Can honour’s voice provoke the silent dust, Or flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of death?
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 41
Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 53
Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 65
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 73
For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling’ring look behind?
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 85
Mindful of th’ unhonoured dead
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 93
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own.
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 117
He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heav’n (‘twas all he wished) a friend.
‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) l. 123
Not all that tempts your wand’ring eyes And heedless hearts, is lawful prize; Nor all, that glisters, gold.
‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat’ (1748)
Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, That crown the wat’ry glade.
‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ (1747) l. 1
Still as they run they look behind, They hear a voice in every wind, And snatch a fearful joy.
‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ (1747) l. 38
Alas, regardless of their doom, The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day.
‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ (1747) l. 51
To each his suff’rings, all are men, Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another’s pain, Th’ unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss,
’Tis folly to be wise.
‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ (1747) l. 91
The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening paradise.
‘Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude’ (1754) l. 49
The Attic warbler pours her throat, Responsive to the cuckoo’s note, The untaught harmony of spring.
‘Ode on the Spring’ (1748) l. 5
Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature’s darling laid.
‘The Progress of Poesy’ (1757) l. 83 (on Shakespeare)
Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy, The secrets of th’abyss to spy.
He passed the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble, while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.
‘The Progress of Poesy’ (1757) l. 95 (on Milton)
Thoughts, that breathe, and words, that burn.
‘The Progress of Poesy’ (1757) l. 110
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
Beneath the good how far—but far above the great.
‘The Progress of Poesy’ (1757) l. 122
Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune, He had not the method of making a fortune.
‘Sketch of his own Character’
The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image does not support it, differs in nothing from prose.
Letter to West, 8 April 1742, in H. W. Starr (ed.) ‘Correspondence of Thomas Gray’ (1971) vol. 1, letter 103
It has been usual to catch a mouse or two (for form’s sake) in public once a year.
On refusing the Laureateship, in a letter to William Mason, 19 December 1757, in H. W. Starr (ed.) ‘Correspondence of Thomas Gray’ (1971) vol. 2, letter 259
I shall be but a shrimp of an author.
Letter to Horace Walpole, 25 February 1768, in H. W. Starr (ed.) ‘Correspondence of Thomas Gray’ (1971) vol. 3, letter 471
Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.
Letter to Horace Walpole, 25 February 1768, in H. W. Starr (ed.) ‘Correspondence of Thomas Gray’ (1971) vol. 3, letter 471
7.87 Horace Greely 1811-72
Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.
‘Hints toward Reforms’ (1850).
7.88 Hannah Green (Joanne Greenberg)
I never promised you a rose garden.
Title of novel (1964)
7.89 Matthew Green 1696-1737
They politics like ours profess, The greater prey upon the less.
‘The Grotto’ (1732) l. 69
Fling but a stone, the giant dies. Laugh and be well.
‘The Spleen’ (1737) l. 92
By happy alchemy of mind
They turn to pleasure all they find.
‘The Spleen’ (1737) l. 610
7.90 Graham Greene 1904-91
Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.
‘The Comedians’ (1966) pt. 3, ch. 4
He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting-off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 1
Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 2
They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 2
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 2
Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst; you didn’t love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 1, pt. 1, ch. 5
He felt the loyalty we all feel to unhappiness—the sense that that is where we really belong.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 2, pt. 2, ch. 1
Any victim demands allegiance.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 3, pt. 1, ch. 1
His hilarity was like a scream from a crevasse.
‘The Heart of the Matter’ (1948) bk. 3, pt. 1, ch. 1
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
‘The Power and the Glory’ (1940) pt. 1, ch. 1
Innocence always calls mutely for protection, when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm.
‘The Quiet American’ (1955) pt. 1, ch. 3
If only it were possible to love without injury—fidelity isn’t enough...The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be
possessed without humiliation.
‘The Quiet American’ (1955) pt. 2, ch. 3
See also Orson Welles (11.45) in Volume II
7.91 Robert Greene c.1560-92
Cupid abroad was lated in the night,
His wings were wet with ranging in the rain.
‘Cupid abroad was lated’ (c.1590)
Hangs in the uncertain balance of proud time.
‘Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay’ (1594) act 3, sc. 1
Ah! were she pitiful as she is fair, Or but as mild as she is seeming so.
‘Pandosto. The Triumph of Time’ (1588)
Ah! what is love! It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king, And sweeter too;
For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, And cares can make the sweetest love to frown. Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain, What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
‘The Shepherd’s Wife’s Song’ (1590)
For there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
‘Greenes Groats-Worth of Witte’ (1592) referring to Shakespeare
7.92 Germaine Greer 1939—
The female eunuch.
Title of book (1971)
Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.
‘The Times’ 1 February 1986
7.93 Gregory the Great c.540-604
Non Angli sed Angeli.
Not Angles but Angels.
Bede ‘Historia Ecclesiastica’ bk. 2, sect. 1, recorded: Responsum est, quod Angli vocarentur. At ille: ‘Bene,’ inquit; ‘nam et angelicam habent faciem, et tales angelorum in caelis decet esse coheredes.’ They answered that they were called Angles. ‘It is well,’ he said, ‘for they have the faces of angels, and such should be the coheirs of the angels of heaven.’
7.94 Gregory VII 1020-85
Dilexi iustitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio.
I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.
Bowden ‘Life’ bk. 3, ch. 20
7.95 Stephen Grellet 1773-1855
I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Attributed. John o’ London ‘Treasure Trove’ (1925) p. 48 for some of the many other claimants to authorship
7.96 Joyce Grenfell 1910-79
Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor,
Doing the Military Two-step, as in the days of yore.
‘Stately as a Galleon’ (1978)
7.97 Julian Grenfell 1888-1915
The naked earth is warm with Spring, And with green grass and bursting trees Leans to the sun’s kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead, who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.
The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth. Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth.
‘Into Battle’ in ‘The Times’ 28 May 1915
7.98 Frances Greville (nèe Macartney) c.1724-89
Far as distress the soul can wound ’Tis pain in each degree;
Bliss goes but to a certain bound, Beyond is agony.
‘A Prayer for Indifference’ (1759)
Half-pleased, contented will I be, Contented, half to please.
Staled are my thoughts, which loved and lost, the wonder of our age, Yet quickened now with fire, though dead with frost ere now, Enraged I write, I know not what: dead, quick, I know not how.
‘Elegy on the Death of Sir Philip Sidney’
Oh wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound.
‘Mustapha’ (1609) act 5, sc. 4
Fulke Greville, Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King James, and Friend to Sir Philip Sidney.
Epitaph written for himself, on his monument in Warwick
7.100 Sir Edward Grey (Viscount Grey of Fallodon) 1862-1933
The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
‘25 Years’ (1925) vol. 2, ch. 18 (said on the eve of the first World War)
7.101 Mervyn Griffith-Jones 1909-79
Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?
On D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, in Speech for the prosecution at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, 20 October 1960: ‘The Times’ 21 October 1960
7.102 Nicholas Grimald 1519-62
Of all the heavenly gifts that mortal men commend, What trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend?
‘Of Friendship’
7.103 George and Weedon Grossmith 1847-1912 and 1854-1919
What’s the good of a home if you are never in it?
‘The Diary of a Nobody’ (1894) ch. 1
I...recognized her as a woman who used to work years ago for my old aunt at Clapham. It only shows how small the world is.
‘The Diary of a Nobody’ (1894) ch. 2
He suggested we should play ‘Cutlets’, a game we never heard of. He sat on a chair, and asked Carrie to sit on his lap, an invitation which dear Carrie rightly declined.
‘The Diary of a Nobody’ (1894) ch. 7
I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat.
‘The Diary of a Nobody’ (1894) ch. 12
I am a poor man, but I would gladly give ten shillings to find out who sent me the insulting
Christmas card I received this morning.
‘The Diary of a Nobody’ (1894) ch. 13
7.104 Philip Guedalla 1889-1944
Any stigma, as the old saying is, will serve to beat a dogma.
‘Masters and Men’ (1923) ‘Ministers of State’
The little ships, the unforgotten Homeric catalogue of Mary Jane and Peggy IV, of Folkestone Belle, Boy Billy, and Ethel Maud, of Lady Haig and Skylark...the little ships of England brought the Army home.
Referring to the evacuation of Dunkirk in ‘Mr Churchill’ (1941) ch. 7
The cheerful clatter of Sir James Barrie’s cans as he went round with the milk of human kindness.
‘Supers and Supermen’ (1920) ‘Some Critics’
The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender.
‘Supers and Supermen’ (1920) ‘Some Critics’
History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.
‘Supers and Supermen’ (1920) ‘Some Historians’
7.105 Texas Guinan (Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan) 1884-1933
Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.
In ‘New York World-Telegram’ 21 March 1931, p. 25, which asserts that Guinan used the phrase at least six or seven years previously; also attributed to Jack Osterman and Mae West, it was the title of a 1927 song and a film of 1931.
7.106 Nubar Gulbenkian 1896-1972
The best number for a dinner party is two—myself and a dam’ good head waiter.
In ‘Daily Telegraph’ 14 January 1965
7.107 Dorothy Frances Gurney 1858-1932
The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s Heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth.
‘God’s Garden’ (1913)
7.108 Woody Guthrie (Woodrow Wilson Guthrie) 1912-67
This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to the New York Island.
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.
‘This Land is Your Land’ (1956 song)
7.109 Nell Gwyn 1650-87
Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore.
In Oxford, during the Popish Terror, 1681, in B. Bevan ‘Nell Gwyn’ (1969) ch. 13
8.0H
8.1Emperor Hadrian A.D. 76-138
Animula vagula blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula rigida nudula,
Nec ut soles dabis iocos!
Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav’ring sprite, Friend and associate of this clay! To what unknown region borne,
Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humour gay,
But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.
In J. W. Duff (ed.) ‘Minor Latin Poets’ (1934) p. 445, translated by Byron as ‘Adrian’s Address to His Soul When Dying’
8.2 Rider Haggard (Sir Henry Rider Haggard) 1856-1925
She who must be obeyed.
‘She’ (1887) passim
8.3 C. F. S. Hahnemann 1755-1843
Similia similibus curantur.
Like cures like.
Motto of homoeopathic medicine. Hahnemann seems to have used this formula, but with curentur: ‘Let similars be treated by similars’. Paracelsus (1493-1541), not acknowledged as an influence by Hahnemann, wrote Simile similis cura: non contrarium in ‘Fragmenta Medica’
8.4 Earl Haig 1861-1928
A very weak-minded fellow I am afraid, and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him!
Of the 17th Earl of Derby, in a letter to Lady Haig, 14 January 1918: R. Blake ‘Private Papers of Douglas Haig’ (1952) ch. 16
Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.
Order to British troops, 12 April 1918, in A. Duff Cooper ‘Haig’ (1936) vol. 2, ch. 23
8.5 Lord Hailsham (Baron Hailsham, Quintin Hogg) 1907—
A great party is not to be brought down because of a scandal by a woman of easy virtue and a proved liar.
Interviewed on the Profumo affair, in ‘The Times’ 14 June 1963
8.6 J. B. S. Haldane 1892-1964
I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.
‘Possible Worlds and Other Essays’ (1927) ‘Possible Worlds’.
The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles.
On observing that there are 400,000 species of beetle on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals: report of lecture, 7 April 1951, in ‘Journal of the British Interplanetary Society’ (1951)vol. 10, p. 156
8.7 H. R. Haldeman 1929—
Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back in.
To John Dean on the Watergate affair, 8 April 1973, in ‘Hearings Before the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities of US Senate: Watergate and Related Activities’ (1973) vol. 4, p. 1399
8.8 Edward Everett Hale 1822-1909
‘Do you pray for the senators, Dr Hale?’ ‘No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.’
Van Wyck Brooks ‘New England Indian Summer’ (1940) p. 418 n.
8.9 Sir Matthew Hale 1609-76
Christianity is part of the Common Law of England.
In ‘Historia Placitorum Coronae’ (ed. Sollom Emlyn, 1736)
8.10 Nathan Hale 1755-76
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
Before being executed as a spy by the British, 22 September 1776, in Henry Phelps Johnston ‘Nathan Hale, 1776’ (1914) ch. 7.
8.11 Sarah Josepha Hale 1788-1879
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went The lamb was sure to go.
‘Poems for Our Children’ (1830) ‘Mary’s Little Lamb’
