text:
William Cullen Bryant

William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American Romantic poet and journalist.

Quotes

 * All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away, Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
 * as quoted in Poems, from the Provensal Of Bernard Rascas

 * There is a day of sunny rest For every dark and troubled night; And a grief may bid, and evening guest, Bot joy shall come with early light
 * Blessed are they that mourn

 * Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.
 * To a Waterfowl, st. 2 (1815)

 * He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.
 * To a Waterfowl, st. 8 (1818)

 * Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen; Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.
 * Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids (1820)

 * Here the free spirit of mankind, at length, Throws its last fetters off; and who shall place A limit to the giant's unchained strength, Or curb his swiftness in the forward race!
 * The Ages, st. XXXIII (1821)

 * Oh, sun! that o'er the western mountains now Goest down in glory! ever beautiful And blessed is thy radiance, whether thou Colourest the eastern heaven and night-mist cool, Till the bright day-star vanish, or on high Climbest and streamest thy white splendours from mid-sky.
 * A Walk At Sunset, st. 2 (1821)

 * The little wind-flower, whose just opened eye Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.
 * A Winter Piece, st. 3 (1821)

 * The groves were God's first temples.
 * A Forest Hymn (1824)

 * Ah, why Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore Only among the crowd and under roofs That our frail hands have raised?
 * A Forest Hymn

 * They talk of short-lived pleasures—be it so— pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; And after dreams of horror, comes again The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
 * Mutation. A Sonnet (1824)

 * Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase Are fruits of innocence and blessedness.
 * Mutation. A Sonnet

 * Weep not that the world changes—did it keep A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.
 * Mutation. A Sonnet

 * And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze, Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
 * November. A Sonnet (1824)

 * Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
 * A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson, st. 3 (1828)

 * Thou unrelenting Past! Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain, And fetters, sure and fast, Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
 * The Past, st. 1 (1828)

 * The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
 * Death of the Flowers (1832), st. 1

 * The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.
 * Death of the Flowers (1832), st. 4, lines 23-24

 * Maidens hearts are always soft: Would that men's were truer!
 * Song: Dost Thou Idly Ask To Hear, st. 1 (1832)

 * These are the gardens of the Desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name— The Prairies.
 * The Prairies, l. 1 (1833)

 * The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by, As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.
 * The Strange Lady, st. 6 (1835)

 * Heed not the night; a summer lodge amid the wild is mine - 'Tis shadowed by the tulip-tree, 'tis mantled by the vine.
 * The Strange Lady, st. 6

 * When April winds Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up, Opened in airs of June her multitude Of golden chalices to humming-birds And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.
 * The Fountain, st. 3 (1839)

 * The victory of endurance born.
 * The Battlefield (1839), st. 8

 * Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers.
 * The Battlefield (1839), st. 9

Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit Patiently by the way-side, while I traced The mazes of the pleasant wilderness Around me.''' She should be my counsellor, But not my tyrant. '''For the spirit needs Impulses from a deeper source than hers, And there are motions, in the mind of man, That she must look upon with awe.''' I bow Reverently to her dictates, but not less Hold to the fair illusions of old time — lllusions that shed brightness over life, And glory over nature.
 * '''I would make
 * "The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus" in Poems (1841)

 * These struggling tides of life that seem In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end.
 * The Crowded Street, st. 10 (1864)

 * And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
 * October. A Sonnet (1866)

 * Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson, Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green. Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.
 * The Third of November, 1861. Thirty Poems. Appleton, New York. pp. 112-115. (1864)

 * The rugged trees are mingling Their flowery sprays in love; The ivy climbs the laurel To clasp the boughs above.
 * The Serenade, St. 14

 * Wild was the day; the wintry sea Moaned sadly on New England's strand, When first the thoughtful and the free, Our fathers, trod the desert land.
 * The Twenty-Second of December, st. 1

 * The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.
 * Editorial written in remembrance of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Presbyterian minister, journalist, newspaper editor and abolitionist, who was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois during their attack on his warehouse to destroy his press and abolitionist materials.

Thanatopsis (1817–1821)

 * To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.
 * l. 1

 * Go forth under the open sky, and list To Nature's teachings.
 * l. 14

 * The hills, Rock-ribbed, and ancient as the sun.
 * l. 37

 * Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.
 * l. 43

 * All that tread, The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.
 * l. 48

 * So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
 * l. 73. Note: The edition of 1821 read, "The innumerable caravan that moves / To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take".

About William Cullen Bryant

 * There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying Truth crushed to earth will rise again.
 * Martin Luther King Jr., 3 Dec. 1956, as quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Advocate of the social gospel, p. 162

 * [Thanatopsis] was written in 1817, when Bryant was 23. Had he died then, the world would have thought it had lost a great poet. But he lived on.
 * Bergen Evans, in his Dictionary of Quotations

Attributed

 * The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.
 * March. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * But ’neath yon crimson tree Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame, Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, Her blush of maiden shame.
 * Autumn Woods. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: William Cullen Bryant


text:
Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 – 13 January 1599) was an English poet, who wrote such pastorals as The Shepheardes Calendar, Astrophell and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, but is most famous for the multi-layered allegorical romance, The Faerie Queene.

Quotes

Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.'''
 * '''I trow that countenance cannot lie,
 * An Elegie, or Friends Passion, for his Astrophill (1586), line 108

 * Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the skies.
 * Another [Epitaph] of the Same (1586), line 20

What ever thing seemes small in common eyes.
 * I learned have, not to despise,
 * Visions of the Worlds Vanitie (1591), line 69

And thoughts of men do as themselves decay; But wise words, taught in numbers for to run, Recorded by the Muses, live for aye; Nor may with storming showers be washed away; Nor bitter-breathing winds, with harmful blast, Nor age, nor envy, shall them ever waste.
 * For deeds do die, however nobly done,
 * "The Ruins of Time" (1591)

And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer bodie doth procure To habit in, and it more fairely dight With cheerful grace and amiable sight: For of the soule the bodie forme doth take; For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
 * So every spirit, as it is most pure,
 * An Hymne in Honour of Beautie (1596), line 127

That is a signe to know the gentle blood.
 * For all that faire is, is by nature good;
 * An Hymne in Honour of Beautie, line 139

Has bene an old-sayd sawe; And '''he that strives to touche a starre Oft stombles at a strawe.'''
 * To kerke the narre from God more farre,
 * The Shepheardes Calender, July, line 97; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

What hell it is in suing long to bide: To loose good dayes, that might be better spent; To wast long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow. . . . . . . . . . To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares; To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; 13 To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne, To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne. Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end, That doth his life in so long tendance spend!
 * Full little knowest thou that hast not tride,
 * Mother Hubberds Tale, line 895; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Than to enjoy delight with libertie, And to be lord of all the workes of Nature, To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie, To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.
 * What more felicitie can fall to creature
 * Muiopotmos: or, The Fate of the Butterflie, line 209; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

To see all things, but not my love to see.
 * I hate the day, because it lendeth light
 * Daphnaida, v. 407; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.
 * I was promised on a time
 * Lines on his Promised Pension; reported in Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol ii, page 379, and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes, And blesseth her with his two happy hands.
 * Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
 * Epithalamion, line 223; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Amoretti (1595)
The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear; And drizzling drops, that often do redound, The firmest flint doth in continuance wear: Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear, And long entreaty, soften her hard heart, That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear, Or look with pity on my painful smart: But when I plead, she bids me play my part; And when I weep, she says, "Tears are but water"; And when I sigh, she says, "I know the art"; And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter; So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain, Whiles she as steel and flint doth still remain.
 * The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,
 * Sonnet XVIII

Unlesse she doe him by the forelock take.
 * Tell her the joyous Time will not be staid,
 * Sonnet LXX; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Prothalamion (1596)

 * Full text online

Sweet-breathing Zephyrus did softly play— A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair
 * Calm was the day, and through the trembling air
 * Line 1

 * Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.
 * The last line of each stanza
 * This is often attributed to T. S. Eliot, who does indeed quote it in The Waste Land

Come softly swimming down along the Lee: Two fairer birds I yet did never see; The snow which doth the top of Pindus strow Did never whiter show, Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be For love of Leda, whiter did appear
 * With that I saw two swans of goodly hue
 * Line 37

Book I

 * Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.
 * Introduction, stanza 1

 * A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine.
 * Canto 1, stanza 1

Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.
 * But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
 * Canto 1, stanza 2

 * The noblest mind the best contentment has.
 * Canto 1, stanza 35

Great Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night.
 * A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name
 * Canto 1, stanza 37

And made a sunshine in the shady place.
 * As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
 * Canto 3, stanza 4

The righteous man, to make him daily fall!
 * Ay me, how many perils doe enfold
 * Canto 8, stanza 1

An heard of bulles, whom kindly rage doth sting, Doe for the milky mothers want complaine, And fill the fieldes with troublous bellowing.
 * As when in Cymbrian plaine
 * Canto 8, stanza 11

 * Entire affection hateth nicer hands.
 * Canto 8, stanza 40

That cursed man, low sitting on the ground, Musing full sadly in his sullein mind.
 * That darksome cave they enter, where they find
 * Canto 9, stanza 35

And layes the soul to sleepe in quiet grave? Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.
 * Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,
 * Canto 9, stanza 40

Whereon thy innocent feet doe ever tread!
 * O happy earth,
 * Canto 10, stanza 9

Book II
No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.
 * No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd,
 * Canto 6, stanza 12

In heavenly spirits to these Creatures bace?
 * And is there care in Heaven? And is there love
 * Canto 8, stanza 1

To come to succour us that succour want!
 * How oft do they their silver bowers leave
 * Canto 8, stanza 2

 * And all for love, and nothing for reward.
 * Canto 8, stanza 2

 * Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound.
 * Canto 12, stanza 70

Book III
In hope her to attaine by hooke or crooke.
 * Through thicke and thin, both over banke and bush
 * Canto 1, stanza 17

To seeke for hearbes, that mote him remedy; For she of hearbes had great intendiment, Taught of the Nymphe, which from her infancy Her nourced had in trew Nobility: There, whether it divine Tobacco were, Or Panachaea, or Polygony, She found, and brought it to her patient deare Who al this while lay bleeding out his hart-bloud neare.
 * Into the woods thenceforth in hast she went,
 * Canto 5, stanza 32

And her conception of the joyous Prime.
 * Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew,
 * Canto 6, stanza 3

And all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew.
 * Roses red and violets blew,
 * Canto 6, stanza 6

How over that same dore was likewise writ, Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold, That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it By any ridling skill, or commune wit. At last she spyde at that same roomes upper end, Another yron dore, on which was writ, Be not too bold.
 * And as she lookt about, she did behold,
 * Canto 11, stanza 54

Book IV
On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.
 * Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
 * Canto 2, stanza 32

Could frame in earth.
 * For all that Nature by her mother-wit
 * Canto 10, stanza 21

That feeles the warmth of sunny beames reflection, Liftes up his head, that did before decline And gins to spread his leafe before the faire sunshine.
 * As withered weed through cruell winters tine,
 * Canto 12, stanza 34

Book V
From the first point of his appointed sourse, And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.
 * Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,
 * Introduction, stanza 1

How can he mercy ever hope to have?
 * Who will not mercie unto others show,
 * Canto 2, stanza 42

 * Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.
 * Canto 2, stanza 43

Yet at the last she will her owne cause right.
 * But Justice, though her dome [doom] she doe prolong,
 * Canto 11, stanza 1

A dreadfull feend of gods and men ydrad.
 * A monster, which the Blatant beast men call,
 * Canto 12, stanza 37

Book VI
For a man by nothing is so well bewrayd, As by his manners.'''
 * '''The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.
 * Canto 3, stanza 1; Spenser here is referencing and paraphrasing a statement from the "Wife of Bath's Tale" of Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer: "he is gentil that doth gentil dedis."

Book VII
To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold.
 * And in his hand a sickle he did holde,
 * Canto 7, stanza 30

And by eternall doome of Fate's decree, Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.
 * For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,
 * Canto vi, stanza 33

Quotes about Spenser

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source

An host of angels flew the clouds among, And rapt this swan from his attentive mates To make him one of their associates In heaven's fair choir.
 * Ere he ended his melodious song,
 * William Browne, Britannia's Pastorals (1613), Book II, Song 1

 * He threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and magnificently descriptive than it ever was before, or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since. ... We shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of English poetry. ... Though his story grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him. He is like a speaker whose tones continue to be pleasing, though he may speak too long.
 * Thomas Campbell, Essay on English Poetry (1819), Part II

 * I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet.
 * Abraham Cowley, essay "Of Myself", in The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, Vol. II (1710), p. 782

 * [T]hat matchlesse Poem, The Faery Queen, written by our English Virgil.
 * Kenelm Digby, Observations on the 22. Stanza in the 9th Canto of the 2d. Book of Spencers Faery Queen (1644), quoted in The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition. The Faerie Qveene: Book Two, ed. Edwin Greenlaw (1933), p. 472

 * For us Anishinaabe, Biskaabiiyang is a specific term that means “returning to the woods,” because we’re woodland peoples. For example, I grew up growing my “three sisters”—that is, corn, beans, and squash—along the edge of the forest, using what people now call sylvan culture or permaculture. It’s curious how this counters the perspective of classical authors like Dante in early modern Europe or, later, Edmund Spenser, an important Renaissance poet, who view the woods as this terrifying presence. Why is this decolonizing? Because through boarding schools and many other colonial experiences, that fear of the woods creeps in.
 * Grace Dillon "Taking the Fiction Out of Science Fiction: A Conversation about Indigenous Futurisms" (2021)

 * I must acknowledge that Virgil in Latin, and Spenser in English, have been my masters.
 * John Dryden, Dedication to the Aeneid (1697)

 * No man was ever born with a greater genius, or had more knowledge to support it.
 * John Dryden, Dedication to the Aeneid (1697)

 * His versification is at once the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds...that would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted by their continued variety of modulation. ... It is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the soul in pleasure or holding it captive in the chains of suspense.
 * William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818), p. 84

 * This poet contains great beauties, a sweet and harmonious versification, easy elocution, a fine imagination: Yet ... it soon becomes a kind of task-reading; and it requires some effort and resolution to carry us on to the end of his long performance. ...the affectations, and conceits, and fopperies of chivalry...appear ridiculous... The tediousness of continued allegory, and that too seldom striking or ingenious, has also contributed to render the Fairy Queen peculiarly tiresome; not to mention the too great frequency of its descriptions, and the languor of its stanza. Upon the whole, Spencer maintains his place in the shelves among our English classics: But he is seldom seen on the table.
 * David Hume, The History of England, Vol. II (1759), Ch. VII, p. 738

