Jane Austen Sequels

Money & Materialism

Tom:	Do you seriously believe that having money automatically brings you happiness?
Schatzie:	No, but it doesn’t automatically depress me either. {How to Marry a Millionnaire, 1953 film, Zoe Akins et al.}

Certainly morality should come first - for writers, critics, and everybody else. People who change tires. People in factories. They should always ask, Is this moral? Not, Will it sell? If you're in construction and building houses out of shingles and you realize that you're wiping out ten thousand acres of Canadian pine every year, you should ask yourself, Can I make it cheaper or as cheaply out of clay? Because clay is inexhaustible. Every place there's dirt. A construction owner should say, I don't have to be committed to this particular product: I can go for the one that will make me money, and make a better civilization... {John Gardner, The Art of Fiction, The Paris Review, 1979}

It is without a doubt a misfortune for a man who has a living to get, to be born of a truly noble nature. A high soul will bring a man to the workhouse... {Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Chapter 19}

It's not easy for people to rise out of obscurity when they have to face straitened circumstances at home. {Juvenal, Satires}

"...a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper." {Jane Austen, Emma, Volume I Chapter 10}

Unbroken worldly prosperity has a natural tendency to harden the sympathies: when life comes so easily to ourselves, it is difficult to fancy it going hardly with others. {Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Ethel Churchill, (1837); Part II/Page 185}

‘It does not make it any better for a man who has to work all the days of his life, and gets no enjoyment out of it, and lives ignobly and dies obscurely, that the same thing happens to most people.’ {Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Chapter VII}

‘...there are thousands and thousands of people who never, all their lives, get to a place where they can be quiet. Always noise, always crowds, always buying and selling...’{Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Chapter XII}

Perfect health and a tolerably prosperous business, where the returns are regular though the profits are small, make the possessor agree with Pope and Candide that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. {Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Chapter I}

O grant me, Heaven, a middle state,
Neither too humble nor too great;
More than enough, for nature's ends,
With something left to treat my friends.
{David Mallet, "Imitation of Horace"}

"I detest bargains; the bargain can only be one, because either the first purchaser is dead, or ruined… A bargain is a social evil; one man’s loss, tempting another man’s cupidity." {Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Ethel Churchill, (1837); Part III/Page 71}

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. {Henry David Thoreau, Walden ('Economy')}

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it - for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. {Henry David Thoreau in a letter to H.G.O. Blake, December 6, 1856}

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. {Emma Goldman}

It is novelty only that can lend charms to things in themselves valueless; and when that wears off, the disenchanted baubles appear in all their native worthlessness... it is only the vulgar mind which can long find enjoyment in the mere attributes of wealth - in the contemplation of silk hangings, and gilded chairs, and shewy equipages. Amidst all these, the mind of any taste or refinement, 'distrusting, asks if this be joy.' {Susan Ferrier, Marriage, Vol III, Chapter XIX}

I remember the time... when if I had made such an attempt my only thought would have been 'what will be said of it?' but now Alas! my only anxiety is, what will be paid for it? - This same poverty has a mighty lowering effect on ones sublimities. {Fanny Trollope on writing (quoted in Fanny Trollope by Teresa Ransom, ch. 6)}

The daydream of his youth was over, and at the age of forty he felt that he was not fit to work in the spirit of an apostle. He had mistaken himself, and learned his mistake when it was past remedy. He had professed himself indifferent to mitres and diaconal residences, to rich livings and pleasant glebes, and now he had to own to himself that he was sighing for the good things of other men, on whom in his pride he had ventured to look down. {Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, Chapter XX}

Of what use a great fire on the hearth and a confounded little fire in the heart? {Henry David Thoreau in a letter to H.G.O. Blake, December 6, 1856}

Alone, neither technology nor commerce can provide a guiding philosophy through which a complex society can live and prosper. While markets are essential to a vibrant culture... not all human needs flow through the marketplace. Markets are tools just as technology is a tool. Their purpose is to serve prosperity, not to be its embodiment... {Peter C. Whybrow, MD, American Mania: When More is Not Enough (New York:Norton, 2005), page 188}

Nature, the City and the Countryside

To one who has been long in city pent,
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven...
{John Keats, To one who has been long in city pent}

…cities need luxuries, were it only to conceal the actual. In the country, an open window lets in at once the fair face of heaven: the sunshine has its own cheerfulness; the green bough flings on the floor its pleasant shade; and the spirit sees, at a glance, the field and the hedge where the hawthorn is in bloom. Not so in a town: there smoke enters at the casement; and we look out upon the darkened wall, and the narrow street, where the very atmosphere is dull and coarse. Its gloomy influence is on all. {Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Ethel Churchill, (1837); Part I/Page 161}

