The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

your mouth shut.

In ‘Observer’ 15 January 1950

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

‘Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium’ (1941) ch. 13

Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.

In Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman ‘Albert Einstein, the Human Side’ (1979) p. 38

5.19 Dwight D. Eisenhower 1890-1969

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Speech in Washington, 16 April 1953, in ‘Public Papers of Presidents 1953’ (1960) p. 182

You have broader considerations that might follow what you might call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly. So you have the beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

Speech at press conference, 7 April 1954, in ‘Public Papers of Presidents 1954’ (1960) p. 383

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Broadcast discussion, 31 August 1959, in ‘Public Papers of Presidents 1959’ (1960) p. 625

5.20 Edward Elgar 1857-1934

To my friends pictured within.

‘Enigma Variations’ (1899) dedication

5.21 George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 1819-80

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitute a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character.

‘Adam Bede’ (1859) ch. 29

A maggot must be born i’ the rotten cheese to like it.

‘Adam Bede’ (1859) ch. 32

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

‘Adam Bede’ (1859) ch. 33

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

‘Adam Bede’ (1859) ch. 42

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

‘Adam Bede’ (1859) ch.42

The mother’s yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man.

‘Adam Bede’ (1859) ch. 43

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

‘Daniel Deronda’ (1876) bk. 2, ch. 13

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

‘Daniel Deronda’ (1876) bk. 2, ch. 15

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

‘Daniel Deronda’ (1876) bk. 3, ch. 24

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.

‘Daniel Deronda’ (1876) bk. 4, ch. 32

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless; nay, the speech they have resolved not to make.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) ch. 2

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) ch. 3

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) ch. 5

A little daily embroidery had been a constant element in Mrs Transome’s life; that soothing occupation of taking stitches to produce what neither she nor any one else wanted, was then the resource of many a well-born and unhappy woman.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) ch. 7

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) ch. 15

A woman can hardly ever choose...she is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) ch. 27

There’s many a one who would be idle if hunger didn’t pinch him; but the stomach sets us to work.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) ch. 30

‘Abroad’, that large home of ruined reputations.

‘Felix Holt’ (1866) epilogue

Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure

which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) Prelude

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 9

He said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 9

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 10

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 11

Any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life or another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbour.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 1, ch. 11

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 2, ch. 20

We do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 2, ch. 20

A woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 3, ch. 25

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 3, ch. 29

A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having intended greatness for men.

‘Middlemarch’ (1871-2) bk. 4, ch. 39

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860) bk. 1, ch. 10

The dead level of provincial existence.

‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860) bk. 5, ch. 3

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

‘The Mill on the Floss’ (1860) bk. 6, ch. 3.

Teach us to sit still.

‘Ash-Wednesday’ (1930) pt. 1

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day.

‘Ash-Wednesday’ (1930) pt. 2

You’ve missed the point completely, Julia: There were no tigers. That was the point.

‘The Cocktail Party’ (1950) act 1, sc. 1

What is hell? Hell is oneself,

Hell is alone, the other figures in it

Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

‘The Cocktail Party’ (1950) act 1, sc. 3.

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps. Over buttered scones and crumpets Weeping, weeping multitudes

Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s.

‘Cooking Egg’ (1920)

Success is relative:

It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

‘The Family Reunion’ (1939) pt. 2, sc. 3

Round and round the circle Completing the charm

So the knot be unknotted The cross be uncrossed

The crooked be made straight And the curse be ended.

‘The Family Reunion’ (1939) pt. 2, sc. 3

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn—

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

‘La Figlia Che Piange’ (1917)

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze

The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.

‘La Figlia Che Piange’ (1917)

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Burnt Norton’ (1936) pt. 1

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Burnt Norton’ (1936) pt. 1

Human kind

Cannot bear very much reality.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Burnt Norton’ (1936) pt. 1.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Burnt Norton’ (1936) pt. 2

Words strain,

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Burnt Norton’ (1936) pt. 5

In my beginning is my end.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘East Coker’ (1940) pt. 1.

That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle

With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘East Coker’ (1940) pt. 2

The houses are all gone under the sea. The dancers are all gone under the hill.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘East Coker’ (1940) pt. 2

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘East Coker’ (1940) pt. 3

The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer’s art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘East Coker’ (1940) pt. 4

Each venture

Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘East Coker’ (1940) pt. 5

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘The Dry Salvages’ (1941) pt. 1

And what the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Little Gidding’ (1942) pt. 1

Ash on an old man’s sleeve

Is all the ash the burnt roses leave. Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended. Dust inbreathed was a house—

The wall, the wainscot and the mouse. The death of hope and despair,

This is the death of air.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Little Gidding’ (1942) pt. 2

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe

And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Little Gidding’ (1942) pt. 2

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Little Gidding’ (1942) pt. 5

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Little Gidding’ (1942) pt. 5

A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Little Gidding’ (1942) pt. 5

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

‘Four Quartets’ ‘Little Gidding’ (1942) pt. 5.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

‘Gerontion’ (1920)

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities.

‘Gerontion’ (1920)

Tenants of the house,

Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.

‘Gerontion’ (1920)

The hippopotamus’s day

Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way— The Church can feed and sleep at once.

‘The Hippopotamus’ (1919)

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

‘The Hollow Men’ (1925)

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act

Falls the Shadow.

‘The Hollow Men’ (1925)

This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

‘The Hollow Men’ (1925)

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.

‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927).

But set down This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927)

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917)

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes. The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes.

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917)

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917)

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917)

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917)

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917)

I grow old...I grow old...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1917)

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

‘Morning at the Window’ (1917)

Polyphiloprogenitive

The sapient sutlers of the Lord Drift across window-panes

In the beginning was the Word.

‘Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service’ (1919)

Yet we have gone on living, Living and partly living.

‘Murder in the Cathedral’ (1935) pt. 1

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

‘Murder in the Cathedral’ (1935) pt. 1

Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take the stone from stone, take the skin from the arm, take the muscle from bone, and wash them.

‘Murder in the Cathedral’ (1935) pt. 2

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity, There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:

At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE! And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known

‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ (1939) ‘Macavity: the Mystery Cat’

The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

‘Preludes’ (1917)

Every street lamp that I pass