 * I think that if he had not been a great poet, he would have been a great painter.
 * Leigh Hunt, Imagination and Fancy (1845), p. 105

 * The poets' poet.
 * Charles Lamb, as quoted in The English Poets (1888) by James Russell Lowell, p. 59

 * I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do — so much have I enjoyed it.
 * C. S. Lewis, in a letter to Arthur Greeves (7 March 1916), published in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis : Family Letters, 1905-1931 (2004) edited by Walter Hooper, p. 170

 * Elizabeth's arse-kissing poet.
 * Karl Marx, quoted in The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx, ed Lawrence Krader (2nd ed. 1974), p. 305 and S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature (1976), p. 362

 * Our sage and serious poet Spencer, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas.
 * John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)

 * The Fairie Queene makes cinema out of the west's primary principle: to see is to know; to know is to control. The Spenserian eye cuts, wounds, rapes.
 * Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990), p. 173

 * The Faerie Queene is the most extended and extensive meditation on sex in the history of poetry. It charts the entire erotic spectrum, a great chain of being rising from matter to spirit, from the coarsest lust to chastity and romantic idealism. The poem’s themes of sex and politics are parallel: the psyche, like society, must be disciplined by good government. Spenser agrees with the classical and Christian philosophers on the primacy of reason over animal appetites. He looks forward to the Romantic poets, however, in the way that he shows the sex impulse as ultimately daemonic and barbaric, breeding witches and sorcerers of evil allure. Like the Odyssey, The Faerie Queene is a heroic epic in which the masculine must evade female traps or delays.
 * Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae (1990), p. 188

 * It is easy to mark out the general course of our poetry. Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Dryden, are the great landmarks for it.
 * Alexander Pope, as quoted in Joseph Spence's Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820), p. 171

 * Spenser, I think, may be reckoned the first of our heroic poets. He had a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a genius for heroic poetry, perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil. But our misfortune is, he wanted a true idea, and lost himself by following an unfaithful guide. Though besides Homer and Virgil he had read Tasso, yet he rather suffered himself to be misled by Ariosto, with whom blindly rambling on marvels and adventures, he makes no conscience of probability; all is fanciful and chimerical, without any uniformity, or without any foundation in truth; his poem is perfect fairy land.
 * Thomas Rymer, 'The Preface of the Translator' to Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie (1674)

 * The great master of English versification, incomparably the greatest master in our language.
 * Robert Southey, letter to Walter Savage Landor (11 January 1811), in The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, Vol. III (1850), p. 295

 * No poet borrows so much from learned languages as Spencer.
 * John Upton, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Vol. II (1758), p. 354

With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace, I called him Brother, Englishman, and Friend!
 * Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
 * William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805), Book III

title: Edmund Spenser


text:
John Philips

John Philips (1676–1709) was an English poet.

Quotes

 * Thrice happy time, Best portion of the various year, in which Nature rejoiceth, smiling on her works Lovely, to full perception wrought!
 * Cyder (1708).

title: John Philips


text:
Ambrose Philips

Ambrose Philips (c. 1675 – June 18, 1749) was an English poet.

Quotes

 * Studious of ease and fond of humble things.
 * Epistle: "From Holland to a Friend in England" (1703), line 23

 * The flowers anew returning seasons bring! But beauty faded has no second spring.
 * Lobbing, The First Pastoral (1709), line 55.

 * There solid billows of enormous size, Alps of green ice, in wild disorder rise.
 * Epistle: "To the Earl of Dorset" (1709), line 21.

 * The stag in limpid currents with surprise Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise.
 * Epistle: "To the Earl of Dorset" (1709), line 39.

 * He the robe of justice wore, Sully'd not, as heretofore, When the magistrate was sought With yearly gifts. Of what avail Are guilty hoards? for life is frail; And we are judg'd where favour is not bought.
 * Ode: "On the Death of the Right Honourable William Earl Cowper" (1723), line 137.

To Miss Charlotte Pulteney in Her Mother’s Arms (1724)

 * Timely blossom, Infant fair, Fondling of a happy pair.

 * And thou shalt in thy daughter see, This picture, once, resembled thee.

 * Wearied then and glad of rest, Like the linnet in the nest.

title: Ambrose Philips


text:
William King

William King (1663 – 1712) was an English poet.

Quotes

 * Beauty from order springs.
 * Source: The Art of Cookery

title: William King


text:
Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, classical liberal political theorist, and sociological theorist of the Victorian era. He developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. He is known for coining the phrase "survival of the fittest".

Quotes

 * The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion. ... Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any thing in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? Think you that what is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of snow-crystals? Think you that the rounded rock marked with parallel scratches calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
 * Lectures on Education delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, 1855, published in "What Knowledge is of Most Worth", The Westminster Review (July 1859) volume CXLI, p. 1-23, at p. 19

 * Time: That which man is always trying to kill, but which ends in killing him.
 * Definitions, as quoted in The Dictionary of Essential Quotations (1983) by Kevin Goldstein-Jackson, p. 154

Social Statics (1851)

 * Social Statics : or, The Conditions Essential to Happiness Specified, and the First of them Developed (1851)

 * All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.
 * Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1

 * Evil perpetually tends to disappear.
 * Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 2

Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.
 * Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life.
 * Pt. I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, concluding paragraph

 * Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.
 * Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 3

 * Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.
 * Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 4

 * Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense.
 * Pt. II, Ch. 16 : The Rights of Women

 * Attila conceived himself to have a divine claim to the dominion of the earth: — the Spaniards subdued the Indians under plea of converting them to Christianity; hanging thirteen refractory ones in honour of Jesus Christ and his apostles: and we English justify our colonial aggressions by saying that the Creator intends the Anglo-Saxon race to people the world! An insatiate lust of conquest transmutes manslaying into a virtue; and, amongst more races than one, implacable revenge has made assassination a duty. A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale. Piracy was heroism with Jason and his followers; was so also with the Norsemen; is so still with the Malays; and there is never wanting some golden fleece for a pretext. Amongst money-hunting people a man is commended in proportion to the number of hours he spends in business; in our day the rage for accumulation has apotheosized work; and even the miser is not without a code of morals by which to defend his parsimony. The ruling classes argue themselves into the belief that property should be represented rather than person — that the landed interest should preponderate. The pauper is thoroughly persuaded that he has a right to relief. The monks held printing to be an invention of the devil; and some of our modern sectaries regard their refractory brethren as under demoniacal possession. To the clergy nothing is more obvious than that a state-church is just, and essential to the maintenance of religion. The sinecurist thinks himself rightly indignant at any disregard of his vested interests. And so on throughout society.
 * Pt. II, Ch. 16 : The Rights of Women

 * Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature — this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.
 * Pt. II, Ch. 17 : The Rights of Children

 * As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state — to relinquish its protection, and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one; and whilst passive he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally selfevident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation, without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will, is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment — a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.
 * Pt. III, Ch. 19 : The Right to Ignore the State, § 1

 * “No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original.” Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time; and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not “our God upon earth,” though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.
 * Pt. III, Ch. 19 : The Right to Ignore the State, § 2

 * The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.
 * Pt. III, Ch. 25 : Poor-Laws

 * Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
 * Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations

 * Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.
 * Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations

 * No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
 * Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations

The Development Hypothesis (1852)

 * The Development Hypothesis, first published in The Leader (20 March 1852), later published with revisions as in various editions of Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative (1852). This essay was written six years prior to the July 1, 1858 presentation of papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, to the Linnean Society of London, on the theory of evolution by natural selection. The following quotes are from the edition of Seven Essays, Selected from the Works of H. Spencer Watts & Co. (1907).

 * Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.

 * Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?

 * Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a conceivable mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a conceivable mode, but for the actual mode.

 * The supporters of the Development Hypothesis... can show that any existing species—animal or vegetable—when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.

 * Throughout all organic nature there is at work a modifying influence of the kind... as the cause, these specific differences: an influence which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the circumstances demand it, produce marked changes—an influence, which to all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and under the great varieties of condition which geological records imply, any amount of change.

 * That by any series of changes a protozoon should ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology, and who have not seen how clear becomes the relationship between the simplest and the most complex forms when intermediate forms are examined, a very grotesque notion. Habitually, looking at things rather in their statical aspect than in their dynamical aspect, they never realize the fact that, by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time be generated.

 * The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said — Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

 * That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual being is so evolved—who knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a Zoophyte or of a Man";—for him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable.
 * Spencer here references William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Comparative Physiology see p. 473

 * Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.

 * We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law versus Miracle," a good illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague non-natural sense. ...Whence ...this notion of "special creations"...Why, after rejecting all the rest of the story, he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.

The Philosophy of Style (1852)

 * The Philosophy of Style at Project Gutenberg

 * There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.
 * Pt. I, sec. 1, "The Principle of Economy"

 * We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.
 * Pt. I, sec. 3, "The Principle of Economy Applied to Sentences"

 * Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.
 * Pt. I, sec. 6, "The Effect of Poetry Explained"

 * The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.
 * Pt. II, sec. 4, "The Ideal Writer"

Essays on Education (1861)

 * Essays on Education at Project Gutenberg

 * Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.
 * Education: What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?

 * Every cause produces more than one effect.
 * On Progress: Its Law and Cause

 * The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.
 * On Manners and Fashion

 * Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.
 * On Manners and Fashion

 * Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts — as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.
 * On the Origin and Function of Music

Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861)

 * Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (1861)

 * The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind, considered historically. In other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual, must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race. In strictness, this principle may be considered as already expressed by implication; since both being processes of evolution, must conform to those same general laws of evolution... and must therefore agree with each other. Nevertheless this particular parallelism is of value for the specific guidance it affords. To M. Comte we believe society owes the enunciation of it; and we may accept this item of his philosophy without at all committing ourselves to the rest.

 * If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.

 * It is provable both that the historical sequence was, in its main outlines, a necessary one; and that the causes which determined it apply to the child as to the race. ...as the mind of humanity placed in the midst of phenomena and striving to comprehend them has, after endless comparisons, speculations, experiments, and theories, reached its present knowledge of each subject by a specific route; it may rationally be inferred that the relationship between mind and phenomena is such as to prevent this knowledge from being reached by any other route; and that as each child's mind stands in this same relationship to phenomena, they can be accessible to it only through the same route. Hence in deciding upon the right method of education, an inquiry into the method of civilization will help to guide us.

First Principles (1862)

 * First Principles (1862)

 * We too often forget that not only is there "a soul of goodness in things evil," but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
 * Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science; quoting from "There is some soul of goodness in things evil / Would men observingly distil it out", William Shakespeare, Henry V, act iv. sc. i

 * The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.
 * Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science

 * Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.
 * Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. IV, The Relativity of All Knowledge

 * Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious.
 * Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. V, The Reconciliation

 * Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.
 * Pt. II, The Knowable; Ch. XV, The Law of Evolution (continued)

 * We have repeatedly observed that while any whole is evolving, there is always going on an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself; but we have not observed that this equally holds of the totality of things, which is made up of parts within parts from the greatest down to the smallest.
 * Pt. II, The Knowable; Ch. XIV, Summary and Conclusion

Principles of Biology (1864)

 * If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.
 * Vol. I, Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 3 : General Aspects of the Evolution Hypothesis; compare: "As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth, / So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Maud (1855)

But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest.''' Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force.
 * '''It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces.
 * The Principles of Biology, Vol. I (1864), Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 7: Indirect Equilibration

 * With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.
 * The Principles of Biology, Vol. II (1867), Part VI: Laws of Multiplication, ch. 8: Human Population in the Future

 * We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.
 * Vol. I, Part III, Ch. 2 General Aspects of the Special-Creation-Hypothesis

The Man versus the State (1884)

 * The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom (1884)

The Coming Slavery

 * "The Coming Slavery"; also published in The Contemporary Review (April 1884), p. 474

"But why is this change described as 'the coming slavery'?," is a question which many will still ask. The reply is simple. All socialism involves slavery.
 * Influences of various kinds conspire to increase corporate action and decrease individual action. And the change is being on all sides aided by schemers, each of whom thinks only of his pet plan and not at all of the general reorganization which his plan, joined with others such, are working out. It is said that the French Revolution devoured its own children. Here, an analogous catastrophe seems not unlikely. The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with the numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State-socialism—swallowed in the vast wave which they have little by little raised.

 * What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. To be more than nominal, however, the ownership must be shown by control of the slave's actions — a control which is habitually for the benefit of the controller. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of sundry gradations. Remembering that originally the slave is a prisoner whose life is at the mercy of his captor, it suffices here to note that there is a harsh form of slavery in which, treated as an animal, he has to expend his entire effort for his owner's advantage. Under a system less harsh, though occupied chiefly in working for his owner, he is allowed a short time in which to work for himself, and some ground on which to grow extra food. A further amelioration gives him power to sell the produce of his plot and keep the proceeds. Then we come to the still more moderated form which commonly arises where, having been a free man working on his own land, conquest turns him into what we distinguish as a serf; and he has to give to his owner each year a fixed amount of labour or produce, or both: retaining the rest himself. Finally, in some cases, as in Russia before serfdom was abolished, he is allowed to leave his owner's estate and work or trade for himself elsewhere, under the condition that he shall pay an annual sum. What is it which, in these cases, leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit. If all the slave's labour is for his owner the slavery is heavy, and if but little it is light. Take now a further step. Suppose an owner dies, and his estate with its slaves comes into the hands of trustees; or suppose the estate and everything on it to be bought by a company; is the condition of the slave any the better if the amount of his compulsory labour remains the same? Suppose that for a company we substitute the community; does it make any difference to the slave if the time he has to work for others is as great, and the time left for himself is as small, as before? The essential question is—How much is he compelled to labour for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labour for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.

