Clay Lane in Quotations

I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That’s always been my reason for writing. People won’t write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself.

Nothing clears up one’s ideas so much as explaining them.

It is the custom, and a very bad one, for the English never to tell their own story.

It is blamed in our Englishmen, that they are apt too much to admire foreigne Countreys and Commodities, and exotick Fashions also, because they are either ignorant of or do not Sufficiently prize the Excellencies of their own native Soil; and herein the old Proverb of the English is verified, They never know when they are well.

We have also taken the Roman ideal of just administration, the Greek ideal of democracy and freedom of art, and the French tradition of the family unit, along with the Norse courage and loyalty and the Christian faith. Like all people, we have made some mistakes and have committed some crimes during our history, but we can say that we have built something worthy of our defence.

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. Let the lie come into the world, even dominate the world, but not through me.

If I have done anything worthy of being remembered, it has not been through any superiority of gifts, but only through a moderate portion of them, accompanied, it is true, with energy and the habit of industry and application. As in the case of everyone else, I had for the most part to teach myself.

Much of the best and most useful work done by men and women has been done amidst affliction — sometimes as a relief from it, sometimes from a sense of duty overpowering personal sorrow. “If I had not been so great an invalid,” said Dr Darwin to a friend, “I should not have done nearly so much work as I have been able to accomplish.”

If ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are to be more than catchwords, clear communication must be the rule, and not the exception. The alternative to government by force is government by persuasion. The latter must mean that the governed can talk back to the governors.

The study of history will make us chary about the loud, vague use of formulas. It will make us anxious to see catchwords in their historical relations, and will help us to realise the maleficent effect of phrases which have a fine rhetorical appeal, but very little concrete meaning.

A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.

It seems to me neither necessary to moralise at every turn in historical writing, nor becoming to adopt an attitude of lofty superiority over anyone who ever played a prominent part in European affairs, nor charitable to lavish undiscriminating censure on any man.

History should teach us sympathy with the national past of other peoples.

No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.

The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.

I warmly welcome the genuine eagerness with which you make the effort to acquaint yourself in detail with the sayings and doings of earlier generations, and particularly the famous men of our own nation.

For if history relates good things about good men, the attentive listener is stirred to imitate what is good; whereas if it records the evil done by wicked men, the listener will himself be all aflame to pursue, more skilfully than before, those things which he knows are good and worthy in God’s eyes.

Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force - many such good things have been first nourished in the child's heart by this powerful aid. Every one who has considered the subject knows full well that a nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will, hold a great place under the sun.

Ah! freedom is a noble thing. Freedom makes a man to have zest in life, and gives him all comfort. He that lives free, lives at ease. A noble heart can have no ease, nor aught else to pleasure it, if freedom fail.

There is another thing that renders England rich, viz. the liberty of conscience, granted and allowed to every nation, whereby great numbers of foreigners are invited to come and trade here sooner than in Spain and other countries, where liberty of conscience is not allowed.

Some two dayes after, the Emperour called me againe, demanding the reason of our comming so farre: I answered, We were a People that sought all friendship with all Nations and to have trade of Merchandize in all Countries, bringing such Merchandizes as our Country had, and buying such Merchandizes in strange Countryes, as our Countrey desired; through which our Countryes on both side were inriched.

Free Trade! What is it? Why, breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those barriers, behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bounds, and deluge whole countries with blood.

We must get rid of the impression, that if the contract be voluntary and the service be mutual, one man’s gain is another’s loss. It has induced a jealous foreign policy, and put a multitude of restrictions on trade. The real truth is exactly the reverse; for one man’s gain in all acts of free exchange is another man’s gain.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

The discipline, if we must call it so, of forced obedience differs by the whole diameter of man’s being from the discipline of self-control. The former may generate a habit or set of habits, and may do this so thoroughly that action at last becomes automatic and the man becomes a puppet, whose movements are controlled by wires which are worked by another man’s words of command. When this point has been reached, the source of the man’s activity has been transferred from his own will to the will of another, and he has lost the power of controlling himself.

I must admit that I did not learn when I was at Oxford that which I have learned since — namely, to set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principle of British liberty. The temper which too much prevailed in academical circles was that liberty was regarded with jealousy and fear, something which could not wholly be dispensed with, but which was to be continually watched for fear of excesses.

He [Daniel O’Connell] was succeeded by the Duffys, Mitchells, Meagher, and others, — men who loved liberty for themselves and their country, but were utterly destitute of sympathy with the cause of liberty in countries other than their own. One of the first utterances of John Mitchell on reaching the United States, from his exile and bondage, was a wish for a “slave plantation, well stocked with slaves.”

