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Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898) was an English author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, logician, and amateur photographer. His father was Charles Dodgson (archdeacon), his great-grandfather was Charles Dodgson (bishop) and his nephew was Stuart Dodgson Collingwood.

 * See also:
 * Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
 * Through the Looking-Glass
 * Letters of Lewis Carroll
 * The Hunting of the Snark

Quotes

 * The White Knight must not have whiskers; he must not be made to look old.
 * Instructions to Sir John Tenniel c.1864; quoted in Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 130

Said echo in her ear: "No mind to bring a living thing To suffering or fear. For all that's bad, or mean or sad, you have no mind, my dear."
 * "You have no mind to be unkind,"
 * "To Janet Merriman", quoted in Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends (1933) p. 81

 * The `Why?' cannot, and need not, be put into words. Those for whom a child's mind is a sealed book, and who see no divinity in a child's smile, would read such words in vain: while for any one that has ever loved one true child, no words are needed. For he will have known the awe that falls on one in the presence of a spirit fresh from GOD's hands, on whom no shadow of sin, and but the outermost fringe of the shadow of sorrow, has yet fallen: he will have felt the bitter contrast between the haunting selfishness that spoils his best deeds and the life that is but an overflowing love--for I think a child's first attitude to the world is a simple love for all living things: and he will have learned that the best work a man can do is when he works for love's sake only, with no thought of name, or gain, or earthly reward. No deed of ours, I suppose, on this side the grave, is really unselfish: yet if one can put forth all one's powers in a task where nothing of reward is hoped for but a little child's whispered thanks, and the airy touch of a little child's pure lips, one seems to come somewhere near to this.
 * Alice's Adventures Under Ground (1886), Introduction, p. v

 * To Her, whose children's smiles fed the narrator's fancy and were his rich reward: from the Author.
 * Inscribed in Mrs. Lorina Liddell's copy of Alice's Adventures Under Ground; quoted by Edward Wakeling

All keenly as my glance I bend, Will Memory, goddess coy, Embody for my joy Departed days, nor let me gaze On thee, my fairy friend!
 * I charm in vain; for never again,
 * "To my Child-friend" in The Game Of Logic (1886)

 * If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics – it does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, so long as there is enough of them.
 * Three Years in a Curatorship, By One Whom It Has Tried, 1886

"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?" "Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you, 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see." "Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your notebook, please. We will call it (E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?" "I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.
 * "And at last we've got to the end of this ideal racecourse! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."
 * "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", Mind, n.s., 4 (1895), pp. 278–80

 * But surely you trust God! Do you think He would let you come to harm? To be afraid is to distrust.
 * To a girl who was frightened of traveling by train
 * Quoted in Beatrice Hatch, "Lewis Carroll", Strand Magazine (April 1898), p. 421

 * As you have invited me, I cannot come, for I have made a rule to decline all invitations; but I will come the next day.
 * Quoted in Beatrice Hatch, "Lewis Carroll", Strand Magazine (April 1898), p. 422

Useful and Instructive Poetry (1845)
Tired of the painful task. The fairy quietly replied, And said "You must not ask."
 * "What may I do?" at length I cried,
 * My Fairy

Who daily got shorter and shorter, The reason he said Was the hod on his head Which was filled with the heaviest mortar.
 * There was once a young man of Oporta,
 * Melodies No. 3

The Rectory Umbrella
Like jars of strawberry jam, a sound was heard in the old henhouse, A beating of a hammer.
 * The day was wet, the rain fell souse
 * Lays of Sorrow No.1, opening lines

(That is, it never rose again)
 * And so it fell upon a day,
 * Lays of Sorrow No.1

The Rectory of Croft, The sun shines bright upon it, The breezes whisper soft. From all the house and garden Its inhabitants come forth, And muster in the road without, And pace in twos and threes about, The children of the North.
 * Fair stands the ancient Rectory,
 * Lays of Sorrow No. 2, opening lines

And cower in the straw; The chickens are submissive, And own thy will for law; Bullfinches and canary Thy bidding do obey; And e'en the tortoise in its shell Doth never say thee nay.
 * The rabbits bow before thee,
 * Lays of Sorrow No. 2

Phantasmagoria (1869)
Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy, I had come home, too late to dine
 * One winter night, at half past nine,
 * Opening lines

"Out there upon the landing." I turned to look in some surprise, And there, before my very eyes, A little Ghost was standing!
 * "I've caught a cold," the Thing replies,
 * Canto 1, "The Trysting"

Allow me to remark That Ghosts have just as good a right In every way, to fear the light, As Men to fear the dark.
 * And as to being in a fright,
 * Canto 1

To haunt a man of forty-two, Was no great compliment!"
 * Yet still to choose a brat like you,
 * Canto 1

Warms his old bones like nectar: And as the inns, where it is found, Are his especial hunting-ground, We call him the INN-SPECTRE.
 * Port-wine, he says, when rich and sound,
 * Of "Inspector Kobold", a spectre
 * Canto 3, "Scarmoges"

Serves but to let the dusk in - " "But please," said I, "to recollect 'Twas fashioned by an architect Who pinned his faith on Ruskin!"
 * "That narrow window, I expect,
 * Canto 3

And so I tell you flat.
 * Now that's a thing I WILL NOT STAND,
 * Canto 3

A merry time had we! Each seated on his favourite post, We chumped and chawed the buttered toast They gave us for our tea.
 * Oh, when I was a little Ghost,
 * Canto 4, "Hys Nouryture"

My mother was a Fairy. The notion had occurred to her, The children would be happier, If they were taught to vary.
 * My father was a Brownie, Sir;

The notion soon became a craze; And, when it once began, she Brought us all out in different ways - One was a Pixy, two were Fays, Another was a Banshee.
 * Canto 4

Of answering my question, "Well, if you don't know THAT," he said, "Either you never go to bed, Or you've a grand digestion!
 * Who's the Knight-Mayor?" I cried. Instead
 * Canto 5, "Byckerment"

Well suits the occupation: In point of fact, if you must know, We used to call him years ago, THE MAYOR AND CORPORATION!
 * He is immensely fat, and so
 * Canto 5

(As it was baking hot, And he was over twenty stone), The King proceeded, half in fun, To knight him on the spot.
 * So, to reward him for his run
 * Explaining the Knight-Mayor's name
 * Canto 5

Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)
Was eight years old, she said: Every ringlet, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden thread.
 * Lady Clara Vere de Vere
 * Echoes

The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three - That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most Is a thing they call the Sea.
 * There are certain things - as, a spider, a ghost,
 * A Sea Dirge, st.1

(Whence is derived the verb 'to flee'). Where have you been by it most annoyed? In lodgings by the Sea.
 * There is an insect that people avoid
 * A Sea Dirge

Took the camera of rosewood, Made of sliding, folding rosewood; Neatly put it all together. In its case it lay compactly, Folded into nearly nothing; But he opened out the hinges, Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, Till it looked all squares and oblongs, Like a complicated figure In the Second Book of Euclid.
 * From his shoulder Hiawatha
 * Hiawatha's Photographing st. 1 & 2

Tumbled all the tribe together, ('Grouped' is not the right expression), And, as happy chance would have it Did at last obtain a picture Where the faces all succeeded: Each came out a perfect likeness. Then they joined and all abused it, Unrestrainedly abused it, As the worst and ugliest picture They could possibly have dreamed of. 'Giving one such strange expressions - Sullen, stupid, pert expressions. Really any one would take us (Any one that did not know us) For the most unpleasant people!' (Hiawatha seemed to think so, Seemed to think it not unlikely.)
 * Finally my Hiawatha
 * Hiawatha's Photographing

''Nor anything that cost me much: High prices profit those who sell, but why should I be fond of such?''
 * I NEVER loved a dear Gazelle –
 * Tèma con Variazióne, st. 1

To see the eager lad Rush madly for his pen and ink And for his blotting-pad – But, when he thought of publishing, His face grew stern and sad.
 * Then proudly smiled that old man
 * Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur, last stanza

He said wi' sighs and tears, 'I wot my coortin' sall not be Anither thirty years: 'For gin I find a ladye gay, Exactly to my taste, I'll pop the question, aye or nay, In twenty years at maist.'
 * 'O gin I find anither ladye,'
 * The Lang Coortin', last two stanzas

Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds? x2+7x+53 =11/3.
 * Yet what are all such gaieties to me
 * Four Riddles, no. I

We clove a pathway through a frantic throng: The steeds, wild-plunging, filled us with affright: The chariots whirled along. Within a marble hall a river ran - A living tide, half muslin and half cloth: And here one mourned a broken wreath or fan, Yet swallowed down her wrath
 * A change came o'er my Vision - it was night:
 * Four Riddles, no. I

