Quotations

  

I wish I’d said that.
— Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 – 1900).

You will, Oscar, you will.
— James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834 – 1903), in response.

… it is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent [new-born] state.
— James Clerk Maxwell (1831 – 1879), A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
— Edward Young (1683 – 1765), Love of Fame.

I have a great respect for my namesake, and always say that if Erewhon had been a racehorse it would have been got by Hudibras out of analogy. Someone said this to me many years ago, and I felt so much flattered that I have been repeating the remark as my own ever since.
— Samuel Butler (1835 – 1902), Quis Desiderio …

What the outstanding person does, others will try to do. The standards such people create will be followed by the whole world.
— Bhagavad Gita, 3:21, in the translation of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.

I discovered to-day that I made a gross blunder in Literature and Science, attributing the phrase ‘Whom not to know argues yourself unknown’ to Shakespeare. It is by Milton — and the correct quotation is ‘Not to know me argues yourselves unknown’. If this is still correctable, I’d be grateful if you’d have it changed.
— Aldous Huxley, letter to Ian Parsons, 1963, Letters of Aldous Huxley, Chatto and Windus, 1969, 954.

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