There is, however, this great danger in modern politics: the enormous power gained by small resolute bodies. Extreme people are always shouting and protesting: moderate men are content to work quietly.

It is not his [man’s] duty to urge women in the direction of employments they feel to be uncongenial to them; but it is his duty to remove as far as possible all impediments and disqualifications which yet remain in restraint of their own discretion, to leave the choice of careers as open to them as it is to himself and to wait and see what comes of it. Nothing but good can come of it.

The opening up of the internal communications of a country, is undoubtedly the first and most important element of its growth in commerce and civilisation.

Learning’s a Ladder, grounded upon faith,
By which we climb to heaven (the Scripture saith).
And ’tis a means to hurry men to hell,
If grace be wanting for to use it well.

Nothing has become clearer to me during this investigation than the fact that any sweeping or Procrustean measure will do great injustice... Nothing could be more fatal to true educational progress than any public measure designed to make all schools conform to one type.

Discipline must come through liberty. ... We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined.

My aim, in writing this book, is to show that the externalism of the West, the prevalent tendency to pay undue regard to outward and visible ‘results’ and to neglect what is inward and vital, is the source of most of the defects that vitiate Education in this country, and therefore that the only remedy for those defects is the drastic one of changing our standard of reality and our conception of the meaning and value of life.

It is the glory of our empire to embrace within its confines many races and traditions. It is in its variety that its strength lies.

There must certainly be something very peculiar in the climate and soil of England, which causes it not only to yield such a variety of the productions of the earth, but also such a difference in the tempers and manners of its inhabitants, that no two of them appear to think or act alike.

The equity of our laws and the freedom of our political system have been the envy of every surrounding nation. It is the boast of the law of England, that it affords equal security and protection to the high and the low, to the rich and the poor.

The real merchant, as I have a hundred times observed, is a person to be cherished; his calling is as honourable and as conducive to the good of the country, as that of the farmer. It is only when his calling is perverted; when his trade becomes a species of gambling; when he trusts more to craft than to industry, prudence, and integrity; when he, if he be so lucky, may become richer than a lord by the speculations of a few days; when his fortune may be made, when the means of bringing five or six members [i.e. MPs] in amongst the representatives of the people, may be obtained in consequence of one valuable hint from a minister, or a minister’s favourite — then it is that the commercial system becomes dangerous to the liberties of the people and the throne of the king.

A fatal poison, tainting at their common source two of the most sacred springs of social life, personal liberty and personal responsibility.

An equally hateful though more efficient form of the communist despotism.

In vain do some think that socialism is merely a theory of economics. No, socialism replaces everything with itself; it is founding its own religion. ... [T]he socialists have but one desire: to debunk Christianity, to undermine trust in its historical principles, to mock the content of its ideals, and to drag even its moral teachings through the mire.

The delusion that by force you can impose the Millennium on the human race is one of the most dangerous delusions in existence. Those who are out to line their own pockets can do little harm — mere greed defeats its own ends. But the belief in a superstratum of human beings — in Supermen to rule the rest of the decadent world — that, Victoria, is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, “I am not as other men” — you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have tried to attain: humility and brotherhood.

A labour leader of a younger generation, Mr Morgan Phillips, has said that the origins of the British Labour movement are to be found in Methodism rather than Marxism.

England is insular, maritime, linked through its trade, markets and food supply to very diverse and often very distant countries. Its activities are essentially industrial and commercial, and only slightly agricultural. It has very marked and original customs and traditions. In short, the nature, structure and economic context of England differs profoundly from those of the other States of the Continent.

To try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the centre of a European conglomerate would be highly damaging and would jeopardise the objectives we seek to achieve. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality. [...] We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

“What did I do wrong?”

“Everything. You listened to what he was saying instead of seeing what he was doing.”

How comes it to pass that the sight of that flag always raises the spirit of Englishmen? It is because it has always been associated with the cause of justice, with opposition to oppression, with respect for national rights, with honourable commercial enterprise.

Patriotism, a healthy, lively, intelligent interest in everything which concerns the nation to which we belong, and an unselfish devotedness to the public service, — these are the qualities which make a people great and happy; these are the virtues which ought to be most sedulously cultivated in all classes of the community.

All [nations] are equal, and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the constant subject of invective. If you claim for yourself a superiority, a Pharisaical superiority over the whole of them, then I say you may talk about your patriotism if you please, but you are a misjudging friend of your country, and in undermining the basis of the esteem and respect of other people for your country you are in reality inflicting the severest injury upon it.

“What a glorious thing must be a victory, Sir!” said —— to the Duke. “The greatest tragedy in the world, Madam; except a defeat.”

If it were the province of Great Britain to administer justice to all the people of the earth — in other words, if God had given us, as a nation, the authority and the power, together with the wisdom and the goodness, sufficient to qualify us to deal forth His vengeance, then should we be called upon in this case to rescue the weak from the hands of their spoilers.

But do we possess these favoured endowments? [...] Do we find ourselves to possess the virtue and the wisdom essential to the possession of supreme power; or, on the other hand, have we not at our side, in the wrongs of a portion of our own people, a proof that we can justly lay claim to neither?

Nationalism is good in its place, but it is an unreliable friend and an unsafe historian. It blinds us to many happenings, and sometimes distorts the truth, especially when it concerns us or our country.

Both Parliament and people, in this country, seem to get less and less worthy of respect in proportion as they fancy themselves more and more civilised and intelligent.

It [the British Raj] was, quite frankly, a bureaucracy, or, as the wags of Simla used to put it, “government by a dispatch box occasionally tempered by the loss of the key”.

Although English officialism may often drift stupidly into gigantic blunders, the men of the nation generally contrive to work their way out of them with a heroism almost approaching the sublime.

Doubtless it is more blessed to give than to receive, but it is also more hazardous, for you put the recipient of your bounty under an obligation and that is a condition that only the very magnanimous can accept with good will. Gratitude is not a virtue that comes easily to the human race. I do not think it can be denied that the British conferred great benefits on the peoples over which they ruled; but they humiliated them and so earned their hatred. The Americans would do well to remember it.

To propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies ... would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be, adopted by any nation in the world. If it was adopted, however, Great Britain would not only be immediately freed from the whole annual expense of the peace establishment of the colonies, but might settle with them such a treaty of commerce as would effectually secure to her a free trade.

I believe that it is our duty not only to govern India well now for our own sakes and to satisfy our own conscience, but so to arrange its government and so to administer it that we should look forward to the time when India will have to take up her own government, and administer it in her own fashion.

The task of the wise government of so vast an empire may be an impossible one — I often fear it is so — we may fail in our efforts, but, whether we fail or succeed, let us do our best to compensate for the wrong of the past and the present by conferring on the Indian people whatever good it is in our power to give them.

A base, corrupt, and abject people, when once they are properly frighted, when once they are sufficiently alarmed, will submit to any thing for the sake of being defended. ... If such a thing were attempted in time of peace, it would appear at once so alarming and so exorbitant that every man would oppose the exercise of it.

I shall imitate the bee’s habits, gathering those things which belong to the truth and harvesting fruit even from our enemies; but I shall reject all that is worthless, and falsely held to be knowledge.

The English in Russia, even if they saw around them modes of worship to which they were not accustomed, might at least learn a lesson from a nation which so evidently put the worship of God, whether in the streets, or in their houses, or in their churches, before everything else, and expressed in that worship all the articles of the Christian faith in better proportion than any other Church in Christendom.

Pleased as the king [Ethelbert of Kent] was by their faith and conversion, it is said that he would not compel anyone to Christianity; but where they were believers through deeply held love, he embraced them as fellow subjects in a heavenly kingdom; for he had been taught by the teachers and instigators of his own salvation that service to Christ should be voluntary, and not forced.

If someone shows you a new idea, don’t chuck a brick at it. Search its pockets for anything of value.

The great fault of the English is their insularity, and insistence on the English ideal as the only one possible. Hence comes our want of sympathy with those we govern, e.g. in India. The Russians, who understand Oriental ways, avoid this fault.

To preserve his language which has come from the past, to prevent its sterilization from mere repetition, but much more to prevent its dissolution, is as much the duty of a citizen as is the defence of the soil, and in a sense it is a greater duty.

For me, to die for Greece is better than to be the sole ruler over the people of my race.

Civilisation, like truth, cannot be forced on minds unwilling or unable to receive it.

A man can no more be taught to play golf by a book, than he can be made virtuous by Act of Parliament.

I love to make people like each other better.

Daniel Webster told the Americans that Dickens had done more already to ameliorate the condition of the English poor than all the statesmen Great Britain had sent into parliament.

Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursel’s united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted.

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promis’d joy!

The Japanese are a highly polished people, considerably advanced in science, highly inquisitive and full of penetration.

True eloquence I find to be none, but the serious and hearty love of truth.

There is no greater delusion than the supposition that we have to deal with the Russians as a warlike people. The character of the Russian people is a gentle character.

For a nation that has no access to the rest of the world but by sea, the chief use of a navy should be to keep open its communications, not to close them!

Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant;
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.

I hope you do not think I am so illiberal as to want every man to have the same objects and pleasures as myself.

The work of Governments lies in providing for the full and undisturbed action of the forces of freedom, instead of interfering themselves with their operation.

At least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards, if you think yourself qualified to do so, but ascertain it first.

A nation like ours should behave to other nations just as a man should behave to neighbours and equals.

By a free country I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.

It is clear that the right of absolute self-government involves the corresponding duty of self-support and self-defence.

Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.

We consider it as our first duty to maintain and reverence the British constitution.

He must be treated with sincerity and reality; with muffins, and not the promise of muffins.

‘Never leave off hoping; it don’t answer. Don’t leave a stone unturned. It’s always something, to know you’ve done the most you could. Hope, hope, to the last!’

For me one of the highest and noblest expressions of art is always that of the English.

Be wisely worldly, not worldly wise.

There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ‘Thus far and no farther.’

England is, and must be a shopkeeper; and our docks and harbours are only so many wholesale shops, the doors of which should always be kept wide open.

’Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius;
we’ll deserve it.

Commerce first taught nations to see with goodwill the wealth and prosperity of one another.

God is not in might but in Truth. ‘Some trust in princes and some in horses, but we will call upon the Lord our God.’

The terms of justice, the terms of science, the value of government, are the everlasting ramparts of Greece and Rome – the father and mother of civilisation.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his round.

The increase of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours.

Nouns of number, or multitude, such as Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court of King’s Bench, Den of Thieves, and the like.

From a very early age, I had imbibed the opinion, that it was every man’s duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.

As long as you keep this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you.

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

England expects every Man will do his Duty

In all forms of Government the people is the true legislator.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.

God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England’s the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go.

This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea...
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

The final question must always be, not how are England’s imports and exports, not how many ships we are building, how many tons of coal we are getting out of the ground, but how are the English People?

History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side.

Come unto Me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.

It was through looking at churches that I came to believe in the reason why churches were built and why they still survive and continue to grow and prosper.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

Freedom means ‘that men wish to do things for themselves, instead of having them done for them’.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.

He who would oblige all nations at all times to take the same course, would prove as foolish as a physician who should apply the same medicine to all distempers, or an architect that would build the same kind of house for all persons.

It must be share and share alike in the joint stock of good things. The African has an equal right with the European to them all. He is not a subordinate, but a partner in the business.

I do not come here to advocate, and I never have advocated, a principle of defencelessness — of total disarmament; that we should trust any man on the face of the earth, and not be prepared to defend ourselves, like rational beings, against all probable contingencies.

The new system of weights and measures will be a subject of embarrassment and difficulties for several generations. Thus are nations tormented about trifles!

The railway and the steamship and the electric telegraph and the motor-car changed the world completely. The world shrank, and its inhabitants grew nearer to each other, and could see much more of each other, and, with mutual knowledge, many barriers, born of ignorance, went down.

’Tis hard for kings to steer an equal course,
And they who banish one oft gain a worse.

Did you ever hear my definition of marriage? It is, that it resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.

Laws are like spiders’ webs, which stand firm when any light and yielding object falls upon them, while a larger thing breaks through them and makes off.

The US has broken the second rule of war. That is, don’t go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don’t march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself.

“Well, thank God we have at last got a ministry without one of those confounded men of genius in it!”

The Constitution of England may be summed up thus: “Everything is allowed except the following;” while these wise statesmen were doing their utmost to make it like that of Prussia, which may be summed up thus: “Everything is forbidden; except the following.”

A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks.

If one wants to go to the people and remain with the people, one must first of all learn not to scorn the people.

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

If in the preceding pages you see sound views of commerce, just principles of government, freedom, improvement, morality, justice and truth, anxiously and yet all ineffectively advocated, then, and not otherwise, recommend this trifle to your friends, place it in the hands of the nearest newspaper editors, and bring it in every possible way before the eye of the public; and do this, not for the sake of the author, or the merit of his poor production, but that other and more competent writers may be encouraged to take up, with equal zeal and far greater ability, the same cause, which, we religiously believe, is the cause of the best interests of humanity.