The Sins of Our Legislators

 * The Sins of Our Legislators · The Coming Slavery and Other Essays (May 1888)

An obvious implication is that the ethics of Government, originally identical with the ethics of war, must long remain akin to them; and can diverge from them only as warlike activities and preparations become less.
 * Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression. In small undeveloped societies where for ages complete peace has continued, there exists nothing like what we call Government: no coercive agency, but mere honorary headship, if any headship at all. In these exceptional communities, unaggressive and from special causes unaggressed upon, there is so little deviation from the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, justice, and generosity, that nothing beyond an occasional expression of public opinion by informally-assembled elders is needful. Conversely, we find proofs that, at first recognized but temporarily during leadership in war, the authority of a chief is permanently established by continuity of war; and grows strong where successful aggression ends in subjection of neighboring tribes. And thence onwards, examples furnished by all races put beyond doubt the truth, that the coercive power of the chief, developing into king, and king of kings (a frequent title in the ancient East), becomes great in proportion as conquest becomes habitual and the union of subdued nations extensive. Comparisons disclose a further truth which should be ever present to us — the truth that the aggressiveness of the ruling power inside a society increases with its aggressiveness outside the society. As, to make an efficient army, the soldiers in their several grades must be subordinate to the commander; so, to make an efficient fighting community, must the citizens be subordinate to the ruling power. They must furnish recruits to the extent demanded, and yield up whatever property is required.

Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

 * Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

 * The saying that beauty is but skin deep is but a skin-deep saying.
 * Vol. 2, Ch. XIV, Personal Beauty

 * Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use.
 * Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation

 * Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies — unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand — unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.
 * Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation

 * Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world.
 * Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation

 * The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
 * Vol. 3, Ch. IX, State-Tamperings with Money and Banks

 * The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature — a type nowhere at present existing.
 * Vol. 3, Ch. XV, The Americans

 * The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary.
 * Vol. 3, Ch. XV, The Americans

The Principles of Ethics (1897)

 * The Principles of Ethics'', Vol. I · Vol. II

Part I: The Data of Ethics

 * Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.
 * Ch. 6, The Biological View

 * The essential trait in the moral consciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings.
 * Ch. 7, The Psychological View

 * The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.
 * Ch. 8, The Sociological View

 * People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end.
 * Ethics (New York:1915), § 14, pp. 38-39

 * If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems ... self-evident truths are by most people silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences.
 * Ethics (New York:1915), § 68, p. 187

 * The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.
 * Ethics (New York:1915), § 70, pp. 190-191

 * He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.
 * Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194

Part II: The Inductions of Ethics

 * Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.
 * Ch. 1, The Confusion of Ethical Thought

 * How often misused words generate misleading thoughts!
 * Ch. 8, Humanity

Part III: The Ethics of Individual Life

 * Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.
 * Ch. 1, Introductory

 * As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.
 * Ch. 10, General Conclusions

Part IV: The Ethics of Social Life: Justice

 * Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.
 * Ch. 6, The Formula of Justice

Facts and Comments (1902)

 * When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.
 * "Patriotism", p. 126

Misattributed

 * There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
 * Commonly attributed to Spencer, information provided in The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes and The Survival of a Fitting Quotation. (2005) by Michael StGeorge, indicates the attribution may have originated with the book [w:The_Big_Book_(Alcoholics_Anonymous)|Alcoholics Anonymous]]. It was used exactly as written above in the personal stories section of the first edition in 1939 and in 'Appendix II: Spiritual Experience' of all subsequent editions.
 * "Contempt prior to examination" was a phrase used by William Paley, the 18th-century English Christian apologist. In A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794), he wrote:
 * The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination.
 * Paley's characterization of non-believers was later modified and used by other religious authors who uniformly attributed their words to Paley. In Anglo-Israel or, The British Nation: The lost Tribes of Israel (1879), Rev. William H. Poole may have been the first to render the quotation in its more familiar and enduring form:
 * There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination.
 * Various authors following Rev. Poole would offer new iterations of the quotation into the early decades of the 20th century. Most of these credited William Paley, but by the early 1930s the first obscure publications to falsely attribute this quote to Spencer emerged. Its usage for decades since as a maxim in Alcoholics Anonymous and the twelve-step recovery community has popularized its erroneous association with Herbert Spencer.

Quotes about Spencer

 * Spencer argued in a very articulate way for the communality of these processes of self-organization, and used his ideas to make a theory of sociology. However, he was not able to put these ideas into mathematical form or argue them from first principles. And no one else has, either — doing so is perhaps the central problem in the study of complex systems.
 * J. Doyne Farmer, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution ed. John Brockman (1995)

 * One of the factors that caused Spencer's ideas to lose popularity was social Darwinism... Social evolution is different from biological evolution: it's faster, it's Lamarckian, and it makes even heavier use of altruism and cooperation than biological evolution does. None of this was well understood at the time.
 * J. Doyne Farmer, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution ed. John Brockman (1995)

 * In the words of Herbert Spencer, I would say that “in proportion as the principle of voluntary cooperation more and more characterizes the social type, the implied assertion of equality in... rights become the fundamental requirement of... law."
 * Anna Kuliscioff Il monopolio dell'uomo: conferenza tenuta nel circolo filologico milanese (1894) translated from the Italian into The Monopoly of Man by Lorenzo Chiesa (2021)

 * Herbert Spencer, who was ever undone by his love of classification.
 * Rebecca West, "Quiet Women of the Country", in The Clarion, (31 January 1913); in re-published in The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17 (1982), p. 152.

 * Spencer had a photo of Marian (George Eliot) in his bedroom until the day he died. The sisters who kept house for him in the 1890s used to tease him about it. "What a long nose she had! She must have been very difficult to kiss, Mr Spencer!" "Yes indeed! he brightly acquiesced, to our intense delight at the apparent admission. He laughingly protested he was speaking theoretically; but would Herbert Spencer, the philosopher, have generalised from an a priori reasoning?"
 * George Eliot a Biography. Gordon S. Height. Clarendon Press 1968. Home Life with Herbert Spencer, by Two (1906).

title: Herbert Spencer


text:
Thomas Nashe

Thomas Nashe (November 1567 – c. 1601) was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, poet and satirist.

Quotes

 * Spring, the sweete Spring, is the yeres pleasant King, Then bloomes eche thing, then maydes daunce in a ring, Cold doeth not sting, the pretty birds doe sing, Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo.The Palme and May make countrey houses gay, Lambs friske and play, the Shepherds pype all day, And we heare aye birds tune this merry lay, Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo.The fields breathe sweete, the dayzies kisse our feete, Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, In every streete, these tunes our eares doe greete, Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo Spring, the sweete Spring.
 * "Song" from Summer’s Last Will and Testament (1600)

 * Evermore mayst thou be canonized as the Nonparreille of impious epistlers.
 * Four Letters 1592.

 * The Sun shineth as well on the good as the bad: God from on high beholdeth all the workers of iniquity, as well as the upright of heart.
 * Christ's Tears over Jerusalem 1593.

Summer's Last Will and Testament (1600)

 * Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant King, Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu wee, to witta woo!
 * lines 161-164.

 * Blest is that government where no art thrives.
 * line 1425.

 * Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour.
 * lines 1588-1589.

 * Brightness falls from the air, Queens have died young and fair, Dust hath closed Helen's eye. I am sick, I must die: Lord, have mercy on us.
 * lines 1590-1594.

 * From winter, plague, & pestilence, good Lord, deliver us.
 * line 1878.

title: Thomas Nashe


text:
Samuel Paterson

Samuel Paterson (1728 – 1802) was a bookseller, auctioneer, cataloguer, librarian, lecturer and author.

Quotes

 * Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.
 * Joineriana: or The Book of Scraps (London: 1772), Vol. I, p. 40

title: Samuel Paterson


text:
David Sedaris

David Raymond Sedaris (born December 26, 1956) is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor.

