Bryn Hammond > Bryn's Quotes

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
I am human, and think nothing human alien to me.”
― Terence

“No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses, reckon up their own;
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel.

--Sonnet 121”
― Shakespeare

“I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“They accuse me--Me--the present writer of
The present poem--of--I know not what,--
A tendency to under-rate and scoff
At human power and virtue, and all that;
And this they say in language rather rough.
Good God! I wonder what they would be at!
I say no more than has been said in Dante's
Verse, and by Solomon and by Cervantes;

By Swift, by Machiavel, by Rochefoucault;
By Fenelon, by Luther and by Plato;
By Tillotson, and Wesley, and Rousseau,
Who knew this life was not worth a potato.
'Tis not their fault, nor mine, if this be so--
For my part, I pretend not to be Cato,
Nor even Diogenes.--We live and die,
But which is best, you know no more than I.”
― George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”
― Howard Nemerov

“Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of this land,
And trace it in this poem every line:
I don't pretend that I quite understand
My meaning when I would be very fine;
But the fact is that I have nothing planned...”
― George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

“Thus the protagonist of this Dream of mine is ooze, here and forever call'd Oozymandias the King.”
― William T. Vollmann, Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
― Herman Melville

“Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.”
― A.E. Housman

“Over the sea there dwelt a queen whose like was never known, for she was of vast strength and surpassing beauty. With her love as the prize, she vied with brave warriors at throwing the javelin, and the noble lady also hurled the weight to a great distance and followed with a long leap; and whoever aspired to her love had, without fail, to win these three tests against her, or else, if he lost but one, he forfeited his head.”
― The Nibelungenlied

“Even in terms of fiction, nothing in their lives became them like the leaving of it. King Fjolnir rose in the night to make water, fell into a vat of mead and drowned instead; Sveigdir ran after a dwarf when drunk and vanished into a boulder; Vanlandi was trampled to death by a nightmare; Domaldi was sacrificed for good seasons; Dag was struck on the head with a pitchfork when seeking revenge for his sparrow; and so on down to the fifth century.”
― Gwyn Jones

“First, is the image, so far projected here, of Mongols draped in gilded cloth that would gladden the heart of a Liberace really true?”
― Thomas J. Allsen

“It must be remembered: fields end freedom. Whatever the astonishing subsequent achievements of civilization, it had a little recognized price: humanity itself became one of its own domesticated species. We enslaved ourselves to conquer.”
― Mark Elvin

“Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here I am in hell.”
― A.E. Housman, More Poems

“though books, as Milton says, may be the embalming of mighty spirits, they are also the resurrection of rebellious, reactionary, fantastical, and wicked spirits! in books dwell all the demons and all the angels of the human mind. it is for this reason that a a bookshop -- especially a second-hand bookshop / antiquarian - is an arsenal of explosives, an armory of revolutions, an opium den of reaction.

and just because books are the repository of all the redemptions and damnations, all the sanities and insanities, of the divine anarchy of the soul, they are still, as they have alwasys been, an object of suspicion to every kind of ruling authority. in a second-hand bookshop are the horns of the altar where all the outlawed thoughts of humanity can take refuge! here, like depserate bandits, hide all the reckless progeny of our wild, dark, self-lacerating hearts. a bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.

of all the 'houses of ill fame' which a tyrant, a bureaucrat, a propagandist, a moralist, a champion of law and order, an advocate of keeping people ignorant for their own good, hurries past with averted eyes or threatens with this minions, a bookshop is the most flagrant.

~ autobiography”
― John Cowper Powys

“[on John Cowper Powys]...there is an indistinct photograph of the great man himself, gazing into the misty cleft of a mountain range, wearing what could be an old rug, or an old cardigan. He looks like a cross between an aged werewolf and a puzzled child.”
― Margaret Drabble

“Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar

“You are 'the best of cut-throats:'--do not start;
The phrase is Shakespeare's, and not misapplied:--
War's a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,
Unless her cause by Right be sanctified.
If you have acted once a generous part,
The World, not the World's masters, will decide,
And I shall be delighted to learn who,
Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo?

I am no flatterer--you've supped full of flattery:
They say you like it too--'tis no great wonder:
He whose whole life has been assault and battery,
At last may get a little tired of thunder;
And swallowing eulogy much more than satire, he
May like being praised for every lucky blunder;
Called 'Saviour of the Nations'--not yet saved,
And Europe's Liberator--still enslaved.

I've done. Now go and dine from off the plate
Presented by the Prince of the Brazils,
And send the sentinel before your gate
A slice or two from your luxurious meals:
He fought, but has not fed so well of late...”
― George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

“A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.”
― Gaston Bachelard

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“My life has a superb cast, but I cannot figure out the plot.”
― Ashleigh Brilliant

“I, myself, am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
― Augusten Burroughs

“It is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble your foe.”
― Anne Brontë

“A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King.”
― Emily Dickinson

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.”
― Gustave Flaubert, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857