19th-century Journalist Quotes

I am sure that it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.

Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much.

The more one gets to know of men, the more one values dogs.

Alphonse Toussenel

I await thee as hills wait the morning,
I desire thee as eagles the storm...

Constance Lindsay Skinner

One starts gambling for a joke, out of curiosity, as a little challenge to fortune. One goes on, pricked to the quick by delusions, excited by vague desires that grow. Woe to you if you win anything - an AMBO, a small TERNO! It is all up with you, for your chance of winning seems certain.... It is the devil's money going back to hell.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

Harvey Spencer Lewis

There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast

Paul Scott Mowrer

You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much.

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

Oscar Ameringer

The conservative in financial circles I have often described as a man who thinks nothing new ought ever to be adopted for the first time.

Frank A. Vanderlip

It 's no matter what you do
If your heart be only true,
And his heart was true to Poll.

Francis Burnand

I rise from bed the first thing in the morning, leaving my couch not because I am dissatisfied with it, but because I cannot carry it with me during the day.

Edgar Wilson Nye

If you are to love mankind, you must not expect too much from it.

Charles Edward Montague

The devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die.

John Reed (journalist)

The word patriotism, or its equivalents and derivations, is upon everyone's lips at the present time. It is a magic word which is thought by most people to cover any multitude of sins. To be patriotic in whatever cause is tantamount to being virtuous, while no worse charge can be brought against a man in popular estimation than to say he is unpatriotic.

Ernest Belfort Bax

Of all the literary scenes
Saddest this sight to me:
The graves of little magazines
Who died to make verse free.

I received a card the other day from Steve Early which said, 'Don't Worry Me – I am an 8 Ulcer Man on 4 Ulcer Pay.'

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Richard Holt Hutton

Unless the American Liberal idea of the peace ultimately prevails with us and replaces the more official idea of a territorial peace, sustained by armaments, British progress to democracy must suffer arrest [...] The entry of America into the war is the best hope that offers the return to power of Liberal democracy in Europe.

Henry William Massingham

On the Avenue in front of the White House were several hundred colored people, mostly women and children, weeping and wailing their loss. This crowd did not diminish through the whole of that cold, wet day; they seemed not to know what was to by their fate since their great benefactor was dead, and though strong and brave men wept when I met them, the hopeless grief of those poor colored people affected me more than almost anything else.

Here lay the dilemma: either Villa would submit to the idea of the revolution without understanding it, in which case he and the true revolution would succeed; or Villa would follow his instincts blindly, and the revolution and he would both fail.

Martín Luis Guzmán

Up to now you have believed in the existence of tyrants. Well, you were mistaken. There are only slaves. Where none obeys, none commands.

Anselme Bellegarrigue

Beautiful and rich is an old friendship, Grateful to the touch as ancient ivory, Smooth as aged wine, or sheen of tapestry Where light has lingered, intimate and long. Full of tears and warm is an old friendship That asks no longer deeds of gallantry, Or any deed at all- save that the friend shall be Alive and breathing somewhere, like a song.

Eunice Tietjens

Great music is a psychical storm, agitating to fathomless depths the mystery of the past within us.

Paul Elmer More

Diplomacy is to do and say
The nastiest thing in the nicest way.