Quotes

 * "I love things made out of animals," Sedaris says, holding a knife with a hoof for a handle. "It's just so funny to think of someone saying, 'I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.'"
 * Interview with Robert David Sullivan

 * Shit is the tofu of cursing.
 * Reading at George Washington University in Washington, DC. 4 April 2005.

 * I read "Revolutionary Road" once a year. Aside from its word-by-word construction, I love how his characters deceive themselves.
 * from the Praise for Revolutionary Road section at the front of the Vintage 2007 paperback edition of that 1961 novel.

Barrel Fever (1994)

 * What did Trish's mother say when her daughter, heartbroken over her breakup with Randy, came to her in search of love and understanding? 'If you're looking for sympathy you can find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.'
 * Story, "The last you'll hear from me" - p.23 [page numbers per the Abacus paperback edition, 2011 reprint]

 * Last Christmas I received a set of golf clubs that, my father likes to remind me, cost a goddamned fortune. He says that he would give his right arm for such a beautiful set of clubs.
 * Story, "My manuscript" - p.27

 * Over Christmas we looked through boxes of family pictures and played a game we call 'Find Mom, find Mom's cigarettes.' There's one in every picture. We've got photos of her pregnant, leaning toward a lit match, and others of her posing with her newborn babies, the smoke forming a halo above our heads. These pictures gave us a warm feeling. She smoked in the bathtub, where we'd find her drowned butts lined up in a neat row beside the shampoo bottle. She smoked through meals, and often used her half-empty plate as an ashtray. Mom's theory was that if you cooked the meal and did the dishes, you were allowed to use your plate however you liked.
 * Essay, "Diary of a smoker" - p.191

 * 'Of course he died,' the window washer said. 'You can't take more than a four-storey fall, not in this town anyway. Then Jeffrey Lee got off the phone and said that, given a choice, he'd rather fall from a higher floor as it would allow more time for his life to flash before his eyes. The window man said that all depends on the life you led.
 * Essay, "Giantess" - p.198

 * I Photo Elfed all day for a variety of Santas and it struck me that many of the parents don't allow their children to speak at all. A child sits upon Santa's lap and the parents say, 'All right now, Amber, tell Santa what you want. Tell him you want a Baby Alive and My Pretty Ballerina and that winter coat you saw in the catalog.' The parents name the gifts they have already bought. They don't want to hear the word 'pony' or 'television set,' so they talk through the entire visit, placing words in the child's mouth. When the child hops off the lap, the parents address their children, each and every time, with, 'What do you say to Santa?' The child says, 'Thank you, Santa.' It is sad because you would like to believe that everyone is unique and then they disappoint you every time by being exactly the same, asking for the same things, reciting the exact same lines as though they have been handed a script. All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to the fingerprints.
 * Essay, "Santaland diaries" - p.233-234, 235

Naked (1997)

 * "You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? What produced in others a feeling of exhilaration left Jason and me with a mortifying sense of guilt. We fled the room as if, in our fumblings, we had uncapped some virus we still might escape if we ran fast enough. Had one of the counselors not caught me scaling the fence, I felt certain I could have made it back to Raleigh by morning, skittering across the surface of the ocean like one of those lizards often featured on television wildlife programs.
 * Essay: "I like guys". (p.106-107) [Page numbers per the 2006 Abacus paperback edition.]

 * It occurred to me that everything we buy has been poked or packaged by some unfortunate nitwit with a hairnet and a wad of cotton stuffed into his ears. Every ear of corn, every chocolate-coated raisin or shoelace. Every barbeque tong, paper hat, and store-bought mitten arrives with a history of abject misery. Vegetarians look at a pork roast thinking about the animal. I'd now look at them wondering whose job it was to package the shallow Styrofoam trays.
 * Essay: "C.O.G." (p.199)
 * Because I was lazy, I'd adopted the philosophy that things just happen.
 * Essay: "C.O.G." (p.222)

 * that's the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent.
 * Essay: "Something for everyone". (p.238)

 * My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
 * Essay: "Something for everyone". (p.251)

 * 'If I had one wish, I'd wish for an unlimited amount of wishes,' I said. She shook her head in a way that suggested she had heard this answer countless times before. 'Don't get greedy on me, Dave, you only get one wish.'
 * Essay: "Naked". (p.317)

 * 'It is ironic that nudists are just about the last people you'd ever want to see naked.
 * Essay: "Naked". (p.339)

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

 * They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgeable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.

 * on genders of nouns: Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?

 * After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of the these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations.

 * For the first twenty years of my life I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it's funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even make it to bed. I'd squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I'm now told that this is not called "going to sleep" but rather "passing out," a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment.

 * Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

 * In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.

 * If cooking is an art, I think we're in our Dada phase.

 * Because I'm both a glutton and a masochist, my standard complaint, "That was so bad", is always followed by "And there was so little of it!"

"And...?" "And hearts and eyelids."
 * Friends always say, "How can you eat those? I read in the paper that they're made from hog's lips."

 * The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing. No credit is given for distinguishing between these two very different emotions.

 * Quoting his brother Paul:
 * You can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up a little sometimes, but you can't kill him.
 * I ain't seen pussy in so long I'd throw stones at it.
 * from "You Can't Kill The Rooster"

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004)

 * It was insulting to be told not to take too much of something you didn't really want in the first place.
 * Essay: "Us and them" - p.7 [page numbers per the Abacus paperback, 2005 UK edition]

 * My mother and I were at the dry cleaner's, standing behind a woman we had never seen. "My sister and I are visiting from out of town," the woman said, a little louder now, and again the man nodded. "I'd love to stay awhile longer and explore, but my home—well, one of my homes—is on the garden tour, so I've got to get back to Williamsburg." "My home—well, one of my homes": by the end of the day my mother and I had repeated this line no less than fifty times. You had to get it just right, or else the sentence lost its power. The first dozen times we tried it, our voices sounded pinched and snobbish, but by midafternoon they had softened. "My home—well, one of my homes . . ." My mother said it in a rush, as if she were under pressure to be more specific.
 * Essay, "The ship shape" - p.17, 18, 19

 * In the coming years our father would continue to promise what he couldn't deliver, and in time we grew to think of him as an actor auditioning for the role of a benevolent millionaire. He'd never get the part but liked the way the words felt in his mouth.
 * Essay, "The ship shape" - p.28

 * My sister Lisa had an apartment over by the university and said that I could come stay with her as long as I didn't bring my Joni Mitchell record. My mother offered to drive me over, and after a few bong hits I took her up on it. It was a fifteen-minute trip across town, and on the way we listened to the rebroadcast of a radio call-in show in which people phoned the host to describe the various birds gathered around their backyard feeders. Normally the show came on in the morning, and it seemed strange to listen to it at night. The birds in question had gone to bed hours ago and probably had no idea they were still being talked about.
 * ** Essay, "Hijira" - p.88

 * "Cut corners and it'll always come back to bite you in the ass." That was one of her sayings.
 * Essay, "The girl next door" - p.106

 * Her face was like the weather in one of those places with no discernible seasons.
 * Essay, "The girl next door" - p.107

 * I never went into their apartment, but what I saw from the door was pretty rough - not simply messy or chaotic, but hopeless, the lair of a depressed person.
 * Essay, "The girl next door" - p.108

 * "It wouldn't have made any difference," my mother said. "A woman like that, the way she sees it she's a victim. Everyone against her, no matter what."
 * Essay, "The girl next door" - p.119

