“Every great national literature is a fruit of much foreign sustenance and refreshment, however capable the national spirit may prove of mastering the foreign element.”

"The French Renaissance in England" (1910), Preface

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Every great national literature is a fruit of much foreign sustenance and refreshment, however capable the national spi…" by Sidney Lee?

Sidney Lee8

English biographer and critic 1859–1926

Related quotes

“A great nation's foreign policy involves power, money, trade, oil and arms, but it proeeds from ideas.”

William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist

Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 5, Nationalism, p. 149.

“Our country – In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.”

Stephen Decatur (1779–1820) United States Navy officer

Toast at a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia (April 1816) reported in Niles' Weekly Register (Baltimore, Maryland) 20 April 1816; as cited in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (2010), Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, p. 70
Variant: Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
[emphasis added] This widely quoted version is attributed in Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States (1846), C. C. Little and J. Brown, p. 443.
This statement produced the famous slogan "My country, right or wrong!" which itself produced famous responses by:
Carl Schurz "...if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."
Schurz, Carl, remarks in the Senate, February 29, 1872, The Congressional Globe, vol. 45, p. 1287. See Wikisource for the complete speech.
G. K. Chesterton "'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'." -- A Defence of Patriotism
Variant: Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!

“The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 479.

“We have gained very much from foreign sources and even from foreign immigration. The modern conception of keeping out all alien immigrants may be an economic necessity, but I am satisfied it is a psychological evil. The democratic principle is just as important in international as in national affairs.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)

“Israel will not transfer Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District to any foreign sovereign authority, [because] of the historic right of our nation to this land, [and] the needs of our national security, which demand a capability to defend our State and the lives of our citizens.”

Menachem Begin (1913–1992) Israeli politician and Prime Minister

Iron Wall, p. 356

“The current use of the National Guard is wrong… These are men who did not sign up to go occupy foreign nations.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

The Army Times (6 September 2004) http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-ARMYPAPER-323322.php

“The foreign policy of the United States in the decades ahead may prove to be the deciding factor in determining whether or not militant nationalism, aggressive imperialism and international anarchy, are to lead to further wars, or whether an era of international peace shall be ushered in by outlawing war and by creating effective social machinery through which a new and higher conception of nationalism may find expression.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

An American Peace Policy (1925)

“The principal lever relied on by the insurgents for exciting foreign nations to hostility against us, as already intimated, is the embarrassment of commerce. Those nations, however, not improbably saw from the first that it was the Union which made as well our foreign as our domestic commerce. They can scarcely have failed to perceive that the effort for disunion produces the existing difficulty, and that one strong nation promises more durable peace and a more extensive, valuable, and reliable commerce than can the same nation broken into hostile fragments.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)

“Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there’s an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 4
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“If we can't be a great nation in population we can be a great nation in spirit!”

Jakob Hurt (1839–1907) Estonian linguist

International Arvo Part Center signed a contract with Swedbank http://www.arvopart.ee/en/Archive-of-News/international-arvo-paert-centre-signed-a-contract-with-swedbank op arvopart.ee, 2010

“Every great national literature is a fruit of much foreign sustenance and refreshment, however capable the national spirit may prove of mastering the foreign element.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Sidney Lee8

Related quotes

Related topics