Of the English soldiers, during World War I, in Alan Clark ‘The Donkeys’
8.113 Gerard Hoffnung 1925-59
Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations. There is a French widow in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects.
Supposedly quoting a letter from a Tyrolean landlord in a speech at the Oxford Union, 4 December 1958
8.114 Lancelot Hogben 1895-1975
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
‘Science for the Citizen’ (1938) epilogue
8.115 James Hogg 1770-1835
Where the pools are bright and deep Where the gray trout lies asleep, Up the river and o’er the lea
That’s the way for Billy and me.
‘A Boy’s Song’
God bless our lord the king! God save our lord the king! God save the king!
Make him victorious,
Happy, and glorious, Long to reign over us: God save the king!
‘The King’s Anthem’ in ‘Jacobite Relics of Scotland’ Second Series (1821) p. 50.
We’ll o’er the water, we’ll o’er the sea, We’ll o’er the water to Charlie;
Come weel, come wo, we’ll gather and go, And live or die wi’ Charlie.
‘O’er the Water to Charlie’ in ‘Jacobite Relics of Scotland’ Second Series (1821) p. 76
Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu’ sprush; We’ll over the Border and gi’e them a brush;
There’s somebody there we’ll teach better behaviour. Hey, Johnnie lad, cock up your beaver!
‘Cock Up Your Beaver’ in ‘Jacobite Relics of Scotland’ Second Series (1821) p. 127
8.116 Paul Henri, Baron d’Holbach 1723-89
Si l’ignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux dieux, la connaissance de la nature est faite pour les dètruire.
If ignorance of nature gave rise to the Gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them.
‘Systéme de la Nature’ (1770), in P. B. Shelley ‘Queen Mab’ (1813) canto 7, l. 13, note
L’art n’est que la Nature agissante á l’aide des instruments qu’elle a faits.
Art is only Nature operating with the aid of the instruments she has made.
‘Systéme de la Nature’ (1780 ed.) vol. 1, p. 3
8.117 Billie Holiday 1915-59
When my parents were married, my father was 18, my mother was 16, and I was 3.
‘Autobiography’, opening sentence
8.118 Billie Holiday 1915-59 and Arthur Herzog Jr. 1901-83
Them that’s got shall get, Them that’s not shall lose, So the Bible said,
And it still is news;
Mama may have, papa may have,
But God bless the child that’s got his own! That’s got his own.
‘God Bless the Child’ (1941 song)
8.119 1st Lord Holland 1705-74
If Mr Selwyn calls again, shew him up: if I am alive I shall be delighted to see him; and if I am
dead he would like to see me.
During his last illness, in J.H. Jesse ‘George Selwyn and his Contemporaries’ (1844) vol. 3, p. 50
8.120 3rd Lord Holland 1733-1840
Nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey,— Enough my meed of fame
If those who deign’d to observe me say I injur’d neither name.
Lady Holland, ‘Memoir of Rev.Sydney Smith’ (1855), i.334
8.121 Stanley Holloway 1890-1982
Sam, Sam, pick up tha’ musket.
‘Pick Up Tha’ Musket’ (1930 recorded monologue)
8.122 John H. Holmes 1879-1964
This, now, is the judgement of our scientific age—the third reaction of man upon the universe! This universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.
‘The Sensible Man’s View of Religion’ (1932) ch. 4
8.123 Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-94
The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.
‘The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table’ (1858) ch. 6
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes. And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.
‘The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table’ (1858) ch. 11 ‘Aestivation’
Depart,—be off,—excede,—evade,—erump!
‘The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table’ (1858) ch. 11 ‘Aestivation’.
It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
‘The Poet at the Breakfast Table’ (1872) ch. 10
Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays The pleasing game of interchanging praise.
‘An After-Dinner Poem’
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.
‘The Boys’ (on Samuel Francis Smith)
A general flavour of mild decay.
‘The Deacon’s Masterpiece’
Lean, hungry, savage anti-everythings.
‘A Modest Request’
Wisdom has taught us to be calm and meek, To take one blow, and turn the other cheek;
It is not written what a man shall do If the rude caitiff smite the other too!
‘Non-Resistance’
And, when you stick on conversation’s burrs, Don’t strew your pathway with those dreadful urs.
‘A Rhymed Lesson’
Man wants but little drink below, But wants that little strong.
‘A Song of other Days’.
Blank cheques of intellectual bankruptcy.
