He loves black people with a fuck of a lot of money

I would like to say yeah, he [Kanye West*] was right but he wasn't ... I'm sure George Bush has a lot of black friends. He loves black people with a fuck of a lot of money. He doesn't care about people that don't have money. It just so happens that those people are black.

William James Adams [will.i.am], quoted in D. Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per minute: a history of protest songs (2010), 676


* This was Kanye West saying on live television, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 'George Bush doesn't care about black people'

On the other hand, we were on acid

You can't approach the White Panther party without a sense of humour .. I mean, on the one hand we were serious political revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the government. On the other hand, we were on acid.

John Sinclair, quoted in D. Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per minute: a history of protest songs (2010), 209

In break-up terms, the equivalent of piling his ex-lover's belongings in a heap and setting fire to them

[Dylan] returned at Yarrow's urging for an acoustic encore of 'Mr Tambourine Man' and, telling, 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'. Unsettled and irate, he then went off and wrote the scornful 'Positively 4th Street' - in break-up terms, the equivalent of piling his ex-lover's belongings in a heap and setting fire to them.

D. Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per minute: a history of protest songs (2010), 86

At dawn the barbed wire was full of children’s washing hung out in the wind to dry

The mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed their luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children’s washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?

P. Levi, If this is a man (1958), tr. S. Woolf, If this is a Man / The Truce (1979), 21

The principles of progress and reform had been those of wisdom and justice in every age of the world

He [Dr Arnold] was, as he consistently declared, a Liberal. In his opinion, by the very constitution of human nature, the principles of progress and reform had been those of wisdom and justice in every age of the world - except one: that which preceded the fall of man from paradise. Had he lived then Dr Arnold would have been a Conservative.

L. Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918), 174

He could not withstand the last enchantment of the Middle Age

If Newman had never lived, or if his father when the gig came round on the fatal morning, still undecided between the two Universities, had chanced to turn the horse's head in the direction of Cambridge, who can doubt that the Oxford Movement would have flickered out its little flame unobserved in the Common Room of Oriel. And how different, too, would have been the fate of Newman himself! ... At Oxford, he was doomed. He could not withstand the last enchantment of the Middle Age.It was in vain that he plunged into the pages of Gibbon or communed for long hours with Beethoven over his beloved violin. The air was thick with clerical sanctity, heavy with the odours of tradition and the soft warmth of spiritual authority.

[There's actually lots more of this. I'd urge you to read it]

L. Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1918), 23

I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had

When you are young, you think that the old lament the deterioration of life because this makes it easier for them to die without regret. When you are old, you become impatient with the way in which the young applaud the most insignificant improvements - the invention of some new valve or sprocket - while remaining heedless of the world’s barbarism. I don’t say things have got worse; I merely say the young wouldn’t notice if they had. The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.

J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), 199

I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes

I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocence and honesty. Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are brown: reliability and common sense. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler.

J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), 85

'I live alone, like a bear.'

'I [Flaubert] live alone, like a bear.' (The word 'alone' in this sentence is best glossed as: 'alone except for my parents, my sister, the servants, our dog, Caroline's goat, and my regular visits from Alfred le Poittevin'.)

J. Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot (1984), 48 

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there

L.P. Hartley, The Go between (1953), 1

Two points:
1. I hadn't ever realised this was from a novel as recent as the 50s, but have now discovered it. It's a great line, one every historian who is asked to demonstrate relevance of their work would do well to reply with.
2. Reading the book, it astonished me how many people commented on the Yellow Pages advert that refers to J.R. Hartley. That ad was first shown in 1983! Extraordinary.

Fleetingly I thought of the Mongolian horsemen

Fleetingly I thought of the Mongolian horsemen who tried to make of China an infinite pasture ground and then grew old in the cities they had longed to destroy

J.L. Borges, 'Story of the warrior and the captive' in Labyrinths (1962), 161

Temple Haynes pointed at pictures in turn with a stick, inviting the little men to name them

Temple Haynes pointed at pictures in turn with a stick, inviting the little men to name them. He seemed pleased to see Moneypenny. "I don't seen to getting very far with this dialect," he said. "They keep saying the same thing. They seem to give everything the same name." He read off a weird word from his notebook. "That," he said.

"Yes," said Moneypenny. "That means 'picture'."

"Why do you have more than one picture of each thing?" asked Crabbe.

"That," said Temple Haynes, "is for plurals."

A. Burgess, Beds in the East (1959), Malayan trilogy edition: 508
"

Protestantism is a disreputable young brother

My reactions are most unorthodox. I feel less hurt about your entering Islam than I would if you were to become a Protestant. That is wrong, for Protestantism is a disreputable young brother but still of the family. Whereas Islam is the old enemy.

A. Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), Malayan trilogy edition: 244

Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose

Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological department  has done in the corruption of human language makes if unnecessary to warn you that they must never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won't. It will never occur to them that Democracy is properly the name of a political system, even of a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor, of course, must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle's question: whether 'democratic behaviour means the behaviour the democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.

You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate.  

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape letters (1942), 197

The parochial organisation should always be attacked

Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that 'suits' him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organisation should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy [God] desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape letters (1942), 81

It is a fact amazing to ordinary mortals that The Jupiter is never wrong

I wanted to post the entire chapter on the power of the press from The Warden, but it's too long. This is the best bit - the entire thing is here.

It is a fact amazing to ordinary mortals that The Jupiter [i.e. the Times] is never wrong. With what endless care, with what unsparing labour, do we not strive to get together for our great national council the men most fitting to compose it. And how we fail! Parliament is always wrong: look at The Jupiter, and see how futile are their meetings, how vain their council, how needless all their trouble! With what pride do we regard our chief ministers, the great servants of state, the oligarchs of the nation on whose wisdom we lean, to whom we look for guidance in our difficulties! But what are they to the writers of The Jupiter? They hold council together and with anxious thought painfully elaborate their country's good; but when all is done, The Jupiter declares that all is naught. Why should we look to Lord John Russell - why should we regard Palmerston and Gladstone, when Tom Towers without a struggle can put us right? Look at our generals, what faults they make; at our admirals, how inactive they are. What money, honesty, and science can do, is done; and yet how badly are our troops brought together, fed, conveyed, clothed, armed, and managed. The most excellent of our good men do their best to man our ships, with the assistance of all possible external appliances; but in vain. All, all is wrong - alas! alas! Tom Towers, and he alone, knows all about it. Why, oh why, ye earthly ministers, why have ye not followed more closely this heaven-sent messenger that is among us?

A. Trollope, The Warden (1855), 181

Ever rising on stepping-stones of dead whiskies and sodas

Where most of his [Galahad's] contemporaries had reluctantly thrown in the towel and retired to Harrogate and Buxton to nurse their gout, he had gone blithely on, ever rising on stepping-stones of dead whiskies and sodas to higher things. He had discovered the prime grand secret of eternal youth - to keep the decanter circulating and never to go to bed before four in the morning. His eye was not dimmed nor his natural force abated, his heart was of gold and in the right place, and he was loved by all except the female members of his own family.

P.G. Wodehouse, Full Moon (1947), 65

One of the many gods that Dr. Juvenal Urbino wrote with a small g

the Revered Jonathan B. Lynch, a lean black Protestant minister who rode on a mule through the poverty-stricken settlements in the salt marshes, preaching the word of one of the many gods that Dr. Juvenal Urbino wrote with a small g to distinguish them from his own.

G. Garcia Marquez, Love in the time of Cholera (1985), tr. E.Grossman (1988), 241

They like command better than power

military men are the opposite of you, general, they're men of quick and easy ambition, they like command better than power and they're not in the service of something but of someone, and that's why it's so easy to make use of them, he said, especially one against the other,

G. Garcia Marquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), 160

The Liberals were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests

The Liberals ... were Freemasons, bad people, wanting to hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce,  to recognise the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut up the country into a federal system that would take power away from the supreme authority. The Conservatives, on the other hand, who had received their power directly from God, proposed the establishment of public order and family morality. They were the defenders of the faith of Jesus Christ, of the principle of authority, and were not prepared to permit the country to be broken down into autonomous entities.

G. Garcia Marquez, One hundred years of solitude (1967), 98

Billy didn't think there would be a blank cartridge in a squad that small, in a war that old

Billy closed that one eye, saw in his memory of the future poor old Edgar Derby in front of a firing squad in the ruins of Dresden. There were only four men in that squad. Billy had heard that one man in each firing squad was customarily given a rifle loaded with a blank cartridge. Billy didn't think there would be a blank cartridge in a squad that small, in a war that old.

K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (1969), 86

Secret? My God - from whom?

I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on Dresden, who ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what desirable results there had been and so on. I was answered by a man who, like myself, was in public relations. He said that he was sorry, but that the information was top secret still.

I read the letter out loud to my wife, and I said, 'Secret? My God - from whom?'

K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5 (1969), 9

Because these were people she knew, she refrained from calling them "degenerates" or "infidels"

When some rich Muslim families in Şişli and Nişantaşı began buying pine trees to decorate and display in windows the way Christians did in films, I remember that even my mother felt uneasy, but because these were people she knew, she refrained from calling them "degenerates" or "infidels" as the religious press would, dismissing them rather as "harebrained."

O. Pamuk, The museum of Innocence (2009), 446

The absolute black of the sky dulled and dimmed

The absolute black of the sky dulled and dimmed and blanched slowly away, and finally half a dozen daubs of cloud, dull powder pink, sailed high in a pale-green sky, rust-red at the horizon.

M. Robinson, Housekeeping (1980),117

One seems to hear the bugles blowing for the Crusades

[']I rather wish sometimes, Connie,' said Lady Julia meditatively, 'that you were a little less of the grande dame. It's wonderful to watch you in action, I admit - one seems to hear the bugles blowing for the Crusades and the tramp of the mailed feet of a hundred steel-clad ancestors - but there's no getting away from it that you do put people's backs up a bit.'

P.G Wodehouse, Heavy Weather (1933), 240-241

A public-house for each individual inhabitant

The ideal towards which the City Fathers of all English county towns strive is to provide a public-house for each individual inhabitant; and those of Market Blandings had not been supine in this matter. From where Beach stood, he could see no fewer than six such establishments.

P.G. Wodehouse, Heavy Weather (1933), 153

The deceased was a Russian by birth, and therefore excitable

He did not attempt to disguise his own opinion, which was that the deceased had taken his own life. ... Various motives had been suggested, and the jury must bear in mind that the deceased was a Russian by birth, and therefore excitable, and liable to be overcome by feelings of melancholy and despair. He himself  had read a great deal of Russian literature and could assure the jury that suicide was of frequent occurrence among the members of that unhappy nation. We who enjoyed the blessing of being British might find that difficult to understand, but the jury could take it from him that it was so.

D.L. Sayers, Have his carcase (1932),  277

Satan is real

Preacher, tell them that Satan is real too. You can hear him in songs that give praise to idols and sinful things of this world. You can see him in the destruction of homes torn apart. I know that Satan is real. For once I had a happy home; I was loved and respected by my family; I was looked upon as a leader in my community. And then Satan came into my life, I grew selfish and un-neighbourly. My friends turned against me. And finally my home was broken apart. My children took their path into a world of sin.

Yes, preacher, it’s sweet to know that God is real. And to know that in him all things are possible. And we know that heaven is a real place, where joy shall never end. But sinner friends, if you’re here today, Satan is real too, and hell is a real place. A place of everlasting punishment.

The Louvin Brothers, 'Satan is Real', Satan is Real (1959), 1.11 - 2.24

Votaries initiated in the orgies of Dionysus ran about in goat-skins, mangling hounds in Bacchic frenzy

Accordingly during the whole period of his [Valens'] reign the altar fire was lit, libations and sacrifices were offered to idols, public feasts were celebrated in the forum, and votaries initiated in the orgies of Dionysus ran about in goat-skins, mangling hounds in Bacchic frenzy, and generally behaving in such a way as to show the iniquity of their master. When the right faithful Theodosius found all these evils he pulled them up by the roots, and consigned them to oblivion.

Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Ecclesiastical History V.21.4-5, tr. NPNF

If Keith Richards is running your intervention, you're in trouble

Keith sincerely feared Gram [Parsons] was doing an unhealthy amount of heroin. It hardly needs saying that if Keith Richards is running your intervention, you're in trouble

D.N. Meyer, Twenty thousand roads: the ballad of Gram Parsons (2007), 351

As objective as a panel of butchers telling us we should eat more meat

Everyone wants to live what they would see as the good life. Philosophers have had plenty to say about what this comprises, but their answers have tended to reveal an unsurprising bias. As people who value thought and contemplation, they have tended to come up with the idea that the good life is one of thought and contemplation. For some reason this answer has been granted a great deal of respect, even though it looks as objective as a panel of butchers telling us we should eat more meat.

J. Baggini, Welcome to Everytown (2007), 96-97

Pounded to death by the thunder of its own prosperity

The once ancient, free, and Hanseatic city of Hamburg, now almost pounded to death by the thunder of its own prosperity

J. Le Carré, Smiley's People (1979), 27

For fifty years the world has talked of, condemned, and executed Robespierre

For fifty years the world has talked of, condemned, and executed Robespierre. Men and women, who have barely heard the names of Pitt and Fox, who know not whether Metternich is a man or a river, or one of the United States, speak of Robespierre as of a thing accursed. They know, at any rate, what he was--the demon of the revolution; the source of the fountain of blood with which Paris was deluged; the murderer of the thousands whose bodies choked the course of the Loire and the Rhone. Who knows not enough of Robespierre to condemn him?

...

Has it not been proved to us that crooked-backed Richard was a good and politic King; and that the iniquities of Henry VIII are fabulous? whereas the agreeable predilections of our early youth are disturbed by our hearing that glorious Queen Bess, and learned King James, were mean, bloodthirsty, and selfish.

A. Trollope, The Vendee (1850), Kindle ed. loc 4399 and 4405

But rebellion and hell-fire are synonomous

"But rebellion and hell-fire are synonomous," said the priest, "and loyalty is the road to Paradise

A. Trollope, The Vendee (1850), Kindle ed. loc. 637

Only the whore of Babylon rises rather splendid

Only the whore of Babylon rises rather splendid, sitting in her purple and scarlet upon her scarlet beast. She is the Magna Mater in malefic aspect, clothed in the colours of the angry sun, and throned upon the great red dragon of the angry cosmic power. Splendid she sits, and splendid is her Babylon. How the late apocalyptists love mouthing out all about the gold and silver and cinnamon of evil Babylon! How they want them all! How they envy Babylon her splendour, envy, envy! How they love destroying it all! The harlot sits magnificent with her golden cup of the wine of sensual pleasure in her hand. How the apocalyptists would have loved to drink out of her cup! And since they couldn't: how they loved smashing it!

D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (1931), 87-88

It is a great relief to find Anaximander's wheels in Ezekiel

It is a great relief to find Anaximander's wheels in Ezekiel. The bible at once becomes a book of the human race instead of being a corked up bottle of 'inspiration'. And so it is a relief to find the four Creatures of the four quarters of the heavens, winged and starry. Immediately we are out in the great Chaldean star spaces, instead of being pinched up in a Jewish tabernacle.

D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (1931), 36

For Anaximander's wheels, here, but it's not important

Religion is the most dangerous thing in the world

'Exactly. Religion is the most dangerous thing in the world. It is not little girls in their communion frocks and silly holy pictures and the Children of Mary. It is,' he said, 'high explosive, dynamite, the,' he smiled at the conceit, 'splitting of the atom.'

...

'Your church,' I said, 'anticipated Carlo's reforms.'
'My church knew what it was doing,. It knew it would turn into a club for upperclass Englishmen. You may laugh at it, but it's a safe church, not like yours. It's tepid, because it knows that fire burns. It thinks fire should be imprisoned in an Adam fireplace, not held in the hand. Never despise tepidity,'

A. Burgess, Earthly Powers (1982), 345 and 629


I've paired these two, because I think they summarise Burgess' view of religion, which threatens to be true. The first is spoken by the catholic priest who later becomes pope; the latter by an English poet. This juxtaposition is as telling as the words, and it's the great glory of Anglicanism that it's almost true, but, just, not quite.

Get off Comparative Literature: it doesn't help you to cope with life

I looked at him and very nearly said: Here are you teaching comparative literature, the big subtle stuff crammed with ambiguities, and you've been put in the situation of melodrama, very simple and crude, a teenage daughter turned into an unmarried mother and a wife distraught with the shame of it, yourself a sorrowing father. Get off Comparative Literature: it doesn't help you to cope with life

A. Burgess, Earthly Powers (1980), 593

There are bad men and good men, it's as simple as that

'Divine mysteries, all nonsense,' she said. 'There are bad men and good men, it's as simple as that. Greed and malevolence face moderation and decency. Carlo always wants to bring theology into things, blame everything  on the devil.'
'That's his trade.'
'Yes, his trade. Evil's necessary to his trade. Without evil he'd have nothing to do.'

A. Burgess, Earthly Powers (1980), 300

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

A. Burgess, Earthly Powers (1980), 1

Can you explain the Trinity to me?

[Mayor] 'Can you explain the Trinity to me? It was more than they could do in Salamanca.'

[Monsignor Quixote] 'I can try.'
'Try then.'
'You see these bottles?'
'Of course.'
'Two bottles equal in size. The wine they contained was of the same substance and it was born at the same time. There you have God the Father and God the Son and there, in the half bottle, God the Holy Ghost. Same substance. Same birth. They’re inseparable. Whoever partakes of one partakes of all three.'
'I was never even in Salamanca able to see the point of the Holy Ghost. He has always seemed to me a bit redundant.'
'We were not satisfied with two bottles, were we? That half bottle gave us the extra spark of life we both needed. We wouldn’t have been so happy without it.'
....

'May God forgive me,' Father Quixote said,  'for I have sinned.'
'It was only a joke, father. Surely your God does understand a joke.'
'I have been guilty of heresy,' Father Quixote replied. 'I think - perhaps - I am unworthy to be a priest.'
'What have you done?'
'I have given wrong instruction. The Holy Ghost is equal in all respect to the Father and the Son, and I have represented Him by this half bottle.'
'Is that a serious error, father?'
'It is anathema. It was condemned expressly at I forget which Council. A very early Council. Perhaps it was Nicaea.'
'Don’t worry, father. The matter is easily put right. We will throw away and forget this half bottle and I will bring a whole bottle from the car.'

G. Greene, Monisgnor Quixote (1982), 51-53