Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner - Charles Dudley Warner
QUOTES AND IMAGES FROM CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
THE WRITINGS OF
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
CONTENTS
Summer in a Garden
Backlog Studies
Baddeck
In the Wilderness
Spring in New England
Captain John Smith
Pocahontas
Saunterings
Being a Boy
On Horseback
For whom Shakespeare Wrote
Novel and School
England
Their Pilgrimage
Mr. Froude's Progress
Modern Fiction
Your Culture to Me
Equality
Literature and Life
Literary Copyright
Indeterminate Sentence
Education of the Negro
Causes of Discontent
Pilgrim and American
Diversities of American Life
American Newspaper
Fashions in Literature
Washington Irving
Nine Short Essays
CONTENTS:
Night in Tuilleries
Truthfulness
Pursuit of Happiness
Literature and the Stage
Life Prolonging Art
H.H. in S. California
Simplicity
English Volunteers
Nathan Hale
As We Go
As We Were Saying
That Fortune
The Golden House
Little Journey in the World
PASSAGES AND SHORT QUOTATIONS FROM
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
WASHINGTON IRVING
"Some persons, in looking upon life, view it as they would view a
picture, with a stern and criticising eye. He also looks upon life as a
picture, but to catch its beauties, its lights,--not its defects and
shadows. On the former he loves to dwell. He has a wonderful knack at
shutting his eyes to the sinister side of anything. Never beat a more
kindly heart than his; alive to the sorrows, but not to the faults, of
his friends, but doubly alive to their virtues and goodness. Indeed,
people seemed to grow more good with one so unselfish and so gentle."
--Emily Foster.
....authors are particularly candid in admitting the faults of their
friends.
The governor, from the stern of his schooner, gave a short but truly
patriarchal address to his citizens, wherein he recommended them to
comport like loyal and peaceable subjects,--to go to church regularly on
Sundays, and to mind their business all the week besides. That the women
should be dutiful and affectionate to their husbands,--looking after
nobody's concerns but their own,--eschewing all gossipings and morning
gaddings,--and carrying short tongues and long petticoats. That the men
should abstain from intermeddling in public concerns, intrusting the
cares of government to the officers appointed to support them, staying at
home, like good citizens, making money for themselves, and getting
children for the benefit of their country.
It happens to the princes of literature to encounter periods of varying
duration when their names are revered and their books are not read. The
growth, not to say the fluctuation, of Shakespeare's popularity is one of
the curiosities of literary history. Worshiped by his contemporaries,
apostrophized by Milton only fourteen pears after his death as the "dear
son of memory, great heir to fame,"--"So sepulchred in such pomp dost
lie, That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die,"--he was neglected
by the succeeding age, the subject of violent extremes of opinion in the
eighteenth century, and so lightly esteemed by some that Hume could doubt
if he were a poet "capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a
refined and intelligent audience," and attribute to the rudeness of his
"disproportioned and misshapen" genius the "reproach of barbarism" which
the English nation had suffered from all its neighbors.
I have lost confidence in the favorable disposition of my countrymen, and
look forward to cold scrutiny and stern criticism, and this is a line of
writing in which I have not hitherto ascertained my own powers. Could I
afford it, I should like to write, and to lay my writings aside when
finished. There is an independent delight in study and in the creative
exercise of the pen; we live in a world of dreams, but publication lets
in the noisy rabble of the world, and there is an end of our dreaming.
