Taylor Caldwell > Quotes

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
― Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”
― Taylor Caldwell

“I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the world seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.”
― Taylor Caldwell

“You can be happy with money and you can be wretched with it. It depends on what kind of person you are. -- A Prologue to Love”
― Taylor Caldwell

“What manner of men had lived in those days...who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not know that power delegated to the government becomes the club of tyrants? They must have known. They had their own history to remember, and the history of five thousand years. Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by "directives," by "emergencies." In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate

“Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician

“Reading, not just an escape, but an exercise in living...”
― Taylor Caldwell

“. . . a statement that is repugnant to one's beliefs can be as true as one that is pleasurable.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician

“Republics never survive, for their people do not like freedom but prefer to be led and guided and flattered and seduced into slavery by a benevolent, or not so, benevolent despot. They want to worship Caesar. So, American republicanism will inevitably die and become a democracy, and then decline, as Aristotle said into a despotism.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Captains and the Kings: The Story of an American Dynasty

“It's a funny thing about love: you don't need to have it returned to love somebody. Loving's enough. -- A Prologue to Love”
― Taylor Caldwell

“The more wants a man has, the less freedom.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician

“God is never absent from the affairs of men, though we are not conscious of Him very often.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician

“Mankind adores its betrayers, and murders its saviors.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Captains and the Kings

“If people are lucky enough to have family they should cultivate it. --A Prologue to Love”
― Taylor Caldwell, A Prologue to Love

“If a nation has not God that nation must fall, but if a nation has God then all the powers of evil, and all the armies, cannot shake its foundations; no, not even if the whole world is arrayed against it.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician

“On the day when you again allow abominable men to confiscate your freedom, your money, your lives, your private property, your manhood and your sacred honor, in the name of "security' or "national emergency' you will die, and never again shall you be free. If plotters again destroy your Republic, they will do it by your greedy and ignorant assent, by your disregard of your neighbors' rights, by your apathy and your stupidity. We were brought to the brink of universal death and darkness because we had become that most contemptible of people -- an angerless one. Keep alive and vivid all your righteous anger against traitors, against those who would abrogate your Constitution, against those who would lead you to wars with false slogans and cunning appeals to your patriotism.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate

“No man is more abhorred than a man who is different from his neighbors. They feel violated and threatened if one dares to be as they are not.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician

“Wicked men are born every generation, and it is the duty of a nation to render them impotent. When you discover a man who seeks power for himself, out of hatred or contempt for his fellows, destroy him,”
― Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

“We all feel inadequate very often. It’s only when it gets chronic that it is disturbing to one’s emotions and can get out of hand and make you pretty damn miserable.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Testimony of Two Men

“I loved you and reverenced you, for teachers are the noblest of men and labor for little and only from the fullness of their unselfish souls. In your name, and in my memory of you, I will do the best I can, and remember you always.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Dear and Glorious Physician

“We all choose how to look at life. --A Prologue to Love”
― Taylor Caldwell

“Man and the State. Always must they be enemies, for men had been given freedom by God and the State hated God, and loathed men and everlastingly fought against the rights of men. The liberty of the individual defied the luxury and the privileges of those who deemed themselves greater and wiser than their fellows, and wished to enslave their brothers. The”
― Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

“Piety without joy, faith without cheer, duty without pleasure, prayer without delight—these do not please the Lord God.”
― Taylor Caldwell, I, Judas: A Novel

“Everyone living is doomed”
― Taylor Caldwell

“There is nothing stronger and nobler than when man and wife are of one heart and mind in a house. A grief to their foes, and to their friends great joy. But their own hearts know it best.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Glory and the Lightning: A Novel of Ancient Greece

“In the end they had lost everything, their freedom as men, their rights as men, their dignity as men, and had become nothing else but slaves of an omnipotent State, working endlessly, half-starved, half-clothed, half-sheltered in ruined buildings, endlessly spied upon, supervised, commanded by the Military and treated like dogs.”
― Taylor Caldwell, The Devil's Advocate: The Epic Novel of One Man's Fight to Save America from Tyranny

“Life is a comedy for the man who thinks, a tragedy for the man who feels.”
― Taylor Caldwell, Captains and the Kings

“He had come to shock the people out of their complacency. This was evident in his every word. There were no sacred sheep in his flock.”
― Taylor Caldwell, I, Judas: A Novel

“My lords, let us consider just law. Does it bring tranquillity, good order, piety, justice and liberty and prosperity to a people? Does it nourish patriotism and the way of a manly and upright life? Then it is a good law, and deserves our utter obedience. “But if it brings pain, intolerable burdens, injustice, sleepless anxiety and fear and slavery to a people, then it is an evil law passed and upheld by evil men, who hate humanity and wish to subjugate and control it.”
― Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome

“Were Cicero alive in the America of today he would be aghast and appalled. He would find it so familiar.”
― Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron: A Novel of Ancient Rome