Shaming his hoary locks with treacherous wile! And dost thou now doubt Truth to be a liar? And wilt thou die, that hast forgot to smile?
 * A sadder vision yet: thine aged sire
 * Four Riddles, no. II

And rich with laughter and with singing: Young hearts beat high in ecstasy, And banners wave, and bells are ringing: But silence falls with fading day, And there's an end to mirth and play. Ah, well-a-day!
 * The air is bright with hues of light
 * Four Riddles, no. III

Ye little men of little souls! And bid them huddle at your back - Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals! Fill all the air with hungry wails - "Reward us, ere we think or write! Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails To sate the swinish appetite!"
 * Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack,
 * Fame's Penny-Trumpet st. 1 & 2

Sylvie and Bruno (1889)

Seen faintly in the golden gleam Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?''' Bowed to the earth with bitter woe Or laughing at some raree-show We flutter idly to and fro. Man's little Day in haste we spend, And, from its merry noontide, send No glance to meet the silent end.
 * '''Is all our Life, then, but a dream

 * I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story — I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it — but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea' — is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
 * Preface

But, once realise what the true object is in life — that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds' — but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man — and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
 * I believe this thought, of the possibility of death — if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
 * Preface

 * Less Bread! More Taxes!--and then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out) "Who roar for the Sub-Warden?" Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting "Bread!" and some "Taxes!", but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted.
 * Opening lines

 * I suppose every child has a world of his own — and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if that's the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life?
 * Chapter 4 : A Cunning Conspiracy

That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, 'The bitterness of Life!'
 * He thought he saw an Elephant,
 * Chapter 5 : A Beggar's Palace

Descending from the bus: He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus: 'If this should stay to dine,' he said, 'There won't be much for us!'
 * He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
 * Chapter 7 : The Baron's Embassy

 * The West is the fitting tomb for all the sorrow and the sighing, all the errors and the follies of the Past: for all its withered Hopes and all its buried Loves! From the East comes new strength, new ambition, new Hope, new Life, new Love! Look Eastward! Aye, look Eastward!"
 * Chapter 25 : Looking Eastward

"Look Eastward! Aye, look Eastward!"
 * Fading, with the Night, the memory of a dead love, and the withered leaves of a blighted hope, and the sickly repinings and moody regrets that numb the best energies of the soul: and rising, broadening, rolling upward like a living flood, the manly resolve, and the dauntless will, and the heavenward gaze of faith — the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen!
 * Chapter 25 : Looking Eastward

Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing (1890)

 * Some American writer has said “the snakes in this district may be divided into one species—the venomous”. The same principle applies here. Postage-Stamp-Cases may be divided into one species, the “Wonderland”. Imitations of it will soon appear, no doubt: but they cannot include the two Pictorial Surprises, which are copyright. You don't see why I call them 'Surprises'? Well, take the Case in your left hand, and regard it attentively. You see Alice nursing the Duchess's Baby ? (An entirely new combination, by the way : it doesn't occur in the book.) Now, with your right thumb and forefinger, lay hold of the little book, and suddenly pull it out. The Baby has turned into a Pig I If that doesn't surprise you, why, I suppose you wouldn't be surprised if your own Mother-in-law suddenly turned into a Gyroscope!

 * Since I have possessed a "Wonderland Stamp Case", Life has been bright and peaceful, and I have used no other. I believe the Queen's laundress uses no other.

 * If the Letter is to be in answer to another, begin by getting out that other letter and reading it through, in order to refresh your memory, as to what it is you have to answer, and as to your correspondent’s present address (otherwise you will be sending your letter to his regular address in London, though he has been careful in writing to give you his Torquay address in full).

 * Put the date in full. It is another aggravating thing, when you wish, years afterwards, to arrange a series of letters, to find them dated "Feb. 17", "Aug. 2", without any year to guide you as to which comes first. And never, never, dear Madam (N.B. this remark is addressed to ladies only: no man would ever do such a thing), put "Wednesday", simply, as the date!

 * Here is a golden Rule to begin with. Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule! A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly.

 * If doubtful whether to end with “yours faithfully”, or “yours truly”, or “your most truly”, &c. (there are at least a dozen varieties, before you reach “yours affectionately”), refer to your correspondent’s last letter, and make your winding-up at least as friendly as his: in fact, even if a shade more friendly, it will do no harm!

Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893)

 * God has given to Man an absolute right to take the lives of other animals, for any reasonable cause, such as the supply of food; but He has not given to Man the right to inflict pain, unless where necessary.
 * Introduction

 * I wasn't asleep! said Bruno, in a deeply-injured tone. "When I shuts mine eyes, it's to show that I'm awake!''"
 * Chapter 1: Bruno's Lessons

That lures the bird home to her nest? Or wakes the tired mother, whose infant is weeping, To cuddle and croon it to rest?
 * Say, what is the spell, when her fledgelings are cheeping,
 * Chapter 19: A Fairy Duet

Bids the whirl of the tempest to cease? That stirs the vexed soul with an aching — a yearning For the brotherly hand-grip of peace?
 * Say, whence is the voice that, when anger is burning,
 * Chapter 19: A Fairy Duet

But the name of the secret is Love!
 * 'Tis a secret: none knows how it comes, how it goes:
 * Chapter 19: A Fairy Duet

 * "Our Second Experiment", the Professor announced, as Bruno returned to his place, still thoughtfully rubbing his elbows, "is the production of that seldom-seen-but-greatly-to-be-admired phenomenon, Black Light! You have seen White Light, Red Light, Green Light, and so on: but never, till this wonderful day, have any eyes but mine seen Black Light! This box", carefully lifting it upon the table, and covering it with a heap of blankets, "is quite full of it. The way I made it was this - I took a lighted candle into a dark cupboard and shut the door. Of course the cupboard was then full of Yellow Light. Then I took a bottle of Black ink, and poured it over the candle: and, to my delight, every atom of the Yellow Light turned Black! That was indeed the proudest moment of my life! Then I filled a box with it. And now - would anyone like to get under the blankets and see it?" Dead silence followed this appeal: but at last Bruno said "I'll get under, if it won't jingle my elbows."  Satisfied on this point, Bruno crawled under the blankets, and, after a minute or two, crawled out again, very hot and dusty, and with his hair in the wildest confusion.  "What did you see in the box?" Sylvie eagerly enquired.  "I saw nuffin!" Bruno sadly replied. "It were too dark!"  "He has described the appearance of the thing exactly!" the Professor exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Black Light, and Nothing, look so extremely alike, at first sight, that I don't wonder he failed to distinguish them! We will now proceed to the Third Experiment."
 * Chapter 21: The Professor's Lecture

Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)
There were no new poems in this book; it was a collection of his "serious" poetry

The star of perfect womanhood.
 * All in the waning light she stood,
 * Three Sunsets (1861), st. 1

That faintly tinged his haggard cheek, Fell on her as she stood, and shed A glory round the patient head.
 * The dying crimson of the West
 * Three Sunsets (1861)

But large hot tears were coursing down her cheek. And her low-panted sobs broke awefully Upon the sleeping echoes of the night.
 * Not as in rest she bowed,
 * The Path of Roses (1856)

Stood lonely as a spirit of the night — Stood calm and fearless in the gathered night — And raised her eyes to heaven. There were tears Upon her face, but in her heart was peace. Peace that the world nor gives nor takes away!
 * And she arose, and in that darkening room
 * The Path of Roses (1856), concluding lines

In weariness alway: At dawn to sigh for eventide, At eventide for day. Thy noon hath fled: thy sun hath shone: The brightness of thy day is gone: What need to lag and linger on Till life be cold and gray?
 * O bitter is it to abide
 * The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1868)

Of innocence, of love and truth! Bright, beyond all imagining, Thou fairy-dream of youth! I'd give all wealth that years have piled, The slow result of Life's decay, To be once more a little child For one bright summer-day.
 * Ye golden hours of Life's young spring,
 * Solitude (1853), conclusion

Of a wanderer to earth From a far celestial height: Summers five are all the span — Summers five since Time began To veil in mists of human night A shining angel-birth. Does an angel look from her eyes? Will she suddenly spring away, And soar to her home in the skies? Beatrice! Blessing and blessed to be!
 * In her eyes is the living Hght
 * Beatrice (1862), st. 1

That breathed around the place; And she was lithe, and tall, and fair, And with a wayward grace Her queenly head she bare.
 * The light was faint, and soft the air
 * Stolen Waters (1862), st. 1

Then take," I cried, "my heart to thee!" The very heart from out my breast I plucked, I gave it willingly; Her very heart she gave to me — Then died the glory from the west. In the gray light I saw her face, And it was withered, old, and gray; The flowers were fading in their place, Were fading with the fading day.
 * "True love gives true love of the best:
 * Stolen Waters (1862)

Stirred by the wandering breath of morn — The happy spot where I was born.
 * An island-farm — broad seas of corn
 * Faces in the Fire (1860), st. 2

And she is strange and far away That might have been mine own to-day — That might have been mine own, my dear, Through many and many a happy year — That might have sat beside me here.
 * Those locks of jet are turned to gray,
 * Faces in the Fire (1860), st. 8 & 9

Are changed to dust and ashes white, And I am left alone with night.
 * The pictures, with their ruddy light,
 * Faces in the Fire (1860), st. 13

"Too well the scholar knows There is no rose without a thorn" — But peace is made! We sing, this morn, "No thorn without a rose!" Our Latin lesson is complete: We've learned that Love is Bitter-Sweet!
 * Last night we owned, with looks forlorn,
 * A Lesson in Latin (1888), st. 3

Realise Life's sober sadness. Let's be merry while we may, Innocent and happy Fay! Elves were made for gladness!
 * All too soon will Childhood gay
 * Puck Lost and Found (1891)

Diaries
Quoted from the version edited by Edward Wakeking

 * Went to the new Church both morning and afternoon, and read service in the afternoon. I got through it all with great success, till I came to read out the first verse of the hymn before the sermon, where the two words ‘strife strengthened,’ coming together, were too much for me, and I had to leave the verse unfinished.
 * 31 August 1862

 * I mark this day with a white stone.
 * 19 December 1863; he frequently used this or a similar phrase for especially notable days.

Letters

 * The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.
 * Lewis Carroll, Roger Lancelyn Green (1989). “The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll”, p.10, Springer

Disputed

 * One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.
 * This is a paraphrase of statement in a thank you note from Carroll to a childhood friend, the actress Ellen Terry, published in Ellen Terry, Player in Her Time (1997), p. 126 by Nina Auerbach: "... and so you have found out that secret — one of the deep secrets of Life — that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others?"

Misattributed

 * You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants a magical solution to their problem, and everyone refuses to believe in magic.
 * Though written in contemporary idiomatic English, this has been recently cited on the Internet on various "quotations" websites (and elsewhere) as having being written by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland [sic]. However, it does not appear within the text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass. It was actually a line spoken by a character named Jefferson in the TV series Once Upon a Time in a 2012 episode entitled "Hat Trick," in which the literary character The Mad Hatter appears. – Ref: Internet Movie Database (IMDb), quotes from Once upon a Time, "Hat Trick".

Quotes about Carroll

 * Alphabetized by author or source

 * Lewis Carroll was especially kind to Charlie and me, though when I was only five I offended him once when, at a children’s party at Hatfield, he was telling us a story. He was a stammerer and being unable to follow what he was saying I suddenly asked in a loud voice, "Why does he waggle his mouth like that?" I was hastily removed by the lady-in-waiting.
 * Princess Alice, For My Grandchildren, Some Reminiscences of Her Royal Highness Princess Alice (1966)

 * He had a curiously womanish face, and, in direct contradiction to his real character, there seemed to be little strength in it.
 * Isa Bowman, The Story of Lewis Carroll (1899) p. 9

 * Lewis Carroll is somebody who wore different hats. He was a clergyman, a mathematician, a teacher. He wrote serious books, and amazing children's books. He was a photographer. So like most people, he was many people in one skin. Creatively, he made a greater impact than almost any other Victorian, and yet we know next to nothing about him, we just fall back on the old cliché.
 * Gyles Brandreth, as cited in Susan Mansfield "Interview: Gyles Brandreth", Edinburgh Festivals website (12 August 2010)

 * We lament that we cannot go home again, cannot be a little child once more, and Lewis Carroll's works have enabled us to deny that reality momentarily, to indulge our dreams for one bright interval.
 * Jerome Bump, Introduction to The Rectory Magazine by Lewis Carroll (1975)

 * It is not children who ought to read the works of Lewis Carroll; they are far better employed making mud-pies.
 * Gilbert Keith Chesterton, quoted in Martin Gardner, The Annotated Snark (1962), Introduction, p. 15

All little children by the hand: And led them laughing through the book Where Alice walks in Wonderland.
 * A Nursery Magician took
 * Henry Savile Clarke, quoted in A Selection from the Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends (1933) edited by Evelyn M. Hatch, p. 188

 * He made pets of the most odd and unlikely animals, and numbered certain snails and toads among his intimate friends. He tried also to encourage civilised warfare among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed. His notions of charity at this early age were somewhat rudimentary; he used to peel rushes with the idea that the pith would afterwards "be given to the poor," though what possible use they could put it to he never attempted to explain.
 * Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 11

 * One day, when Charles was a very small boy, he came up to his father and showed him a book of logarithms, with the request, "Please explain." Mr. Dodgson told him that he was much too young to understand anything about such a difficult subject. The child listened to what his father said, and appeared to think it irrelevant, for he still insisted, "But, please, explain!"
 * Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) pp. 12-3

 * No one who was not by nature a lover of logic, and an extreme precisian in the use of words and phrases, could have written the two "Alice" books.
 * Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899) p. 3

 * Lewis Carroll's humour is that of an educated man; it is fun indeed, but of the most refined and exotic. And that is why his books, popular as they are and as they deserve to be among children, can only be fully appreciated by grown-up readers.
 * Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899) p. 4

 * Such were the lucidity of exposition and his mastery of the topic that it seems possible that, had he ever published it, the political theory of Britain would have been significantly different.
 * Michael Dummett on Carroll's work on election theory; quoted in Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland (2008) p. vii

 * We worked together for seven years. Tenniel and other artists declared I would not work with Carroll for seven weeks! I accepted the challenge, but I, for that purpose, adopted quite a new method. No artist is more matter-of-fact or businesslike than myself: to Carroll I was not Hy. F., but someone else, as he was someone else. I was wilful and erratic, bordering on insanity. We therefore got on splendidly.
 * Harry Furniss, Confessions of a Caricaturist, vol.1 (1901), pp.104-5

 * To have known the man was even as great a treat as to read his books. Lewis Carroll was as unlike any other man as his books were unlike any other author's books. It was a relief to meet the pure simple, innocent dreamer of children, after the selfish commercial mind of most authors.
 * Harry Furniss, Confessions of a Caricaturist, vol.1 (1901), p. 105

 * He was preoccupied with left and right, as with right and wrong.
 * Phyllis Greenacre, quoted in Florence Becker Lennon, The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962), p. 32

In high exuberance of mirth Is dancing yet.
 * The star that danced at Carroll's birth
 * Beatrice Hatch, Letters of Lewis Carroll to his Child-Friends (1933), p. v

 * Mr. Dodgson had a mathematical, a logical and a philosophical mind; and when these qualities are united to a love of the grotesque, the resultant fancies are sure to have a quite peculiar charm, a charm so much the greater because its source is subtle and eludes all attempts to grasp it. Sometimes he seems to revel in ideas which are not merely illogical but anti-logical.
 * Henry Holiday, The Snark's Significance, Academy (29 January 1898)

 * My mother is English, and as she was the one who read to us, my early world was A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. None of them thought it necessary to protect children from darkness. On the contrary, they guided their readers right toward it. This gives one an enormous sense of being respected as a child. Not just of being trusted to handle things as they are, but to be accepted as not entirely good. To be recognized as having darkness within oneself, too.
 * Nicole Krauss Interview (2017)

 * Dodgson was overcome by the beauty of Cologne Cathedral. I found him leaning against the rails of the Choir and sobbing like a child. When the verger came to show us over the chapels behind the Choir, he got out of the way, he said that he could not bear the harsh voice of the man in the presence of so much beauty.
 * Henry Liddon, The Russian Journal, ed. Morton Cohen (1979), p. 13

 * It was a soufflé of a speech, light, pleasant, digestible, and nourishing also.
 * Frederick York Powell, of a talk by Carroll, in The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899) p. 356

 * As one who was a boy for much of his adult life, he was by our standards something of a fuddy-duddy in his youth.
 * John Pudney, Lewis Carroll and His World (1976), p. 10

 * Except for the straw boater for the river outings, a top hat was always worn and gloves carried.
 * John Pudney, Lewis Carroll and His World (1976), p. 13

 * I shall always remember his beautiful twinkling eyes, full of love and laughter, as he told us wonderful stories.
 * Katharine Rivers, "Memories of Lewis Carroll", McMaster University Library Research News, Vol. 3, No. 4 (January 1976)

 * And how Lewis Carroll loved the country, the woods, and the hay, and wove into his magic stories the flowers and animals we saw there! Sitting with his back to a big tree-trunk, with one of us on his knee – sometimes one on each knee – he would tell us for hours, stories of the Pixies. And every time he came, he had fresh adventures to relate.
 * Katharine Rivers, "Memories of Lewis Carroll", McMaster University Library Research News, Vol. 3, No. 4 (January 1976)

