The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (84 page)

You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to

take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.

Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and Other Early Writings (1971) "Q.E.D." (1903) bk. 1

Pigeons on the grass alas.

Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) act 3, sc. 2

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where

anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.

The Geographical History of America (1936)

Just before she [Stein] died she asked, "What is the answer?" No answer

came. She laughed and said, "In that case what is the question?" Then she

died.

Donald Sutherland Gertrude Stein, A Biography of her Work (1951) ch. 6

Disillusionment in living is the finding out nobody agrees with you not

those that are and were fighting with you. Disillusionment in living is

the finding out nobody agrees with you not those that are fighting for

you. Complete disillusionment is when you realise that no one can for they

can't change.

Making of Americans (1934) ch. 5

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, is a rose.

Sacred Emily (1913) p. 187

You are all a lost generation.

In Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) epigraph (Gertrude Stein

heard the phrase "a lost generation" (une g�n�ration perdue) from a French

garage-owner: see James R. Mellow Charmed Circle (1974) ch. 10)

19.117 John Steinbeck =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1902-1968

Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows

beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his

accomplishments.

Grapes of Wrath (1939) ch. 14

I know this--a man got to do what he got to do.

Grapes of Wrath (1939) ch. 18

Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you're a dirty

son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you're scum. Don't mean nothing itself, it's

the way they say it.

Grapes of Wrath (1939) ch. 18

19.118 Gloria Steinem =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1934-

Now, we are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

Ms July/Aug. 1982

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

Attributed

19.119 James Stephens =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1882-1950

Women are stronger than men--they do not die of wisdom.

They are better than men because they do not seek wisdom.

They are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

The Crock of Gold (1912) bk. 1, ch. 2

Finality is death. Perfection is finality.

Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it.

The Crock of Gold (1912) bk. 1, ch. 4

I hear a sudden cry of pain!

There is a rabbit in a snare:

Now I hear the cry again,

But I cannot tell from where....

Little one! Oh, little one!

I am searching everywhere.

Songs from the City (1915) "The Snare"

19.120 Andrew B. Sterling =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1874-1955

Wait till the sun shines, Nellie,

When the clouds go drifting by.

Wait till the Sun Shines, Nellie (1905 song; music by Harry von Tilzer)

19.121 Wallace Stevens =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1879-1955

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.

Harmonium (1923) "A High-Toned old Christian Woman"

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Harmonium (1923) "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

Harmonium (1923) "Sunday Morning, I"

Just as my fingers on these keys

Make music, so the self-same sounds

On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;

And thus it is that what I feel,

Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,

Is music.

Harmonium (1923) "Peter Quince at the Clavier" pt. 1

Beauty is momentary in the mind--

The fitful tracing of a portal;

But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.

Harmonium (1923) "Peter Quince at the Clavier" pt. 4

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

Harmonium (1923) "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,

You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are

Are changed upon the blue guitar."

The Man with the Blue Guitar (1937) title poem

They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.

We shall return at twilight from the lecture

Pleased that the irrational is rational.

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942) "It must give Pleasure"

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Opus Posthumous (1957) "Adagia"

19.122 Adlai Stevenson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1900-1965

I suppose flattery hurts no one, that is, if he doesn't inhale.

TV broadcast, 30 Mar. 1952, in N. F. Busch Adlai E. Stevenson (1952) ch. 5

I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican

friends...that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will

stop telling the truth about them.

Speech during 1952 Presidential Campaign, in J. B. Martin Adlai Stevenson

and Illinois (1976) ch. 8

We must be patient--making peace is harder than making war.

Speech to Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 21 Mar. 1946, in Chicago

Daily News 22 Mar. 1946

In America any boy may become President and I suppose it's just one of the

risks he takes!

Speech in Indianapolis, 26 Sept. 1952, in Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai

E. Stevenson; 1952 (1953) p. 174

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be

unpopular.

Speech in Detroit, 7 Oct. 1952, in Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E.