People who think that all sensations reach us through the eye and the ear have expressed surprise that I should notice any difference, except possibly the absence of pavements, between walking in city streets and in country roads. They forget that my whole body is alive to the conditions about me. The rumble and roar of the city smite the nerves of my face, and I feel the ceaseless tramp of an unseen multitude, and the dissonant tumult frets my spirit. The grinding of heavy wagons on hard pavements and the monotonous clangour of machinery are all the more torturing to the nerves if one's attention is not diverted by the panorama that is always present in the noisy streets to people who can see. In the country one sees only Nature's fair works, and one's soul is not saddened by the cruel struggle for mere existence that goes on in the crowded city. {Helen Keller, The Story of My Life; Chapter 22}

The taste of an individual as well as that of a nation will be in direct proportion to the profound sensibility with which he perceives the beautiful in natural scenery... Open wide, therefore, the doors of your libraries and picture galleries, all ye true republicans! Build halls where Knowledge shall be freely diffused among men and not shut up within the narrow walls of narrow institutions... Plant spacious parks in your cities, and unclose their gates as wide as the gates of the morning to the whole people. {Andrew Jackson Downing, quoted in The Hudson by Carl Carmer, 1939: Farrar & Rinehart}

The DSM defines trauma as 'an event that is outside the range of human experience and that would be markedly distressing to almost anyone.' The trauma endured by technological people like ourselves is the systemic and systematic removal of our lives from the natural world: from the tendrils of earthy textures, from the rhythms of sun and moon, from the spirits of the bears and trees, from the life force itself...' {Chellis Glendenning, in Ecopsychology, page 51}

"I get optimism from the Earth itself. I feel that as long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can." {Alice Walker, in The World is Made of Stories, a New Dimensions interview}

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood... The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead. {George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 3}

It was a fine starlight night, and all Trouville was sitting on the sands. The moon was too young to give much light or to cast a definite shadow, but the stars were bright and the sea was phosphorescent. The pleasure-boats rowing close in shore made long tracks of light and each little wave as it broke on the sand or ran along the jetty shook off showers of drops that shone like silver as they rose and fell. A diver was plunging from the head of the pier, making himself like a mass of white fire as he swam about in the water and splashed up sparkling cascades with his hands. But the shining stars and the phosphorescent sea, the beauty of the scene and the sense of power and majesty that pervaded all nature, were in striking contrast with the human beings assembled there, for the most part with the sole object of drowning Time in the enchanted waters of pleasure… {Eliza Lynn Linton, The Rebel of the Family (1880)}

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar...
{Lord Byron, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', Canto IV, Stanza 178}

...this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings... {William Wordsworth, 'Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey'}

Noise & Quiet

All sane people detest noise. {Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth; Letter II}

"Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit." {Ecclesiastes 4:6}

The living in incessant noise was, to a frame and temper delicate and nervous like Fanny's, an evil which no superadded elegance or harmony could have entirely atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard... Here everybody was noisy, every voice was loud... Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke...{Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 39}

"Every body has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity..." {Jane Austen, Persuasion, Vol. II, Ch. II}

I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me; and to me,
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities torture...
{Lord Byron, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', Canto III, Stanza 72

It's just apartment house rules
So all you 'partment house fools
Remember: one man's ceiling is another man's floor
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
{Paul Simon, "One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor", There Goes Rhymin' Simon}

Politics & Politicians

...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...
{William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene ii}

News is what people want to keep hidden, and everything else is publicity. {Bill Moyers, from a speech given in May 2005: In Defense of Public Broadcasting}

'Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.' {Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander, chapter 5; spoken by the character Stephen Maturin}

The respectability of Mr. Vholes has even been cited with crushing effect before Parliamentary committees... private authorities no less disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is coming to, that we are plunging down precipices... that these changes are death to people like Vholes - a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale of Taunton, and three daughters at home... As though, Mr. Vholes and his relations being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses! {Charles Dickens, Bleak House, Chapter 39, "Attorney and Client"}

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody, ought not to be trusted by anybody. {Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part I}

It is time that nations should be rational, and not be governed like animals, for the pleasure of their riders. {Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part II Chapter 5}

I have always believed that the best security for property, be it much or little, is to remove from every part of the community, as far as can possibly be done, every cause of complaint, and every motive to violence; and this can only be done by an equality of rights. {Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government}

The answer of Solon on the question, "Which is the most perfect popular govemment," has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, "That," says he, "where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution." Solon lived about 500 years before Christ. {Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part Second, Chapter III}

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows... {Anthony Trollope, The Warden, Chapter XV}

...Men, who are notorious for Luxury, Pride, Cruelty, Treachery, and the most abandoned Prostitution; Wretches who are ready to invent and maintain Schemes repugnant to the Interest, the Liberty, and the Happiness of Mankind, not to supply their Necessities, or even Conveniencies, but to pamper their Avarice and Ambition. {Henry Fielding, Shamela (1741)} {Fielding may not have been referring specifically to politicians here - but it seems relevant.}

Q: What is the similarity between a fly and a president? A: They can both be killed by newspapers. {Yegor V. Yakovlev, quoted in Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, by Yale Richmond, 2003: Penn. State University Press, p. 171}

These days, the only time politicians are telling the truth is when they call each other a liar. {Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman, Sergio Aragones, ed. Warner, 1997}

Isn't it amazing how political candidates can give you all their good points and qualifications in a 30-second TV commercial? {Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman, Sergio Aragones, ed. Warner, 1997}

‘...the time has come when the people should leave off caring much about the Government or expecting any good thing for themselves from any Government, because it can’t be done in that way. You must find out for yourselves what you want, and then you must have that done. You must combine for these things as you did for wages, and you will get them. And if you spend half the energy in working for yourselves that you have spent in working for things that do you no good, you will be happy indeed...’ {Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Chapter XXVIII}

‘Politics is a game of lying accusations, and impossible promises; the accusations make you angry: the promises make you hopeful. But you get nothing in the long run, and you never will...it is by our own resolution that [our lot] shall be improved.’ {Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Chapter XXVIII}

Progress & Technology

"...we have got to examine the nature of changes before we have a warrant to call them progress, which word is supposed to include a bettering, though I apprehend it to be ill chosen for that purpose, since mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or a precipice." {George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 42}

The 1990s brought the advent of a dynamic new medium for news, the Internet, a magnificent new technology combining the credibility of anonymous hearsay with the excitement of typing. {The Daily Show with Jon Stewart presents America (The Book), Chapter 7}

Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from 'afternoon church,' - as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone - gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now - eager for amusement: prone to excursion trains, art-museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels: prone even to scientific theorising, and cursory peeps through microscopes... {George Eliot, Adam Bede, chapter 52}

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end... We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough... {Henry David Thoreau, Walden ('Economy')}

Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness. {Randall Robinson, The Debt; Dutton Books, 2000}

I hate machines... Flighty, dangerous, what they do is remove us from our true lives, speed us loose from what we would be content to be - walking animals upon the slow and beautiful earth. {novelist Thomas Williams, quoted by W.D. Wetherell in North of Now}

We're living in an age when lemonade is made with artificial ingredients and furniture polish is made with real lemons. {Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman, Sergio Aragones, ed. Warner, 1997}

The 18th century was an age such as our imagination can barely comprehend; weltering as we do in a slough of habitual ugliness, ranging from the dreary horrors of Victorian sham gothic to the more lively hideousness of modern jerry-building, with advertisements defacing any space that might be left unoffendingly blank, and the tourist scattering his trail of chocolate paper, cigarette ends and film cartons, we catch sight every now and again of a house front, plain and graceful, with a fan light like the half of a spider’s web and a slip of an iron balcony; among the florid or stark disfigurements of a graveyard we discover a tombstone with elegant letters composing, in a single sentence, a well turned epitaph. Among a bunch of furnishing fabrics we come upon a traditional 18th-century chintz, formal and exquisitely gay; a print shows us the vista of a London street, with two rows of blond, porticoed houses closing in a view of trees and fields. The ghost of that vanished loveliness haunts us in every memorial that survives the age: a house in its park, a tea cup, the type and binding of a book. {Elizabeth Jenkins, Jane Austen: A Biography, Page 10}

We urgently need to improve the quality of our lives and of our surroundings, rather than to create little paradises of nostalgia in an ocean of superhighways and loudspeakers, billboards, neon signs, parking lots, used-car dumps, and hot dog stands. {Walter Muir Whitehill, With Heritage So Rich, page 159}

Those railways! When would there be peace in the land? Where one single nook of shelter and escape from them!... 'I conjure up all sorts of horrors, the whistle in the night beneath one's windows, and the smoke of trains defacing the landscape; hideous accidents too... this mania for cutting up the land does really cause me to pity those who are to follow us. They will not see the England we have seen. It will be patched and scored, disfigured... You may call it the sentimental view. In this case, I am decidedly sentimental: I love my country. I do love quiet, rural England. Well, and I love beauty, I love simplicity. All that will be destroyed...' {George Meredith, Diana of the Crossways, Chapter V}

Redworth... said a word for the railways: they would certainly make the flesh of swine cheaper, bring a heap of hams into the market. But Andrew Hedger remarked with contempt that he had not much opinion of foreign hams: nobody, knew what they fed on. Hog, he said, would feed on anything, where there was no choice they had wonderful stomachs for food. Only, when they had a choice, they left the worst for last, and home-fed filled them with stuff to make good meat and fat 'what we calls prime bacon.' {George Meredith, Diana of the Crossways, Chapter VIII}

