The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (78 page)

Chicago Poems (1916) "Fog"

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.

Cornhuskers (1918) "Prairie"

When Abraham Lincoln was shovelled into the tombs,

he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...

in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Cornhuskers (1918) "Cool Tombs"

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work--

I am the grass; I cover all.

Cornhuskers (1918) "Grass"

I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on the way.

Incidentals (1907) p. 8

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes

to work.

In New York Times 13 Feb. 1959, p. 21

Little girl...Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

The People, Yes (1936) (cf. Charlotte Keyes in McCall's Oct. 1966

"Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came?"; a 1970 American film was

entitled "Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?")

Why is there always a secret singing

When a lawyer cashes in?

Why does a hearse horse snicker

Hauling a lawyer away?

Smoke and Steel (1920) "The Lawyers Know Too Much"

19.13 Henry 'Red' Sanders =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Sure, winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.

In Sports Illustrated 26 Dec. 1955 (often attributed to Vince Lombardi)

19.14 William Sansom =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1926-1976

A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling

he has of the good or the evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at

it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.

Blue Skies, Brown Studies (1961) "From a Writer's Notebook"

19.15 George Santayana =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1863-1952

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not

laugh is a fool.

Dialogues in Limbo (1925) ch. 3

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your

aim.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, Introduction

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence

remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, ch. 10

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness....

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, ch. 12

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer

unhappiness.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 2, ch. 2

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 3

Music is essentially useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension

which lends utility to its conditions.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 4

An artist may visit a museum, but only a pedant can live there.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 7

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in

itself and not in its subject.

Life of Reason (1905) vol. 4, ch. 8

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have

loved it.

Little Essays (1920) "Ideal Immortality"

England is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, anomalies,

hobbies, and humours.

Soliloquies in England (1922) "The British Character"

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Soliloquies in England (1922) "War Shrines"

It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially

true.

The Unknowable (1923) p. 4

For an idea ever to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be

always old-fashioned.

Winds of Doctrine (1913) ch. 2

Intolerance itself is a form of egoism, and to condemn egoism intolerantly

is to share it.

Winds of Doctrine (1913) ch. 4

19.16 'Sapper' (Herman Cyril MacNeile) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1888-1937

Hugh pulled out his cigarette-case. "Turkish this side--Virginia that."

Bull-dog Drummond (1920) ch. 8

19.17 John Singer Sargent =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1856-1925

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.

In N. Bentley and E. Esar Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951)

19.18 Leslie Sarony =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1897-1985

Ain't it grand to be blooming well dead?

Title of song (1932)

I lift up my finger and I say "tweet tweet."

Title of song (1929)

19.19 Nathalie Sarraute =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1902-

Today, thanks to technical progress, the radio and television, to which we

devote so many of the leisure hours once spent listening to parlour

chatter and parlour music, have succeeded in lifting the manufacture of

banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major

industry.

Times Literary Supplement 10 June 1960

19.20 Jean-Paul Sartre =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1905-1980

Quand les riches se font la guerre ce sont les pauvres qui meurent.

When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.

Le Diable et le bon Dieu (The Devil and the Good Lord, 1951) act 1, first

tableau

L' �crivain doit donc refuser de se laisser transformer en institution.

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an

institution.

Declaration read at Stockholm, 22 Oct. 1964, refusing the Nobel Prize, in

Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka (eds.) Les �crits de Sartre (1970)

p. 403

L'existence pr�c�de et commande l'essence.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

L'�tre et le n�ant (Being and Nothingness, 1943) pt. 4, ch. 1

Je suis condemn� � �tre libre.

I am condemned to be free.

L'�tre et le n�ant (Being and Nothingness, 1943) pt. 4, ch. 1

L' homme est une passion inutile.

Man is a useless passion.

L'�tre et le n�ant (Being and Nothingness, 1943) pt. 4, ch. 2

Alors, c'est �a l'Enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru.... Vous vous rappelez: le

soufre, le b�cher, le gril.... Ah! quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de

gril, l' Enfer, c'est les Autres.

So that's what Hell is: I'd never have believed it.... Do you remember,

brimstone, the stake, the gridiron?... What a joke! No need of a gridiron,

Hell is other people.

Huis Clos (Closed Doors, 1944) sc. 5

Il n'y a pas de bon p�re, c'est la r�gle; qu'on n'en tienne pas grief aux

hommes mais au lien de paternit� qui est pourri. Faire des enfants, rien

de mieux; en avoir, quelle iniquit�!

There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but

on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing

better; to have them, what iniquity!

Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "Lire"

Les bons pauvres ne savent pas que leur office est d'exercer notre

g�n�rosit�.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our

generosity.

Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "Lire"

Elle [ma grand-m�re] ne croyait � rien; seul, son scepticism l'emp�chait

d'�tre ath�e.

She [my grandmother] believed in nothing; only her scepticism kept her

from being an atheist.

Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "Lire"

Comme tous les songe-creux, je confondis le d�senchantement avec la

v�rit�.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "�crire"

Je confondis les choses avec leurs noms: c'est croire.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "�crire"

Trois heures, c'est toujours trop tard ou trop t�t pour ce qu'on veut

faire.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

La Naus�e (Nausea, 1938) "Vendredi"

Ma pens�e, c'est moi: voil� pourquoi je ne peux pas m'arr�ter. J'existe

par ce que je pense...et je ne peux pas m'emp�cher de penser.

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist by what I think...and

I can't prevent myself from thinking.

La Naus�e (Nausea, 1938) "Lundi"

Je d�teste les victimes quand elles respectent leurs bourreaux.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Les S�questr�s d'Altona (The Condemned of Altona, 1960) act 1, sc. 1

Je me m�fie des incommunicables, c'est la source de toute violence.

I distrust the incommunicable: it is the source of all violence.

Les Temps Modernes July 1947, p. 106, "Qu'est-ce que la litt�rature?"

(What is Literature?)

19.21 Siegfried Sassoon =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1886-1967

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,

Drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

Counter-Attack (1918) "Dreamers"

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win

Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

Counter-Attack (1918) "Dreamers"

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,

I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,

Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,

Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"

I'd say--"I used to know his father well;

Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."

And when the war is done and youth stone dead,

I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.

Counter-Attack (1918) "Base Details"

"Good-morning; good morning!" the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,

And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Counter-Attack (1918) "The General"

Does it matter?--losing your legs?...

For people will always be kind,

And you need not show that you mind

When the others come in after hunting

To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?--losing your sight?...

There's such splendid work for the blind;

And people will always be kind,

As you sit on the terrace remembering

And turning your face to the light.

Counter-Attack (1918) "Does it Matter?"

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?

Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,--

Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

The Heart's Journey (1928) "On Passing the New Menin Gate"

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military

authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged

by those who have the power to end it.

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) pt. 10, ch. 2

I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,

Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"--

And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls

To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

The Old Huntsman (1917) "Blighters"

And he'd come home again to find it more

Desirable than it ever was before.

How right it seemed that he should reach the span

Of comfortable years allowed to man!

Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,

Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.

He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,

And thought: "Thank God they had to amputate!"

The Old Huntsman (1917) "The One-Legged Man"

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,

And one arm bent across your sullen cold

Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,

Deep-shadow'd from the candle's glittering gold;

And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;

Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head...

You are too young to fall asleep for ever;

And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

War Poems (1919) "The Dug-Out"

But the past is just the same,--and War's a bloody game...

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

War Poems (1919) "Aftermath"

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,

And beauty came like the setting sun.

My heart was shaken with tears and horror

Drifted away...O but every one

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

War Poems (1919) "Everyone Sang"

19.22 Erik Satie =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-