Quotes

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to theirParents, or the Country, and for Making ThemBeneficial to the Public.

Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature

How haughtily he lifts his nose,

Hail, fellow, well met,

Ingratitude is among them a capital Crime, . . . For they reason thus: that whoever makes ill Returns to his Benefactor, must needs be a common Enemy to the rest of Mankind, from whom he hath received no Obligation; andtherefore such a Man is not fit to live.

They will never allow, that a Child is under anyObligation to his Father for begetting him, or his Mother for bringing him into the World; which, considering the Miseries of human Life, was neither a Benefit in itself, nor intended so by his Parents, whose Thoughts in their Love-encounters were otherwise employed.

It is computed, that eleven Thousand Personshave, at several Times, suffered Death, ratherthan submit to break their Eggs at the smallerEnd. Many large Volumes have been publishedupon this Controversy: But the Books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden, andthe whole Party rendered incapable by Law ofholding Employments.

Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at Stool.

I told him . . . that we eat when we were not hungry, and drank without the Provocation of Thirst.

But when I behold a Lump of Deformity, and Diseases both in Body and Mind, smitten with Pride , it immediately breaks all the Measures of my Patience.

It is a Maxim among these Lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again.

[ On lawyers :] I said there was a Society of Men among us, bred up from their Youth in theArt of proving by Words multiplied for thePurpose, that White is Black , and Black is White , according as they are paid. To this Society allthe rest of the People are Slaves.

I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is towardsindividuals. . . . I hate and detest that animalcalled man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.

All Government without the Consent of the Governed , is the very Definition of Slavery .

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be avaluable thing, it would not have given them tosuch a scoundrel.

Hence a commander who advances without any thought of winning personal fame andwithdraws in spite of certain punishment, whose only concern is to protect his people and promote the interests of his ruler, is the nation’s treasure.

So veiled and subtle,

The victorious army only enters battle afterhaving first won the victory, while the defeatedarmy only seeks victory after having firstentered the fray.

He who knows the enemy and himself

To win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highestexcellence is to subdue the enemy’s armywithout fighting at all.

There has never been a state that has benefited from an extended war.

War is a vital matter of state.

Warfare is the art of deceit.

I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did His dictation.

I detest dogs, those protectors of cowardswho have not the courage to bite the assailant themselves.

Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements ofthis last convulsion.

My soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t boughtit,—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it.

[ The character Topsy speaking :] I s’pect I growed.

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilitiesdecline.

Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist ofevening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and theswollen current and floundering masses of icepresented a hopeless barrier between her andher pursuer.

I learned three things in Zurich during thewar. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re eithera revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re notyou might as well be an artist as anything else.Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you mightas well be a revolutionary . . . I forget the thirdthing.

I hate writing, but I love having written.

[ On James Joyce :] An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to publicnotice to be universally recognized.

A Footnote to History.

I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir ThomasBrowne, to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and to Obermann.

Am I no a bonny fighter?

A birdie with a yellow bill

The world is so full of a number of things,

How do you like to go up in a swing,

There is but one art—to omit! O if I knew how to omit, I would ask no other knowledge.

Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world.

Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sakegive me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

A. A violent order is disorder; and

Oh, Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,

It was her voice that made

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea