“He who does his best, however little, is always to be distinguished from him who does nothing.”
Samuel Johnson in Rambler 177, according to D.J. Enright’s introduction to Johnson’s The History of Rasselas
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
T.S. Eliot according to https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/101806-half-the-harm-that-is-done-in-this-world-is [part of it was emailed by a friend but whenever possible I do try to check]
“To call this a tendentious reading is to pour more soup than the bowl can hold. Mischievous or adolescent seem a little nearer the mark.”
Rex Murphy in Globe & Mail April 7, 2007 [re a Samson-as-suicide bomber version of Handel’s oratorio]
The historical approach to English Literature “has been destroyed at Cambridge and is now being destroyed at Oxford too. This is done by a compact, well-organized group of whom [F.R.] Leavis is the head. It now has a stranglehold on the schools as well as the universities (and the High Brow press). It is too open and avowed to be called a plot. It is much more like a political party – or Inquisition. Leavis himself is something (in the long run) more fatal than a villain. He is a perfectly sincere, disinterested, fearless, ruthless fanatic. I am sure he would, if necessary, die for his critical principles: I am afraid he might also kill for them. Ultimately, a pathological type – unhappy, intense, mirthless. Incapable of conversation: dead silence or prolonged, passionate, and often irrelevant, monologue are his only two lines.”
A letter from C.S. Lewis to J.B. Priestley on September 18, 1962, quoted in Harry Lee Poe The Completion of C.S. Lewis
“This rock [Plymouth Rock] has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen fragments carefully preserved in several American cities. Does not that clearly prove that man’s power and greatness resides entirely in his soul? A few poor souls trod for an instant on this rock, and it has become famous; it is prized by a great nation; fragments are venerated, and tiny pieces distributed far and wide. What has become of the doorsteps of a thousand palaces? Who cares about them?”
Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America (Lawrence’s translation) [though giving I think a bit too much credit to the Pilgrims in his talk of Puritans]
“That was by no means the first time the question had arisen whether he was more pigheaded than I was strong-minded.”
Archie Goodwin’s internal monologue re himself and Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout “Murder is Corny” in Trio for Blunt Instruments
“All bad language necessarily weakens itself by use.”
G.K. Chesterton in The Bookman December 1931 quoted in “More About Language” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #2 (November/December 2023)
“If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a d*** fool about it.”
W.C. Fields, quoted in the features on a DVD of six classic W.C. Fields shorts [I cast my net widely].