text:
King Lear

King Lear (1608) is a play by William Shakespeare that is generally regarded as one of his greatest tragedies. It is based on the legend of Leir, a king of pre-Roman Britain.

Act I

 * Nothing can come of nothing: speak again.
 *  Lear, Scene I

 * Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; no more nor less.
 * Cordelia, Scene I

 * Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes.
 * Lear, Scene I

 * Lear: So young, and so untender? Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true. Lear: Let it be so; — thy truth, then, be thy dower.
 * Scene I

 * Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
 * Lear, Scene I

 * Lear: The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft. Kent: Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart
 * Scene I

 * Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon the foul disease.
 * Kent, Scene I

 * Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
 * Cordelia, Scene I

 * Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.
 * Regan, Scene I

 * Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops Got 'tween asleep and wake?
 * Edmund, Scene II

 * Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
 * Edmund, Scene II

 * We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.
 * Gloucester, Scene II

 * This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!
 * Edmund, Scene II

 * Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.
 * The Fool, scene iv; brach is an archaic term for bitch.

 * Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest; Leave thy drink and thy whore, And keep in-a-door, And thou shall have more Than two tens to a score.
 * The Fool, Scene IV

 * The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it had it head bit off by it young.
 * The Fool, Scene IV

 * Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child Than the sea-monster!
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
 * Albany, Scene IV

Act II

 * Oswald: Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not. Kent: Fellow, I know thee. Oswald: What dost thou know me for? Kent: A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
 * Scene II

 * I have seen better faces in my time, Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant.
 * Kent, Scene II

Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth: An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness Harbor more craft and more corrupter ends Than twenty silly-ducking observants That stretch their duties nicely.
 * This is some fellow,
 * Cornwall, Scene II

 * Fortune, good-night: smile once more; turn thy wheel!
 * Kent, Scene II

 * That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool, no knave, perdy.
 * The Fool, Scene IV

 * O, sir, you are old; Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine: you should be rul'd and led By some discretion, that discerns your state Better than you yourself.
 * Regan, Scene IV

 * Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's.
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks!
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * I will do such things, What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth.
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
 * Lear, Scene IV

Act III

 * Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man!
 * Lear, Scene II

 * I am a man, More sinn'd against than sinning.
 * Lear, Scene II

 * The art of our necessities is strange, And can make vile things precious.
 * Lear, Scene II

 * He that has and a little tiny wit, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, Must make content with his fortunes fit, Though the rain it raineth every day.
 * The Fool, Scene II

 * O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O! I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just.
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here's three on 's are sophisticated; thou art the thing itself; unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.
 * Lear, Scene IV

 * The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
 * Edgar, Scene IV

 * Child Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still, —Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.
 * Edgar, Scene IV

 * He's mad, that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.
 * The Fool, Scene VI

 * Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.
 * Fool, Scene VI

 * Go, thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Dover.
 * Regan, Scene VII

Act IV

 * I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw: full oft 'tis seen, Our means secure us, and our mere defects Prove our commodities.
 * Gloucester, Scene I

 * And worse I may be yet: the worst is not, So long as we can say, This is the worst.
 * Edgar, Scene I

 * As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, — They kill us for their sport.
 * Gloucester, Scene I

 * You are not worth the dust which the rude wind Blows in your face.
 * Albany, Scene II

 * She that herself will sliver and disbranch From her material sap, perforce must wither And come to deadly use.
 * Albany, Scene II

 * Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile: Filths savour but themselves.
 * Albany, Scene II

 * It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions;
 * Kent, Scene III

 * How fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles; halfway down Hangs one that gathers samphire, — dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen, that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice, and yond tall anchoring bark Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge, That on the unnumber'ed idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.
 * Edgar, Scene VI

 * Ay, every inch a king: When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life. — What was thy cause? — Adultery? — Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son Was kinder to his father than my daughters Got 'tween the lawful sheets. To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers. — Behold yond simpering dame, Whose face between her forks presages snow; That minces virtue, and does shake the head To hear of pleasure's name; — The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't With a more riotous appetite Down from the waist they are centaurs, Though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit, Beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness, There is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption! — fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee.
 * Lear, Scene VI

 * Gloucester: O! let me kiss that hand! Lear: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
 * Scene VI

 * A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
 * Lear, Scene VI

 * There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.
 * Lear, Scene VI

 * Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
 * Lear, Scene VI

 * When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools — This' a good block: — It were a delicate strategem to shoe A troop of horse with felt: I'll put 't in proof; And when I have stol'n upon these sons-in-law, Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!
 * Lear, Scene VI

 * You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave: — Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.
 * Lear, Scene VII