Definition of catch-phrases (attributed)
8.124 John Home 1722-1808
My name is Norval; on the Grampian hills My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain,
Whose constant cares were to increase his store And keep his only son, myself, at home.
‘Douglas’ (1756) act 2, sc. 1
Like Douglas conquer, or like Douglas die.
‘Douglas’ (1756) act 5
8.125 Lord Home (fourteenth Earl of Home, formerly Sir Alec Douglas-Home) 1903—1963-4
As far as the fourteenth earl is concerned, I suppose Mr Wilson, when you come to think of it, is the fourteenth Mr Wilson.
Referring to Harold Wilson in a television interview, 21 October 1963, when asked how he would defend his position as a ‘fourteenth Earl, a reactionary, and an out-of-date figure’
8.126 Homer 8th century B.C.
Achilles’ cursed anger sing, O goddess, that son of Peleus, which started a myriad sufferings for the Achaeans.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 1, l. 1. In Alexander Pope’s translation: Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing.
Winged words.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 1, l. 201
The son of Kronos [Zeus] spoke, and nodded with his darkish brows, and immortal locks fell forward from the lord’s deathless head, and he made great Olympus tremble.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 1, l. 528
It is no cause for anger that the Trojans and the well-greaved Achaeans have suffered for so long over such a woman: she is wondrously like the immortal goddesses to look upon.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 3, l. 156 (referring to Helen)
Son of Atreus, what manner of speech has escaped the barrier of your teeth?
‘The Iliad’ bk. 4, l. 350
Like that of leaves is a generation of men.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 6, l. 146
Always to be best, and to be distinguished above the rest.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 6, l. 208
Smiling through her tears.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 6, l. 484
Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 9, l. 312
This is the one best omen, to fight in defence of one’s country.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 12, l. 243
He lay great and greatly fallen, forgetful of his chivalry.
‘The Iliad’ bk. 16, l. 776
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many tricks, who wandered far and wide after he had sacked Troy’s sacred city, and saw the towns of many men and knew their mind.
The ‘Odyssey’ bk. 1, l. 1 (referring to Odysseus)
Rosy-fingered dawn.
The ‘Odyssey’ bk. 2, l. 1 and elsewhere
I would rather be tied to the soil as another man’s serf, even a poor man’s, who hadn’t much to live on himself, than be King of all these the dead and destroyed.
The ‘Odyssey’ bk. 11, l. 489
8.127 William Hone 1780-1842
John Jones may be described as ‘one of the has beens.’
‘The Every-Day Book’ (1826-27) vol. 2, pt. 1, col. 820
8.128 Arthur Honegger 1892-1955
La premiére qualitè d’un compositeur, c’est d’être mort.
The first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
‘Je suis compositeur’ (1951) p. 16
8.129 Thomas Hood 1799-1845
Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care; Fashioned so slenderly, Young, and so fair!
‘The Bridge of Sighs’
Mad from life’s history,
Glad to death’s mystery, Swift to be hurled— Anywhere, anywhere, Out of the world!
‘The Bridge of Sighs’
Ben Battle was a soldier bold, And used to war’s alarms:
But a cannon-ball took off his legs, So he laid down his arms!
‘Faithless Nelly Gray’
For here I leave my second leg, And the Forty-second Foot!
‘Faithless Nelly Gray’
The love that loves a scarlet coat Should be more uniform.
‘Faithless Nelly Gray’
His death, which happened in his berth, At forty-odd befell:
They went and told the sexton, and The sexton tolled the bell.
‘Faithless Sally Brown’
I remember, I remember, The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn.
‘I Remember’
What is a modern poet’s fate?
To write his thoughts upon a slate; The critic spits on what is done, Gives it a wipe—and all is gone.
‘A Joke’ in a common-place book of Hallam Tennyson’s, in Hallam Tennyson ‘Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir’ (1897) vol. 2, ch. 3 (not found in Hood’s Complete Works)
But evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart!
‘The Lady’s Dream’
Home-made dishes that drive one from home.
‘Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg’ (1841-43) ‘Her Misery’
No sun—no moon! No morn—no noon
No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day.
‘No!’
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,— November!
‘No!’
I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence.
‘Ode: Autumn’
The bird forlorn,
That singeth with her breast against a thorn.
‘The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies’ (1827) st. 30
When Eve upon the first of Men
The apple pressed with specious cant, Oh! what a thousand pities then
That Adam was not Adamant!
