[Jarrow] Once famous for ship-building, now the best-known derelict town in England. Built almost entirely to house the workers of one firm; when that went"bust"so did the workers. A great mass of streets, almost deserted by traffic; shops closed, an air of death and decay over everything. All M.P's, all propsperous southerners and smug optimists should be made to spend a month a year here.
Thomas Sharp, Northumberland and Durham, Shell Guide, 1937

They are a people and they lack the props of a people. They are a disembodied ghost... If you ask what a Jew is - well, he is a man who has to offer a long explanation for his existence, and any person who has to offer an explanation for what he is, is always suspect.
Chaim Weizmann, evidence to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (1947), quoted in The Guardian 18.4.1998

Hitler killed five or six million Jews. One does not know how many he created for there are countless individuals of Jewish origin who do not believe in Judaism, do not observe Jewish tradition, who are completely removed from Jewish life and who would admit to being Jews only if someone knocked on their door in the small hours and asked if they were Jewish. One might call them Hitler Juden. They will remain Jews for as long as the very fact of being Jewish can incur hatred; they are Jews for the hell of it. The acid smell of the crematoria still lingers in their nostrils and one doesn't know how many generations will pass before it dies away.
Chaim Bermant, The Jews

...a proclamation of 1785 in which F. Tom. Lorenzo Matteucei, General Inquisitor of the Ancona District, especially delegated against the heretical depravity, with much complacency and little clarity "orders, prohibits and severely commands, that no Jew shall have the temerity to take Lessons from Christians for any kind of Instrument, and much less that of Dancing."
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table (Tin)

...the wisecracking newsroom comedies of the 30s, which convinced me, not altogether accurately, that journalism must be such fun. I can still hear the crackle of silk as Rosalind Russell, wearing a tilted trilby, perches on the editor's desk and crosses her endless legs.
Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian, 08.11.2005

If my emotional and journalistic instincts tell me one thing, and my political instincts tell me another, I won't fudge it, I won't bend it - but I won't write it.
Walter Pinsky

The hand of God, reaching down into the mire, could not raise one [newspaperman] to the depths of degradation.
Ben Hecht, Nothing Sacred

You cannot hope to bribe or twist -
Thank God! - the British journalist.
But seeing what that man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.

Mr Solomon Binding is a crucial figure on the industrial relations scene.
Editorial, The Guardian 17.2.1984

The end of a journey has always this advantage over its beginning: that periodicals, almost wherever found, are always readable and often absorbing.
Peter Fleming, Diary 17.3.1942

As a law lord later wrote, "Some acquaintance with the less reputable side of life might have saved [Sir Thomas Inskip] who informed the noble and learned lords that roulette was played with cards, from suffering a devastating monosyllabic correction from the Woolsack."
Quoted by David Pannick in The Guardian

From the trial of Mrs Cynthia Payne:
Day five: Items taken from the house were displayed in court, including a large green luncheon voucher sign, contraceptive pills and a wooden bead necklace.
Judge Pryor: "It is notorious that judges have always led sheltered lives but I cannot, for the moment, see the significance of the bead necklace - or, for that matter, of the other items."
The Guardian 12.2 1987

So long as a judge keeps silent, his reputation for wisdom and impartiality remain unassailable.
Kilmuir, LC, quoted by Hugo Young in The Guardian 5.11.1987

Personally, I take what may be thought to be an extreme view on perversity. To my mind, it is the so-called perversity of juries that justifies their existence.
Lord Devlin, The Judge, 1979

Recently, in Rome, looking at the Church of St Peter, I found next to the altar two statues, the masterpieces of Guglielmo della Porta, representing the figures of Justice and Prudence. In the original carving Justice had been nude. But her figure was so astonishingly beautiful that in the nineteenth century priests used to gather and become aroused by her. So, predictably, the Pope had ordered she be clothed. And now, 100 years later, her true figure is still hidden from view, for fear that if Justice is seen naked, she will drive the people crazy.
David Hare, talk to the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature, quoted in The Guardian 3.6.1989

British justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be believed.
Beachcomber (J. B. Morton)

His is the regrettable and disquieting story of the Kapos, the smalltime officials in the rear of the army, the functionaries who sign everything, those who shake their heads in denial but consent, those who say "if I didn't do this, someone worse than I would."
Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve

As with any object of desire, prisoners had their tactics. To my delight, I discovered many inmates could not abide kippers. When in 1968 I was starting my first long sentence, at Strangeways in Manchester, we had kippers for tea once a month. No choice, of course. You could smell the beauties the moment you hit the wing from the workshops. Then came the serious business of marshalling the abstainers I had lined up (I actually lined them up together in the queue). I think 20 portions was my record - not eaten at one sitting, of course. Perhaps four fish that meal and a couple for supper, with the rest wrapped up and stored on the windowsill for as long as they survived the weather and the pigeons. The thing about kippers was that, however hard the kitchen tried they never managed to boil all the flavour out.
Eric Allison, The Guardian 11.2.2004

car il fet bon de tout savoir.
Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose 15184