 * I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less; And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
 * Lear, Scene VII

 * You must bear with me: Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish.
 * Lear, Scene VII

Act V

 * Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.
 * Edgar, Scene II

 * We are not the first Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst.
 * Cordelia, Scene III

 * Come, let's away to prison; We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; — And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones That ebb and flow by the moon.
 * Lear, Scene III

 * The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us.
 * Edgar, Scene III

 * The wheel is come full circle: I am here.
 * Edmund, Scene III

 * Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones: Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so That heaven's vaults should crack. — She's gone for ever! — I know when one is dead, and when one lives; She's dead as earth.
 * Lear, Scene III

 * And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button: thank you sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!
 * Lear, Scene III

 * Vex not his ghost: O! let him pass; he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.
 * Kent, Scene III

 * I have a journey, sir, shortly to go. My master calls me; I must not say no.
 * Kent, Scene III

 * The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
 * Edgar, Scene III in the Folio edition of 1623; in the Quarto of 1608 these lines were those of Albany; more information on this disputed text is at "The Quarto of King Lear - representing the early stage history of the play?"

Quotes about King Lear

 * Plain language sounds purely objective. On the one hand, it has not the accent of mere vituperation, it is thoroughly dignified; and on the other, it is not the language of a person who is mainly concerned with wangling somebody into believing something. When Mr. Jefferson wrote that one of his associates in Washington's cabinet was "a fool and a blabber," his words, taken in their context, make exactly the same impression of calm, disinterested and objective appraisal as if he had remarked that the man had black hair and brown eyes. Or again, while we are about it, let us examine the most extreme example of this sort of thing that I have so far found in English literature, which is Kent's opinion of Oswald, in King Lear:
 * Kent. Fellow, I know thee.
 * Osw. What dost thou know me for?
 * Kent. A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking whoreson, glass-gazing, & super-servicable, finical rogue; onetrunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.
 * Now, considering Kent's character and conduct, as shown throughout the play, I doubt very much that those lines should be taken as merely so much indecent blackguarding.... an actor who ranted through them in the tone and accent of sheer violent diatribe would ruin his part. Frank Warrin cited those lines the other day, when he was telling me how much he would enjoy a revival of Lear, with our gifted friend Bill Parke cast for the part of Kent. He said, "Can't you hear Bill's voice growing quieter and quieter, colder and colder, deadlier and deadlier, all the way through that passage?" Angry as Kent is, and plain as his language is, his tone and manner must carry a strong suggestion of objectivity in order to keep fully up to the dramatist's conception of his role. Kent is not abusing Oswald; he is merely, as we say, "telling him."
 * Albert Jay Nock, in "Free Speech and Plain Language" The Atlantic Monthly (January 1936)

 * Lear is a play [that] contains a great deal of veiled social criticism — but it is all uttered either by the Fool, by Edgar when he is pretending to be mad, or by Lear during his bouts of madness. In his sane moments Lear hardly ever makes an intelligent remark.
 * George Orwell, in Lear

title: King Lear


text:
Julius Caesar (play)

Julius Caesar is a tragedy by William Shakespeare probably written in 1599. It portrays the conspiracy against the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar, his assassination and its aftermath.

Act I

 * Beware the ides of March.
 * Soothsayer, scene ii

 * And it is very much lamented, Brutus, That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye.
 * Cassius, scene ii

 * Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius, That you would have me seek into myself For that which is not in me?
 * Brutus, scene ii

 * Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
 * Cassius, scene ii

 * Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
 * Caesar, scene ii

 * Cassius: Did Cicero say anything? Casca: Ay, he spoke Greek. Cassius: To what effect? Casca: Nay, an I tell you that I'll ne'er look you i' the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another, and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.
 * Scene ii

 * For who so firm that cannot be seduced?
 * Cassius, scene ii

 * Indeed, it is a strange disposed time: But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
 * Cicero, scene iii

 * So every bondman in his own hand bears The power to cancel his captivity.
 * Casca, scene iii

Act II

 * Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.
 * Caesar scene ii

Act III

 * Caesar: The ides of March are come. Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.
 * Scene i

 * I could be well moved if I were as you. If I could pray to move, prayers would move me. But I am constant as the Northern Star, Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament. The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks; They are all fire, and every one doth shine; But there's but one in all doth hold his place.
 * Caesar, scene i

 * Speak, hands, for me!
 * Casca, scene i

 * Et tu, Brute? — Then fall, Caesar!
 * Caesar, scene i

 * How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, In states unborn and accents yet unknown!
 * Cassius, scene i

