècrits de Sartre’ (1970) p. 403
L’existence prècéde et commande l’essence.
Existence precedes and rules essence.
‘L’Être et le nèant’ (1943) pt. 4, ch. 1
Je suis condemnè á être libre.
I am condemned to be free.
‘L’Être et le nèant’ (1943) pt. 4, ch. 1
L’homme est une passion inutile.
Man is a useless passion.
‘L’Être et le nèant’ (1943) pt. 4, ch. 2
Alors, c’est ça l’Enfer. Je n’aurais jamais cru...Vous vous rappelez: le soufre, le bûcher, le gril...
Ah! quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril, l’Enfer, c’est les Autres.
So that’s what Hell is: I’d never have believed it...Do you remember, brimstone, the stake, the
gridiron?...What a joke! No need of a gridiron, Hell is other people.
‘Huis Clos’ (1944) sc. 5.
Il n’y a pas de bon pére, c’est la régle; qu’on n’en tienne pas grief aux hommes mais au lien de paternitè qui est pourri. Faire des enfants, rien de mieux; en avoir , quelle iniquitè!
There is no good father, that’s the rule. Don’t lay the blame on men but on the bond of
paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity!
‘Les Mots’ (1964) ‘Lire’
Les bons pauvres ne savent pas que leur office est d’exercer notre gènèrositè.
The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.
‘Les Mots’ (1964) ‘Lire’
Elle ne croyait á rien; seul, son scepticism l’empêchait d’être athèe.
She believed in nothing; only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.
‘Les Mots’ (1964) ‘Lire’
Comme tous les songe-creux, je confondis le dèsenchantement avec la vèritè.
Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
‘Les Mots’ (1964) ‘Ècrire’
Je confondis les choses avec leurs noms: c’est croire.
I confused things with their names: that is belief.
‘Les Mots’ (1964) ‘Ècrire’
La vie humaine commence de l’autre côtè du dèsespoir.
Human life begins on the far side of despair.
‘Les Mouches’ (1943) act 3
Ma pensèe, c’est moi : voilá pourquoi je ne peux pas m’arrêter. J’existe par ce que je pense...et je ne peux pas m’empêcher de penser.
My thought is me: that’s why I can’t stop. I exist by what I think...and I can’t prevent myself
from thinking.
‘La Nausèe’ (1938) ‘Lundi’ Je dèteste les victimes quand elles respectent leurs bourreaux.
I hate victims who respect their executioners.
‘Les Sèquestrès d’Altona’ (1960) act 1, sc. 1
Je me mèfie des incommunicables, c’est la source de toute violence.
I distrust the incommunicable: it is the source of all violence.
‘Qu’est-ce que la littèrature?’ in ‘Les Temps Modernes’ July 1947, p. 106
7.26 Siegfried Sassoon 1886-1967
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
‘Base Details’ (1918)
I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home’,— And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
‘Blighters’ (1917)
Does it matter?—losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind When the others come in after hunting To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter?—losing your sight?...
There’s such splendid work for the blind; And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
‘Does it Matter?’ (1918)
Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land, Drawing no dividend from time’s tomorrows.
‘Dreamers’ (1918)
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
‘Dreamers’ (1918)
Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled, And one arm bent across your sullen cold Exhausted face?...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.
‘The Dug-Out’ (1919)
Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom.
‘Everyone Sang’ (1919)
The song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
‘Everyone Sang’ (1919)
‘Good-morning; good morning!’ the General said When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead, And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine. ‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
‘The General’ (1918)
Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife, Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.
He hobbled blithely through the garden gate, And thought: ‘Thank God they had to amputate!’
‘The One-Legged Man’ (1917)
Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,— Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
‘On Passing the New Menin Gate’ (1928)
Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride ‘Their name liveth for ever’ the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and devide this sepulchre of crime.
‘On Passing the New Menin Gate’ (1928)
7.27George Savile, Marquis of Halifax
See Halifax (8.13) in Volume I
7.28Dorothy L. Sayers 1893-1957
I admit it is better fun to punt than to be punted, and that a desire to have all the fun is ninetenths of the law of chivalry.
‘Gaudy Night’ (1935) ch. 14
As I grow older and older, And totter towards the tomb, I find that I care less and less Who goes to bed with whom.
‘That’s Why I Never Read Modern Novels’, in Janet Hitchman ‘Such a Strange Lady’ (1975) ch. 12
7.29 Al Scalpone
The family that prays together stays together.
Slogan devised for the Roman Catholic Family Rosary Crusade, 1947
7.30 Hugh Scanlon (Baron Scanlon) 1913—
Of course liberty is not licence. Liberty in my view is conforming to majority opinion.
Television interview, 9 August 1977, in ‘Listener’ 11 August 1977
7.31 Arthur Scargill 1938—
Parliament itself would not exist in its present form had people not defied the law.
Said in evidence to House of Commons Select Committee on Employment, 2 April 1980, in ‘House of Commons Paper no. 462 of Session 1979-80’ p. 55
7.32 Age Scarpelli et al.
Il buono, il bruto, il cattivo.
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Title of film (1966)
7.33 Friedrich von Schelling 1775-1854
Architecture in general is frozen music.
‘Philosophie der Kunst’ (1809)
7.34 Friedrich von Schiller 1759-1805
Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
