The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (56 page)

1885-1930

Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans?

The long-nosed, sensitive-footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans

Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?

Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Cypresses"

Men! The only animal in the world to fear!

Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Mountain Lion"

A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

To drink there.

Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Snake"

And I thought of the albatross,

And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

And I have something to expiate:

A pettiness.

Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) "Snake"

Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling

invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the

snivelling, dribbling, dithering, palsied, pulse-less lot that make up

England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is

that watery it's a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but

frog-spawn--the gibberers! God, how I hate them!

Letter to Edward Garnett, 3 July 1912, in Collected Letters (1962) vol. 1,

p. 134

I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.

Letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith,?25 Nov. 1913, in Collected Letters (1962)

vol. 1, p. 246

The dead don't die. They look on and help.

Letter to J. Middleton Murry, 2 Feb. 1923, in Collected Letters (1962)

vol. 2, p. 736

The autumn always gets me badly, as it breaks into colours. I want to go

south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn't crouch over one

like a snow-leopard waiting to pounce. The heart of the North is dead,

and the fingers of cold are corpse fingers.

Letter to J. Middleton Murry, 3 Oct. 1924, in Collected Letters (1962)

vol. 2, p. 812

I'd like to write an essay on [Arnold] Bennett--sort of pig in clover.

Letter to Aldous Huxley, 27 Mar. 1928, in Collected Letters (1962) vol. 2,

p. 1048

My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags

and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in

the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.

Letter to Aldous and Maria Huxley, 15 Aug. 1928, in Collected Letters

(1962) vol. 2, p. 1074

To the Puritan all things are impure, as somebody says.

Etruscan Places (1932) "Cerveteri"

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) ch. 1

Some things can't be ravished. You can't ravish a tin of sardines.

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) ch. 8

John Thomas says good-night to Lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a

hopeful heart.

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) ch. 19

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit

And the long journey towards oblivion...

Have you built your ship of death, O have you?

O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

Last Poems (1932) "Ship of Death"

Along the avenue of cypresses

All in their scarlet cloaks, and surplices

Of linen go the chanting choristers,

The priests in gold and black, the villagers.

Look! We Have Come Through! (1917) "Giorno dei Morti"

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

Look! We Have Come Through! (1917) "Song of a Man who has Come Through"

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

New Poems (1918) "Piano"

Don't be sucked in by the su-superior,

don't swallow the culture bait,

don't drink, don't drink and get beerier and beerier,

do learn to discriminate.

Pansies (1929) "Don'ts"

How beastly the bourgeois is

Especially the male of the species.

Pansies (1929) "How Beastly the Bourgeois Is"

I never saw a wild thing

Sorry for itself.

Pansies (1929) "Self-Pity"

For while we have sex in the mind, we truly have none in the body.

Pansies (1929) "Leave Sex Alone"

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder

That such trivial people should muse and thunder

In such lovely language.

Pansies (1929) "When I Read Shakespeare"

Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it.

Phoenix (1936) "Pornography and Obscenity" ch. 3

The very first copy of The White Peacock that was ever sent out, I put

into my mother's hands when she was dying. She looked at the outside, and

then at the title-page, and then at me, with darkening eyes. And though

she loved me so much, I think she doubted whether it could be much of a

book, since no one more important than I had written it. Somewhere, in the

helpless privacies of her being, she had wistful respect for me. But for

me in the face of the world, not much. This David would never get a stone

across at Goliath. And why try? Let Goliath alone! Anyway, she was beyond

reading my first immortal work. It was put aside, and I never wanted to

see it again. She never saw it again.

After the funeral, my father struggled through half a page, and it might

as well have been Hottentot.

"And what dun they gi'e thee for that, lad?"

"Fifty pounds, father."

"Fifty pounds!" He was dumbfounded, and looked at me with shrewd eyes, as

if I were a swindler. "Fifty pounds! An' tha's niver done a day's hard

work in thy life."

Phoenix (1936) p. 232

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic

is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) ch. 1

"Be a good animal, true to your instincts," was his motto.

White Peacock (1911) pt. 2, ch. 2

Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just

uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?