 * As fire drives out fire, so pity, pity.
 * Brutus, scene i

 * O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
 * Antony, scene i

 * Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.
 * Antony, scene i

 * As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him; but as he was ambitious I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition.
 * Brutus, scene ii

 * Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault; And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, — For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men, — Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man.
 * Antony, scene ii

 * When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
 * Antony, scene ii

 * Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man.
 * Antony, scene ii

 * O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason.
 * Antony, scene ii

 * My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.
 * Antony, scene ii

 * If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
 * Antony, scene ii

 * I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
 * Cinna the Poet, scene iii

Act IV

 * So is my horse, Octavius; and for that I do appoint him store of provender: It is a creature that I teach to fight, To wind, to stop, to run directly on, His corporal motion govern'd by my spirit. And, in some taste, is Lepidus but so; He must be taught, and train'd, and bid go forth: A barren-spirited fellow; one that feeds On objects, arts, and imitations, Which, out of use and staled by other men, Begin his fashion: do not talk of him But as a property.
 * Antony, scene i

 * We, at the height, are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
 * Brutus, scene iii

 * Remember March, the ides of March remember: Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? What villain touch'd his body, that did stab, And not for justice? What, shall one of us That struck the foremost man of all this world But for supporting robbers, shall we now Contaminate our fingers with base bribes, And sell the mighty space of our large honours For so much trash as may be grasped thus? I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, Than such a Roman.
 * Brutus, scene iii

 * There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, For I am arm'd so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind, Which I respect not.
 * Brutus, scene iii

 * Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come, Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius, For Cassius is aweary of the world; Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother; Cheque'd like a bondman; all his faults observed, Set in a note-book, learn'd, and conn'd by rote, To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger, And here my naked breast; within, a heart Dearer than Plutus' mine, richer than gold: If that thou be'st a Roman, take it forth; I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart: Strike, as thou didst at Caesar; for, I know, When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.
 * Cassius, scene iii

Act V

 * But this same day Must end that work the ides of March begun; And whether we shall meet again I know not. Therefore our everlasting farewell take: For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius! If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why, then, this parting was well made.
 * Brutus, scene i

 * O, that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come! But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.
 * Brutus, scene i

 * Caesar, now be still: I kill'd not thee with half so good a will.
 * Brutus, scene v

 * This was the noblest Roman of all All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; He only, in a general honest thought, And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle; and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, This was a man!
 * Antony, scene v

 * So call the field to rest: and let's away, To part the glories of this happy day.
 * Octavius, scene v

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

title: Julius Caesar (play)


text:
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John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, PC (April 30, 1834 – May 28, 1913) was an English banker, politician, naturalist and archaeologist. He served as President of the Royal Statistical Society.

Quotes

 * When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.
 * The Pleasures of Life, vol. 1 (1887), ch. II: The Happiness of Duty

 * We often hear of bad weather, but in reality no weather is bad. It is all delightful, though in different ways.  Some weather may be bad for farmers or crops, but for man all kinds are good. Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating.
 * The Use of Life (1894), ch. IV: Recreation

 * Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time.
 * The Use of Life (1894), ch. IV: Recreation

 * Earth and Sky, Woods and Fields, Lakes and Rivers, the Mountain and the Sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
 * The Use of Life (1894), ch. IV: Recreation

 * There are three great questions which in life we have over and over again to answer. Is it right or wrong? Is it true or false? Is it beautiful or ugly? Our education ought to help us to answer these questions.
 * The Use of Life (1894), ch. VI: National Education

title: John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury


text:
A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a historical novel by Charles Dickens. The plot centres on the years leading up to the French Revolution and culminates in the Jacobin Reign of Terror. Set in London and Paris, it tells the story of two men, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, who look similar but are very different in traits.

Chapter I - The Period

 * It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
 * France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it.

Chapter II - The Mail

 * The mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.

 * Keep where you are because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime.
 * Said by a guard

 * For I'm the devil at quick mistakes, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead.

 * "Did you hear the message?" "I did, Joe." "What did you make of it, Tom?" "Nothing at all, Joe." "That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I made the same of it myself."

Chapter III - The Night Shadows

 * A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

Chapter IV - The Preparation

 * He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.

 * The sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly.

 * These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on...
 * Jarvis Lorry to.

 * Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.
 * Jarvis Lorry

 * A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business — business that must be done.
 * Jarvis Lorry

 * The best and the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his dear side.
 * Jarvis Lorry to.

Chapter V - The Wine-shop

 * A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
 * All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
 * A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women, and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.

 * One tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees — BLOOD. The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.

 * Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and stared up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.

 * A beautiful world we live in, when it IS possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done—done, see you!—under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on.
 * to Jarvis Lorry.