 * Sometimes our friend’s face looked, when in repose, very sad and worn, and very different from the fun-lit face, with its charming eyes, that we saw when he was telling us those magic tales – tales which seem to have been woven right into the fabric of my life, and to have coloured it always with a tinge of his dreams.
 * Katharine Rivers, "Memories of Lewis Carroll", McMaster University Library Research News, Vol. 3, No. 4 (January 1976)

 * He impressed me mainly as belonging to the type of 'the University Man': a certain externalism of polite propriety, verging towards the conventional. I do not think in my presence he said anything 'funny' or quaint.
 * William Michael Rossetti, quoted in Florence Becker Lennon, The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962), p. 161

 * In a stroke, Carroll anticipated key elements of multiple alignment, minimum distance alignment and local alignment that are now central to biological sequence analysis.
 * David B. Searls, "From Jabberwocky to Genome: Lewis Carroll and Computational Biology", Journal of Computational Biology, 8(3), 2001, p. 342

 * Dodgson’s stammer was a good deal under control and could be used defensively (to gain time), or rhetorically to enhance the effect of a story, when the point was near.
 * John Alexander Stewart, senior student at Christ Church; quoted by Edward Wakeling

 * It may be taken as axiomatic that whatever Dodgson was thinking and feeling at the time found its way into his 'nonsense'.
 * Alexander L. Taylor, The White Knight (1952), p. 157

 * My beloved friend - one of the most unique and charming personalities of our time.
 * E. Gertrude Thomson, quoted in Morton Cohen & Edward Wakeling, Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators (2003) p. 319

 * And the exquisite nonsense he talked! It was like pages out of the Alices, only more delightful, for there was his own voice and smile to give the true charm to it all.
 * E. Gertrude Thomson, quoted in Morton Cohen & Edward Wakeling, Lewis Carroll and his Illustrators (2003) p. 322

 * His imaginatively posed photographs of children are a delight, and his hundreds of photographs of friends and celebrities provide us with much insight into the Victorian world around him.
 * Robin Wilson, Lewis Carroll in Numberland (2008) p. vii

 * He was the kind of man who kept a diagram showing where you sat when you dined with him and what you ate, lest he serve you the same dish when you came again.
 * Alexander Woolcott, Introduction to The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (1939), p. 5

 * The Reverend C. L. Dodgson had no life. He passed through the world so lightly that he left no print. He melted so passively into Oxford that he is invisible.
 * Virginia Woolf, essay "Lewis Carroll" (1939); reprinted in The Moment, and Other Essays (1948)

 * For some reason, we know not what, his childhood was sharply severed. It lodged in him whole and entire. He could not disperse it.
 * Virginia Woolf, essay "Lewis Carroll" (1939)

Beatrice Hatch, "Lewis Carroll", Strand Magazine (April 1898)

 * Those of us who knew him best remember him as the kind and loving friend, who contributed so much to the happiness of our lives, and whom we shall truly mourn as one of the best of men.
 * p. 413

 * Never, surely, did any man make more friends among children than he did.
 * p. 414

 * It was impossible for Mr. Dodgson to pass by the smallest opportunity of speaking to a child, and his winning manner gained the hearts, and generally the tongues, of all whom he met.
 * p. 414

 * In his estimation, logic was a most important study for everyone. No pains were spared to make it clear and interesting to those who would but consent to learn of him.
 * p. 416

 * The arrangement of his papers, the classification of his photographs, the order of his books, the lists and registers that he kept about everything imaginable - all this betokened his well-ordered mind.
 * p. 417

 * Everything that he did must be done in the most perfect manner possible; and the same care and attention would be given to other people's affairs, if in any way he could assist or give them pleasure.
 * p. 418

 * Mr. Dodgson had a great horror of being "lionised," and ingeniously silenced his tormentors by representing to them, indirectly, that "lewis Carroll," the author of "Alice," and "Mr. Dodgson" were two separate persons.
 * p. 421

 * Never was there a more delightful host for a "dinner-party," or one who took such pains for your entertainment, fresh and interesting to the last.
 * p. 421

 * With all his humour he took a serious view of life, and had a very grave vein running through his mind. The simplicity of his faith, his deep reverence, and his child-like faith in the goodness of God were striking.
 * p. 421

 * Mr. Dodgson did not often preach, yet, when he did, he had the power to impress and captivate his hearers. There was no need for him to write out a sermon. Full of earnestness in his subject, the words came without difficulty. Neither was there any danger of his wandering from the direct point, for before the eye of his ordered and logical mind, his subject would arise in the form of a diagram to be worked out point by point.
 * p. 421

 * The benefaction which he bestowed upon the world is still with us - the benefaction of a wit that was never sarcastic, a humour that was always sympathetic; and the embodiment in himself of the three essentials of Life: Faith, the light by which to live; Hope, the goal for which to labour; Charity, the wide horizon, to which his soul looked out in love.
 * p. 423

Florence Becker Lennon, The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962)

 * How did it happen that the Reverend Charles Dodgson, thirty years of age, lecturer on geometry at Christ Church, Oxford, hitherto remarkable chiefly for his precision, on a single July afternoon, while rowing up the Isis with a brother don and three little girls, parthenogenetically gave birth to one of the most famous stories of all time?
 * Page 23

 * Charles Dodgson, born a romantic and a rationalist, would have fitted more easily into the world of Voltaire and Goethe than into the one that received him.
 * Page 25

 * Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's life in space-time colored his liberated life of the imagination.
 * Page 27

 * Charles, trapped in the cave of his period, was the laughing philosopher who could show others the way out. He spoke the language and played the role of Ariel - the mantle of Prospero ill became him, though he fancied it.
 * Page 27

 * Cramped by his own charts, on a stream itself restricted, his genius directed him to the bottomless ocean of his books, and impelled him to dive under the graciously sparkling surface into the dark swirl of the icy depths.
 * Page 30

 * Rich deposits of perversity crop up in his humor - and his sudden attacks of virtue or sentimentality midway through his own or other persons' jests hint that his imp has suggested to him something particularly unfunny and unpardonable.
 * Page 33

 * Dodgson of course was a meticulous traveler. He packed each article separately, well wrapped in paper to twice its bulk.
 * Page 176

title: Lewis Carroll


text:
Heywood Broun

Heywood Campbell Broun Jr. (December 7, 1888 – December 18, 1939) was an American journalist, sportswriter and newspaper columnist in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, now known as The Newspaper Guild.

Quotes

 * The artist has never been a dictator, since he understands better than anybody else the variations in human personality.
 * "Bring on the Artist", New York World Telegram, June 19, 1933

 * There is no proselyter half so energetic as the hard-shelled atheist.
 * "A New Preface to an Old Story", Broun's Nutmeg, August 19, 1939

 * Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.
 * "A New Preface to an Old Story", Broun's Nutmeg, August 19, 1939
 * Collected Edition of Heywood Broun, compiled by Heywood Hale Broun. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1941, [HTTP://BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM/books?id=IRWxAAAAIAAJ&q=%22nobody+talks+so+constantly+about+god+as+those+who+insist+that+there+is+no+god%22&pg=PA26#v=onepage page 26]

 * Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian.
 * Quoted by Lin Yutang in The Wisdom of China and India (1942)

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

title: Heywood Broun


text:
Joseph Joubert

Joseph Joubert (7 May 1754 – 4 May 1824) was a French moralist and essayist. He published nothing during his lifetime; after his death in 1824, Joubert's widow entrusted his manuscripts to François-René de Chateaubriand, who published a short selection of them for private circulation, under the title Recueil des Pensées de M. Joubert (Collected Thoughts of Mr. Joubert) (Paris, 1838). This volume was subsequently re-edited with many additions by Paul Raynal, a nephew of the author, under the new title of Pensées, Essais, Maximes et Correspondance de J. Joubert (Thoughts, Essays, Maxims and Correspondence of J. Joubert) (Paris, 1842). A selection from his correspondence was published in 1883.

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert (1883)

 * As translated by Paul Auster

 * We comprehend the earth only when we have known heaven. Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

 * Some find activity only in repose, and others repose only in movement.

 * We use up in the passions the stuff that was given us for happiness.

 * God has commanded time to console the afflicted.

 * When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

 * The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

 * He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

 * It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

 * Ask the young. They know everything.

 * It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him.

 * Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

 * Eyes raised towards Heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be.

 * Good impulses are naught, unless they become good actions.

 * All luxury corrupts either the morals or the taste.

 * When I see young people such as those of our day, I think that Heaven wishes to destroy the world.

 * To be capable of respect is, in these days, almost as rare as to be worthy of it.