THEIR PILGRIMAGE
Act of eating is apt to be disenchanting
Air of endurance that fathers of families put on
Anxiously asked at every turn how he likes it
As much by what they did not say as by what they did say
Asked Mr King if this was his first visit
Beautifully regular and more satisfactorily monotonous
Best part of a conversation is the things not said
Comfort of leaving same things to the imagination
Common attitude of the wholesale to the retail dealer
Confident opinions about everything
Couldn't stand this sort of thing much longer
Designed by a carpenter, and executed by a stone-mason
Facetious humor that is more dangerous than grumbling
Fat men/women were never intended for this sort of exhibition
Feeding together in a large room must be a little humiliating
Fish, they seemed to say, are not so easily caught as men
Florid man, who "swelled" in, patronizing the entire room
Hated a fellow that was always in high spirits
Irresponsibility of hotel life
It is a kind of information I have learned to dispense with
It's an occupation for a man to keep up a cottage
Let me be unhappy now and then, and not say anything about it
Live, in short, rather more for one's self than for society
Loftily condescending
Lunch was dinner and that dinner was supper
Man in love is poor company for himself and for everybody else
Nearsighted, you know, about seeing people that are not
Not to care about anything you do care about
Notion of duty has to account for much of the misery in life
People who haven't so many corners as our people have
People who leave home on purpose to grumble
Pet dogs of all degrees of ugliness
Satisfy the average taste without the least aid from art
Seemed only a poor imitation of pleasure
Shrinking little man, whose whole appearance was an apology
Small frame houses hopelessly decorated with scroll-work
So many swearing colors
Thinking of themselves and the effect they are producing
Vanishing shades of an attractive and consolable grief
Women are cruelest when they set out to be kind
Wore their visible exclusiveness like a garment
Young ones who know what is best for the elders
LITTLE JOURNEY IN THE WORLD
Absurd to be so interested in fictitious trouble
And in this way I crawled out of the discussion, as usual
Anything can be borne if he knows that he shall see her tomorrow
Clubs and circles
Democracy is intolerant of variations from the general level
Do you think so?
Eagerness to acquire the money of other people, not to make it
Easier to be charitable than to be just
Everybody has read it
Great deal of mind, it takes him so long to make it up
How much good do you suppose condescending charity does?
In youth, as at the opera, everything seems possible
It is so easy to turn life into a comedy!
It is so painful to shrink, and so delightful to grow!
Knew how roughly life handles all youthful enthusiasms
Liberty to indulge in republican simplicity
Much easier to forgive a failure than a success
Not the use of money, but of the use money makes of you
One thing to entertain and another to be entertaining
Possessory act of readjusting my necktie
Process which is called weighing a thing in the mind
Simple enjoyment being considered an unworthy motive
Society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets stupid
Talk is always tame if no one dares anything
Tastes and culture were of the past age
Unhappy are they whose desires are all ratified
World has become so tolerant that it doesn't care
THE GOLDEN HOUSE
Absolutely necessary that the world should be amused
Affectation of familiarity
Air of determined enjoyment
Always did what he said he would do
Desire to do something rather than the desire to make something
Don't know what it's all for--I doubt if there is much in it
Easier to make art fashionable than to make fashion artistic
Emanation of aggressive prosperity
Everybody is superficially educated
Grateful for her forbearance of verbal expression
Happy life: an income left, not earned by toil
Her very virtues are enemies of her peace
How little a thing can make a woman happy
Human vanity will feed on anything within its reach
If one man wins, somebody else has got to lose
Knew how to be confidential without disclosing anything
Long-established habits of aversion or forbearance
Moral hazard bravely incurred in the duty of knowing life
Nature is such a beautiful painter of wood
No confidences are possible outside of that relation
No one expected anything, and no one was disappointed
No such thing as a cheap yacht
Ordering and eating the right sort of lunch
Pitiful about habitual hypocrisy is that it never deceives anybody
"Squares," where the poor children get their idea of forests
To be commanded with such gentleness was a sort of luxury
Was getting to be the fashion; but now it's fashionable
Whatever he disclosed was always in confidence
World requires a great variety of people to keep it going
THAT FORTUNE
Artist who cannot paint a rail-fence cannot paint a pyramid
Best things for us in this world are the things we don't get
Big subject does not make a big writer
Bud will never come to flower if you pull it in pieces
Do you know what it is to want what you don't want?
Few people can resist doing what is universally expected of them
Freedom to excel in nothing
Had gained everything he wanted in life except happiness
Indefeasible right of the public to have news
Intellectual poverty
Known something if I hadn't been kept at school
Longing is one thing and reason another
Making himself instead of in making money
Mediocrity of the amazing art product
Never go fishing without both fly and bait
Nothing like it certainly had happened to anybody
Object was to win a case rather than to do justice in a case
Public that gets tired of anything in about three days
Remaining enjoyment is the indulgence of frank speech
Sell your manuscripts, but don't sell your soul
Success is often a misfortune
Summer days that come but to go
There isn't much to feel here except what you see
Things that are self-evident nobody seems to see
Vanity at the bottom of even a reasonable ambition
We confound events with causes
What is society for?