‘A Reflection’
Sure, I said, heaven did not mean, Where I reap thou shouldst but glean, Lay thy sheaf adown and come, Share my harvest and my home.
‘Ruth’
With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread— Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger, and dirt.
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the ‘Song of the Shirt’.
‘The Song of the Shirt’ (1843)
O! men with sisters dear,
O! men with mothers and wives! It is not linen you’re wearing out, But human creatures’ lives!
‘The Song of the Shirt’ (1843)
Oh! God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!
‘The Song of the Shirt’ (1843)
The sedate, sober, silent, serious, sad-coloured sect.
‘The Doves and the Crows’ (on Quakers)
‘Extremes meet’, as the whiting said with its tail in its mouth.
‘The Doves and the Crows’
Holland...lies so low they’re only saved by being dammed.
‘Up the Rhine’ (1840) ‘Letter from Martha Penny to Rebecca Page’
8.130 Richard Hooker c.1554-1600
He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers.
‘Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity’ (1593) bk. 1, ch. 1, sect. 1
Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.
‘Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity’ (1593) bk. 1, ch. 16, sect. 8
Alteration though it be from worse to better hath in it inconveniences, and those weighty.
‘Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity’ (1593) bk. 4, ch. 14, sect. 1.
8.131 Ellen Sturgis Hooper 1816-41
I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke, and found that life was duty.
‘Beauty and Duty’ (1840)
8.132 Herbert Hoover 1874-1964
Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
On the Eighteenth Amendment enacting Prohibition, in a letter to Senator W. H. Borah, 23 February 1928: Claudius O. Johnson ‘Borah of Idaho’ (1936) ch. 21
The American system of rugged individualism.
Speech in New York City, 22 October 1928, in ‘New Day’ (1928) p. 154
The grass will grow in the streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns.
Speech, 31 October 1932, in ‘State Papers of Herbert Hoover’ (1934) vol. 2, p. 418 (on proposals ‘to reduce the protective tariff to a competitive tariff for revenue’)
Older men declare war. But it is youth who must fight and die.
Speech at the Republican National Convention, Chicago, 27 June 1944, in ‘Addresses upon the American Road’ (1946) p. 254
8.133 Anthony Hope (Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins) 1863-1933
Economy is going without something you do want in case you should, some day, want something you probably won’t want.
‘The Dolly Dialogues’ (1894) no. 12
‘You oughtn’t to yield to temptation.’ ‘Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd,’ said I.
‘The Dolly Dialogues’ (1894) no. 14
Bourgeois...is an epithet which the riff-raff apply to what is respectable, and the aristocracy to what is decent.
‘The Dolly Dialogues’ (1894) no. 17
His foe was a folly and his weapon wit.
Inscription on memorial to W. S. Gilbert on the Victoria Embankment, London, 1915. Sydney Dark and Roland Grey ‘W. S. Gilbert’ (1923)
Oh, for an hour of Herod!
At the first night of J. M. Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’ in 1904, in Denis Mackail ‘The Story of JMB’ (1941) ch. 17
8.134 Bob Hope 1903—
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.
In Alan Harrington ‘Life in the Crystal Palace’ (1959) ‘The Tyranny of Farms’
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?...
Pale hands, pink tipped, like lotus buds that float On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat Crushing out life; than waving me farewell!
‘The Garden of Kama’ (1901) ‘Kashmiri Song’
Less than the dust, beneath thy Chariot wheel, Less than the rust, that never stained thy Sword, Less than the trust thou hast in me, Oh, Lord, Even less than these!
Less than the weed, that grows beside thy door, Less than the speed, of hours, spent far from thee, Less than the need thou hast in life of me.
Even less am I.
‘The Garden of Kama’ (1901) ‘Less than the Dust’
8.137 Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-89
Wild air, world-mothering air, Nestling me everywhere.
‘The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe’ (written 1883)
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve Strokes of havoc ùnselve
The sweet especial scene, Rural scene, a rural scene, Sweet especial rural scene.
‘Binsey Poplars’ (written 1879)
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
‘Carrion Comfort’ (written 1885)
That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil...
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
‘God’s Grandeur’ (written 1877)
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
‘God’s Grandeur’ (written 1877)
Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorléd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.
‘The Habit of Perfection’ (written 1866)
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust, Desire not to be rinsed with wine: The can must be so sweet, the crust So fresh that come in fasts divine!