"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not half so bad as a lot of ignorance."
Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

A vote for "Labour" is a vote for Satan, sin, sodomy, socialism...
Letter from a constituent to Cllr. Skip Gordon

Interview
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognise an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints.
So far, I have had no complaints.

a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot
Max Weinreich, Der yivo un di problemen fun undzer tsayt in 'Yivo-bleter' 25.1.1913

And I said it was an attempt to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn' omentielmo.
J.R.R. Tolkien Letters

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.
Charles V

When I have tense relations with my wife, we speak in Arabic. When we talk business, then we speak English. When our relationship is better, then we talk French.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, The New York Times 19.10.1995

He didn't seem the type for being free
With girls, or going out and having fun.
He had a funny turn in Sixty-Three
And ran out shouting "Yippee! It's begun!"

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
Fred Brooks

He raps in Latvian
OnDigital subtitle to Eurovision Song Contest 12.05.2001

Let us throw back our heads and laugh at reality:
Which is an illusion caused by mescalin deficiency.
At sanity:
Which is an illusion caused by alcohol deficiency.
N. F. Simpson, A Resounding Tinkle

His Lordship: -- I suppose the word "horse" in the rule does not include an aeroplane?
Counsel: -- No, I think not.
His Lordship: -- It ought to, it is much the same thing.
Counsel: -- I think that it was put in for the relief of archdeacons.
The Times Law Reports, (Maclean vs Trembath, 1956). Quoted in The Ansible August 2000.

My life has been misspent in musty courtrooms with hair-splitting lawyers and ponderous judges quibbling over nothing. My only consolation is that I have always been for the defence.
Clarence Darrow, quoted by Irving Stone in Clarence Darrow for the Defence.

Gaiman's Law: if there's one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up.
Neil Gaiman Journal 15.04.2005

On the subject of cutting each other's hair (Letters, 19 September), the locus classicus is the neat line from the Roman comic playwright Plautus, "vix vivunt lavanda mutando" - they eke out a miserable existence by taking each other's washing in.
Michael Bulley, Letters, Guardian, 19.09.2013
There is no evidence of this phrase in Plautus

The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might. And the republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and without. We need law and order! Without law and order our nation cannot survive.
Adolf Hitler, 1932

"I don't understand," said the scientist, "why you lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown yourselves."
"How curious," said the lemming. "The one thing I don't understand is why you human beings don't."
James Thurber Interview with a Lemming

I must not lesnerize. Absolutely not. As you can imagine, that hampers me.
Robert Sheckley, Protection

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land,
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome, her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin-cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she,
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send them, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It has not gone unnoticed that crime has increased parallel with the number of social workers.
Rhodes Boyson

On the Life of Man
What is our life? A play of passion;
Our mirth, the music of division;
Our mothers' wombs the tiring houses be,
When we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss;
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest -
Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.

The Busman's Prayer

Our Father, Who art in Hendon
Harrow Road be Thy name
Thy Kingston come
Thy Wimbledon In Erith as it is in Hendon.
Give us this day our Berkhampstead
And forgive us our Westminsters
As we forgive those who Westminster against us.
Lead us not into Temple Station
And deliver us from Ealing,
For thine is the Kingston
The Purley and the Crawley,
For Iver and Iver
Crouch End

Truly, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of scaffolding.
David Laidley, letter to The Times, 29.4.1985

I can't say I've ever been lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
Attributed to Daniel Boone

Pictures in the Smoke
Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.

This is the monstrosity in love, lady - that the will is infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.
William Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida III ii 81-83

Partial Comfort
Whose love is given over-well
Shall look on Helen's face in hell,
Whilst they whose love is thin and wise
May view John Knox in paradise.

"Isn't it better," said Foulenough, "that I should love you for your money, than that I shouldn't love you at all?"
Beachcomber (J. B. Morton) Cram me with Eels

"Are you, Sir Knight," the Knight of the Wood asked Don Quixote, "by any chance in love?"
"By ill chance I am," replied Don Quixote, "although the sufferings which arise from well-placed affections should rather be considered benefits than calamities."
Miguel Cervantes Don Quixote II 12 (translated J. M. Cohen)

L'amour c'est ce qui se passe entre deux personnes qui s'aiment.
Attributed to Roger Vailland by Françoise Sagan, epigraph to Un certain Sourire

...the love-seat, not much use for loving but superb for quarrelling.
Margery Allingham, Happy Christmas first published in Woman's Own, Christmas 1962