Women in Love (1920) ch. 11

12.19 T. E. Lawrence =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1885-1930

Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper to escape the

life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand.

The Mint (1955) pt. 1, ch. 4

The seven pillars of wisdom.

Title of book (1926). Cf. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1979) 53:27

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my

will across the sky in stars

To earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house, that your eyes

might be shining for me

When we came.

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) dedication "to S.A."

12.20 Sir Edmund Leach =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1910-

Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow

privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.

BBC Reith Lectures, 1967, in Listener 30 Nov. 1967

12.21 Stephen Leacock =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1869-1944

The parent who could see his boy as he really is, would shake his head and

say: "Willie, is no good; I'll sell him."

Essays and Literary Studies (1916) "Lot of a Schoolmaster"

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human

intelligence long enough to get money from it.

Garden of Folly (1924) "The Perfect Salesman"

I am what is called a professor emeritus--from the Latin e, "out," and

meritus, "so he ought to be."

Here are my Lectures (1938) ch. 14

There are no handles to a horse, but the 1910 model has a string to each

side of its face for turning its head when there is anything you want it

to see.

Literary Lapses (1910) "Reflections on Riding"

I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day

die, which is not so.

Literary Lapses (1910) "Insurance up to Date"

Get your room full of good air, then shut up the windows and keep it. It

will keep for years. Anyway, don't keep using your lungs all the time. Let

them rest.

Literary Lapses (1910) "How to Live to be 200"

A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to get out and

kill something. Not that he's cruel. He wouldn't hurt a fly. It's not big

enough.

My Remarkable Uncle (1942) p. 73

Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself

upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

Nonsense Novels (1911) "Gertrude the Governess"

A decision of the courts decided that the game of golf may be played on

Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of

moral effort.

Over the Footlights (1923) "Why I Refuse to Play Golf"

The general idea, of course, in any first-class laundry, is to see that no

shirt or collar ever comes back twice.

Winnowed Wisdom (1926) ch. 6

12.22 Timothy Leary =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1920-

If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system

seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy

process seriously, you must turn on, tune in and drop out.

Lecture, June 1966, in Politics of Ecstasy (1968) ch. 21

12.23 F. R. Leavis =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1895-1978

It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great--the major

novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that

they not only change the possibilities of the art for practitioners and

readers, but that they are significant in terms of the human awareness

they promote; awareness of the possibilities of life.

The Great Tradition (1948) ch. 1

The Sitwells belong to the history of publicity rather than of poetry.

New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) ch. 2

12.24 Fran Lebowitz =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in

fact, barely presentable.

Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 6

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death.

Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behaviour.

Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 6

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.

Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 101

Food is an important part of a balanced diet.

Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 110

Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals.

To actual women, it is merely a good excuse not to play football.

Metropolitan Life (1978) p. 144

12.25 Stanislaw Lec =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1909-1966

Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?

Mysli Nieuczesane (Unkempt Thoughts, 1962) p. 78

12.26 John le Carr� (David John Moore Cornwell) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1931-

The spy who came in from the cold.

Title of novel (1963)

12.27 Le Corbusier (Charles �douard Jeanneret) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1887-1965

Une maison est une machine-�-habiter.

A house is a machine for living in.

Vers une architecture (Towards an Architecture, 1923) p. ix

12.28 Harper Lee =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1926-

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a

sin to kill a mockingbird.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) ch. 10

12.29 Laurie Lee =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1914-

I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with

a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.

Cider with Rosie (1959) p. 9

Such a morning it is when love

leans through geranium windows

and calls with a cockerel's tongue.

When red-haired girls scamper like roses

over the rain-green grass,

and the sun drips honey.

Sun is my Monument (1947) "Day of these Days"

12.30 Ernest Lehman =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Somebody up there likes me.

Title of film (1956)

Sweet smell of success.

Title of book and film (1957)

12.31 Tom Lehrer =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1928-

Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into

it.

Preamble to song "We Will All Go Together When We Go," in An Evening

Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1953 record album)

Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes,

Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,

So don't shade your eyes but plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize!