Quotes about hunting
page 4

Kenneth Grahame photo
Albert Speer photo
Wayne Pacelle photo
Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone photo

“Conservatives do not believe that political struggle is the most important thing in life…The simplest among them prefer fox-hunting—the wisest religion.”

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (1907–2001) British judge, politician, life peer and Cabinet minister

Quintin Hogg, The Case for Conservatism (Penguin, 1947), p. 10.

George Raymond Richard Martin photo
Robert Hayden photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“A Tame Sound,” p. 75
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “What After”

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Jesus Christ: An irresponsible rabble rouser of communistic tendency; victim of an early witch-hunt.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, Doublespeak Dictionary (within Beyond Hypocrisy), p. 124.

Joseph Strutt photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Only three things in my life I've really liked to do - hunt, write and make love.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Pt. 2, Ch. 5
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Emily Dickinson photo
Lewis Pugh photo
Nathalia Crane photo

“Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy,
And the janitor's boy loves me;
He's going to hunt for a desert isle
In our geography.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"The Janitor's Boy"
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)

Lucy Stone photo

“Fifty years ago the legal injustice imposed upon women was appalling. Wives, widows and mothers seemed to have been hunted out by the law on purpose to see in how many ways they could be wronged and made helpless. A wife by her marriage lost all right to any personal property she might have. The income of her land went to her husband, so that she was made absolutely penniless. If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. If a woman wrote a book the copyright of the same belonged to her husband and not to her. The law counted out in many states how many cups and saucers, spoons and knives and chairs a widow might have when her husband died. I have seen many a widow who took the cups she had bought before she was married and bought them again after her husband died, so as to have them legally. The law gave no right to a married woman to any legal existence at all. Her legal existence was suspended during marriage. She could neither sue nor be sued. If she had a child born alive the law gave her husband the use of all her real estate as long as he should live, and called it by the pleasant name of "the estate by courtesy."”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

When the husband died the law gave the widow the use of one-third of the real estate belonging to him, and it was called the "widow's encumbrance."
The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Michael Grimm photo

“From my days as a Marine in combat, to my tenure working undercover in the FBI, to my service as a Congressman representing the hardworking families on Staten Island and Brooklyn, I have spent my entire life fighting on behalf of the People with honor and integrity. The past 24 hours haven’t changed a thing, and I plan to work harder than ever for the people I am exceedingly proud to represent. To my constituents, let me be absolutely clear: the trumped-up charges against me are false and after my peers see the truth, justice will prevail. And while this groundless witch hunt proves there are powerful forces dedicated to tarnishing my reputation as part of a political vendetta, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t do: It doesn’t take back the billions of dollars in Superstorm Sandy aid I fought for in Congress, it doesn’t undo my flood insurance reform bill that will spare millions of Americans from skyrocketing premiums and home foreclosures, and it doesn’t negate the countless success stories of my office helping constituents with difficult challenges, from losing health coverage thanks to Obamacare, to being denied veteran survivor benefits, to helping our seniors deal with multiple daily struggles, simply put…the lives my staff and I have touched for the better are innumerable. And that’s why I am so heartened by the outpouring of love and support – I am truly humbled to work for the most salt of the earth people in the world. Which is why I am back working hard and doing what I’ve done from day one, relentless trying to improve their quality of life through old fashioned hard work and determination.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

Facebook (29 April 2014) https://www.facebook.com/repmichaelgrimm
2010s

Robert T. Bakker photo
Bei Dao photo

“Freedom is nothing but the distance
between the hunter and the hunted”

Bei Dao (1949) contemporary Chinese (PRC) avant garde poet

"Accomplices", p. 89
The August Sleepwalker (1990)

John Ruysbroeck photo
Alan Charles Kors photo
Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein photo
John Barrowman photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Martin Gardner photo
Alfred Russel Wallace photo
Matt Taibbi photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“Sanders: I have a D minus voting record, from the NRA. I lost an election probably, for congress here in Vermont back in 1988, because I believe we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country. I am on record and have been for a very long time in saying we have got to significantly tighten up the background checks. We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole. 40 percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. We have to deal with the straw man provision which allows people to legally buy guns and then distribute. We’ve got to take on the NRA. And that is my view. And I am, will do everything I can to—the tragedy that we saw in Parkland is unspeakable. And all over this country, parents are scared to death of what might happen when they send their kids to school. This problem is not going to be easily solved. Nobody has a magic solution, alright, but we’ve got to do everything we can do protect the children—
Todd: What does that mean? You say everything we can. Does that mean raising the age when you can purchase an AR-15? Does that mean limiting the purchase of AR-15s?
Sanders: Yes! Yeah, look. Chuck, what I just told you is that for 30 years, I believe that we should not be selling assault weapons in this country. These weapons are not for hunting, they are for killing human beings. These are military weapons. I do not know why we have five million of them running around the United States of America, so of course we have to do that. Of course we have to make it harder for people to purchase weapons. We have people now who are on terrorist watch lists who can purchase a weapon. Does this make any sense to anybody. Bottom line here, Republicans are going to have to say that it’s more important to protect the children of this country than to antagonize the NRA. Are they prepared to do that, I surely hope they are.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Interviewed by Chuck Todd of NBC News on Meet the Press on 18 February 2018 after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting ([Meet the Press - 18 February 2018, 18 February 2018, 1 September 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-february-18-2018-n849191, NBC News, Meet the Press]).
2010s, 2018

Goran Višnjić photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“Hunting was the labour of the savages of North America, but the amusement of the gentlemen of England.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Kearsley, 606
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana

Charles Mackay photo
Tad Williams photo

“Strangely, although the world is already full of fearful things, mortals seems always to hunt for new worries.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 2, Chapter 13, “The Fallen Sun” (p. 307).

Aurangzeb photo

“The village of Sattara near Aurangabad was my hunting ground. Here on the top of a hill, stood a temple with an image of Khande Rai. By God's grace I demolished it, and forbade the temple dancers (muralis) to ply their shameful profession.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Satara (Maharashtra) Kalimat-i-Tayyibat, quoted in Sarkar, Jadu Nath, History of Aurangzeb, Vol. II, p. 94 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/page/n293
Quotes from late medieval histories

Victor Villaseñor photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“For love of bustle is not industry – it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.”
Nam illa tumultu gaudens non est industria sed exagitatae mentis concursatio.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter III: On true and false friendship, Line 5.

Wayne Pacelle photo

“If we could shut down all sport hunting in a moment, we would.”

Wayne Pacelle (1965) American activist

Wayne Pacelle, Impassioned Agitator http://www.huntersagainstpeta.com/the-president-of-the-hsus-wayne-pacelle-howls-about-wolves-being-delisted, Associated Press, December 30, 1991

Fermín Lasuén photo
William Saroyan photo
Henry Fielding photo
Isaac Rosenberg photo

“Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting.”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Source: Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853), Ch. 21

Gore Vidal photo

“…for ferocity there is nothing on Earth equal a Christian bishop hunting "heresy", as they call any opinion contrary to their own.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 1, Priscus to Libanius, Athens March 380

“I have hunted all my life…but an AR-15 is not for hunting. It’s for killing.”

After the February 14, 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, on February 15, 2018 on the floor of the United States Senate ([Marc, Fisher, w:Marc Fisher, February 15, 2018, September 6, 2018, The Washington Post, The AR-15: ‘America’s rifle’ or illegitimate killing machine?, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-ar-15-americas-rifle-or-illegitimate-killing-machine/2018/02/15/743e66ca-1266-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html]; [USA Today, Florida shooting suspect bought gun legally, authorities say, Bart, Jansen, February 15, 2018, August 22, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/02/15/florida-shooting-suspect-bought-gun-legally-authorities-say/340606002/]; [Florida Senators on Parkland School Shooting, February 15, 2018, C-SPAN, August 22, 2018, https://www.c-span.org/video/?441042-15/florida-senators-parkland-school-shooting]; [BBC, FL senator: 'AR-15 is not for hunting, it’s for killing', February 15, 2018, August 22, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-43066528]) and in an interview on Fox News' Fox & Friends ([AR-15s are not the problem, manufacturers say after rifle-wielding teenage gunman kills 17 people at Florida school, Kevin, Breuninger, February 15, 2018, August 22, 2018, CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/ar-15s-not-the-problem-rifle-manufacturers-say-after-school-shooting.html]) and the next day in an appearance in Parkland ([VERBATIM: 'An AR-15 is not for hunting, it's for killing', Reuters, February 16, 2018, August 22, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/video/2018/02/16/verbatim-an-ar-15-is-not-for-hunting-its?videoId=401778248]; ['An AR-15 Is for Killing': Sen. Nelson Hopes FL Shooting Is the 'Turning Point' on Gun Control, Fox News, February 16, 2018, August 22, 2018, http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/02/16/bill-nelson-florida-school-shooting-could-be-turning-point-gun-control]).

Isadora Duncan photo
Nikolai Gogol photo
Phil Brooks photo

“Have you guys ever ghost hunted in Hawaii? No? Well, I have this fat friend… I shouldn't say fat, that might offend him, but he's Samoan and claims to have seen ghosts.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ghost Hunters. October 31, 2006.
In reference to Samoa Joe
Ghost Hunters

Orson Scott Card photo
William Golding photo
Naomi Klein photo
James Dickey photo

“Those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk
Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear.”

James Dickey (1923–1997) American writer

The Heaven of Animals (l. 29–34).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

Edward O. Wilson photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Paul Watson photo

“We are pirates of compassion hunting down, hunting down and destroying pirates of profit.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist

Worldfest video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnhqmF-RBu4
quote honored on XOEarth award http://xoearth.org/humpback-whale/

Jacques-Yves Cousteau photo

“Farming as we do it is hunting, and in the sea we act like barbarians.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Interview (17 July 1971): Cited in: Jane Goodall et al. (2005) Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating.

Neal Stephenson photo
George W. Bush photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“The last speech, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity — how awful!”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

On Iago soliloquy in Othello, in "Notes on Shakespeare" (c. 1812)

Sri Aurobindo photo

“When I had the dividing reason, I shrank from many things; after I had lost it in sight, I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellent, but I could no longer find them.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

Warren Farrell photo

“Alfie was an organizer. He would telephone the other kids a week before that first practice session (which he euphemistically called spring training), and he would knock on their doors the morning of, and they would look out the windows and say, "Hey, it's snowing," and he would say, "It's not snowing all that hard. See you in a half-hour." So we would gather our tired, cold bodies together, throw on our baseball clothes—old shirts, old pants, sneakers, old baseball gloves—and grab a couple of bats and scuffed-up balls, and we would pile onto the subway and ride to Van Cortland Park. We would run to make sure we'd be first to claim a ball field. Of course we were first. Nobody else was that crazy. My brother would direct practice for a couple of hours, batting practice, catching fungoes, fielding, practicing our curves and drops on the sidelines, fingers aching from contact with batted or thrown baseballs. We threw ourselves across that hard bone of a field so we would be ready when the spring suns finally thawed the ground at our feet. If the still-awake dreams of hunting lions in Africa were the peak moments of my night life, those frozen ball fields of February were the highlights of my days.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

Recalling his late brother, from "Life with Alfie," https://books.google.com/books?id=PWEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA233&dq=%22Alfie+was+an+organizer%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMIiqWJ2oHaxwIVipANCh2Utw2g#v=onepage&q=%22Alfie%20was%20an%20organizer%22&f=false in Orange Coast Magazine (November 1990), pp. 233–234
Other Topics

Joseph Strutt photo
Mike Huckabee photo

“[W]atching ducks land on a lake in Arkansas in the winter is about the closest to Heaven as you can find on this earth… and as someone who believes, according to my faith, I will go to Heaven when I die, I am pretty sure that there is duck hunting in Heaven!”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

speaking to an NRA group
[Huckabee, Fluent in the NRA’s Language, Jim, Geraghty, 2007-09-21, National Review, http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/11849/huckabee-fluent-nras-language, 2011-03-01]

Neil Peart photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“To not like is not the same as to hate. You don't like the Taliban, do you? We Brazilian people don't like homosexuals, but we don't persecute and hunt homosexuals.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Interview to Stephen Fry in October 2013. Jair Bolsonaro provoca polêmica em documentário do ator Stephen Fry sobre homofobia https://vejasp.abril.com.br/blog/pop/jair-bolsonaro-provoca-polemica-em-documentario-do-ator-stephen-fry-sobre-homofobia/. Veja SP (23 October 2013).

Lewis Pugh photo
Ahmed Shah Durrani photo

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“What is the light from yon deep wood flashing —
What the sound on the wild wind borne?
What the dark ranks that are onwards dashing
To the voice of the pealing horn?
Who are they that thundering go? —
It is the Black Hunt of the bold Litzou!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Black Hunt of Litzou'
Translations, From the German

Roman Vishniac photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Alain photo

“When the pack is out hunting, the dogs do not fight among themselves.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

One Must Vow
Alain On Happiness (1928)

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Joseph Strutt photo
George W. Bush photo
Neil Peart photo
Kenneth Minogue photo
Roy Sesana photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Madison Grant photo
William Carlos Williams photo

“But the hunted news I get from some obscure patients' eyes is not trivial. It is profound”

The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951), Ch. 54: The Practice
General sources
Context: What is the use of reading the common news of the day, the tragic deaths and abuses of daily living, when for over half a lifetime we have known that they must have occurred just as they have occurred given the conditions that cause them? There is no light in it. It is trivial fill-gap. We know the plane will crash, the train be derailed. And we know why. No one cares, no one can care. We get the news and discount it, we are quite right in doing so. It is trivial. But the hunted news I get from some obscure patients' eyes is not trivial. It is profound: whole academies of learning, whole ecclesiastical hierarchies are founded upon it and have developed what they call their dialectic upon nothing else, their lying dialectics. A dialectic is any arbitrary system, which, since all systems are mere inventions, is necessarily in each case a false premise, upon which a closed system is built shutting out those who confine themselves to it from the rest of the world. All men one way or another use a dialectic of some sort into which they are shut, whether it be an Argentina or a Japan. So each group is maimed. Each is enclosed in a dialectic cloud, incommunicado, and for that reason we rush into wars and prides of the most superficial natures.
Do we not see that we are inarticulate? That is what defeats us.

Joaquin Miller photo

“Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt
I knew thee, in thy glorious youth,
And loved thy vast face, white as truth”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

Epigraph, Ch. 1 : Mount Shasta; this appears as "To Mount Shasta" in In Classic Shades, and Other Poems (1890), p. 126
Variant: I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write upon the sky
The awful autograph of God.
This variant was cited as being in The Ship in the Desert in the 10th edition of Familiar Quotations (1919) by John Bartlett, but this appears to be an incorrect citation of a misquotation first found in The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn (1910), edited by Elizabeth Bislande, p. 161.
Shadows of Shasta (1881)
Context: Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt
I knew thee, in thy glorious youth,
And loved thy vast face, white as truth;
I stood where thunderbolts were wont
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,
And heard dark mountains rock and roll;
I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll
The awful autograph of God!

Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo

“Ought I not to have been more careful to win the good opinion of others, more determined to conquer their hostility or indifference? It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation — to force the esteem of others — seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Journal Intime (1882), Quotes used in the Introduction by Ward
Context: Ought I not to have been more careful to win the good opinion of others, more determined to conquer their hostility or indifference? It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation — to force the esteem of others — seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation. A struggle with unfavorable opinion has seemed to me beneath me, for all the while my heart has been full of sadness and disappointment, and I have known and felt that I have been systematically and deliberately isolated. Untimely despair and the deepest discouragement have been my constant portion. Incapable of taking any interest in my talents for their own sake, I let everything slip as soon as the hope of being loved for them and by them had forsaken me. A hermit against my will, I have not even found peace in solitude, because my inmost conscience has not been any better satisfied than my heart.

Nigel Cumberland photo

“With this kind of baggage around your neck, you will choke your job-hunting opportunities”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), p.25
Context: Employers are not going to hire a candidate who is stressed by cashflow and family problems. With this kind of baggage around your neck, you will choke your job-hunting opportunities.

Bill Bailey photo
P. J. O'Rourke photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo

“The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east.”

By the Waters of Babylon (1937)
Context: The north and the west and the south are good hunting ground, but it is forbidden to go east. It is forbidden to go to any of the Dead Places except to search for metal and then he who touches the metal must be a priest or the son of a priest. Afterwards, both the man and the metal must be purified. These are the rules and the laws; they are well made. It is forbidden to cross the great river and look upon the place that was the Place of the Gods — this is most strictly forbidden. We do not even say its name though we know its name. It is there that spirits live, and demons — it is there that there are the ashes of the Great Burning. These things are forbidden — they have been forbidden since the beginning of time.

Robert Williams Buchanan photo

“So hath he hunted down the gods
As well as human things!”

Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901) Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist

Balder the Beautiful (1877)
Context: “O Balder, he who fashion’d us,
And bade us live and move,
Shall weave for Death’s sad heavenly hair
Immortal flowers of love.
“Ah! never fail’d my servant Death,
Whene’er I named his name,—
But at my bidding he hath flown
As swift as frost or flame.
“Yea, as a sleuth-hound tracks a man,
And finds his form, and springs,
So hath he hunted down the gods
As well as human things!
“Yet only thro’ the strength of Death
A god shall fall or rise —
A thousand lie on the cold snows,
Stone still, with marble eyes.
“But whosoe’er shall conquer Death,
Tho’ mortal man he be,
Shall in his season rise again,
And live, with thee, and me!
“And whosoe’er loves mortals most
Shall conquer Death the best,
Yea, whosoe’er grows beautiful
Shall grow divinely blest.”
The white Christ raised his shining face
To that still bright’ning sky.
“Only the beautiful shall abide,
Only the base shall die!”

Nigel Cumberland photo

“Poor quality job-hunting can be the surest way of remaining without work, of being depressed and of feeling that life has no direction.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), p.13

Bill Bailey photo

“Even if you’re not particularly religious, then you have to admit that religion surrounds us even in the most mundane aspects of our lives. I was trying to rent a car, and the bloke said to me: "You’re not covered for acts of God."
I said: "What do you mean by that?", he said: [waving arms] "Woooooh!"
I said, "Can you be a bit more specific?", and he went, [vaguely gesticulating] "Eh… ooooh… uh?"
I said, "I’m intrigued because you said 'acts of God', and not gods, or spirits, or jinn, or nymphs, but 'God', a capital God, a monotheistic religion, maybe a Judeo-Christian religion, which would imply a belief system, which would perhaps lead to free-will and determinism, so logically anything that man does directly or indirectly is in fact an act of God, so I’m not covered for anything!"
He said, "I’ll get the manager."
Then I said, "What do you mean by an act of God? What do you mean by that?"
He said, "I dunno, a plague of locusts or something."
"'A plague of locusts'? They swarm round the vehicle, rip the wing mirrors off, and I’m liable for a fifty pound excess?”
And he said, "No, like, rain or something."
I said, "Yeah, but how much rain? It’s drizzling a bit now, is that an act of God? At what point does the rain reach a certain level beyond which it takes on the more apocalyptic mantle of the water-based punishment of the Lord!?"
And he said, [despairing] "I just work Saturdays."
I said "You can’t answer me, can you? Your policy is riddled with theological inconsistency. You disgust me. You twist and turn. You remind me of the Siberian hunting spider, which adopts a highly-convincing limp in three of its eight legs in order to attract its main prey, the so-called Samaritan squirrel, which takes pity on the spider, and then the spider jumps on it and injects the paralysing venom, and the squirrel remains bafflingly philosophical about the whole thing. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian hunting spider, which actually has got a limp and is, as such, completely harmless, and a little bit bitter about the whole thing: [imitating spider] 'Siberian spider have good leg, have nice day, can catch fly, can make web, can catch fly for family, I can do nothing, my leg, it drags behind! It drags! [audience laughs] And you laugh! You make fun! Oh, ha, big joke! I am failure! I am freak! [singing] But in my dreams I can fly, I'm the greatest spider in town. But I wake and it's cold, and I feel so old, and my legs are dragging me down.'"
And then the manager came out, and he said: “Stop all that spider singing."”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Pointed to a sign on the wall: a spider with a line through it. "Oh, fair enough."
He said "I can offer you an upgrade, fifty quid, and we can include in it policies set in place by the Marquis de Laplace, the French scientist who declared that all things in the universe are predetermined, so you would be covered even if time-travel was invented during the period of rental.”
I said, "Nah, probably leave it."
Part Troll (2004)

Robert Peel photo

“…if wheat were at this moment subject to a duty of twenty shillings the quarter, and if Indian corn were virtually excluded, next winter would not pass without a convulsion endangering the whole frame of society, without the humiliation of constituted authorities forced to yield after a disgraceful struggle…if their [the Protectionists] advice had been taken, we should have had famine prices for many articles, and a state of exasperated public feeling and just agitation, which it would require wiser heads than theirs to allay. So far from regretting the expulsion from office, I rejoice in it as the greatest relief from an intolerable burden. To have your own way, and to be for five years the Minister of this country in the House of Commons, is quite enough for any man's strength. He is entitled to his discharge, from length of service. But to have to incur the deepest responsibility, to bear the heaviest toil, to reconcile colleagues with conflicting opinions to a common course of action, to keep together in harmony the Sovereign, the Lords and the Commons; to have to do these things, and to be at the same time the tool of a party—that is to say, to adopt the opinions of men who have not access to your knowledge, and could not profit by it if they had, who spend their time in eating and drinking, and hunting, shooting, gambling, horse-racing, and so forth—would be an odious servitude, to which I will never submit. I determine to keep aloof from party combinations.”

Robert Peel (1788–1850) British Conservative statesman

Letter to Lord Hardinge (24 September, 1846).
Charles Stuart Parker (ed.), Sir Robert Peel from His Private Papers. Volume III (London: John Murray, 1899), pp. 473-474.

James Branch Cabell photo

“Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

The Judging of Jurgen (1920)
Context: In Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are synonyms,… the tumblebug explained. — I know, for already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three detected makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have been no more free from makers of literature than are the other countries.…