The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (60 page)

and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my

lifetime--nor indeed ever in the history of this country. What is

beginning to worry some of us is, Is it too good to be true?--or perhaps I

should say, Is it too good to last?

Speech at Bedford, 20 July 1957, in The Times 22 July 1957

I thought the best thing to do was to settle up these little local

difficulties, and then turn to the wider vision of the Commonwealth.

Statement at London airport on leaving for Commonwealth tour, 7 Jan.

1958, following the resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and

others, in The Times 8 Jan. 1958

As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas.

Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original

ideas is sound.

Speech to London Conservatives, 7 Mar. 1961, in The Times 8 Mar. 1961

First of all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture

that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go.

Speech on privatization to the Tory Reform Group, 8 Nov. 1985, in The

Times 9 Nov. 1985

13.36 Louis MacNeice =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1907-1963

Better authentic mammon than a bogus god.

Autumn Journal (1939) p. 49

The sunlight on the garden

Hardens and grows cold,

We cannot cage the minute

Within its net of gold,

When all is told

We cannot beg for pardon.

Earth Compels (1938) "Sunlight on the Garden"

Our freedom as free lances

Advances towards its end;

The earth compels, upon it

Sonnets and birds descend;

And soon, my friend,

We shall have no time for dances.

Earth Compels (1938) "Sunlight on the Garden"

It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,

All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.

Earth Compels (1938) "Bagpipe Music"

It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,

It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,

It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,

Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.

Earth Compels (1938) "Bagpipe Music"

It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;

Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.

The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,

But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

Earth Compels (1938) "Bagpipe Music"

I take a rather common-sense view of poetry. I think that the poet is a

sensitive instrument designed to record anything which interests his mind

or affects his emotions.

Listener 27 July 1939

By a high star our course is set,

Our end is Life. Put out to sea.

London Magazine Feb. 1964 "Thalassa" (poem published posthumously)

And under the totem poles--the ancient terror--

Between the enormous fluted Ionic columns

There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces

The guttural sorrow of the refugees.

Plant and Phantom (1941) "The British Museum Reading Room"

Time was away and somewhere else,

There were two glasses and two chairs

And two people with the one pulse

(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):

Time was away and somewhere else.

Plant and Phantom (1941) "Meeting Point"

So they were married--to be the more together--

And found they were never again so much together,

Divided by the morning tea,

By the evening paper,

By children and tradesmen's bills.

Plant and Phantom (1941) "Les Sylphides"

Crumbling between the fingers, under the feet,

Crumbling behind the eyes,

Their world gives way and dies

And something twangs and breaks at the end of the street.

Plant and Phantom (1941) "D�b�cle"

Down the road someone is practising scales,

The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,

Man's heart expands to tinker with his car

For this is Sunday morning, Fate's great bazaar.

Poems (1935) "Sunday Morning"

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

Poems (1935) "Snow"

I am not yet born; O fill me

With strength against those who would freeze my

humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,

would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with

one face, a thing, and against all those

who would dissipate my entirety, would

blow me like thistledown hither and

thither or hither and thither

like water held in the

hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me,

Otherwise kill me.

Springboard (1944) "Prayer Before Birth"

13.37 Salvador de Madariaga =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1886-1978

Since, in the main, it is not armaments that cause wars but wars (or the

fears thereof) that cause armaments, it follows that every nation will at

every moment strive to keep its armament in an efficient state as required

by its fear, otherwise styled security.

Morning Without Noon (1974) pt. 1, ch. 9

13.38 Maurice Maeterlinck =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1862-1949

Il n'y a pas de morts.

There are no dead.

L'Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird, 1909) act 4

13.39 John Gillespie Magee =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1922-1941

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds--and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of--wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,

Where never lark, nor even eagle flew--

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

In K. Rhys More Poems from the Forces (1943) "High Flight"

13.40 Magnus Magnusson =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1929-

I've started so I'll finish.

