Category: Lit & Crit
“No history of the American Revolution, or of the political literature to which it gave birth, would be complete without consideration of the loyalists. That independence was in fact the work of a minority, and that the methods by which the loyal majority was overawed and, in part, expelled were as high-handed and cruel as they were active and vigorous, must be freely conceded. Weighty as was the colonial argument, force and violence were freely employed to give effect to it.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XV, Ch. 8
“Advertisements of merchandise in all the colonies throw a good deal of light on the customs of the time, and, incidentally, also on the popular taste in reading. We find that Peter Turner has ‘Superfine Scarlet Cloth, Hat Linings, Tatlers, Spectators, and Barclay’s Apology’; that Peter Harry imports ‘Head Flowers in Boxes, Laces and Edgings, Psalm-books, Play-books, the Guardians in 2 vol., Women’s Short Cloaks, Men’s Scarlet Great Coats’ and other apparel. The ship Samuel, from London, brings over ‘sundry goods, particularly a very choice collection of printed Books, Pictures, Maps and Pickles, to be Sold very reasonable by Robert Pringle.'” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XV, Ch. 7
“An old-time classification of the human faculties will serve to explain the development of American thought in the eighteenth century, a development which led to the overthrow of high Calvinism. As there were three divisions of the human mind—intellect, sensibility, and will, so were there three divisions among the enemies of orthodoxy. Those who followed the intellect were the rationalists, or deists. Those who followed sensibility were the “hot” men, or enthusiasts. Those who followed the will were the ethical reformers, who emphasized the conscious cultivation of morality rather than a divinely wrought change in man’s nature.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XV, Ch. 5
“All theory is against the freedom of the will, all experience for it.” — Dr. Samuel Johnson
“Art is a sort of experimental station in which one tries out living.” — John Cage (from “Searching for Silence,” by Alex Ross)
“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoint them.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1774
“I like to do things that frighten me. When I’m afraid, I understand more things.” — David Grossman (from “The Unconsoled,” by George Packer)
“The dream of artists–which is simply the dream of friends and lovers, magnified–is to plant themselves in other people’s heads.” — Tad Friend, “Sleeping with Weapons”
“Science and literature must both occupy a great place in university education. But the former ignores sin, and the latter knows it only too well.” — The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. 14
“All the dreams you show up in are not your own.” — Gil Scott-Heron
“In every State it should be a fundamental maxim that the education of youth should be particularly formed and adapted to the nature and end of its government.” — Thomas Sheridan, 1756 (from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. 14)
“Love endures only when the lovers love many things together, and not merely each other.” — Lippmann, A Preface to Morals
“Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (from Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century)
It should be noted here and now (if not earlier) that the Lippmann quotes being posted to this site are sourced from Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century, published in 1980 by the Atlantic Monthly Press.
“The decade 1840–1850, preceding the rush to the gold-diggings, was an important period in the history of Australian poetry. The development of New South Wales brought about an increase in the number of newspapers, and the newspapers gave opportunities for the publication of verse.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. XII
“Farmers without land, workers without jobs, ordinary men and women without hope, all were fodder for visionaries promising the earth.” – MacMillan, Paris 1919
“Total freedom is both the dream of every artist and a promise of catastrophe.” — Anthony Lane, “Wives’ Tales”
“Play is never taken seriously by the players–that’s one of its hallmarks. If it does become serious, it ceases to be play.” — Dodman, The Cat Who Cried for Help
“You cannot make up for the evil things you do–they’re there forever. You can only add better things to your list of deeds in hopes of creating some kind of cosmic balance.” — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Hidden Life of Deer
“The forces called electricity and chemical affinity are one and the same.” — Michael Faraday, quoted in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
“Men of genius work from the centre outwards.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
“At this time, interest in natural philosophy was widely disseminated, and, in science, as in politics and literature, new ideas were readily welcomed.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
“Though prudence, intrepidity and perseverance united are not exempted from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving successful.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VII
“Sir Thomas Gresham, writing on the coinage, lays it down as a principle that, if you have in a country good coins and deteriorated coins of the same metal current side by side, the bad will drive out the good, and Gresham’s law may often be applied to literature, to art and, especially, to journalism. The largest circulations have often been attained by newspapers not exhibiting the highest characteristics; indeed, newspapers have been known suddenly to reach enormous sales by publishing articles describing the careers of notorious criminals.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. IV
“Among English-speaking people, it is difficult to make a great reputation out of short stories.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. III
“While life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, regarding the work of Ruskin
“God forbid you should have to live with the consequences of decisions, permanent, eternal, that will chase you in your head, turning from this side to that, tossing between wrong and right.” — Nathan Englander, “Free Fruit for Young Widows”
“Publish and be damned.” — Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, 1824
“Whereas aestheticians from Aristotle on have insisted that figurative language should redouble and underline the thrust of the anecdote, it turns out that exactly the opposite is what often appeals to us in great works of art, a strange and even mystical discrepancy between the natural drift of the story and the contradictory impulses of the metaphors and similes and descriptions.” — Edmund White, “The Strange Charms of John Cheever”
“Insofar as we can treat a text as not referring to what is outside or beyond it, we more easily understand that it has internal relationships independent of the coding procedures by which we may find it transparent upon a known world.” — Kermode, “What Precisely Are the Facts?”, The Genesis of Secrecy