19th-century Journalist Quotes

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

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

Irving Bacheller

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

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.

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

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

To a prison visitor who asked if he were sewing:

Horatio Bottomley

Even if I do not see the fruits, the struggle has been worthwhile. If my life has taught me anything, it is that one must fight.

The advertising man is a liaison between the products of business and the mind of the nation. He must know both before he can serve either.

The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust; and the flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most elementary form, embodies a novel and gigantic idea, without an analogue in nature, and without a prototype in experience

You can't adopt politics as a profession, and remain honest.

Intelligibility is alike the first and the last demand of the understanding.

Cassius Jackson Keyser

The Russians dashed on towards that thin redline streak tipped with a line of steel.

William Howard Russell

Beyond are greens where pink chestnuts, may trees and copper beeches flaunt themselves gaily.

You can take the whole of the United States of America, from Maine to California and from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico, and set it down in the middle of Siberia, without touching anywhere the boundaries of the latter's territory.

Jazz may be thought of as a current that bubbled forth from a spring in the slums of New Orleans to become the mainstream of the twentieth century. In less than fifty years it has flooded the United States and the rest of the world.

Henry Pleasants

Her uncle drove a taxi which he had purchased on the 'never never' system. You pay $80 down and more than you can afford for the rest of your life.

Since the primary object of the scientific theory is to express the harmonies which are found to exist in nature, we see at once that these theories must have an aesthetic value. The measure of the success of a scientific theory is, in fact, a measure of its aesthetic value, since it is a measure of the extent to which it has introduced harmony in what was before chaos.

J. W. N. Sullivan

A city of sin and gayety unique on the North American continent.

The hedgerows are set with the crystals of winter, And ripe berries hiding from gay-feathered thieves ; The hand of December, the vigorous tinter, Has browned and encarmined the exquisite leaves.

George Robert Sims

O God, give me work till the end of my life
And life till the end of my work.

There is no more graceful and healthful accomplishment for a lady than fly-fishing, and there is no reason why a lady should not in every respect, rival a gentleman in the gentle art.

William Cowper Prime

My studies in speculative philosophy, metaphysics, and science are all summed up in the image of a mouse called man, running in and out of every hole in the cosmos hunting for the absolute cheese.

Benjamin De Casseres

O tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?

The morning stars sang together. And a person of delicate ear and nice judgment discussed the singing at length, and showed how and wherein one star differed from another, and which was great and which was not. And still the morning stars sang together.

Thomas William Hodgson Crosland