Said when a contestant's time runs out while a question is being put in

Mastermind, BBC television (1972 onwards)

13.41 Sir John Pentland Mahaffy =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1839-1919

In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly

occurs.

In W. B. Stanford and R. B. McDowell Mahaffy (1971) ch. 4

13.42 Gustav Mahler =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1860-1911

On seeing Niagara Falls, Mahler exclaimed: "Fortissimo at last!"

K. Blaukopf Gustav Mahler (1973) ch. 8

13.43 Derek Mahon =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1941-

"I am just going outside and may be some time."

The others nod, pretending not to know.

At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

Antarctica (1985) title poem (for the first line, cf. Captain Lawrence

Oates)

13.44 Norman Mailer =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1923-

Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no

sentiment.

Cannibals and Christians (1966) p. 51

Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.

Dissent Summer 1957, p. 281

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the

protagonists.

Esquire June 1960

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each event, and the

paucity of its reverberation.

A Fire on the Moon (1970) pt. 1, ch. 2

So we think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America,

Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little

rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American

backyards.

Marilyn (1973) p. 15

Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the Gods, and so awakens

devils to contest his vision.

The Presidential Papers (1976) Special Preface to the 1st Berkeley

Edition

13.45 Bernard Malamud =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1914-1986

I think I said "All men are Jews except they don't know it." I doubt I

expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it's an

understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history,

sooner or later, treats all men.

Leslie and Joyce Field (ed.) Bernard Malamud (1975) "An interview with

Bernard Malamud" p. 11

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is

no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all

biography is ultimately fiction.

Dubin's Lives (1979) p. 20

13.46 George Leigh Mallory =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1886-1924

Because it's there.

Response to question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?," in New

York Times 18 Mar. 1923

13.47 Andr� Malraux =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1901-1976

L'art est un anti-destin.

Art is a revolt against fate.

Les Voix du silence (Voices of Silence, 1951) pt. 4, ch. 7

13.48 Lord Mancroft (Baron Mancroft) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1914-

Our soft grass and mild climate has enabled us to foster new sports.

Racing, golf, football and particularly cricket--a game which the English,

not being a spiritual people, have invented in order to give themselves

some conception of eternity--all owe their development to our climate.

Bees in Some Bonnets (1979) p. 185

13.49 Winnie Mandela =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1936-

We are going to dismantle apartheid ourselves. That programme will be

brought to you by the ANC. Together, hand in hand, with that stick of

matches, with our necklace, we shall liberate this country.

Speech in black townships, 14 Apr. 1986, in Guardian 15 Apr. 1986

13.50 Osip Mandelstam =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1891-1938

Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.

Selected Poems (1973), trans. by D. McDuff p. 129

13.51 Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Herman J. Mankiewicz 1897-1953

Orson Welles 1915-1985

Katherine: What's Rosebud?

Raymond: That's what he said when he died....

Louise: If you could have found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that

would've explained everything.

Thompson: No, I don't think so. No, Mr Kane was a man who got everything

he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get

or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I

don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just

a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, a missing piece.

Citizen Kane (1941 film)

13.52 Joseph L. Mankiewicz =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1909-

Fasten your seat-belts, it's going to be a bumpy night.

All About Eve (1950 film; words spoken by Bette Davis)

13.53 Thomas Mann =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1875-1955

Der Tod in Venedig.

Death in Venice.

Title of novella (1912)

Tats�chlich ist unser Sterben mehr eine Angelegenheit der Weiterlebenden

als unserer selbst.

It is a fact that a man's dying is more the survivor's affair than his

own.

Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain, 1924) ch. 6, pt. 8

13.54 Katherine Mansfield (Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1888-1923

E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare

fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but

there ain't going to be no tea.

Journal May 1917 (1927) p. 69

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should

I never return, all is in order. This is what life has taught me.

Journal 29 Jan. 1922 (1927) p. 224

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But

better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

Journal 1922 (1927) p. 243

13.55 Mao Tse-Tung =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1893-1976

Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend