C. L. R. James Quotes

The nunneries of silent nooks, the murmured longing of the wood.

Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves.

Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.

Let us be thankful that there is no court by which we can be excluded from our share in the inheritance of the great poets of all ages and countries, to which our simple humanity entitles us.

I tell ye wut, my judgment is you're pooty sure to fail, Ez long 'z the head keeps turnin' back for counsel to the the tail.

Tis easy now for the heart to be true As for grass to be green or skies to be blue-- 'Tis the natural way of living.

Attention is the stuff that memory is made of, and memory is accumulated genius.

To put more faith in lies and hate than truth and love, is the true atheism.

I who still pray at morning and at eve Thrice in my life perhaps have truly prayed, Thrice stirred below conscious self Have felt that perfect disenthrallment which is God.

Where Church and State are habitually associated, it is natural that minds, even of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler mode of police.

Practical application is the only mordant which will set things in the memory. Study without it is gymnastics, and not work, which alone will get intellectual bread.

I love her with a love as still As a broad river's peaceful might, Which by high tower and lowly mill, Goes wandering at its own will, And yet does ever flow aright.

The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State.

All thoughts that mold the age begin deep down within the primitive soul.

It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many broken purposes and lives left in the rough.

To have greatly dreamed precludes low ends.

In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing.

Borrowed garments never keep one warm.

Moral supremacy is the only one that leaves monuments, and not ruins, behind it.

It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is...

A ginooine statesman should be on his guard, if he must hev beliefs, not to b'lieve 'em too hard.

It seems to me that the bane of our country is a profession of faith either with no basis of real belief, or with no proper examination of the grounds on which the creed is supposed to rest.

Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best.

The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.

The pine is the mother of legends.

When I was a beggarly boy, And lived in a cellar damp, I had not a friend nor a toy, But I had Aladdin's lamp.

The true ideal is not opposed to the real but lies in it; and blessed are the eyes that find it.

He gives only the worthless gold who gives from a sense of duty.

In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.

The surest plan to make a man is, think him so.

But better far it is to speak One simple word, which now and then Shall waken their free nature in the weak And friendless sons of men.

At the devil's booth are all things sold. Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold.

In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained; Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, "I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?"

Every person born into this world their work is born with them.

Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.

If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes.

Truth only needs to be for once spoken out; and there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, as makes men's memories her joyous slaves.

Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue; but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.

We cannot but think there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle's theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals.

The story of any one man's real experience finds its startling parallel in that of every one of us.

He who keeps his faith only, cannot be discrowned.

To fail at all is to fail utterly.

Comparative criticism teaches us that moral and aesthetic defects are more nearly related than is commonly supposed.

All that hath been majestical In life or death, since time began, Is native in the simple heart of all, The angel heat of man.

Large charity doth never soil, but only whitens soft white hands.

That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong man behind it.

Love lives on, and hath a power to bless when they who loved are hidden in the grave.

Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.

The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it; but they are tuned differently in every one of us.