Chapter VI - The Shoemaker

 * "If you hear my voice — I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is — if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a home long desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!"

Chapter I - Five Years Later

 * Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two.

 * But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's?

Chapter V - The Jackal

 * Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

 * Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

Chapter IX - The Gorgon's Head

 * "Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky."

Chapter XIII - The Fellow of No Delicacy

 * If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.
 * O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!
 * O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!

Chapter XVI - Still Knitting

 * Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well — thousands of acres of land — a whole province of France — all France itself — lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.

Chapter XVII - One Night

 * Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.

Chapter XIX - An Opinion

 * So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed [hiding Dr Manette's shoe-making bench] and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.

Chapter XX - A Plea

 * "I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding." "It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, "that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him." "My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things." She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours. "And, O my dearest Love!" she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, "remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!"
 * and, speaking of

Chapter XXI - Echoing Footsteps

 * Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! "Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand; in the name of all the angels or the devils — which you prefer — work!"

Chapter XXIV - Drawn to the Loadstone Rock

 * It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the one [and] only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be endured without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew the truth.

Chapter V - The Wood-Sawyer

 * Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; — the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!

Chapter X - The Substance of the Shadow

 * "I, Alexander Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year 1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust."

 * "'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior Beings — taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the doors barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it from us — I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out!'"

Chapter XI - Dusk

 * It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, "A life you love."

Chapter XII - Darkness

 * Defarge, a weak minority interposed a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Marquis; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. "Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!"

Chapter XIII - Fifty-two

 * The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.

Chapter XIV - The Knitting Done

 * "You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer," said Miss Pross, in her breathing. "Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman."

 * It was nothing to her [Madame Defarge, a Republican], that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such he had no right to live.

Chapter XV - The Footsteps Die Out For Ever

 * Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.

 * "Do you think:" the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: "that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?" "It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there."

 * I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

 * I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more.

 * I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both.

 * I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place— then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement— and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

 * It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
 * Note: These closing lines bring Dickens' motif of doubles into the story one last time. Dickens uses the literary device anaphora, which is the repetition of a word or phrase over many lines (doubles), many times throughout A Tale of Two Cities. "It is a far, far better..." is repeated twice in these parting lines, as "It was the ____ of times, it was the epoch of _____," etc. is repeated in the opening lines. This motif of doubles makes up the entire plot of the novel: the two main characters, Darnay and Carton are doubles of each other; London and Paris are the 'two cities' to which the title refers. The very last thoughts attributed to Carton, in their poetic use of repetition, register this faith as a calm and soothing certainty: that both the name of Sydney Carton and of France will be reborn into glory and made "illustrious".

title: A Tale of Two Cities


text:
Wikiquote:FAQ

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title: Wikiquote:FAQ


text:
Henry Ford

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, he converted the automobile from an expensive curiosity into an accessible utility that profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century. Ford was an antisemite who promoted The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion in the collection of articles known as The International Jew.

1910s

 * I don't know whether Napoleon did or did not try to get across there and I don't care. I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
 * Interview in Chicago Tribune (25 May 1916)

 * An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
 * Remarks from the witness stand, to a court in Mount Clemens, Michigan (July 1919), as quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1948) by Edmund Fuller, p. 162

 * International financiers are behind all war. They are what is called the international Jew: German-Jews, French-Jews, English-Jews, American-Jews ... the Jew is the threat.
 * Henry Ford, quoted in New York World, 1919, as cited in: Martin Allen (2002). Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies. p. 55-56

1920s

 * History is bunk. What difference does it make how many times the ancient Greeks flew their kites?
 * "History is Bunk, Says Henry Ford", The New York Times, October 29, 1921

 * Jews have always controlled the business [...]. The motion picture influence of the United States and Canada [...] is exclusively under the control, moral and financial, of the Jewish manipulators of the public mind.
 * The Dearborn Independent (February 1921).

 * The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to his time. They fit it now.
 * Henry Ford, in an interview quoted in the New York World, February 17, 1921

 * There's just one thing that's permanent in this world, and that's change. And when a man gets too old to change, why, then, he dies. And after that, who knows? Do we go on somewhere else? We'd all like to think so; it seems sometimes as though something inside us was telling us that we do. But if we do live on, then one thing is sure: The fellows who are afraid all the time that they may lose what they've got will lose out over there just the way they lose out here. And the big prizes will keep right on going to the fellows who do their duty and have faith. That's all there is to happiness, according to my way of thinking—just doing your duty and having faith.
 * Interview with Bruce Barton, "It Would Be Fun To Start Over Again," The American Magazine (April 1921)

 * Money doesn't change men. It merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish, or arrogant, or greedy, the money brings it out; that's all.
 * Interview with Bruce Barton, "It Would Be Fun To Start Over Again," The American Magazine (April 1921)

 * So, while the people are indeed supreme over the written Constitution, the spiritual constitution is supreme over them. The French Revolutionists wrote constitutions too—every drunken writer among them tossed off a constitution. Where are they? All vanished. Why? Because they were not in harmony with the constitution of the universe. The power of the Constitution is not dependent on any Government, but on its inherent rightness and practicability.
 * Henry Ford (1922). Ford Ideals: Being a Selection from "Mr. Ford's Page" in The Dearborn Independent. p. 323; as cited in: William A. Levinson, Henry Ford, Samuel Crowther. The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work: Henry Ford's Universal Code for World-Class Success. CRC Press, 2013. p. xxix

 * I've never made a flight in an airplane, and I don't know that I'm particularly anxious to. I would, though, like to take a trip in a . Bring one out here some time, won't you, Doctor Eckener, and give me a ride?
 * Raymond J. Brown. "Henry Ford Says, 'There Is Always Room for More'," in: Popular Science, Vol. 106, nr. 2 (February 1925), p. 37

 * But to do for the world more than the world does for you--that is Success.
 * Ford News (March 1926)

 * Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.
 * As quoted in "My Philosophy of Industry" an interview of Ford by Fay Leone Faurote, The Forum, Vol. 79, No. 4 (April 1928), p. 481; also in "Thinking Is Hardest Work, Therefore Few Engage in It", San Francisco Chronicle (13 April 1928), p. 25; both articles are cited as the primary sources of other variants which later arose, in "Thinking Is the Hardest Work There Is, which Is the Probable Reason Why So Few Engage In It" in Quote Investigator (April 5, 2016)

 * I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men's minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.
 * Interview in the San Francisco Examiner (August 26, 1928)

 * Nothing is particularly hard if you subdivide it into small jobs.
 * Interview in Industrial Management (October 1927)

The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (1920–1922)

 * The genius of the Jew is to live off people, not off land, nor off the production of commodities from raw materials, but off people. Let other people till the soil; the Jew, if he can, will live off the tiller. Let other people toil at trades and manufacture; the Jew will exploit the fruits of their work. That is his particular genius. If this genius be described as parasitic, the term would seem to be justified by a certain fitness.

My Life and Work (1922)

 * My Life and Work (1922) co-written with Samuel Crowther

 * We have only started on our development of our country — we have not as yet, with all our talk of wonderful progress, done more than scratch the surface. The progress has been wonderful enough — but when we compare what we have done with what there is to do, then our past accomplishments are as nothing. When we consider that more power is used merely in ploughing the soil than is used in all the industrial establishments of the country put together, an inkling comes of how much opportunity there is ahead. And now, with so many countries of the world in ferment and with so much unrest everywhere, is an excellent time to suggest something of the things that may be done — in the light of what has been done. When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green fields. And that then we shall have a world composed of metal machines and human machines. With all of that I do not agree. I think that unless we know more about machines and their use, unless we better understand the mechanical portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields.
 * p. 1; as cited in The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work: Henry Ford's Universal Code for World-Class Success. (2013) by Henry Ford, Samuel Crowther, and William A. Levinson,p. xxvii

 * I am not a reformer. I think there is entirely too much attempt at reforming in the world and that we pay too much attention to reformers. We have two kinds of reformers. Both are nuisances. The man who calls himself a reformer wants to smash things. He is the sort of man who would tear up a whole shirt because the collar button did not fit the buttonhole. It would never occur to him to enlarge the buttonhole. This sort of reformer never under any circumstances knows what he is doing. Experience and reform do not go together. A reformer cannot keep his zeal at white heat in the presence of a fact. He must discard all facts.
 * p. 2

 * The economic fundamental is labour. Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's labour that makes the harvest what it is. That is the economic fundamental: every one of us is working with material which we did not and could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature.
 * p. 9

 * As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow.
 * p. 10

 * Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.
 * pp. 19–20. Quoted in Samuel Crowther, "Henry Ford's Problem," The Magazine of Business, vol. 52 (1927), p. 182

 * Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.
 * p. 72. Chapter IV, : Remark about the Model T in 1909; this has often been paraphrased, e.g.: "You can have any color as long as it's black."

 * I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces.
 * p. 73. Chapter IV.