AS WE WERE SAYING
Absorption in self
American pronunciation of the letter 'a' a reproach to the Republic
Annual good intentions
Art of listening and the art of talking both being lost
Attempt to fill up our minds as if they were jars
Barbarians of civilization
Blessed are those that expect nothing
But is it true that a woman is ever really naturalized?
Ceased to relish the act of studying
Content with the superficial
Could play anybody else's hand better than his own
Culture is certain to mock itself in time
Disease of conformity
Disposition of people to shift labor on to others' shoulders
Do not like to be insulted with originality
Eve trusted the serpent, and Adam trusted Eve
Fit for nothing else, they can at least write
Good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be surprised
Housecleaning, that riot of cleanliness which men fear
Idle desire to be busy without doing anything
Imagining that the more noise there is in the room the better
Imitativeness of the race
Insist that he shall admire at the point of the social bayonet
It is beautiful to witness our reliance upon others
Lady intending suicide always throw on a waterproof
Let it be common, and what distinction will there be in it?
Man's inability to "match" anything is notorious
Needs no reason if fashion or authority condemns it
Nothing is so easy to bear as the troubles of other people
Passion for display is implanted in human nature
Platitudinous is to be happy?
Reader, who has enough bad weather in his private experience
Seldom that in her own house a lady gets a chance to scream
Taste usually implies a sort of selection
To read anything or study anything we resort to a club
Vast flocks of sheep over the satisfying plain of mediocrity
Vitality of a fallacy is incalculable
Want our literature (or what passes for that) in light array
We move in spirals, if not in circles
AS WE GO
Agreeable people are pretty evenly distributed over the country
As wealth is attained the capacity of enjoying it departs
Assertive sort of smartness that was very disagreeable
Attention to his personal appearance is only spasmodic
Boy who is a man before he is an infant
Bringing a man to her feet, where he belongs
Chief object in life is to "get there" quickly
Climate which is rather worse now than before the scientists
Content: not wanting that we can get
Excuse is found for nearly every moral delinquency
Frivolous old woman fighting to keep the skin-deep beauty
Granted that woman is the superior being
Held to strict responsibility for her attractiveness
History is strewn with the wreck of popular delusions
Hot arguments are usually the bane of conversation
Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization
Insists upon applying everywhere the yardstick of his own local
It is not enough to tell the truth (that has been told before)
Knows more than he will ever know again
Land where things are so much estimated by what they cost
Listen appreciatingly even if deceivingly
Man and wife are one, and that one is the husband
Mean more by its suggestions and allusions than is said
Must we be always either vapid or serious?
Newspaper-made person
No power on earth that can prevent the return of the long skirt
No room for a leisure class that is not useful
Persistence of privilege is an unexplained thing in human affairs
Poor inhabitants living along only from habit
Repose in activity
Responsibility of attractiveness
Responsible for all the mischief her attractiveness produces
Rights cannot all be on one side and the duties on the other
Servile imitation of nature degrades art
They have worn off the angular corners of existence
They who build without woman build in vain
Those who use their time merely to kill it
Trying to escape winter when we are not trying to escape summer
Use their time merely to kill it
Want of toleration of sectional peculiarities
Wantonly sincere
We are already too near most people
Woman can usually quote accurately
NINE SHORT ESSAYS
A Night in the Garden of the Tuilleries
Truthfulness
The Pursuit of Happiness
Literature and the Stage
The Life-saving and Life Prolonging Art
"H.H." in Southern California
Simplicity
The English Volunteers During the Late Invasion
Nathan Hale
Affection for the old-fashioned, all-round country doctor
Applauds what would have blushed at a few years ago
Architectural measles in this country
Avoid comparisons, similes, and even too much use of metaphor
Book a window, through which I am to see life
Cannot be truthfulness about life without knowledge
Contemporary play instead of character we have "characters,"
Disposition to make the best of whatever comes to us
Do not habitually postpone that season of happiness
Dwelling here. And here content to dwell
Explainable, if not justifiable
Eye demands simple lines, proportion, harmony in mass, dignity
Happiness is an inner condition, not to be raced after
Instead of simply being happy in the condition where we are
Lawyers will divide the oyster between them
Make a newspaper to suit the public
Making the journey of this life with just baggage enough
Moral specialist, who has only one hobby
Name an age that has cherished more delusions than ours
No amount of failure seems to lessen this belief
No man can count himself happy while in this life
No satisfaction in gaining more than we personally want
Not the thing itself, but the pursuit, that is an illusion
Profession which demands so much self-sacrifice
Proprietary medicine business is popular ignorance and credulity
"Purely vegetable" seem most suitable to the wooden-heads
Relapsing into the tawdry and the over-ornamented
Secrecy or low origin of the remedy that is its attraction
Simplicity: This is the stamp of all enduring work
Thinks he may be exempt from the general rules
Treated the patient, as the phrase is, for all he was worth
Unrelieved realism is apt to give a false impression
Warm up to the doctor when the judgment Day heaves in view
Yankee ingenuity,--he "could do anything but spin,"
FASHIONS IN LITERATURE
Discrimination between the manifold shadings of insincerity
Great deal of the reading done is mere contagion
His own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment
Inability to keep up with current literature
Main object of life is not to keep up with the printing-press
Man who is past the period of business activity
Never to read a book until it is from one to five years old
Quietly putting himself on common ground with his reader
Simplicity
Slovenly literature, unrebuked and uncorrected
Suggestion rather than by commandment
Unenlightened popular preference for a book
Waste precious time in chasing meteoric appearances
AMERICAN NEWSPAPER
American newspaper is susceptible of some improvement
Borderland between literature and common sense
Casualties as the chief news
Continue to turn round when there is no grist to grind
Elevates the trivial in life above the essential
If it does not pay its owner, it is valueless to the public
Looking for something spicy and sensational
Most newspapers cost more than they sell for
Newspaper's object is to make money for its owner
Power, the opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the press
Public craves eagerly for only one thing at a time
Quotations of opinions as news
Should be a sharp line drawn between the report and the editorial
DIVERSITIES OF AMERICAN LIFE
It appears, therefore, that speed,--the ability to move rapidly from
place to place,--a disproportionate reward of physical over intellectual
science, an intense desire to be rich, which is strong enough to compel
even education to grind in the mill of the Philistines, and an inordinate
elevation in public consideration of rich men simply because they are
rich, are characteristics of this little point of time on which we stand.
They are not the only characteristics; in a reasonably optimistic view,
the age is distinguished for unexampled achievements, and for
opportunities for the well-being of humanity never before in all history
attainable. But these characteristics are so prominent as to beget the
fear that we are losing the sense of the relative value of things in this
life.
PILGRIM AND AMERICAN
What republics have most to fear is the rule of the boss, who is a tyrant
without responsibility. He makes the nominations, he dickers and trades
for the elections, and at the end he divides the spoils. The operation
is more uncertain than a horse race, which is not decided by the speed of
the horses, but by the state of the wagers and the manipulation of the
jockeys. We strike directly at his power for mischief when we organize
the entire civil service of the nation and of the States on capacity,
integrity, experience, and not on political power.
And if we look further, considering the danger of concentration of power
in irresponsible hands, we see a new cause for alarm in undue federal
mastery and interference.
Poverty is not commonly a nurse of virtue, long continued, it is a
degeneration. It is almost as difficult for the very poor man to be
virtuous as for the very rich man; and very good and very rich at the
same time, says Socrates, a man cannot be. It is a great people that can
withstand great prosperity
We are in no vain chase of an equality which would eliminate all
individual initiative, and check all progress, by ignoring differences of
capacity and strength, and rating muscles equal to brains. But we are in
pursuit of equal laws, and a fairer chance of leading happy lives than
humanity in general ever had yet.
