William McFee Quotes

If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow.

A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on.

Steam is the friend of man. Steam engines are very human. Their very weaknesses are understandable. Steam engines do not flash back and blow your face in. They do not short-circuit and rive your heart with imponderable electric force. They have arms and legs and warm hearts and veins full of warm vapour. Give us steam every time. You know where you are with steam.

There are some men whom a staggering emotional shock, so far from making them mental invalids for life, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvanize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity of soul.

London is always beautiful to those who love and understand that extraordinary microcosm; but at five of a summer morning there is about her an exquisite quality of youthful fragrance and debonair freshness which goes to the heart.

While my companion is busily engaged in getting copy for a special article about the Market, I step nimbly out of the way of a swarthy gentleman from Calabria, who with his two-wheeled barrow is the last link in the immense chain of transportation connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the cockney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and purchases a banana for a couple of pennies.

Roses just now predominate. There is a satisfying solidity about the bunches, a glorious abundance which, in a commodity so easily enjoyed without ownership, is scarcely credible. I feel no desire to own these huge aggregations of odorous beauty. It would be like owning a harem, one imagines.

People don't seem to realize that doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune.

Responsibility's like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight.

Terrible and sublime thought, that every moment is supreme for some man and woman, every hour the apotheosis of some passion!

A trouble is a trouble, and the general idea, in the country, is to treat it as such, rather than to snatch the knotted cords from the hand of God and deal out murderous blows.

It is extraordinary how many emotional storms one may weather in safety if one is ballasted with ever so little gold.

People don't ever seem to realise that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune.

That is my rule of life. If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow. Do you remember Henley's magnificent lines?
'Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.' ?
That is my gospel. What do you think of it?

One must choose between Obscurity with Efficiency, and Fame with its inevitable collateral of Bluff. There is a period, well on toward middle life, when a man can say such things to himself and feel comforted.