Gestern liebt’ ich, Heute leid’ ich, Morgen sterb’ ich: Dennoch denk’ ich Heut und morgen Gern an gestern.
Yesterday I loved, today I suffer, tomorrow I die: but I still think fondly, today and tomorrow,
of yesterday.
‘Lied aus dem Spanischen’
Ein einziger dankbarer Gedanke gen Himmel ist das volkommenste Gebet.
One single grateful thought raised to heaven is the most perfect prayer.
‘Minna von Barnhelm’ (1767) act 2, sc. 7
Wenn Gott in seiner Rechten alle Wahrheit und in seiner Linken den einzigen, immer regen Trieb nach Warhheit, obgleich mit dem Zusatz, mich immer und ewig zu irren, verschlossen hielte and spräche zu mir: Wähle! ich fiele ihm mit Demut in seine Linke und sagte: Vater, gieb! Die reine Warhheit ist ja doch nur für Dich allein.
If God were to hold out enclosed in His right hand all Truth, and in His left hand just the active search for Truth, though with the condition that I should ever err therein, and should say to me: Choose! I should humbly take His left hand and say: Father! Give me this one; absolute Truth
belongs to Thee alone.
‘Wolfenbüttler Fragmente’
12.75 Winifred Mary Letts 1882-1972
I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by,
The grey spires of Oxford Against a pearl-grey sky;
My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.
‘The Spires of Oxford’ (1916)
12.76 Ros Levenstein
I’m only here for the beer.
Slogan for Double Diamond beer, 1971 onwards. Nigel Rees ‘Slogans’ (1982) p. 11
12.77 Ada Leverson 1865-1936
He seemed at ease and to have the look of the last gentleman in Europe.
On Oscar Wilde, in ‘Letters to the Sphinx’ (1930) p. 34
You don’t know a woman until you have had a letter from her.
‘Tenterhooks’ (1912) ch. 7
‘No hurry, no hurry,’ said Sir James, with that air of self-denial that conveys the urgent necessity of intense speed.
‘The Twelfth Hour’ ch. 2
Before he left, Aunt William pressed a sovereign into his hand, as if it were conscience money. He, on his side, took it as though it were a doctor’s fee, and both ignored the transaction.
‘The Twelfth Hour’ (1907) ch. 4
12.78 Bernard Levin 1928—
Paul Getty...had always been vastly, immeasurably wealthy, and yet went about looking like a man who cannot quite remember whether he remembered to turn the gas off before leaving home.
‘The Pendulum Years’ (1970) ch. 1
In every age of transition men are never so firmly bound to one way of life as when they are about to abandon it, so that fanaticism and intolerance reach their most intense forms before tolerance and mutual acceptance come to be the natural order of things.
‘The Pendulum Years’ (1970) ch. 4
Between them, then, the Walrus and Carpenter, they divided up the Sixties.
On the Harolds, Macmillan and Wilson, in ‘The Pendulum Years’ (1970) ch. 12
Whom the mad would destroy, they first make gods.
Of Mao Tse-Tung in 1967; Levin quoting himself in ‘The Times’ 21 September 1987.
A stag at bay with the mentality of a fox at large.
On Harold Macmillan; attributed
12.79 Duc de Lèvis 1764-1830
Noblesse oblige.
Nobility has its obligations.
‘Maximes et Rèflexions’ (1812 ed.) ‘Morale: Maximes et Prèceptes’ no. 73
Gouverner, c’est choisir.
To govern is to choose.
‘Maximes et Rèflexions’ (1812 ed.) ‘Politique: Maximes de Politique’ no. 19
12.80 Claude Lèvi-Strauss 1908—
La langue est une raison humaine qui a ses raisons, et que l’homme ne connaît pas.
Language is a form of human reason, and has its reasons which are unknown to man.
‘La Pensèe sauvage’ (1962) ch. 9.
12.81 G. H. Lewes (George Henry Lewes) 1817-78
Murder, like talent, seems occasionally to run in families.
‘The Physiology of Common Life’ (1859) ch. 12
The pen, in our age, weighs heavier in the social scale than the sword of a Norman Baron.
‘Ranthorpe’ (1847) epilogue
Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.
‘A Spanish Drama’ ch. 2
12.82 C. Day Lewis
See C. Day-Lewis (4.21)
12.83 C. S. Lewis 1898-1963
We have trained them [men] to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain—not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
‘The Screwtape Letters’ (1942) no. 25
She’s the sort of woman who lives for others—you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.
‘The Screwtape Letters’ (1942) no. 26
Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave school, and then work, work, work till we die.
‘Suprised by Joy’ (1955) ch. 4
Leavis demands moral earnestness; I prefer morality...I’d sooner live among people who don’t cheat at cards than among people who are earnest about not cheating at cards.
In Brian Aldiss and Kingsley Amis ‘Spectrum IV’
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
In Cyril Connolly ‘The Unquiet Grave’ (1944) ch. 31
12.84 Esther Lewis (later Clark) fl. 1747-89
Are simple women only fit
To dress, to darn, to flower, or knit, To mind the distaff, or the spit? Why are the needle and the pen Thought incompatible by men?
‘A Mirror for Detractors’ (1754) l. 146
12.85 Sir George Cornewall Lewis 1806-63
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
‘Dictionary of National Biography’
12.86 John Spedan Lewis 1885-1963
Never knowingly undersold.
Slogan (c. 1920) of the John Lewis Partnership, in ‘Partnership for All’ (1948) ch. 29
12.87 Wyndham Lewis (Percy Wyndham Lewis) 1882-1957
Those prosperous mountebanks who alternately imitate and mock at and traduce those figures they at once admire and hate.
Defining the eponymous Apes of God (1930) pt. 3
Gertrude Stein’s prose-song is a cold, black suet-pudding...Cut it at any point, it is the same thing...all fat, without nerve.
‘Time and Western Man’ (1927) pt. 1, ch. 13
Angels in jumpers.
Describing the figures in Stanley Spencer’s paintings; attributed
12.88 Sam M. Lewis 1885-1959 and Joe Young 1889-1939
How ’ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm (after they’ve seen Paree)?
Title of song (1919)
Mammy, Mammy, look at me. Don’t you know me? I’m your little baby.
‘My Mammy’ (1920 song); sung by Al Jolson
12.89 Sinclair Lewis 1885-1951
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
‘The American Fear of Literature’ (Nobel Prize Address, 12 December 1930), in H. Frenz ‘Literature 190167’ (1969) p. 285
To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore.
‘Babbitt’ (1922) ch. 3
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man.
‘Babbitt’ (1922) ch. 14
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind that reveres details and never quite understands them.
‘Babbitt’ (1922) ch. 18
It can’t happen here.
Title of novel (1935)
12.90 Robert Ley 1890-1945
Kraft durch Freude.
Strength through joy.
German Labour Front slogan, in ‘The Times’ 30 November 1933, p. 13
12.91 George Leybourne d. 1884
O he flies through the air with the greatest of ease, This daring young man on the flying trapeze.
He [Liberace] begins to belabour the critics announcing that he doesn’t mind what they say but that poor George [his brother] ‘cried all the way to the bank’.
‘Collier’s’ 17 September 1954. Liberace’s ‘Autobiography’ (1973) ch. 2: ‘When the reviews are bad I tell my staff that they can join me as I cry all the way to the bank’)
12.93 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg 1742-99
The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can’t hear yourself speak.
In ‘Observer’ 18 November 1990, p. 20
12.94 Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne 1735-1814
Le congrés ne marche pas, il danse.
The Congress makes no progress; it dances.
In Auguste de la Garde-Chambonas ‘Souvenirs du Congrés de Vienne’ (1820) ch. 1
12.95 Beatrice Lillie 1894-1989
Never darken my Dior again!
To a waiter, who had spilled soup down her neck, in ‘Every Other Inch a Lady’ (1973) ch. 14
12.96 George Lillo 1693-1739
There’s sure no passion in the human soul, But finds its food in music.
‘The Fatal Curiosity’ (1736) act 1, sc. 2
12.97 Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Speech, 19 May 1856
‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.
Speech, 16 June 1858.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time.
Attributed, in a speech at Clinton, 8 September 1858: N. W. Stephenson ‘Autobiography of A. Lincoln’ (1927). Attributed also to Phineas Barnum
What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?
Speech, 27 February 1860
Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Speech, 27 February 1860
I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules.
First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history...No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour to the last generation.
Annual Message to Congress, 1 December 1862
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honourable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.
Annual Message to Congress, 1 December 1862
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
Second Inaugural Address, 4 March 1865
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
Second Inaugural Address, 4 March 1865
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...In a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and
that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Address at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 19 November 1863, as reported the following day; the Lincoln Memorial inscription reads ‘by the people, for the people’.
I think the necessity of being ready increases.—Look to it.
The whole of a letter to Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania, 8 April 1861
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union...If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that...I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty and I intend no modification of my oftexpressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Letter to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Letter to A. G. Hodges, 4 April 1864
As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.
Attributed reply to the South Carolina Commissioners.
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is why he makes so many of them.
In James Morgan ‘Our President’ ch. 6
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
Reply to National Union League, 9 June 1864, in J. G. Nicolay and J. Hay ‘Abraham Lincoln’ bk. 9
People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
Judgement on a book, in G. W. E. Russell ‘Collections and Recollections’ (1898) ch. 30
So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!
On meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ (1852); in Carl Sandburg ‘Abraham Lincoln: The War Years’ vol. 2, ch. 39
12.98 R. M. Lindner 1914-56
Rebel without a cause.
Title of book (1944) and film (1955) starring James Dean
12.99 Vachel Lindsay 1879-1931
Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black, Cutting through the forest with a golden track.
‘The Congo’ pt. 1 (1914)
Booth led boldly with his big brass drum— (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said: ‘He’s come.’ (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) Walking Lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravos from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale—
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-power frail:— Vermin-eaten saints with moldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of Death— (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
‘General William Booth Enters into Heaven’ (1913).
Booth died blind and still by faith he trod, Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.
‘General William Booth Enters into Heaven’ (1913)
12.100 Eric Linklater 1899-1974
‘There won’t be any revolution in America,’ said Isadore. Nikitin agreed. ‘The people are all too clean. They spend all their time changing their shirts and washing themselves. You can’t feel fierce and revolutionary in a bathroom.’
‘Juan in America’ (1931) bk. 5, pt. 3
12.101 Art Linkletter 1912—
The four stages of man are infancy, childhood, adolescence and obsolescence.
‘A Child’s Garden of Misinformation’ (1965) ch. 8
12.102 George Linley 1798-1865
Among our ancient mountains, And from our lovely vales, Oh, let the prayer re-echo:
‘God bless the Prince of Wales!’
‘God Bless the Prince of Wales’
12.103 Walter Lippmann 1889-1974
Mr Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is far from being an indolent activity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity which keeps Mr Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task.
‘Men of Destiny’ (1927) p. 12
12.104 Joan Littlewood and Charles Chilton 1914—
Oh what a lovely war.
Title of stage show (1963)
12.105 Maxim Litvinov 1876-1951
Peace is indivisible.
Note to the Allies, 25 February 1920, in A. U. Pope ‘Maxim Litvinoff’ (1943) p. 234
12.106 Livy (Titus Livius) 59 B.C.—AD 17
Vae victis.
Down with the defeated!
The cry (already proverbial) of the Gallic King, Brennus, on capturing Rome (390 B.C.), in ‘Ab Urbe Condita’ bk. 5, ch. 48, sect. 9
Pugna magna victi sumus.
In a battle, a big one, we were the defeated!
The announcement of the Roman disaster in Hannibal’s ambush at Lake Trasimene (217 B.C.), in ‘Ab Urbe Condita’ bk. 22, ch. 7, sect. 8
12.107 Richard Llewellyn (Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd) 1907-83
How green was my valley.
Title of book (1939)
12.108 Robert Lloyd
Turn parson, Colman, that’s the way to thrive; Your parsons are the happiest men alive.
‘The Law-Student’ (1762)
Alone from Jargon born to rescue Law, From precedent, grave hum, and formal saw! To strip chicanery of its vain pretence,
And marry Common Law to Common Sense!
‘The Law-Student’ (1762) (on Lord Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice, 1756-88)
True Genius, like Armida’s wand, Can raise the spring from barren land. While all the art of Imitation,
Is pilf’ring from the first creation.
‘Shakespeare’ (1762)
12.109 David Lloyd George (Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor) 1863-1945
The leal and trusty mastiff which is to watch over our interests, but which runs away at the first snarl of the trade unions....A mastiff? It is the right hon. Gentleman’s poodle.
On the House of Lords and Lord Balfour, in ‘Hansard’ 26 June 1907, col. 1429
A fully-equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts; and dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer.
Speech at Newcastle, 9 October 1909, in ‘The Times’ 11 October 1909
The great peaks of honour we had forgotten—Duty, Patriotism, and—clad in glittering white— the great pinnacle of Sacrifice, pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.
Speech at Queen’s Hall, London, 19 September 1914, in ‘The Times’ 20 September 1914
At eleven o’clock this morning came to an end the cruellest and most terrible war that has ever
scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars.
In ‘Hansard’ 11 November 1918, col. 2463.
What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.
Speech at Wolverhampton, 23 November 1918, in ‘The Times’ 25 November 1918
M. Clemenceau...is one of the greatest living orators, but he knows that the finest eloquence is that which gets things done and the worst is that which delays them.
Speech at Paris Peace Conference, 18 January 1919, in ‘The Times’ 20 January 1919
A politician was a person with whose politics you did not agree. When you did agree, he was a statesman.
Speech at Central Hall, Westminster, 2 July 1935, in ‘The Times’ 3 July 1935
Negotiating with de Valera...is like trying to pick up mercury with a fork.
In M. J. MacManus ‘Eamon de Valera’ (1944) ch. 6 (to which de Valera replied, ‘Why doesn’t he use a spoon?’)
The world is becoming like a lunatic asylum run by lunatics.
In ‘Observer’ 8 January 1933.
Sufficient conscience to bother him, but not sufficient to keep him straight.
On Ramsay MacDonald, in A. J. Sylvester ‘Life with Lloyd George’ (1975) p. 216
12.110 John Locke 1632-1704
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
‘An Essay concerning Human Understanding’ (1690) dedicatory epistle
The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity...
in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr Newton...’tis ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way of knowledge.
‘An Essay concerning Human Understanding’ (1690) epistle to the reader
General propositions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians: much less are they to found in the thoughts of children.
There are very few lovers of truth, for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know, whether he be so, in earnest, is worth enquiry; and I think, there is this one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposition with greater
