Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 305
The Life of Students (1915)
Speech to the Virginia Convention (1861)
Context: The majority according to the Northern idea, which will then be the all-pervading, all powerful one, have the right to control. It will be in keeping particularly with the principles of the abolitionists that the majority, no matter of what, shall rule. Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand that? It is not a supposable case. Although not half so numerous, we may readily assume that war will break out everywhere like hidden fire from the earth, and it is probable that the white race, being superior in every respect, may push the other back. They will then call upon the authorities at Washington, to aid them in putting down servile insurrection, and they will send a standing army down upon us, and the volunteers and Wide-Awakes will come in thousands, and we will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth; and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination. That is the fate which Abolition will bring upon the white race.
Source: The Enchantress of Florence
“Whence Men, a hard Race, sprung.”
The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks
Bk. 1, Ch. "The Number You Have Reached"
The Shockwave Rider (1975)
Source: Speech (June 1853), p. 79
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 498.
“One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.”
“Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.”
Source: The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope (1717), Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Line 13.
Opening lines
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
Context: The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called “Keep to-morrow dark,” and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) “Cheat the Prophet.” The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and the childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable.