CAUSES OF DISCONTENT
Now, content does not depend so much upon a man's actual as his relative
condition. Often it is not so much what I need, as what others have that
disturbs me. I should be content to walk from Boston to New York, and be
a fortnight on the way, if everybody else was obliged to walk who made
that journey. It becomes a hardship when my neighbor is whisked over the
route in six hours and I have to walk. It would still be a hardship if
he attained the ability to go in an hour, when I was only able to
accomplish the distance in six hours.
It ought to be said, as to the United States, that a very considerable
part of the discontent is imported, it is not native, nor based on any
actual state of things existing here. Agitation has become a business.
A great many men and some women, to whom work of any sort is distasteful,
live by it.
Compared with the freedom of action in such a government as ours, any
form of communism is an iniquitous and meddlesome despotism.
Doubtless men might have been created equal to each other in every
respect, with the same mental capacity, the same physical ability, with
like inheritances of good or bad qualities, and born into exactly similar
conditions, and not dependent on each other. But men never were so
created and born, so far as we have any record of them, and by analogy we
have no reason to suppose that they ever will be. Inequality is the most
striking fact in life. Absolute equality might be better, but so far as
we can see, the law of the universe is infinite diversity in unity; and
variety in condition is the essential of what we call progress--it is, in
fact, life.
It sometimes seems as if half the American people were losing the power
to apply logical processes to the ordinary affairs of life.
It is human nature, it is the lesson of history, that real wrongs,
unredressed, grow into preposterous demands. Men are much like nature in
action; a little disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium becomes a
cyclone, a slight break in the levee a crevasse with immense destructive
power.
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO
But slavery brought about one result, and that the most difficult in the
development of a race from savagery, and especially a tropical race, a
race that has always been idle in the luxuriance of a nature that
supplied its physical needs with little labor. It taught the negro to
work, it transformed him, by compulsion it is true, into an industrial
being, and held him in the habit of industry for several generations.
Perhaps only force could do this, for it was a radical transformation.
I am glad to see that this result of slavery is recognized by Mr. Booker
Washington, the ablest and most clear-sighted leader the Negro race has
ever had.
Conceit of gentility of which the world has already enough.
It is this character, quality, habit, the result of a slow educational
process, which distinguishes one race from another. It is this that the
race transmits, and not the more or less accidental education of a decade
or an era. The Brahmins carry this idea into the next life, and say that
the departing spirit carries with him nothing except this individual
character, no acquirements or information or extraneous culture. It was
perhaps in the same spirit that the sad preacher in Ecclesiastes said
there is no "knowledge nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest." It
is by this character that we classify civilized and even semi-civilized
races; by this slowly developed fibre, this slow accumulation of inherent
quality in the evolution of the human being from lower to higher, that
continues to exist notwithstanding the powerful influence of governments
and religions.
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE
The proposed method is the indeterminate sentence. This strikes directly
at the criminal class. It puts that class beyond the power of continuing
its depredations upon society. It is truly deterrent, because it is a
notification to any one intending to enter upon that method of living
that his career ends with his first felony. As to the general effects of
the indeterminate sentence, I will repeat here what I recently wrote for
the Yale Law Journal.
It happens, therefore, that there is great sympathy with the career of
the lawbreakers, many people are hanging on them for support, and among
them the so-called criminal lawyers. Any legislation likely to interfere
seriously with the occupation of the criminal class or with its increase
is certain to meet with the opposition of a large body of voters. With
this active opposition of those interested, and the astonishing
indifference of the general public, it is easy to see why so little is
done to relieve us of this intolerable burden. The fact is, we go on
increasing our expenses for police, for criminal procedure, for jails and
prisons, and we go on increasing the criminal class and those affiliated
with it.
I will suggest that the convict should, for his own sake, have the
indeterminate sentence applied to him upon conviction of his first penal
offense. He is much more likely to reform then than he would be after he
had had a term in the State prison and was again convicted, and the
chance of his reformation would be lessened by each subsequent experience
of this kind. The great object of the indeterminate sentence, so far as
the security of society is concerned, is to diminish the number of the
criminal class, and this will be done when it is seen that the first
felony a man commits is likely to be his last, and that for a young
criminal contemplating this career there is in this direction:
"No Thoroughfare."