 * Le génie commence les beaux ouvrages, mais le travail seul les achève.
 * Genius begins beautiful works, but only labor finishes them.

 * To teach is to learn twice over.

 * He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing.

 * Thought forms in the soul the same way clouds form in the air.

 * The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.

 * It is not facts, but rumors that cause emotions among the people. What is believed creates everything.

 * Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?

 * Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking.

 * Wisdom is the strength of the weak.

 * The good is worth more than the best.

 * Here is the desert. In this silence, everything speaks to me: and in your noise, everything falls silent.

 * The number of books is infinite.

 * They cannot accustom themselves to lacking nothing.

 * The people. They know how to know, but not how to choose.

 * One loves to say what he knows, the other loves to say what he thinks.

 * The imagination is the eye of the soul.

 * I love to see two truths at the same time. Every good comparison gives the mind this advantage.

 * Divorce. Its existence and use should be determined only by the interests of the children.

 * To compensate absence with memory.

 * To seek wisdom rather than truth. It is more within our grasp.

 * Anger makes us adroit.

 * The mind can only create errors. Truths are not created, they exist; one can only see them, disentangle them, discover them, and expose them.

 * Democracy and slavery are inseparable. Why. Democracy as it existed among the ancients was no more than government by a number of men large enough to be called the people. But this designation is false. The true people, in such a state, the greatest number, the majority belong to the class of slaves, and slavery inevitably develops in a country governed this way, because it is impossible that those who spend their time making laws can make shoes and clothes, plant crops, work fields, etc.

 * They do not know how to apply names to things.

 * What our eyes see, our imagination can no longer see. The same thing cannot be the object of both kinds of seeing.

 * The imagination has made more discoveries than the eye.

 * When men are imbeciles, the one who is mad dominates the others.

 * God made life to be lived and not to be known.

 * Imprisoned in our bodies...and our soul has its windows.

 * Don't cut what you can untie.

 * All these philosophers are no more than surgeons.

 * The weakness of the dying slanders life.

 * The staircase that leads to God. What does it matter if it is make-believe, if we really climb it? What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is made of marble or word, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to those who do not climb it.

 * What good is modesty? — It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly.

 * To hide our eyes to make others believe we are hiding tears.

 * The truth. They make it consist of nothing they cannot prove. The greatest happiness they find in it is being able to put forth incontestable assertions. This is what they like, and they consider it a sign of prestige, a prerogative, a power, a dignity, etc., a liberation from error.

 * Stars more beautiful to the eyes than the telescope that robs them of their illusions.

 * To draw up in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive our minds of the pleasures of the encounter and the novelty that comes from executing the work. It is to make the execution insipid for us and consequently impossible in works that depends on enthusiasm and imagination. Such a plan is itself a half-work. It must be left imperfect if we want to please ourselves. We must say it cannont be finished. In fact, it must not be for a very good reason: it is impossible. We can, however, draw up such plans for works whose execution and accomplishment are a mechanical thing, a thing that depends above all others on the hand. This is suitable and even very useful for painters, for sculptors. Their senses, with each stroke of the brush or chisel, will find this novelty that did not exist for their minds. Forms and colors, which the imagination cannot represent to us as perfectly as the eye can, will offer the artist a horde of these encounters which are indispensable to giving genius pleasure in work. But the orator, the poet, and the philosopher will not find the same encouragement in writing down what they have already thought. Everything is one for them. Because the words they use have beauty only for the mind and, having been spoken in their head in the same way they are written on the page, the mind no longer has anything to discover in what it wants to say. A plan, however is necessary, but a plan that is vague, that has not been pinned down. We must have above all the notion of the beginning, the end, and the middle of our work. That is to say, we must choose its pitch and range, its pauses, and its objectives. The first word must give the color, the beginning determines the tone; the middle rules the measure, the time, the space, and the proportions.

 * It is impossible to love the same person twice.

 * To think what we do not feel is to lie to ourselves, in the same way that we lie to others when we say to others what we do not think. Everything we think must be thought with our entire being, body, and soul.

 * Memory. — It is a mirror, that retains, and retains forever. Nothing is lost in it, nothing is erased. But it can be tarnished. And then one sees nothing in it.

 * Illusion or play. Everything agreeable is in them.

 * Adventurous minds, which wait for and receive their ideas only from chance.

 * My soul lives in a place where the passions have passed by and where I have known them all.

 * Let us remember that everything is double.

 * Everything is game except what makes the soul better or worse.

 * We are worth more when someone looks at us. And, because of this, an eye is always watching us.

 * It is impossible for me to say something foolish without being aware of it.

 * Solitude gives an I. I that gives solitude. It is in our thoughts, and the one the world gives, in our feelings. Because solitude grows accustomed to seeing, to contemplating; and the world, to acting for itself.

 * Politeness is the art of bearing boredom without being bored.

 * Pride swells the brain. Vanity carries with it smoke, minds. Hatred tightens the heart. Love warms the lungs. Admiration stops the heart. We breathe through desire. We want to pump up all that delights, and dilates. Sadness is inaction. The love that comes from the blood, the love that comes from the soul.

 * To speak with his imagination, but to think with his reason.

 * The things we know when not thinking of them.

 * Where do ideas go? They go into the memory of God.

 * Ideas never lack for words. It is words that lack ideas. As soon as the idea has come to its last degree of perfection, the word blossoms; or, if you like, it blossoms from the word that presents it and clothes it.

 * Thoughts that cannot survive the open air and that evaporate as soon as we take them out of the room. To put them to the test of isolation. Take them out of the book where you found them, they do not endure.

 * To know: it is to see inside oneself.

 * Perhaps (and probably) it would be true to say that we cannot conceive of anything except what we can see in our minds.

 * It is very difficult to be wise (through the mind); it is not difficult to be wise occasionally and by chance, but it is difficult to be wise assiduously and by choice.

 * Close your eyes and you will see.

 * Objects must be described only in order to describe the feelings they envoke in us.

 * I have not seen you since, but you have often appeared to me in my dreams.

 * The imagination is an eye where images remain forever.

 * A thought is a thing as real as a cannonball.

 * To seek the truth. But, as you are seeking and as you are waiting, what will you do, what will you think, what will you practice, what rules will you follow?

 * Do not choose for your wife any woman you would not choose for a friend if she were a man.

 * We are all old children, more or less serious, more or less filled with ourselves.

 * What will you think of pleasures when you no longer enjoy them?

 * Dream. Lost memory.

 * Speak more softly to be better heard by a deaf public.

 * If I weigh myself down, everything is lost.

 * Fear feeds the imagination.

 * There are many situations in life that we suddenly feel we have seen in dreams.

 * All beautiful words are susceptible to more than one meaning (or signification).

 * The phrase, "One dies before one has lived."

 * The truth by way of illusion.

 * A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

 * The child speaks words with his memory long before he speaks them with his tongue.

 * Because they know all the words, they think they know all the truths.

 * Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

 * Someone said of an asthmatic who was being very sweet and patient in his suffering: "One would like to breathe for him."

 * The voice is an aid to intelligence.

 * They speak to the ear. I want to speak to the memory.

 * Everything that is exact is short.

 * "But he doesn't finish his sentences," (he said). And they don't finish their thoughts. — To finish their thoughts. — To finish one's thought! It is a long process, it is rare. It gives intense pleasure. Because every finished thought easily enters the mind. They don't have the same need to be beautiful in order to please. It is enough for them to be finished. The situation of the soul that has had such thoughts communicates itself to other souls and transfers its repose to them.

 * These thoughts form not only the foundation of my work, but of my life.

 * It's not mental repose they seek, but mental laziness.

 * Enter oneself (we say). When one enters oneself, one sees God.

 * They want to shake up the world, not make it wiser.

 * The time I once lost in pleasure I now lose in suffering.

 * When you write easily, you always think you have more talent than you really do.

 * There is nothing serious in civil life except good and evil, vice and virtue. Everything else in it should be a game.

 * It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas.

 * In the same way crimes have increased laws, errors have increased explanations.

 * Those thoughts that come to us suddenly and that are not yet ours.

 * I know too well what I am going to say. I know it too well before writing.

 * Thoughts that are light, clear, distinct, finished; and words that resemble their thoughts. Words that often retain their meaning even when they are detached from others and that please when isolated as sounds.

 * For simple light is perhaps still more beautiful than colors.

 * Glory. Lovelier to desire than to possess.

 * All things that are easy to say have already been perfectly said.

 * Once we have tasted the juice of words, our mind can no longer pass them by. We drink thought from them.

 * We must try, as much as possible, not to mistrust anyone.

 * My ideas! It is the house for lodging them that costs me so much to build.

 * All these young minds the revolution has heated up and brought to flower before their time, before their age.