 * We are not against borrowing money and we are not against bankers. We are against trying to make borrowed money take the place of work. We are against the kind of banker who regards a business as a melon to be cut. The thing is to keep money and borrowing and finance generally in their proper place, and in order to do that one has to consider exactly for what the money is needed and how it is going to be paid off.
 * Chapter 11, Money and Goods,

 * The people are on the side of sound money. They are so unalterably on the side of sound money that it is a serious question how they would regard the system under which they live, if they once knew what the initiated can do with it.
 * p. 110. Chapter XII.

 * Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry...
 * Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

 * The average successful banker is by no means so intelligent and resourceful a man as is the average successful business man. Yet the banker through his control of credit practically controls the average business man.
 * Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

 * The banker is, as I have noted, by training and because of his position, totally unsuited to the conduct of industry. If, therefore, the controllers of credit have lately acquired this very large power, is it not to be taken as a sign that there is something wrong with the financial system that gives to finance instead of to service the predominant power in industry? It was not the industrial acumen of the bankers that brought them into the management of industry.
 * Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

 * My objection to bankers has nothing to do with personalities. I am not against bankers as such. We stand very much in need of thoughtful men, skilled in finance. The world cannot go on without banking facilities. We have to have money. We have to have credit. Otherwise the fruits of production could not be exchanged. We have to have capital. Without it there could be no production. But whether we have based our banking and our credit on the right foundation is quite another matter.
 * Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

 * The bankers who do straight banking should regard themselves as naturally the first men to probe and understand our monetary system—instead of being content with the mastery of local banking-house methods; and if they would deprive the gamblers in bank balances of the name of "banker" and oust them once for all from the place of influence which that name gives them, banking would be restored and established as the public service it ought to be, and the iniquities of the present monetary system and financial devices would be lifted from the shoulders of the people.
 * Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

 * If the present faulty system is more profitable to a financier than a more perfect system would be, and if that financier values his few remaining years of personal profits more highly than he would value the honour of making a contribution to the life of the world by helping to erect a better system, then there is no way of preventing a clash of interests. But it is fair to say to the selfish financial interests that, if their fight is waged to perpetuate a system just because it profits them, then their fight is already lost. Why should finance fear? The world will still be here. Men will do business with one another. There will be money and there will be need of masters of the mechanism of money. Nothing is going to depart but the knots and tangles. There will be some readjustments, of course. Banks will no longer be the masters of industry. They will be the servants of industry.
 * Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

 * Business will control money instead of money controlling business. The ruinous interest system will be greatly modified. Banking will not be a risk, but a service. Banks will begin to do much more for the people than they do now, and instead of being the most expensive businesses in the world to manage, and the most highly profitable in the matter of dividends, they will become less costly, and the profits of their operation will go to the community which they serve.
 * Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

 * Money is only a tool in business. It is just a part of the machinery. You might as well borrow 100,000 lathes as $100,000 if the trouble is inside your business. More lathes will not cure it; neither will more money. Only heavier doses of brains and thought and wise courage can cure. A business that misuses what it has will continue to misuse what it can get.
 * p. 157

 * Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

 * The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed.

 * If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.

1930s

 * The provision of a whole new system of electric generation emancipated industry from the leather belt and line shaft, for it eventually became possible to provide each tool with its own electric motor. This may seem only a detail of minor importance. In fact, modern industry could not be carried out with the belt and line shaft for a number of reasons. The motor enabled machinery to be arranged in the order of the work, and that alone has probably doubled the efficiency of industry, for it has cut out a tremendous amount of useless handling and hauling. The belt and line shaft were also tremendously wasteful – so wasteful indeed that no factory could be really large, for even the longest line shaft was small according to modern requirements. Also high speed tools were impossible under the old conditions – neither the pulleys nor the belts could stand modern speeds. Without high speed tools and the finer steels which they brought about, there could be nothing of what we call modern industry.
 * Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther (1930). Edison as I Know Him. Cosmopolitan Book Company. p. 15

 * Through all the years that I have been in business I have never yet found our business bad as a result of any outside force. It has always been due to some defect in our own company, and whenever we located and repaired that defect our business became good again - regardless of what anyone else might be doing. And it will always be found that this country has nationally bad business when business men are drifting, and that business is good when men take hold of their own affairs, put leadership into them, and push forward in spite of obstacles. Only disaster can result when the fundamental principles of business are disregarded and what looks like the easiest way is taken. These fundamentals, as I see them, are:
 * (1) To make an ever increasingly large quantity of goods of the best possible quality, to make them in the best and most economical fashion, and to force them out onto the market.
 * (2) To strive always for higher quality and lower prices as well as lower costs.
 * (3) To raise wages gradually but continuously B and never to cut them.
 * (4) To get the goods to the consumer in the most economical manner so that the benefits of low cost production may reach him.
 * These fundamentals are all summed up in the single word 'service'... The service starts with discovering what people need and then supplying that need according to the principles that have just been given.
 * Henry Ford in: Justus George Frederick (1930), A Philosophy of Production: A Symposium, p. 32; as cited in: Morgen Witzel (2003) Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 196

