John Davidson Quotes (9 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

John Davidson: 9 quotes0 likes

Famous John Davidson Quotes

“Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies:
Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more
In every branch becomes the sale of money.”

John Davidson

Smith (Glasgow: Wilson, 1888) p. 26

“And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that's the proper thing for you.

It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It's walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one.
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.”

John Davidson

"Thirty Bob a Week", p. 97
Ballads and Songs (1894)

“One must become
Fanatic – be a wedge – a thunder-bolt
To smite a passage through the close-grained world.”

John Davidson

Smith (Glasgow: Wilson, 1888) p. 33

“Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair
That went before me still and made the pace.
The earth is full of graves, and mine was there
Before my life began; my resting-place.”

John Davidson

"The Last Journey", from The Testament of dick peter (London: Grant Richards, 1908) p. 146

“Mere by-blows are the world and we,
And time within eternity
A sheer anachronism.”

John Davidson

"Queen Elizabeth's Day", from Fleet Street Eclogues (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., [1893] 1895) p. 198

“That minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.”

John Davidson

There is a Dish to hold the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“My feet are heavy now but on I go,
My head erect beneath the tragic years.”

John Davidson

I felt the World a-spinning on its Nave, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate;
Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate.”

John Davidson

"To My Enemy", p. 2
Ballads and Songs (1894)

“Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear.
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.”

John Davidson

"A Ballad of Hell", p. 85
Ballads and Songs (1894)

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