 * When we speak, we write what we are saying in the air.

 * Does talent have any need of passions? Yes, of many passions — repressed.

 * To judge things of taste, we must give ourselves time to taste them.

 * Let us look to beautiful poetry for the material of a beautiful prose.

 * An oratorical style often has the same drawbacks as those operas in which the music prevents you from hearing the words. Here the words prevent you from seeing the thoughts.

 * All reflection is art.

 * This poetic nudity within words.

 * One can advance a long time in life without aging.

 * The soul speaks to itself in parables.

 * Like those dreams that have pleased us. They escape us and we vainly try to hold onto them.

 * My dreams are more amorous than my actions have ever been.

 * Genius is the aptitude for seeing invisible things, for stirring intangible things, for painting things that have no features.

 * Conversation. — Because they have many of those ideas that, to be shown, have need of eyes, gestures, voice, a whole multitude of signs that the written word does not accompany. One sees the soul in operation.

 * To see the world means judging the judges.

 * It is not simply a matter of distinguishing between good and evil, but also of not confusing what is laughable with what is not. To make laughable what is not is in some way to make bad what was good.

 * We are afraid of having and showing a small mind and we are not afraid of having and showing a small heart.

 * One ruins the mind with too much writing. — One rusts it by not writing at all.

 * All ways of expressing ourselves are good if they make us understood. Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts comes through better in a play of words, then the wordplay is good.

 * One must know how to enter the ideas of others and how to leave them. One must know how to leave one's own ideas and how to come back to them.

 * It seems there is something spiritual in wine.

 * In every kind of debauch there enters much coldness of soul. It is a conscious and voluntary abuse of pleasure.

 * What man knows only through feeling can be explained only through enthusiasm.

 * It is above all the language for expressing these truths that have not yet been found.

 * A person who is never duped cannot be a friend.

 * I don't like to write anything down on paper that I would not say to myself.

 * The important business of man is life, and the important business of life is death.

 * To descend into ourselves, we must first lift ourselves up.

 * One must be an illusionary rather than a visionary.

 * Illusions comes from heaven and mistakes come from us.

 * Tacitus. And all those words that are obscure only once.

 * In these times when, to express ourselves, we must speak in a way others do not.

 * Think nothing outside their paper.

 * I did not have good eyes nor light in my mind that day.

 * Available. A thought is perfect only when it is perfectly available, that is to say when one can place it and detach it at will.

 * All those whom for style is not a game but a labor.

 * ...burdened with the unbearable weight of ourselves.

 * All clear and transparent words appear to be beautiful sounds. Yes and no are not precisely clear words, but definite words. In clear words, there is more light than movement or attitude.

 * What you call weakness comes from the strength of friendship.

 * Beyond the brain, there is something that observes the brain itself.

 * Undoubtedly, philosophy caused the Revolution. But what caused philosophy? Theological arrogance.

 * Those who never back down love themselves more than they love the truth.

 * From the center we should perceive the circle.

 * One always adds a little of one's soul to what one thinks.

 * All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

 * I have too much brain for my head. It cannot play comfortably in its box.

 * There must be several voices together in one voice for it to be beautiful. And several meanings in one word for it to be beautiful.

 * For in spite of ourselves we respect those whom we see respected.

 * Man loves what is small; and he loves what is big, through the same weakness.

 * I stop when I see no more light; it is impossible for me to write by feeling my way.

 * What is promised to you in dreams is given to you in dreams!

 * Those who have judgment use it as much as in judging stones as in judging men.

 * Beauty is something animal, the beautiful is something celestial.

 * What we say is similar to what we are.

 * In living, one learns how to read. (How, and with what result.)

 * Little people have few passions, they hardly have anything but needs.

 * Speak for the ear and write for the memory.

 * A book that reveals the mind is worth more than one that only reveals its subject.

 * Poetry of ideas.

 * Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place in them or can offer some vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities and are filled by some knowledge that blocks them up. What a torture to talk to filled heads, that allow nothing from the outside to enter them! A good mind, in order to enjoy itself and allow itself to enjoy others, always keeps itself larger than its own thoughts. And in order to do this, this thoughts must be given a pliant form, must be easily folded and unfolded, so they are capable, finally, or maintaining a natural flexibility. All those short-sighted minds see clearly within their little ideas and see nothing in those of others; they are like those bad eyes that see from close range what is obscure and cannot perceive what is clear from afar. Night minds, minds of darkness.

 * During our youth, there is something in us that is better than ourselves, I mean better than our desires, our pleasures, our yieldings, and our inclinations. Our soul is good then, even though our intelligence and will are not.

 * Whoever does not see his friends in a good light loves them little. To see in a good light. — Whoever does not see in a good light is a bad painter, a bad friend, a bad lover. Whoever does not see in a good light has not been able to lift his mind up to what is there or his heart to what is good.

 * Strength is not energy. Some writers have more muscles than talent.

 * A stupid lie is one that can never make itself believed.

 * People of intelligence often treat business in the way ignorant people treat books: they understand nothing.

 * No, men are not born to know, but they are destined for it.

 * Of those who want us to be wrong and those who want us to be right.

 * When the last word is always the one that offers itself first, the work becomes difficult.

 * All religions = all women.

 * Properly speaking, man inhabits only his head and his heart. All other places are vainly before his eyes, at his sides, and under his feet: he himself is not there at all.

 * I am like Montaigne: "unsuited to continuous discourse."

 * Wicked people have nothing human about them except passions: they are almost their virtues.

 * The truth! Only God sees it.

 * Maxims, because what is isolated can be seen better.

 * Necessity can make a doubtful action innocent, but it cannot make it commendable.

 * Sloth waiting for inspiration.

 * The breath of the mind is attention.

 * Animals love the people who talk to them.

 * The great inconvenience of new books is that they prevent us from reading the old ones.

 * Abuse of words, foundation of ideology.

 * The punishment of those who have loved women too much is to love them forever.

 * Everything we can measure seems small.

 * Tenderness is the repose of passion.

 * Whoever consults the light within himself (it is within everyone) excels at judging the object this light illumines.

 * A work is perfectly finished only when nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away.

 * The hordes of words that fill our books proclaim our ignorance, reveal the obscurities that flood our knowledge. If we were perfectly enlightened, our moral books would contain only maxims and our books on physics and spirituality would contain only axioms and facts. Everything else is clutter and shows no more than our gropings, our efforts, and our difficulties.

 * He must not cultivate his friends, but cultivate his friendships within himself. They must be kept, cared for, watered.

 * We always lose the friendship of those who lose our esteem.

 * Reason leads man back to his instincts.

 * Without fixed ideas, no fixed feelings. (Whoever has no constant opinions has no constant emotions.)

 * There is an infinity of things one does well only through necessity.

 * The talkative person is one who speaks more than he thinks. Someone who thinks a great deal and talks a great deal is never considered a talkative person. The talkative man speaks from his mouth, the eloquent man speaks from his heart.

 * Let's go; and follow your mistake.

 * Anger, which purges resentment.

 * To let the reader complete the symmetry between words and do no more than suggest it.

 * In this painting of our life given to us by our memories, everything is moving and depends on our point of view.

 * Never the mind without the soul.

 * Having found nothing worth more than emptiness, he leaves space vacant.

 * When I had the strength, I did not have the patience. I have the patience today and I no longer have the power.

 * Fortunately, when he lacks reason he also lacks words.

 * Let anger pass, make a place for it; do not impede its progress; do not disturb its development, give it the time it needs to die out, open a wide path for it.

 * There are words agreeable to the eye (in the same way there are words agreeable to the ear). By a fortunate combination of the letters that form them or by the harmony of these letters. For each letter has its shape.

 * In political institutions, almost everything we call an abuse was once a remedy.

 * What is clear should not be drawn out too much. These useless explanations, these endless examinations are a kind of long whiteness and lead to boredom. It is the uniformity of a wall, of a long piece of laundry.

 * In order to know men, something must be chanced. Who risks himself of nothing knows nothing.

 * Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

 * To be pathetic when we cry, we must cry without wanting to and without knowing it.

 * Half myself mocks the other half.

 * A frightening thing, which is perhaps true: "old men want to survive."

 * You want to explain everything by the facts that are known to you. But the facts that are not known to you? What do they say?

 * Everyone makes and has need of making a world other than the one he sees.

 * Nothing is better than a justified enthusiasm.

 * Let us look for our light in our feelings. There is a warmth in them that contains many clarities.

 * Neither in the arts, nor in logic, nor in life should an idea by in any way treated as a thing.

 * There is nothing perfectly true for man; I mean in human opinions. Just like there is nothing perfectly round.

 * Courage (in a soldier) is maintained by a certain anger; anger is a little blind and likes to strike out. And from this follows a thousand abuses, a thousand evils and misfortunes that are impossible to predict in an army during war.

