19th-century Memoirist Quotes

George Sand

Siegfried Sassoon

George Moore

Alice B. Toklas

Mary Antin

We must love stupid people better than ourselves; are they not the really unfortunate ones of this world? Do not people without taste and without ideal grow constantly weary, rejoicing in nothing, and being quite useless here below?

In 1917 I was only beginning to learn that life, for the majority of the population, is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds, culminating in a cheap funeral.

Siegfried Sassoon

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities. For as those majestic, magisterial truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge on the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides.

Sex is perhaps like culture — a luxury that only becomes an art after generations of leisurely acquaintance. Why we scarcely approach either as individuals — it's mass propulsion still!

Alice B. Toklas