Book I: The Suburb, Ch. IV
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
William McFee:
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quotes
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Famous William McFee Quotes
Harbours of Memory (1921), p. 236
Paraphrased variant: A man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on.
“It is so much easier to tell intimate things in the dark.”
Book I: The Suburb, Ch. IV http://books.google.com/books?id=ByhFAAAAIAAJ&q=%22It+is+so+much+easier+to+tell+intimate+things+in+the+dark%22&pg=PA21#v=onepage
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
"On a Balcony", First lines, in The Atlantic Monthly (January 1920), p. 27
“The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool.”
Book I: The Suburb, Ch. XIII
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
William McFee Quotes
“There is nothing like an odor to stir memories.”
The Market
Context: "And what are those things at all?" demands my companion, diverted for a moment from the flowers. She nods towards a mass of dull-green affairs piled on mats or being lifted from big vans. She is a Cockney and displays surprise when she is told those things are bananas. She shrugs and turns again to the musk-roses, and forgets. But to me, as the harsh, penetrating odor of the green fruit cuts across the heavy perfume of the flowers, comes a picture of the farms in distant Colombia or perhaps Costa Rica. There is nothing like an odor to stir memories.
Dedication
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
Context: To those who live and toil and lowly die,
Who past beyond and leave no lasting trace,
To those from whom our queen Prosperity
Has turned away her fair and fickle face;
To those frail craft upon the restless Sea
Of Human Life, who strike the rocks uncharted,
Who loom, sad phantoms, near us, drearily,
Storm-driven, rudderless, with timbers started;
To those poor Casuals of the way-worn earth,
The feckless wastage of our cunning schemes,
This book is dedicate, their hidden worth
And beauty I have seen in vagrant dreams!
The things we touch, the things we dimly see,
The stiff strange tapestries of human thought,
The silken curtains of our fantasy
Are with their sombre histories o'erwrought.
And yet we know them not, our skill is vain to find
The mute soul's agony, the visions of the blind.
“To those who live and toil and lowly die,
Who past beyond and leave no lasting trace”
Dedication
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
Context: To those who live and toil and lowly die,
Who past beyond and leave no lasting trace,
To those from whom our queen Prosperity
Has turned away her fair and fickle face;
To those frail craft upon the restless Sea
Of Human Life, who strike the rocks uncharted,
Who loom, sad phantoms, near us, drearily,
Storm-driven, rudderless, with timbers started;
To those poor Casuals of the way-worn earth,
The feckless wastage of our cunning schemes,
This book is dedicate, their hidden worth
And beauty I have seen in vagrant dreams!
The things we touch, the things we dimly see,
The stiff strange tapestries of human thought,
The silken curtains of our fantasy
Are with their sombre histories o'erwrought.
And yet we know them not, our skill is vain to find
The mute soul's agony, the visions of the blind.
“If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow.”
Book II: The City, Ch. II
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
The Market
Context: 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.
Book II: The City, Ch. IV
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
"A Six-hour Shift : The Log of a Transport Engineer" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. CXIX, No. 4 (April 1917), p. 449
Book I: The Suburb, Ch. X
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
“People don't ever seem to realise that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune.”
Book II: The City, Ch. VI
Also quoted as: Doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune. Paraphrased variant: "People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune."
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
“Responsibility's like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight.”
Book II: The City, Ch. VI
Casuals of the Sea (1916)
The Market
“And what are those things at all?”
demands my companion, diverted for a moment from the flowers. She nods towards a mass of dull-green affairs piled on mats or being lifted from big vans. She is a Cockney and displays surprise when she is told those things are bananas. She shrugs and turns again to the musk-roses, and forgets. But to me, as the harsh, penetrating odor of the green fruit cuts across the heavy perfume of the flowers, comes a picture of the farms in distant Colombia or perhaps Costa Rica. There is nothing like an odor to stir memories.
The Market
