19th-century Journalist Quotes

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

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

The day when the Jew was first admitted to civil rights, the Christian state was in danger...the entrance of the Jew into {White) society marked the destruction of the State, meaning by State, the Christian State.

Among my notes I find something else that Kafka said about vegetarianism. He compared vegetarians with the early Christians, persecuted everywhere, everywhere laughed at, and frequenting dirty haunts. "What is meant by its nature for the highest and the best, spreads among the lowly people."

True socialism is the equalization of all privileges. The power to take advantage of them, -- that is another matter...

It is also possible, I believe, if one lives in India long enough, to come across a globe-trotter who is modest and teachable, but we have been out here only twenty-two years, and I am going home without having seen one.

Sara Jeannette Duncan

Texans are the only race of people known to anthropologists who do not depend on breeding for propagation. Like princes and lords, they can be made by breath; plus a big hat-which comparatively few Texans wear.

The dearest days in one's life are those that seem very far and very near at once.

Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

James Ryder Randall

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

Look in my face. My name is Used-to-was;
I am also called Played-out and Done-to-death,
And It-will-wash-no-more.

Henry Duff Traill

Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Blaise Cendrars

A great ball of fire about a mile in diameter, changing colors as it kept shooting upward, from deep purple to orange, expanding, growing bigger, rising as it was expanding, an elemental force freed from its bonds after being chained for billions of years.

William L. Laurence

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

William Norman Ewer