19th-century Editor Quotes

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

Carl Sandburg

Victoria Woodhull

George Holyoake

John Gibson Lockhart

Daniel De Leon

Mark Lemon

I have always fought for ideas — until I learned that it isn't ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.

Margaret Caroline Anderson

Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long, long night away
In statue-like repose. But when the sun in all his state
Illumed the eastern skies,
She passed through Glory's morning-gate,
And walked in Paradise.

It is an old belief
That on some solemn shore
Beyond the sphere of grief
Dear friends shall meet once more.

John Gibson Lockhart

Forth we went, a gallant band—
Youth, Love, Gold and Pleasure.

I saw two clouds at morning,
Tinged with the rising sun,
And in the dawn they floated on,
And mingled into one.
I thought that morning cloud was blest,
It moved so sweetly to the West.

John Gardiner Calkins Brainard

O for a lodge in a garden of cucumbers!
O for an iceberg or two at control!
O for a vale that at midday the dew cumbers!
O for a pleasure trip up to the pole!

Rossiter Johnson

It is better to give love. Hatred is a low and degrading motion and is so poisonous that no man is strong enough to use it safely. The hatred we think we are directing against some person or thing or system has a devilish way of turning back upon us. When we seek revenge we administer slow poison to ourselves. When we administer affection it is astonishing what magical results we obtain.

Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!...
Punch, brothers! Punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

Isaac H. Bromley

The Bookshop has a thousand books,
All colors, hues, and tinges,
And every cover is a door
That turns on magic hinges.

Nancy Byrd Turner

Make no mistake: The organization of the working class must be both economic and political. The capitalist is organized upon both lines. You must attack him on both.

If the author of the Declaration of Independence were to utter such a sentiment today, the Post Office Department could exclude him from the mail, grand juries could indict him for sedition and criminal syndicalism, legislative committees could seize his private papers and United States Senators would be clamoring for his deportation that he should be sent back to live with the rest of the terrorists.

The Angel of Death is the invisible Angel of Life.

Henry Mills Alden

We had stayed up all night my friends and I beneath mosque lamps hanging from the ceiling. Their brass domes were filigreed, starred like our souls; just as, again like our souls, they were illuminated by the imprisoned brilliance of an electric heart. On the opulent oriental rugs, we had crushed our ancestral lethargy, arguing all the way to the final frontiers of logic and blackening reams of paper with delirious writings.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

It often puzzles me when people think that matters connected with sex ought to be suppressed. Sex itself cannot be suppressed, and the efforts to do it, it seems to me, result in greater damage than it can do itself. After all, it was not an invention of man, but of God.

Maxwell Perkins

Ah, we fondly cherish
Faded things
That had better perish.
Memory clings
To each leaf it saves.
Chilly winds are blowing.
It will soon be snowing
On our graves.

John Henry Boner

Whene'er I walk the public ways,
How many poor that lack ablution
Do probe my heart with pensive gaze,
And beg a trivial contribution!

Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence, honesty and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says Whitman, is always inviting the insolence of power.

George William Foote

Justice, even-handed justice, for the Negro—that which, according to American profession, is every man's birthright—that I claimed, nothing less.

Samuel Ringgold Ward

It often seems that celestial happenings [eclipse of the sun or moon] deign to be seen only from the most inaccessible parts of our globe.

Mabel Loomis Todd

Bismarck, when asked what was the most important fact in modern history, replied: The fact that North America speaks English.

William Gurney Benham

We lean on Faith; and some less wise have cried, "Behold the butterfly, the see that's cast!" Vain hopes that fall like flowers before the blast! What man can look on Death unterrified?

Richard Watson Gilder

Poetry is an exhibit of one pendulum connecting with other and unseen pendulums inside and outside the one seen.

Poetry, perhaps the finest of fine arts, certainly the shynest and most elusive?, poetry which must have listeners, which cannot sing into a void.

The language of poetry is the only speech which has in it the power of permanent impression

George Gilfillan

But I account it worth
All pangs of fair hopes crost—
All loves and honors lost,—
To gain the heavens, at cost
Of losing earth.

Theodore Tilton