
"Per Pacem ad Lucem".
A Chaplet of Verses (1862)
Epigraph, Ch. 4 : The Old Gold-Hunter
Shadows of Shasta (1881)
Context: For the Right, through thickest night,
Till the man-brute Wrong be driven
From high places; till the Right
Shall lift like some grand beacon light.
For the Right! Love, Right and duty;
Lift the world up, though you fall
Heaped with dead before the wall;
God can find a soul of beauty
Where it falls, as gems of worth
Are found by miners dark in earth.
"Per Pacem ad Lucem".
A Chaplet of Verses (1862)
Source: The Negro's Complaint (1788), Lines 49-52
“Second to the right and then straight on till morning.”
Act I
Peter Pan (1904)
“You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy
But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!”
Macheath in "Second Threepenny-Finale"; Act 2, scene 3, p. 67
Variant translations:
However much you twist, whatever lies you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on.
Used by the Pet Shop Boys, in "What Keeps Mankind Alive?", Can You Forgive Her (1993 EP)
Food first, then morality.
The Threepenny Opera (1928)
Podcast - Bonus Hour
On Work