 * The average man won't really do a day's work unless he is caught and cannot get out of it. There is plenty of work to do if people would do it.
 * Quoted in The Zanesville Sunday Times-Signal [Zanesville, Ohio] (15 March 1931): On reasons for the Great Depression

 * Let them fail; let everybody fail! I made my fortune when I had nothing to start with, by myself and my own ideas. Let other people do the same thing. If I lose everything in the collapse of our financial structure, I will start in at the beginning and build it up again.
 * February 11, 1934; quoted in: Peter Collier, David Horowitz (2001). The Fords: An American Epic. p. 108

 * What we need is some financial engineers.
 * Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 11, 1936
 * A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Attributed from posthumous publications

 * You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
 * As quoted in International Encyclopedia of Prose and Poetical Quotations (1951) by William S. Walsh

 * A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
 * As quoted in News Journal [Mansfield, Ohio] (3 August 1965)

 * When I see an Alfa Romeo go by, I tip my hat.
 * As quoted in Alfa Romeo. I creatori della Leggenda (1990) by Griffith Borgeson

 * You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.
 * As quoted in Wisdom & Inspiration for the Spirit and Soul (2004) by Nancy Toussaint, p. 85

 * There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years.
 * As quoted in Biopolymers, Polyamides and Complex Proteinaceous Materials I (2003) by Stephen R. Fahnestock, Alexander Steinbüchel, p. 395

Misattributed

 * It is perhaps well enough that the people of the Nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
 * Variant: If the American people knew the corruption in our money system there would be revolution before morning.
 * Attributed to Henry Ford by Charles Binderup (March 19, 1937), Congressional Record—House vol. 81, p. 2528. The quote is preceded by "It was Henry Ford who said, in substance, this," indicating that it was a paraphrase rather than an actual quote. Ford wrote at length in My Life and Work (1923) against the dominance of finance over industry, including a remark in Chapter XII, quoted above, which is very similar to the attributed statement.

 * If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
 * Patrick Vlaskovits, "Henry Ford, Innovation, and That "Faster Horse" Quote," in Harvard Business Review (August 29, 2011).

 * Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.
 * The earliest published incident of this yet located is in "32 Mystical Connections for Advertising Buffs" by Ram Ray, in Ideate with June A Valladares (2005) by June A Valladares, p. 154; the earliest attributions to Henry Ford yet located date to about a decade after that.

 * My best friend is one who brings out the best in me.
 * Actually due to Harris Weinstock: "My best friend is the man who can bring out of me my best, and your best friend is the one who tends to bring out the best in you" (May 1914) Attributed to Henry Ford as early as 1948.

 * Any man who thinks he is going to be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him should take a close look at the American Indian.
 * Possibly said by Hugh Allen, printed in Reader's Digest (January 1967)

About Henry Ford

 * Industrialist Henry Ford hated jazz. He thought it was a Jewish conspiracy to use black music to get good white people into booze, cigarettes and sex.
 * Samantha Bee, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, (February 7, 2018); as quoted in Tracy Brown, "Samantha Bee reminds us that everything you know and love from your childhood is racist", (February 8, 2018).

 * He draws upon his subconscious mind.
 * Thomas Edison, as quoted in The Living Age, Vol. 312 (1922), p. 742

 * Only workers are forbidden to be internationalists. It’s perfectly proper for J. P. Morgan and Henry Ford; for the bankers, the munitions trusts, the chemical companies. It’s proper for scientists, stamp collectors, athletic associations, musicians, spiritualists, people who raise bees, to be internationalist – but not workers. Only the clasped hands of the workers across the boundaries are struck down in every country.
 * Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "May 1st: The Sun of Tomorrow" (May 6, 1941)

 * One of the strangest demonstrations for peace at that time was the Ford Peace Party which chartered a ship, the Oscar II, known as the Peace Ship. It sailed on December 4, 1915 and its slogan was: "Get the boys out of the trenches by Christmas." Henry Ford paid all the expenses of the trip, it was rumored. The pilgrims for peace numbered about 30 determined souls, including Miss Addams, Miss Balch, Miss Beckenridge of Chicago and amazingly enough William C. Bullit of Philadelphia. The roster of prominent, honest Americans who stood squarely for peace and for keeping us out of war was impressive, including statesmen, ministers, professors, labor leaders, women leaders, writers, editors and even capitalists. However, we of the IWW took no part in any of these pacifist activities. To us it was a grim joke to see an anti-union exploiter like Ford a participant in a peace movement. We were suspicious of non-working-class elements of all sorts and held ourselves aloof from them. Yet, it was the IWW that bore the full impact of wartime prosecution as soon as war was declared.
 * Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography, My First Life (1906-1926)

