User:Musical Linguist/Quotations

Favourite quotations

"Shame, Corin," said the King. "Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you: then, as you please."

(C. S. Lewis: The Horse and His Boy)

The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives with which profane and violent people are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does – what feeling it spares – what horror it conceals.

(Charlotte Brontë: Preface to Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights)

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

(G. K. Chesterton)

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

(Alexander Pope: Essay on Man, Epistle II)

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

(William Shakespeare: Othello, Act 3, Scene 3)

. . . but man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal.

(William Shakespeare: Measure for Measure Act 2, Scene 2)

. . . . Mine enemy's dog,

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night

Against my fire.

(William Shakespeare: King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

(Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward Fitzgerald)

"Give your evidence," said the King; "and don’t be nervous, or I’ll have you executed on the spot."

(Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

When Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so excited that he said, "Both" and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, "But don't bother about the bread, please."

(A. A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh)

One of my favourite poems

The Burning Babe

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,

Surprised I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorchèd with excessive heat such floods of tears did shed,

As though His floods should quench His flames which with His tears were fed.

"Alas!" quoth He, "but newly born in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is; the fuel wounding thorns;

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shames and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defilèd souls;

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood."

With this He vanished out of sight and swiftly shrank away,

And straight I callèd unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

Saint Robert Southwell (c. 1561–1595). English martyr. Hanged, drawn, and quartered at the age of thirty-three. "Though thirteen times most cruelly tortured," wrote Cecil, "he cannot be induced to confess anything, not even the colour of the horse whereon on a certain day he rode." Ben Jonson said that he would have happily destroyed many of his own poems if only he could have written The Burning Babe. The lines in this poem are completely end-stopped. The third line has a dangling participle, but Southwell was such a great hero and a great poet that I forgive him completely!