I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing... as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. {Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 1, "Economy"}

Religion & Spirituality

Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies, all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty...our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. {George Eliot, Adam Bede, chapter 3}

"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching." {Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance}

...I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. {Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part First, Chapter 1}

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. {Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects}

"...when I see the world going all wrong at this time o' day, bothering itself wi' things it knows nought about, and leaving undone all the things that lie in disorder close at its hand - why, I say, leave a' this talk about religion alone, and set to work on what yo' see and know. That's my creed..." {Elizabeth Gaskell, North & South, Chapter 11}

How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us, make poetry for a mind that has no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near? {George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 19}

It is of such stuff that superstitions are commonly made: an intense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star shine at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And superstitions carry consequences which often verify their hope or their foreboding. {George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 29}

...if it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual lot, must it not also be true that she seems unmindful, unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different... {George Eliot, Adam Bede, chapter 27}

...I look upon the vulgar observation, That the Devil often deserts his friends, and leaves them in the lurch, to be great abuse on that gentleman's character. Perhaps he may sometimes desert those who are only his cup acquaintance; or who, at most, are but half his; but he generally stands by those who are thoroughly his servants, and helps them off in all extremities 'till their bargain expires. {Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Book 18, ch. 5}

Then stirs the infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt
And purifies from self: it is a tone,
The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eternal harmony...
{Lord Byron, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', Canto III, Stanza 90}

Some people like to say that things happen for a reason, while others insist that life is random. I'm not so sure I believe either one. Because anyone who has ever played poker knows that most wins involve a certain amount of skill and probability. On the other hand, you still need the cards. And you need them at the right moment. {Laura Pedersen, Beginner's Luck}

Sleep & Insomnia

Weary with toil, I haste to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head

To work my mind, when body's work's expired.

{William Shakespeare, Sonnet 27}

...Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,

Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind

Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;

Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,

But, like a lackey, from the rise to set

Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night

Sleeps in Elysium...
{William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 1}

Society

"Free time's like a vacuum - it has to be filled. And if it isn't filled with good stuff, it's filled with bad stuff, stuff that will degrade the individual and corrupt society... If we don't solve the problem of how to school all these children for their responsibilities as citizens, and for the use of their free time, they will ruin themselves and us..." {Mortimer J. Adler, in an interview with Studs Terkel, November 5, 1959; from Voices of Our Time: Five Decades of Studs Terkel Interviews, a set of audiocassettes/CDs published by HighBridge}

Our national character wants the dignity of repose. We seem to live in the midst of a battle - there is such a din, such a hurrying to and fro. In the streets of a crowded city, it is difficult to walk slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd, and rush with it onward. In the press of our life it is difficult to be calm... {Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion}

Our life is frittered away by detail. {Henry David Thoreau, Walden ('Where I Lived)'}

After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. 'Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe,' - and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself. {Henry David Thoreau, Walden ('Where I Lived)'}

To live in this world in which madness daily passes for sanity is a kind of madness in itself. Yet where else can we go? {Jonathan Baumbach}

Every ancient custom ought to be sacred, unless it is prejudicial to Happiness. {Jane Austen, criticising Walpole's government for making the Scottish Highlanders give up wearing kilts; quoted in David Cecil, A Portrait of Jane Austen, NY: Hill & Wang, 1979; p. 46}

War & Peace

"...in my opinion, there never was a good war, or a bad peace. What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility... by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last War have been spent in doing mischief; in bringing misery into thousands of families, and destroying the lives of so many thousands of working people, who might have performed the useful labour!" {Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Sir Joseph Banks, July 27, 1783}

"Lincoln said, ‘With malice toward none, and charity to all.’ Nowadays they say, ‘Think the way I do or I’ll bomb the daylights out of you.’ " {Mr. Vanderhof, a character in the movie 'You Can’t Take It With You', written by Robert Riskin, based on a play by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart}

There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives - when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. {George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Chapter 69}

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? {Mahatma Gandhi, 'Non-Violence in Peace and War'}

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary. {Mahatma Gandhi, 'Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13,' May 3, 1919}

The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy. {Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government}

Work

If I employ a man, and he works faithfully, I should like that man to feel that he grows every day worth to me more than his marketable value.’ {Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Prologue}

People think it better to choose their own work. That is a great mistake. You might just as well want to choose your own disease. {Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882), Chapter VII}

An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. {John William Gardner, Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? p.102}

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then throwing them back again, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now... {Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle}

Experience is something you never have until just after you need it. {Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman, Sergio Aragones, ed. Warner, 1997}

Mansfield Park quote

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