Stevenson; 1952 (1953) p. 218

We hear the Secretary of State [John Foster Dulles] boasting of his

brinkmanship--the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.

Speech in Hartford, Connecticut, 25 Feb. 1956, in New York Times 26 Feb.

1956, p. 64

She [Eleanor Roosevelt] would rather light a candle than curse the

darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

Comment on learning of Mrs Roosevelt's death, in New York Times 8 Nov.

1962

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House.

Speech in Washington, 13 Dec. 1952 (after his defeat in the Presidential

election), in Alden Whitman Portrait: Adlai E. Stevenson (1965) ch. 1

Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them

the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the

eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're

attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure

triumph over the great enemies of man--war, poverty and tyranny--and the

assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of

each.

Speech of Acceptance at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago,

Illinois, 26 July 1952, in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952) p. 20

A hungry man is not a free man.

Speech at Kasson, Minnesota, 6 Sept. 1952, in Speeches of Adlai Stevenson

(1952) "Farm Policy"

There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.

Speech at Hartford, Connecticut, 18 Sept. 1952, in Speeches of Adlai

Stevenson (1952) "The Atomic Future"

It reminds me of the small boy who jumbled his biblical quotations and

said: "A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in

trouble."

In Bill Adler The Stevenson Wit (1966) p. 84 (cf. Proverbs 12:22, Psalms

46:1)

19.123 Anne Stevenson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1933-

Blackbirds are the cellos of the deep farms.

minute by Glass Minute (1982) "Green Mountain, Black Mountain"

19.124 Caskie Stinnett =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1911-

A diplomat...is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that

you actually look forward to the trip.

Out of the Red (1960) ch. 4

19.125 Rt. Revd Mervyn Stockwood =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1913-

A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies-Berg�re and looks at the

audience.

In Observer 15 Oct. 1961

19.126 Tom Stoppard =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1937-

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.

Jumpers (1972) act 1

My problem is that I am not frightfully interested in anything, except

myself. And of all forms of fiction autobiography is the most gratuitous.

Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966) pt. 2

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to

subscribe--responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch

throughout the ages.

Lord Malquist and Mr Moon (1966) pt. 6. Cf. Rudyard Kipling

A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and

corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts.

Otherwise he's someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks

that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has

arrived to cover it.

Night and Day (1978) act 1

Wagner: You don't care much for the media, do you, Ruth?

Ruth: The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.

Carson: Ruth has mixed feelings about reporters.

Night and Day (1978) act 1

Milne: No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press

everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.

Ruth: I'm with you on the free press. It's the newspapers I can't

stand.

Night and Day (1978) act 1

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of

integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1

Guildenstern: Well then--one of the Greeks, perhaps? You're familiar

with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? The great homicidal classics?

Matri, patri, sorori, uxori and it goes without saying--suicidal--hm?

Maidens aspiring to godheads--

Rosencrantz: And vice versa.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1

I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and

I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and

I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but

I can't do you love and rhetoric without the blood.

Blood is compulsory--they're all blood, you see.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1

To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come

back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother

popped onto his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal

and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this

extraordinary manner?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 1

We're actors--we're the opposite of people. Think, in your head, now,

think of the most...private...secret...intimate thing you have ever done

secure in the knowledge of its privacy.... Are you thinking of it?...

Well, I saw you do it!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 2

Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 2

The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 2. Cf. Oxford Dictionary

of Quotations (1979) 573:3

Life is a gamble at terrible odds--if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) act 3

I doubt that art needed Ruskin any more than a moving train needs one of

its passengers to shove it.

Times Literary Supplement 3 June 1977

War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but

they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.

Travesties (1975) act 1

19.127 Lytton Strachey =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1880-1932

[Samuel] Johnson's aesthetic judgements are almost invariably subtle, or

solid, or bold; they have always some good quality to recommend

them--except one: they are never right.