 * She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you will never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing.
 * Essay, "Repeat after me" - p.147

 * Sometimes when you're stoned it's fun to sit around and think of who might play you in the movie version of your life. What makes it fun is that no one is actually going to make a movie of your life. I'd worried that, in making the movie, the director might get me and my family wrong, but now a worse thought occurred to me: What if he got us right?
 * Essay, "Repeat after me" - p.147, 155
 * What really interests me are the local gun laws. Can I carry a concealed weapon and, if so, under what circumstances? What's the waiting period for a tommy gun? Could I buy a Glock 17 if I were recently divorced or fired from my job?
 * Essay, "Six to eight black men" - p.157-158

 * He took a sip of my father's weak coffee and spit it back into the mug. "This shit's like making love in a canoe." "Excuse me?" "It's fucking near water."
 * Essay, "Rooster at the hitchin' post" - p.171

 * My problem was that I already loved an apartment. The one we had was perfect, and searching for another left me feeling faithless and sneaky, as if I were committing adultery. After a viewing, I'd stand in our living room, looking up at the high, beamed ceiling and trying to explain that the other two-bedroom had meant nothing to me.
 * Essay, "Possession" - p.180

 * If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.
 * Essay: "Possession" - p.183

 * I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.
 * Essay: "Put a lid on it" - p.203
 * Talk like this [i.e. by companions at a diner] can go on for hours, and while you do have to accept it, you don't have to actually pay attention. I stared straight ahead, watching a broken-nosed cook top a hamburger with cheese, and then I turned slightly to my left and began listening to the two men seated on the other side of me. There was about them the weariness of people who could not afford to retire and would keep on toiling, horselike, until they dropped. The man beside me wore a T-shirt endorsing the state of Florida, and as if the weather were completely different on the other side of the ketchup bottle, the man beside him wore a thick wool sweater and heavy corduroy pants. "Did you read about those worms?" he asked. He was referring to the can of nematodes—tiny worms—recently discovered on the Texas plains. They'd been sent up with the doomed space shuttle and had somehow managed to survive the explosion. While I'd been listening to my neighbors, Anne had ordered me a slice of pie, and as I picked up my fork she told me that I was supposed to eat it backward, starting with the outer crust and working my way inward. "Your last bite should be the point, and you're supposed to make a wish on it," she said. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that?" As Anne and Hugh resumed their conversation, I thought of all the pie I had eaten during the course of my life, and wondered how different things might be if only I had wished upon the points.
 * Essay: "A can of worms" - p.207, 208, 209

 * I thought I'd get a coffee and take it outdoors, but just as I approached, a boy swooped in and began mixing himself a cup of hot chocolate. It was a complicated business, mixing a cup of hot chocolate. You had to spread the powdered cocoa from one end of the table to the other and use as many stirrers as possible, making sure to thoroughly chew the wetted ends before tossing them upon the stack of unused napkins. This is what I like about children: complete attention to one detail and complete disregard of another.
 * Essay: "Chicken in the henhouse" - p.215

When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008)

 * ... name association was big, as were my presumed interests in vaudeville and politics. In St. Louis the Bow tie was characterized as "very Charlie McCarthy", while in Chicago a young man defined it as "the pierced eyebrow of the Republican party".
 * On stereotypes of bowtie wearers,

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013)

 * Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognised it for what it was: crap.
 * Essay, "Attaboy". p.14 [page numbers per the Abacus paperback edition 2014]
 * My dad was like the Marine Corps, only instead of tearing you to pieces and then putting you back together, he just did the first part and called it a day. I'm sure my father said plenty of normal things to me when I was growing up, but what stuck, probably because he said it, like, ten thousand times, was "Everything you touch turns to crap." His other catchphrase was "You know what you are? A big fat zero."
 * Essay, "Memory laps". p.38
 * I laid my hand over hers on the desktop and then looked down at it, thinking what a great poster this would make. "Togetherness," it might read. I'd expected electricity to pass mutually between us, but all I really felt was self-conscious, and disappointed that more people weren't looking on.
 * Essay, "A friend in the ghetto". p.52-53

 * People had their places, and to not understand that, to act in violation of it, demoted you from a nature nut to something even lower, a complete untouchable, basically.
 * Essay, "Loggerheads". p.68

 * In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, "Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl." I'm guessing this comes from having watched too many Second World War movies.
 * Essay, "Easy, tiger". p.80
 * Gambling to me is what a telephone pole might be to a groundhog. He sees that it's there but doesn't for the life of him understand why. Friends have tried to explain the appeal, but still I don't get it. Why take chances with money?
 * Essay, "A guy walks into a bar car." p.127

 * "Look at us," he said, and he let out a long sigh. "A couple of first-class fucking losers." I wanted to defend myself, to at least point out that we were in second class.
 * Essay, "A guy walks into a bar car." p.132 [conversation is on a train]
 * In 2004, I offered priority signing to smokers, the reason being that, because they didn't have as long to live, their time was more valuable. Four years later my special treatment was reserved for men who stood five-foot-six and under. "That's right, my little friends," I announced. "There'll be no waiting in line for you." It seemed unfair to restrict myself to men, so I included any woman with braces on her teeth. "What about us?" asked the pregnant and the lame. And because it was my show, I told them to wait their fucking turn.
 * Essay, "Author, author." p.146

 * But then my focus shifts and I find myself staring. I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It's as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, "Fuck this. I'm going to Los Angeles!"
 * Essay, "Standing by." p.158

 * Then again, even if I were informed, what's the likelihood of changing anyone's opinion, especially a couple of strangers? If my own little mind is nailed shut, why wouldn't theirs be?
 * Essay, "Standing by." p.165

 * A person doesn't consciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them.
 * Essay, "Understanding understanding owls." p.186

 * My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we've got. On some level we all know this and manage, quite pleasantly, to shove it towards the back of our minds.
 * Essay, "#2 to go." p.192
 * While talking, Mrs Dunston rummaged through her tremendous purse. Her wallet was eventually located, but then it seemed that the register was locked, so the best solution was to put the coffees on her bill. That's how I discovered her name and her room number: 302. My only question then was what time I should arrange her wake-up call for. Let's see how chatty you feel at four a.m., I thought.
 * Essay, "Now hiring friendly people." p.209
 * It doesn't take many people to muck up a roadside. A devoted handful can do the trick. One of the things I find repeatedly is a plastic Diet Coke bottle containing a meticulously folded Mars bar wrapper. I imagine this is someone's after-work snack and that by putting the wrapper inside the empty bottle, the person feels he's done his bit. And though he has turned two pieces of trash into one, until he learns to keep it in his car, I don't think he's entitled to pat himself on the back.
 * Essay, "Rubbish." p.222

 * It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it.
 * Essay, "Day in, day out." p.233 [on keeping diaries and journals]

Theft by Finding: Diaries, Volume 1 (1977-2002) (2017)

 * Another old-fashioned practice I maintain is carrying a notebook, a small one I keep in my shirt pocket and never leave the house without. In it I register all the little things that strike me, not in great detail but just quickly. The following morning I'll review what I jotted down and look for the most meaningful moment in the previous day, the one in which I felt truly present. It's worth mentioning that this is my edit. It wasn't easy revisiting what are now 156 volumes of my diary.
 * "Introduction". p.6, 7 [Page numbers per the 2017 Little, Brown hardback UK edition.]

 * If you talk to people, you can have whatever you want.
 * 26.09.1978 - p.21

 * It's fun to see where people live.
 * 20.01.1979 - p.29

 * Dad on friendship: "Sure, some people are nice. Real nice. Nice like carpets so you can walk all over them."
 * 16.04.1979 - p.31

 * Later I went to the design school and saw Kumar and Melamid, the Soviet dissident artists, who are funny. I sold them my soul for $1.
 * 26.02.1981 - p.52

 * After coming home, I listened to the radio and cleaned up a little. A woman on All Things Considered wrote a book of advice called If You Want to Write and mentioned the importance of keeping a diary. It was valuable, she said, because after a while you'd stop being forced and pretentious and become honest and unafraid of your thoughts.
 * 01.07.1983 - p.94

 * Amy, Tiffany and I sat in the kitchen and talked until three thirty this morning. One of the things we laughed about was an old episode of The Newlywed Game. The host asked the wives, "What's the most exotic place you've ever made love?" He was likely expecting "The kitchen" or "On a tennis court at night," but one woman didn't quite understand the question and answered, "In the butt."
 * 28.12.1984 - p.119

 * Delinquent style is timeless. Real trouble doesn't walk around with a ponytail. It doesn't have a Mohawk or special shoelace patterns. Real trouble has a bad complexion and a Windbreaker.
 * 08.12.1986 - p.153

 * Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to.
 * 10.06.1988 - p.181

 * Something has changed, and now, when I look at my students, I see only people who are going to eat up my time.
 * 17.01.1989 - p.201

 * Dad doesn't pay attention when you talk to him, so Paul's taken to throwing the term IRS into his sentences. Then it's suddenly: "Hold on a second, what did you say?"
 * 25.09.1990 - p.242

 * Walking down 8th Avenue, I fell in behind two muscled gym queens. When a car alarm went off, one of them turned to the other, saying, "That's the Puerto Rican national anthem." "Really?" the other guy said. "That's actually their anthem?"
 * 04.09.1992 - p.291
 * Someone stopped Mitch on the street last night and said, "I need another seventy-five cents so I can buy a cheeseburger. How about helping me?" Mitch said, "Get it without the cheese," and continued walking.
 * 07.07.1995 - p.317

 * I'm finding it progressively more difficult to have my picture taken, especially now, when there always has to be a gimmick. The idea is that you have to be humiliated in order for your personality to shine through. You need to hang from the ceiling by a hook or crawl on your hands and knees through a puddle of something.
 * 04.02.1997 - p.329

 * The inevitable finally happened, just as I knew it would.
 * 06.04.1999 - p.387

 * Harry Rowohlt, the fellow who translated my book into German and is reading with me on my tour, told me that when someone on the bus or at a nearby table in a restaurant talks on a cell phone, he likes to lean over and shout, "Come back to bed, I'm freezing."
 * 18.05.1999 - p.391

 * In 1976 Dawn Erickson taught me that, in order to ensure good luck, you're supposed to say, "Rabbit, rabbit," on the first day of every month. It has to be the very first thing that comes out of your mouth and you have to say it out loud or else it doesn't work. I'd never been particularly superstitious, but ever since she told me, I've made it a point to follow her example.
 * 08.05.2000 - p.412
 * On Wednesday my watch broke, so yesterday I went across the street to the saddest mall in America. Half the stores were shuttered up and the fountain had been drained. The food court was gone except for a place called Granny's Fudgery, a wooden cart surrounded by card tables. I imagine the mall started going downhill when it accepted Walmart as a tenant. Anything you could find at Bill's Card Shop and the Record Bin could also be found there, where a customer could pay less and buy everything in one shot. I'd been to only one Walmart in my life before this and I was shocked at how ugly it was, even by American standards. It was a mammoth jumble of absolute shit made more chaotic by brightly colored signs and promotional displays. Yesterday's Walmart was even worse than the first, but the employees were incredibly friendly.
 * 20.10.2000 - p.428

 * On several occasions during my visit, she referred to herself as poor, and that depressed me. Most people would say they're broke. That word suggests a temporary setback. Poor, on the other hand, conveys a permanence.
 * 09.11.2000 - p.431

 * In first class, you count on your fellow passengers to make you feel good about yourself. You're supposed to look around with pride, telling yourself that these are your kind of people.
 * 21.07.2001 - p.445

 * Someone in the back of the room started singing "God Bless America." The thing about "God Bless America" is that, after a certain point, nobody really knows the words. There's always a weird mumbling that follows "Stand beside her and guide her," and lasts until "From the mountains to the prairies."
 * 12.09.2001 - p.455

Calypso (2018)

 * Honestly, though, does choice ever come into it? Is it my fault that the good times fade to nothing while the bad ones burn forever bright? Memory aside, the negative just makes for a better story: the plane was delayed, an infection set in, outlaws arrived and reduced the schoolhouse to ashes. Happiness is harder to put into words. It's also harder to source, much more mysterious than anger or sorrow, which come to me promptly, whenever I summon them, and remain long after I've begged them to leave.
 * Essay, "Leviathan." p.90 [page numbers per the Abacus paperback edition 2018]
 * Increasingly at Southern airports, instead of a "good-bye" or "thank-you," cashiers are apt to say, "Have a blessed day." This can make you feel like you've been sprayed against your will with God cologne. "Get off me!" I always want to scream. "Quick, before I start wearing ties with short-sleeved shirts!" As a business traveller, you'll likely be met at your destination by someone who asks, "So, how was your flight?" This, as if there are interesting variations and you might answer, "The live orchestra was a nice touch," or "The first half was great, but then they let a baby take over the controls and it got all bumpy." In fact, there are only two kinds of flights: ones in which you die and ones in which you do not.
 * Essay, "Your English is so good." p.96

 * After the desk clerk hands you your key, the bellman will grab your suitcase and ask, "So where are you coming in from today?" Like everyone else at the hotel, he doesn't really listen to your answer. His words are just a hook to hang a tip on. You could say you're from a town ten miles down the road or from another dimension. Either way, you get the same response: "You're a long way from home, aren't you?"
 * Essay, "Your English is so good." p.97

 * The following morning you'll wander to the hotel breakfast room and tell the hostess that there is only one in your party. She'll pick up a menu and lead you to your table, asking, "And how is your day going so far?" "You mean the last twelve minutes?" you'll ask. "OK, I guess." And she'll say, "Awesome."
 * Essay, "Your English is so good." p.98-99

 * Should you wander into a shop during your visit to the United States, you can expect a clerk to ask, "So what are we up to today?" "We," as if the two of you had made plans you forgot about. "Oh," I usually say, already sorry I walked in, "I'm just looking around." "Awesome." If you purchase something, you'll be asked at the register what you're going to do with the rest of your afternoon. "Umm, I don't know. Buy more shit?"
 * Essay, "Your English is so good." p.100

 * "Stay safe," a Starbucks employee said to me one morning. I was in a hurry to get to my gate, so didn't stop to ask, "Safe from what?"
 * Essay, "Calypso." p.106

 * Whenever I see a young woman boarding a plane in her pyjamas, or a guy in a T-shirt that reads your hole is my goal, I always wonder what Mom would think.
 * Essay, "Why aren't you laughing?" p.200

title: David Sedaris