 * Retreat often into your sphere, rest yourself in your center, plunge yourself into your element: good advice, which must be remembered.

 * Tormented by the cursed ambition always to put a whole book in a page, a whole page in a sentence, and this sentence in a word. I am speaking of myself.

 * You go to truth by way of poetry and I go to poetry by way of truth.

 * To write his views or his observations, his ideas, but not his judgments. Our judgments limit our views of things. Some enclosures, but no walls. The man who always write his judgments places before his eyes the calpe and abyla. He goes no further and creates a nec plus ultra. Thus, in the study of wisdom, many views and few judgments.

 * When we find what we have been looking for, we don't have time to say it. We must die.

 * One must die lovable (if one can).

 * Reason does not reason. It goes straight to the fact or the consequence.

 * When a truth is better conceived through abstraction, use the abstraction; if not, don't.

 * Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

 * It is not light that burns, that purifies, that consumes, that divides, and that recomposes; it is fire. And this fire we are talking about always follows light.

 * Of what must be said and what must not be said. The importance of knowing.

 * In such times, if you want neither to lie nor to wound, you are reduced to being silent.

 * Melancholy: when we have sorrows without a name.

 * It is better to be concerned with being than with nothingness. Dream therefore of what you still have rather than what you have lost.

 * You want to talk to someone: first open your ears.

 * Madness is an illness of the brain, not of the mind.

 * Luminous words, like those drops of light we see in fireworks.

 * And perhaps there is no advice to give a writer more important than this: — Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure.

Quotes about Joubert and his writings

 * Joubert had this gift. He never wrote a book. He only prepared to write one, resolutely seeking the exact conditions that would allow him to write it. Then he forgot even his plan.
 * Maurice Blanchot : from his Afterword to The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert : edited and translated by Paul Auster (1983), published by North Point Press/SF, p. 164

 * In selecting from the “Thoughts” I have sought those that are the largest and deepest, that are the least one-sided or partial, those that combine originality with beauty, brevity with weight, freshness with truth ; and thence I have passed over most of those that were written under dogmatic influences, and which, therefore, seem to me partial or one-sided. At the same time, to any who shall find themselves profited by what is here given them in English, may be cordially recommended the original volume, of which scarcely the half is here translated.
 * George H. Calvert, editor and translator of Some of the ‘Thoughts’ of Joseph Joubert (1867), pub. William V. Spencer (from the preface, Notice of Joseph Joubert, p. xxvi)

title: Joseph Joubert


text:
Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson (11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor, most famous for his plays Volpone and The Alchemist, his lyrics, his influence on Jacobean and Caroline poets, his theory of humours, his contentious personality, and his friendship and rivalry with William Shakespeare.

Quotes

 * Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance.
 * Every Man out of His Humour (1598), Act I, scene 1

 * There shall be no love lost.
 * Every Man out of His Humour (1598), Act II, scene 1. Compare: "There is no love lost between us", Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, part ii, chapter xxxiii

Yet, slower, yet; O faintly, gentle springs: List to the heavy part the music bears, Woe weeps out her division, when she sings. Droop herbs, and flowers, Fall grief in showers, Our beauties are not ours; O, I could still, Like melting snow upon some craggy hill, Drop, drop, drop, drop, Since nature's pride is now, a withered daffodil.
 * Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears:
 * Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act I, scene i

Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice.'''
 * '''True happiness
 * Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act III, scene ii

Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep: Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess, excellently bright.
 * Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
 * Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act V, scene iii

 * That old bald cheater, Time.
 * The Poetaster (1601), Act I, scene i

 * Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; and of all tame, a flatterer.
 * Sejanus (1603), Act I

 * The world knows only two, — that's Rome and I.
 * Sejanus (1603), Act V, scene 1

 * Calumnies are answered best with silence.
 * Volpone (1606), Act II, scene ii

Make no more coil, but buy of this oil. Would you be ever fair and young? Stout of teeth and strong of tongue? Tart of palate, quick of ear? Sharp of sight, of nostril clear? Moist of hand and light of foot? (Or, I will come nearer to it) Would you live free from all diseases, Do the act your mistress pleases; Yet fright all aches from your bones? Here's a medicine for the nones.
 * You that would last long, list to my song,
 * Volpone (1606), Act II, scene ii

 * Preserving the sweetness of proportion and expressing itself beyond expression.
 * The Masque of Hymen (1606)

As you were going to a feast.
 * Still to be neat, still to be drest,
 * Epicene, or The Silent Woman (1609), Act I, scene i; a translation from Bonnefonius

Lady, it is to be presum'd, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free, Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
 * Still to be powder'd, still perfum'd,
 * Epicene, or The Silent Woman (1609), Act I, scene i

No egg but differs from a chicken more Than metals in themselves. Surly. That cannot be. The egg's ordained by nature to that end And is a chicken in potentia. Subtle. The same we say of lead and other metals, Which would be gold if they had time. ...for 'twere absurd To think that nature in the earth bred gold Perfect in the instant; something went before. There must be remote matter.
 * Subtle.
 * The Alchemist (1610) Act II, scene ii

 * Thou look'st like Antichrist in that lewd hat.
 * The Alchemist (1610), Act IV, scene vii

Who's angry at a slander makes it true.
 * Where it concerns himself,
 * Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act III, scene i

With much protesting.
 * The dignity of truth is lost
 * Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act III, scene ii

And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, and offereth violence to nature's self.
 * Ambition, like a torrent, ne'er looks back;
 * Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), Act III, scene ii

Wherein rude winter bound her veins; So grows both stream and source of price, That lately fettered were with ice. So naked trees get crispèd heads, And coloured coats the roughest meads, And all get vigour, youth and spright, That are but looked on by his light.
 * So breaks the sun earth's rugged chains,
 * The Irish Masque at Court (1613)

 * I will eat exceedingly, and prophesy.
 * Bartholomew Fair (1614), Act I, scene vi

Not at his picture, but his book.'''
 * '''Reader, look,
 * To the Reader [On the portrait of Shakespeare prefixed to the First Folio] (1618), lines 9-10

And needs no other touch, And purer than the purest gold, Refine it ne'er so much.
 * Truth is the trial of itself
 * The Touchstone of Truth (1624), lines 1-4

Doth her mighty brother run.
 * Courses even with the sun
 * The Gipsies Metamorphosed, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Lies the subject of all verse,— Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother. Death, ere thou hast slain another, Learn'd and fair and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.
 * Underneath this sable hearse
 * Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This epitaph is generally ascribed to Ben Jonson. It appears in the editions of his Works; but in a manuscript collection of Browne's poems preserved amongst the Lansdowne MS. No. 777, in the British Museum, it is ascribed to Browne, and awarded to him by Sir Egerton Brydges in his edition of Browne's poems.

Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?
 * What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
 * Elegy on the Lady Jane Pawlet, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); comparable to "What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade / Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?", Alexander Pope, in To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.

Every Man in His Humour (1598)

 * It was a mighty while ago.
 * Act i, Scene 3

 * Hang sorrow! care'll kill a cat.
 * Act i, Scene 3. Comparable to "Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat", George Wither, "Poem on Christmas"

 * As he brews, so shall he drink.
 * Act ii, Scene 1

No matter by what means.
 * Get money; still get money, boy,
 * Act ii, Scene 3. Compare: "Get place and wealth,—if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place", Alexander Pope, Horace, book i. epistle i. line 103

 * Have paid scot and lot there any time this eighteen years.
 * Act iii, Scene 3

 * It must be done like lightning.
 * Act iv, Scene v

Eastward Hoe (1605)

 * In the meantime, to all suits, to all entreaties, to all letters, to all tricks, I will be deaf as an adder, blind as a beetle, lay mine ear to the ground, and lock mine eyes i' my hand against all temptations.
 * Act v, scene ii, lines 68-70

The Devil Is an Ass (performed 1616; published 1631)

 * The burnt child dreads the fire.
 * Act I, scene 2

 * The Devil is an Ass! fool'd off! and beaten!
 * "Pug"; Act II, scene 6

To be made honest by an act of parliament I should not alter in my faith of him.
 * If he were
 * Act IV, scene 1

 * The Devil is an Ass, I do acknowledge it.
 * "Pug"; Act IV, scene 4

Epigrams
To read it well: that is, to understand.
 * Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,
 * I, To The Reader, lines 1-2

Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.
 * If all you boast of your great art be true;
 * VI, To Alchemists, lines 1-2

Men's manners ne'er were viler, for your sake.
 * There's reason good, that you good laws should make:
 * XXIV, To The Parliament, lines 1-2

Shows of the resurrection little trust.'''
 * '''He that fears death, or mourns it, in the just,
 * XXXIV, Of Death, lines 1-2

My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. O, could I lose all father now. For why Will man lament the state he should envy? To have soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage, And, if no other misery, yet age! Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry: For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.
 * Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy!
 * XLV, On My First Son, lines 1-12

One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.
 * Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike;
 * LXI, To Fool, or Knave, lines 1-2 (complete epigram)

Through which our merit leads us to our meeds. How willful blind is he then, that would stray, And hath it in his powers, to make his way! This world death's region is, the other life's: And here, it should be one of our first strifes, So to front death, as men might judge us past it. For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
 * The ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds:
 * LXXX, Of Life and Death, lines 1-8

Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.
 * Thus, in his belly, can he change a sin,
 * CXVIII, On Gut, lines 5-6

As much beauty as could die; Which in life did harbor give To more virtue than doth live.
 * Underneath this stone doth lie
 * CXXIV, Epitaph on Elizabeth, Lady H—, lines 3-6

The Forest

While we can, the sports of love; Time will not be ours forever, He at length our good will sever.''' Spend not then his gifts in vain; Suns that set may rise again, But if once we lose this light, 'Tis with us perpetual night. ''' Why should we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys.'''
 * '''Come my Celia, let us prove,
 * Song, To Celia, lines 1-10.
 * Compare Catullus, Carmina V

Seem to fly it, it will pursue: So court a mistress, she denies you; Let her alone, she will court you.'''
 * '''Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
 * That Women Are But Men's Shadows, lines 1-4

And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine.''' The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I would not change for thine. I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honoring thee As giving it a hope that there It could not withered be. But thou thereon didst only breathe, And sent'st it back to me; Since when it grows and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee.
 * '''Drink to me only with thine eyes,
 * Song, To Celia, lines 1-16; this poem was inspired by "Letter XXIV" of Philostratus, which in translation reads: "Drink to me with your eyes alone…. And if you will, take the cup to your lips and fill it with kisses, and give it so to me".

Is virtue, and not fate: Next to that virtue is to know vice well, And her black spite expel.
 * Not to know vice at all, and keep true state,
 * Epode, lines 1-4

And almost every vice — almighty gold.
 * Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,
 * Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, lines 1-2. Comparable to "The flattering, mighty, nay, almighty gold", John Wolcot, To Kien Long, Ode iv; "Almighty dollar", Washington Irving, The Creole Village.

To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (1618)

The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage!''' My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room; '''Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give.''' To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb...
 * '''Soul of the age!
 * Lines 17 - 24; this was inspired by a eulogy by William Basse, On Shakespeare:
 * "Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh

I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lily outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlow's mighty line. And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee, I will not seek For names…
 * For if I thought my judgment were of years,
 * Lines 27 - 33

To whom all Scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time! And all the muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm! Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joy'd to wear the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and woven so sit, As, since she will vouchsafe no other wit.
 * 'Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show
 * Lines 41 - 50

My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part. '''For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion. And that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat''', (Such as thine arc) and strike the second heat Upon the muses anvil; turn the fame, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn, For '''a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou.''' Look how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned, and true filed lines: '''In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.'''
 * Yet must I not give nature all: thy art,
 * Lines 55 - 70

To see thee in our water yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza, and our James. But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere Advanc'd, and made a constellation there! '''Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage, Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage, Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn'd like night, And despairs day, but for thy volumes light.'''
 * Sweet swan of Avon! what a sight it were
 * Lines 71 - 80

Underwoods
For else it could not be, That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me, And cast my love behind.
 * I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind,
 * IX, My Picture Left in Scotland, lines 1-5

Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.
 * Where dost thou careless lie,
 * XXIII, An Ode, to Himself, lines 1-6

That expresseth but by fits, True conceit, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Cozening judgement with a measure, But false weight. Wresting words from their true calling; Propping verse, for fear of falling To the ground. Jointing syllables, drowning letters, Fastening vowels, as with fetters They were bound!
 * Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
 * XXIX, A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme, lines 1-12

Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never!
 * Still may syllabes jar with time,
 * XXIX, A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme

That live in the wild anarchy of drink.
 * Those that merely talk and never think,
 * XLVII, An Epistle, Answering to One That Asked to Be Sealed of the Tribe of Ben, lines 9-10. Comparable to: "They never taste who always drink; They always talk who never think", Matthew Prior, Upon a passage in the Scaligerana.

In bulk, doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log, dry, bald and sere: A lily of a day, Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall, and die that night; It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be.
 * It is not growing like a tree
 * LXX, To the Immortal Memory of Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison, lines 65-74

As some soft chime had stroked the air; And, though the sound were parted thence, Still left an echo in the sense.
 * The voice so sweet, the words so fair,
 * LXXXIV, Eupheme, part 4, lines 37-40

Timber: or Discoveries

 * Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.

 * A good life is a main argument.

 * It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

 * A cripple in the way out-travels a footman or a post out of the way.

 * He is a narrow-minded man, that affects a triumph in any glorious study; but to triumph in a lie, and a lie themselves have forged, is frontless. Folly often goes beyond her bounds; but Impudence knows none.

 * It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.

 * I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand".

 * I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.
 * On William Shakespeare

 * They say princes learn no art truly, but the art of horsemanship. The reason is, the brave beast is no flatterer. He will throw a prince as soon as his groom.

 * Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first.

 * Though the most be players, some must be spectators.

 * Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks...

 * One, though he be excellent and the chief, is not to be imitated alone; for never no imitator ever grew up to his author; likeness is always on this side truth. Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking; his language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.
 * Referring to Francis Bacon

The New Inn, or The Light Heart (licensed 19 January 1629; printed 1631)

 * Lady: How do's it fit? wilt come together? Prudence: Hardly. Lad: Thou must make shift with it. Pride feels no Pain.
 * Act II, Scene I

Virtue is never aided by a vice.
 * I never thought an angry person valiant:
 * Lovel, Act IV, Scene iii

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

 * In the winter of 1618–1619, Jonson made a walking tour of England and Scotland. At one point he spent two weeks as a guest of author William Drummond of Hawthornden. Jonson's often contentious talk was recorded in notes by Drummond, who quoted Jonson in third-person form.

 * That Shakespeare wanted Art.

 * He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short.

 * That Donne himself, for not being understood, would perish.

 * Shakespeare, in a play, brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where there is no sea by some 100 miles.

 * He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy at which he should not be disjected; in the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manly shape, and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.

 * He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination.

That he wrote all his first in prose, for so his master Camden had learned him. That verses stood by sense without either colours or accent; which yet other times he denied.
 * His opinion of verses.

Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen? [Jonson] calling his cook, asked if he had ever heard of her, who answering "No," demonstrate to him Lo, there the man that never yet did hear Of fair Penelope, Ulysses' queen.
 * A gentleman reading a poem that began with Where is that man that never yet did hear

Quotes about Jonson

 * When Ben Jonson presented a masque entitled "News from the New World," his new world was not the newly found continent of North America, but the new world of science, the world revealed by the telescope of Galileo.
 * I. Bernard Cohen, The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life (2005)

 * With the death of Ben Jonson and the beginning of the civil troubles the great literary society that had met at the Mermaid and the Devil Taverns was dissolved, and London saw no real literary society again until the time of Pope and Swift.
 * Walter Raleigh, The English Novel: Being a Short Sketch of Its History from the Earliest Times to the Appearance of Waverley (1894) p. 106

 * Those who have most deeply studied Jonson and most truly felt his power, will hesitate the longest before pronouncing a decisive judgment on the place he occupies among the foremost poets of our literature. One thing, however, can be considered as certain in any estimate which we may form. His throne is not with the Olympians but with the Titans; not with those who share the divine gifts of creative imagination and inevitable instinct, but with those who compel our admiration by their untiring energy and giant strength of intellectual muscle. What we most marvel at in his writings, is the prodigious brain-work of the man, the stuff of constant and inexhaustible cerebration they contain. Moreover, we shall not be far wrong in saying that, of all the English poets of the past, he alone, with Milton and Gray, deserves the name of a great and widely learned scholar.
 * John Addington Symonds, Ben Jonson (1888)

 * To make a proper estimation of his merits as a dramatic writer, we are to consider what was the state of the drama and the usual practice of the stage-writers in those early times; and what alterations and improvements it received from the plays of Jonson. Shakespear, and Beaumont and Fletcher, are the only contemporary writers that can be put in competition with him; and as they have excellencies of genius superior to those of Jonson, they have weaknesses and defects which are proportionably greater. If they transcend him in the creative powers, and the astonishing flights of imagination, their judgment is much inferior to his; and if he doth not at any time rise so high, neither perhaps doth he sink so low as they have done.
 * Peter Whalley, Preface, The Works of Ben. Jonson (1756)

title: Ben Jonson