Selected Quotations, Authors with names starting M

"Every calling has its particular temptations. There is no injustice in saying that diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by their address, by the art with which they win the confidence of those with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which they catch the tone of every society into which they are admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere rectitude."

"War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms."

"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those would gain by the new ones."

"Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But this must happen in such a way that no one become aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand, to be produced immediately."The Prince

"The whole point of a secret service is that it should be secret." (Water on the Brain)

"Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance: beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth." 29.04.1981

"This is no river of the dead
Tonight we sleep on the banks of the Rubicon.
The dye is cast,
There will be time to audit the accounts later;
There will be sunlight later
And the equation will come out, at least."

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth .. put out my hand and touched the face of God." WWII pilot

During personal attack by M. Thatcher during debate on Maastricht: "It is hard to be arrogant when you are grey" 22/11/91.

John Major

"It's home. It's where I live and where I am going to continue to live, and I give no man the right to impose violence on the community that I live in. While there are difficulties and dangers, there is also tremendous job satisfaction. People who have been through the crucible of Northern Ireland I think time will tell and history will show that it will make for a better quality of people in this community, when all of the bitterness starts to ease away, when the pain starts to dissolve, and when we start to get a decent quality of life, because that crucible has tempered, I think, a very strong resolution and a very strong will within this community."

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers fear."

"Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud." Inaugural Address 1994

"I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts."

"When there is an atmosphere of sauve qui peut, the man who keeps his head and tries to be helpful makes himself conspicuous and therefore suspect." Agent Extraordinaire, the story of Michel Hollard p. 31.

"The rudiments of military intelligence [are] not a matter of individual prowess, producing dramatic coups, but a painstaking labour, the result of teamwork piecing together an infinite number of small facts." p. 67.

"Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts."

Marx replied to a letter from his bank manager offering to be of any service to him "steal some money from the accounts of one of your richer clients and credit it to mine."

As a gameshow host he interviewed a mother of twenty-two. "I love my husband." "I love my cigar too, but I take it out once in a while."

Mistaken for a gardener, a nosy woman asked him how much he was paid. "Oh, I don't get paid in dollars. The lady of the house just lets me sleep with her."

Advised not to join a reportedly anti-Semitic beach club, he replied "My wife isn't Jewish - will they let my son go in up to his knees?"

In a lift with a group of priests, one told that his mother was a great fan of Marx. "I didn't know you guys were allowed to have mothers."

A drunk lurched up to him saying "You old son-of-a-gun, you probably don't remember me." "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."

"I'm sorry sir, you cannot enter the dining room without a necktie." "But you let him in without his hair!"

Harpo's daughter sent two letters to her uncle. He replied "as a matter of fact I got two letters from you. One was manilla and the other was strawberry."

Warner Brothers were prepared to sue the Marxes over the title of their next film "A Night In Casablanca". Marx replied "I'll sue you for using the word 'Brothers'."

"You can't expect the public to get excited about a film where the leading man's bust is bigger than the leading lady's."

François Mauriac

"When you take jokes in that way [laughing as heartily as anyone, as if thoroughly enjoying the joke], people soon leave off poking fun at you." p. 90.

"It is good to be a soldier and a detrimental; you touch the hearts of women and charm them - old and young, high or low (excepting, perhaps, a few worldly mothers of marriageable daughters. They take the sticking of your tongue in cheek for the wearing of your heart on the sleeve." p. 159.

"One man loves his fiddle (or, alas! his neighbours sometimes) for all the melodies he can wake from it - it is but a selfish love ! Another, who is no fiddler, may love a fiddle too; for its symmetry, its neatness, its colour - its delicate grainings, the lovely lines and curves of its back and front - for its own sake, so to speak. He may have a whole galleryful of fiddles to love in this innocent way - a harem ! - any yet not know a single note of music, or ever care to hear one. He will dust them and stroke them, and take them down and try to put them in tune - pizzicato ! - and put them back again, and call them ever such sweet little pet names .. and breathe his little troubles into them, and they will give back inaudible little murmurs in sympathetic response, like a damp Aeolian harp; but he will never draw a bow across the strings, nor wake a single cord - or discord ! Any who shall say he is not wise in his generation? It is but an old-fashioned philistine notion that fiddles were only made to be played upon - the fiddles themselves are beginning to resent it; and rightly, I wot !" pp. 173-174. (all from Svengali / Trilby).