Died on May 7 — Quotes

British public opinion was solidly behind the League when it was founded... The British people supported the League for no selfish motive. They had seen the old system of alliances unable to prevent a world war. As practical men and women they wished to find a more effective instrument for peace. After four years of devastation they were determined to do their utmost to prevent another such calamity falling not only on themselves but upon the whole world. They were determined to throw the whole weight of their strength into the scales of international peace and international order. They were deeply and genuinely moved by a great ideal. It is the fashion sometimes in the world of to-day—a foolish fashion like many others in the world of to-day—to scoff at such ideals. What is the use, say the modern critics, of collective action when individual strength is simpler and swifter to apply, and more direct in its appeal to national sentiment? What is the good of working for peace when the whole history of the world shows that war is the only way of settling great issues? These questions ring every day in our ears. The day to day events of recent history have made it impossible for us to ignore the strength of the argument behind them. None the less, in spite of the grim experiences of the past, in spite of the worship of force in the present, the British people have clung to their ideal and they are not prepared to abandon it.

Live truth instead of professing it.

En el principio era el Verbo y en el final el lugar común.

The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.

It is...necessary when the League is in a time of real difficulty for the representative of the United Kingdom to state his view and to make it as clear as he can, first, that his Majesty's Government and the British people maintain their support of the League and its ideals as the most effective way of ensuring peace; and, secondly, that this belief in the necessity for preserving the League is our sole interest in the present controversy. No selfish or imperialist motives enter into our minds at all.

Las inteligencias poco capaces se interesan en lo extraordinario; las inteligencias poderosas en las cosas ordinarias.

What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

If any of my readers set out with the notion that that all races of men think and act much in the same way as educated Englishmen, the evidence of superstitious belief and custom collected in this work should suffice to disabuse him of so erroneous a prepossession.

..the great white blanket of snow [in one of his painting of Cemetery / Church in the Snow, mid-1820's].. ..the essence of the utmost purity, beneath which nature prepares herself for a new life..

My happiness is my business. I can see finality for myself, an end, an absolute end; but none for my business. There one has room to breathe, to grow, to expand, and the possibilities are boundless. One can go to places like the Congo, and organize, organize, organize, well, very big things indeed. But I don’t work at business only for the sake of money. I am not a lover of money as money and never have been. I work at business because business is life. It enables me to do things.

All is in the hands of Man. Therefore you should wash them often.

Two-thirds of all preachers, doctors and lawyers are hanging on to the coat tails of progress, shouting, whoa! while a good many of the rest are busy strewing banana peels along the line of march.

For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten.The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice.

[He said] that might, slumbering in the arms of temperate freemen, which, though he hoped the fatal experiment never would be tried, he had a confident persuasion would, if it ever should become necessary, be uplifted as manfully as it was by their forefathers, when they marshalled the way, through blood and danger, to a free constitution... Of powers thus exercised, and for so hallowed a purpose, we have now a glorious example in a neighbouring nation, which has now made your case its own, and which, after long being, as some say, your enemy, has now become your competitor in the glorious race of liberty, which, roused by unbearable oppression, groaning—but that freemen will not groan—has risen in its might, and driven, as your forefathers drove, a tyrant from the throne which he had polluted, and from a capital which he had stained with the blood of free and innocent citizens. From this castle-yard, at the close of the American war, burst forth a flame in favour of parliamentary reform, which, spreading over the country, eclipsed, during the system of terror and persecution, by fires of a less pure and holy nature, quenched by the blood shed in the name of liberty by those who called themselves its votaries in France, has at length, now that peace has been restored to us, burst forth again with renovated splendour to illuminate your hearts, and with such vigour as will ultimately destroy the abuses of your country. I hail its progress with joy and rapture! Be it mine to fan the flame, &c.!