He was emphatically a good citizen. Not only are his books delightful, not only is he the author to whom all men turn when they think of the Sierras and northern glaciers, and the giant trees of the California slope, but he was also – what few nature lovers are – a man able to influence contemporary thought and action on the subjects to which he had devoted his life. He was a great factor in influencing the thought of California and the thought of the entire country so as to secure the preservation of those great natural phenomena – wonderful canyons, giant trees, slopes of flower-spangled hillsides – which make California a veritable Garden of the Lord. Theodore Roosevelt, ‘John Muir: An Appreciation’ Outlook vol 109 (16 January 1915)
John Muir talked even better than he wrote. His greatest influence was always upon those who were brought into personal contact with him. But he wrote well, and while his books have not the peculiar charm that a very, very few other writers on similar subjects have had, they will nevertheless last long. Our generation owes much to John Muir. ibid.
Rebel without a pause. Bono, re Professor Noam Chomsky
Saddam Hussein ... perhaps the first visionary Arab statesman since Nasser. Christopher Hitchens, article New Statesman 2nd April 1976, ‘Iraq Flexes Arab Muscle’
Chaucer … is God’s plenty … a perpetual fountain of good sense. John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern, 1700
He somehow embodied a symbolic British reaction to the whirlpool of the modern world, endlessly perplexed by the dizzying and incoherent pattern of events but doing his courteous best to ensure that resentment never showed. The Guardian, obituary leading article re John le Mesurier
He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems. Nelson Mandela’s eulogy for Joe Slovo, 15 January 1995
He was this very intelligent, intense young lawyer, and she was an au pair. But she had a very good brain. Serge opened up Beate’s eyes to what happened during the war. And their life since then has been one long very very hardly fought campaign against injustice. Guy Walters, re Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, cited Nazi Hunters: Kurt Lischka
Now he belongs to the ages. Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, re Abraham Lincoln
A priceless treasure that can never be replaced. Brian May, re Patrick Moore, Sky News 9th December 2012
4No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had. Samuel Johnson, re Oliver Goldsmith
Out-babying Wordsworth and out-glittering Keats. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, re Tennyson
Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. James Joyce, Ulysses
The thinking man’s crumpet. Frank Muir, of Joan Bakewell
He energized the Garden-Suburb ethos with a certain original talent and the vigour of prolonged adolescence … rather like Keat’s vulgarity with a Public School accent. F R Leavis, re Rupert Brooke
Self-contempt, well-grounded. F R Leavis, re T S Elliot’s work
I have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfect wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow. Adam Smith
As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets. John Lothrop Motley, re William of Orange
Infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. Frederick Douglass
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth. Matthew Arnold of William Wordsworth
O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies,
O skilled to sing of time or eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a man to resound for ages. Alfred Lord Tennyson, Milton: Alcaics, 1863
The immortal god of harmony. Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827, re J S Bach
Hugh’s Everett’s discovery [Parallel Universes] was as big a breakthrough as those of Newton and Einstein. Professor Max Tegmark
We all fell in love, fell out of love, and fell in love again to the sound of his voice. Tony Bennett, re Frank Sinatra
For that fine madness still her did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain. Michael Drayton, 1563-1631, re Henry Reynolds
As time requireth, a man of marvellous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity, as who say: a man for all seasons. Robert Whittington, re Sir Thomas More
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise. Fitz-Greene Halleck, On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake, 1820
A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, re Florence Nightingale
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
Seven years thou’wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ‘scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much. Ben Jonson, On My First Son
This figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-do the life:
O could he but have drawn his wit
As well in brass, as he has hit
His face; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass:
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture but his book. Ben Jonson, on the portrait of Shakespeare
Soul of the Age!
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! Ben Jonson, ‘To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr William Shakespeare’
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line. ibid.
And although thou hast small Latin, and less Greek.
From thence to honour thee, I would not seek
For names. ibid.
He was not of an age, but for all time! ibid.
Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza, and our James! ibid.
Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review 1843
I am so grateful to God that George W Bush is our president. Glenn Beck
Here lies he who neither feared nor flattered any flesh. James Douglas, Earl of Morton, c.1516-81, re John Knox
I have all of her works. Yes. I think her best work was Isis Unveiled part II which is Theology. And that was an exceptional work. I think that Helena Patrovna Blavatsky the Russian mystic was a very wise and perceptive lady. Jordan Maxwell, televised interview
Madame Blavatsky, one of the greatest scholars the world has ever known. Michael Tsarion