19th-century Journalist Quotes

To a prison visitor who asked if he were sewing:

Horatio Bottomley

The Book of Nature is issued only in uncut editions, and the scientist has to open its pages one by one as he reads.

The real us present, and it is transfigured... It is everywhere a reality at once immutable and changing. Matter is present, submitted to a luminous phantasmagoria. What Monet paints is the space that exists between himself and things.

Gustave Geffroy

Luck means the hardships and privations which you have not hesitated to endure, the long nights you have devoted to work. Luck means the appointments you have never failed to keep; the trains you have never failed to catch.

Beloved Scotland of the winter and the hills! 'Tis little that thou'lt get from them, but they will make thee hard and brave!

A poet may be a good companion, but, so far as I know, he is ever the worst of fathers.

Irving Bacheller

The wisest is he that knows only that he knows nothing. God only knows. We mortals are only troubled with morbid little ideas, sired by circumstance and damned by folly. The human head can absorb only the flavorings of its surroundings. We assume that our faith political and our creed religious are founded upon our reason, when they are really made for us by social conditions over which we had little control.

William Cowper Brann

I gave my life for freedom—This I know:
For those who bade me fight had told me so.

William Norman Ewer

Out in the Pool certain other boats caught the eye... each carried a bright fire amidships, in a brazier, beside a man, two small barrels of beer, and a very large handbell. The men were purlmen, Grandfather Nat told me, selling hot beer in the cold mornings - to the men on the colliers, or on any other craft thereabout.

Arthur Morrison

I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.

Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free from rust in the movable parts of his mind.

The air currents of the world never ventilated his mind.

Walter Hines Page

If history were a photograph of the past it would be flat and uninspiring. Happily, it is a painting; and, like all works of art, it fails of the highest truth unless imagination and ideas are mixed with the paints.

I did not want to be taken for a fool-the typical French reason for performing the worst of deeds without remorse.

Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

Fatherhood, for me, has been less a job than an unstable and surprising combination of adventure, blindman's bluff, guerilla warfare, and crossword puzzle.

Frederic Franklyn Van de Water

The Kingdom of God is plainly that state of temporal affairs which, by a proper distribution of labor, enables the entire human family to cultivate their best faculties. The Kingdom of God commences in this world, will progress in the next, and in all other worlds.

The path of the pursuer and the prey often run obscurely parallel.

Samuel Hopkins Adams

Most people are too silly to be truly interested in any thing. They herd together like cattle, and do not know what is good for them.

Frank R. Stockton

In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a Jew, so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all...

Men of science in former ages worked in secret, and instead of publishing their discoveries, taught them in secret to carefully selected pupils.

Alfred Percy Sinnett

Next to the pleasure of reading a favourite fishing book comes that of persuading a friend to read it too.

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.

Robert, Marquis de Flers

She was the perfect cliché among dear little old ladies, down to the very lavender bags she placed among her linen.

Gladys Bronwyn Stern

Cats do not keep the mice away; it is my belief that they preserve them for the chase.

Be not concerned if thou findest thyself in possession of unexpected wealth; Allah will provide an unexpected use for it.

James Jeffrey Roche