Quotes

But yesterday the word of Caesar might

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

You all did see, that on the Lupercal

O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts

The noble Brutus

As for me, I am a watercolor.

She has always been there, my darling.

Set forth three children under the moon, three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo, done this with her legs spread out in the terrible months in the chapel.

If we cannot eschew hatred, at least let us eschew group hatred.

You, Doctor Martin, walk

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;

Only rhythm brings about a poetic short-circuit and transforms the copper into gold, the words into life.

I chose my black people struggling, my country people, all country people, in the world.

Tanta stultitia mortalium est!

When on his way to Thebes Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, his answer to its riddle was: “Man.” That simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of the answer of Oedipus.

[ Of his need to raise money to pay huge debts by writing :] My own right hand shall do it.

Rouse the lion from his lair.

Tell that to the marines—the sailors won’t believe it.

Sea of upturned faces.

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect.

The criminals came in so fast that they were fain to execute them first and afterwards try them at leisure.

“That sounds like nonsense, my dear.”

Your Lordship will probably recollect where the Oriental tale occurs, of a Sultan who consulted Solomon on the proper inscription for a signet-ring, requiring that the maxim which it conveyed should be at once proper for moderating the presumption of prosperity and tempering the pressure of adversity. The apophthegm supplied by the Jewish sage was, I think, admirably adapted for both purposes, being comprehended in the words “And this also shall pass away.”

For him no Minstrel raptures swell;

And dar’st thou, then,

In peace, Love tunes the shepherd’s reed;

May memory restore again and again

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation . . . that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within , incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved.

The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare—all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases. He who knows how to listen to its message here discerns the thunder of world history more clearly than anywhere else.

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens .

Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.

Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht .

As years come in and years go out

Many words have no legal meaning. Others have a legal meaning very unlike their ordinary meaning. For example, the word “daffy-down-dilly.” It is a criminal libel to call a lawyer a “daffy-down-dilly.” Ha! Yes, I advise you never to do such a thing. No, I certainly advise you never to do it.

[ Declining to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature :]

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Well, well, let’s get on with it.

Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he can count on nothing but himself: that he is alone, left alone on earth in the middle of his infinite responsibilities, with neither help nor succor, with no other goal but the one he will set for himself, with no other destiny but the one he will forge on this earth.

L’homme est une passion inutile .

L’Enfer, c’est les Autres .

The most ominous conflict of our time is the difference of opinion, of outlook, between men of letters, historians, philosophers, the so-called humanists, on the one side and scientists on the other. The gap cannot but increase because of the intolerance of both and the fact that science is growing by leaps and bounds.

Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift . . . that’s nausea.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches.

If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and then he is no longer a thief.

The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.

[ Of a girl before marriage :] As an apple reddens on the high bough; high atop the highest bough the apple pickers passed it by—no, not passed it by, but they could not reach it.