 * If there is any certainty as to what a businessman is, he is assuredly the things Ford was not.
 * John Kenneth Galbraith, as quoted in Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (1997) by Daniel Gross, p. 79

 * we feel that we don't want abstract equality rights, we want material equality. That means the redistribution of the wealth in this society. And that means that people like Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Ford or the Bishop Estate or Dillingham or whatever, they have to redistribute the wealth that they have robbed from the poor working people of the world. I mean, they made if off our backs. Henry Ford, he made the first Model T. After that, who made all the other cars. So it wasn't him, it was the people who work in the automobile factories, who sweat in 100 degree temperatures; who risk industrial accidents for a lousy $150 a week. And he makes millions every year. And he ain't produced shit. I mean, he just sits behind his desk and writes papers, either that or signs checks. That's the reality of the way society functions. And what we say, we do want a redistribution of that wealth-spread it among the people it's been robbed from. Return it to the people it belongs to.
 * Juan González (journalist), "The Young Lords Party" speech (Nov. 1971)

 * the IWW's positive side, certainly it was militant, it was courageous, that it fitted the period, that it belonged to the pioneer days and that it fought for the interests of the poorest, the most lonely, the most despised, those that the AFL couldn't organize, the foreign born, the women, and as the Negroes began coming into industry, the Negroes. Of course, I should say that when we first started in 1905, there were not too many Negro workers in the north. They came up later. Henry Ford was responsible for bringing a great many of them, on all kinds of false pretenses and the steel industries brought them up also to act as strike breakers. However, they were very susceptible to the organization put forward by Foster and others.
 * Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "Memories Of The Industrial Workers Of The World" (November 8, 1962)

 * The model for us rich guys should be Henry Ford. When Ford famously introduced the $5 day, which was twice the prevailing wage at the time, he didn't just increase the productivity of his factories, he converted exploited autoworkers who were poor into a thriving middle class who could now afford to buy the products that they made. Ford intuited what we now know is true, that an economy is best understood as an ecosystem and characterized by the same kinds of feedback loops you find in a natural ecosystem, a feedback loop between customers and businesses. Raising wages increases demand, which increases hiring, which in turn increases wages and demand and profits, and that virtuous cycle of increasing prosperity is precisely what is missing from today's economic...
 * Nick Hanauer in "Beware fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming", TED (conference) (August 2014)]

 * In 1932 Dearborn police had fired into a crowd of 4,000 seeking entrance to the Ford plant to protest against mass lay-offs, and had killed four men and wounded many others. Ever since Henry Ford announced a $5-a-day minimum wage for unskilled labor in 1913, the automobile industry had had the reputation of paying "fat" wages. But the auto workers received less than an average of $1,300 a year in 1925, when times were good, and less than $1,000 in 1935. A report to the NRA (by the Henderson committee) showed that 45 per cent of these workers were paid less than $1,000 in 1934. In one plant three-fifths of the employees received less than $800, while a third got less than $400. UAW aggressiveness in 1936 evidently was felt by the car manufacturers. With the exception of Henry Ford, always an independent, they acted in concert in most matters affecting the industry.
 * Rose Pesotta Bread upon the Waters (1945)

 * Every year Jews make more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions; only a single great man, Ford, to their fury still maintains full independence.
 * Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925)

 * I regard Ford as my inspiration.
 * Adolf Hitler, attributed in Bill McGraw, "Forced Labor and Ford: History of Nazi Labor Stares Ford in the Face", Detroit Free Press, 21 December 1999, p. B1; as cited in Timothy W. Ryback, Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, p. 71 & footnote p. 275.

 * "Progress" is for the convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and technicism. This charming but dull vision was always the pseudoreligious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman. Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells's, [The Shape] Of Things to Come, the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy.
 * Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn writing under the pen name Francis Stewart Campbell (1943), Menace of the Herd, or, Procrustes at Large, Milwaukee, WI: The Bruce Publishing Company, pp. 35-36

 * It will take a hundred years to tell whether he helped us or hurt us, but he certainly didn't leave us where he found us.
 * Will Rogers, as quoted in Henry Ford and Grass-roots America (1972) by Reynold M. Wik, p. 195

title: Henry Ford