21 John Davidson Quotes

John Davidson quotes

1. Business - the world's work - is the sale of lies: Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more In every branch becomes the sale of money.

2. One must become Fanatic - be a wedge - a thunder-bolt To smite a passage through the close-grained world.

3. Mere by-blows are the world and we, And time within eternity A sheer anachronism.

4. Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair That went before me still and made the pace. The earth is full of graves, and mine was there Before my life began; my resting-place.

5. Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate; Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate.

6. Seraphs and saints with one great voice Welcomed that soul that knew not fear. Amazed to find it could rejoice, Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.

7. And the difficultest job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that's the proper thing for you. It's a naked child against a hungry wolf; It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It's walking on a string across a gulf With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; But the thing is daily done by many and many a one. And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.

1. It wasn't until I went to college that I met the theatre people and began to admire them because they were learning a trade that was guaranteed to make money!

2. Physical activity can get you going when you are immobilized. Get action in your life, and don't just talk about it. Get into the arena!

3. I don't know why people are so surprised by my live performances.

4. My approach is so simple; every song I sing, every story I tell, every move I make, must move the audience to laughter, tears, or inspiration. Otherwise, why do it? It's the communication.

5. In White Plains I wasn't theatrical at all. I was a model and I used to take the train into New York three days a week to do travelogue work.

6. Singing well has always been important to me, but the most important factor is the connection to the audience.

7. I don't know why people are so surprised by my live performances. My approach is so simple; every song I sing, every story I tell, every move I make, must move the audience to laughter, tears or inspiration. Otherwise, why should I do it?

8. “...you mustn’t pun, Brumm, puns are produced only in vacant minds. Keep high thoughts and visions of delightful things before you and you won’t pun.”

9. “You will find, Brumm,” said Earl Lavender, “that one of two things must be sacrificed by every man who lives to be over sixty—the mind, or the liver.”

10. “Do I believe in Heaven and Hell? I do, we have them here; the world is nothing else.”

11. “It is the observer of the pun that makes it, my dear Brumm. Of course, when the word is distorted, as in Evilution, the most preoccupied notice it, but in this instance which you try to fasten upon me the crime is yours. There is nothing more contrary to the Evolutionary will than puns. Bloodshed and desolation follow in their wake. Their English heyday, which was in the reign of James I, caused the great civil war; in France they flourished most rankly under Louis XV, and produced the French Revolution. I have considered puns, and apart altogether from their hateful effect, as shown in history, it is certain that they are quite unevolutionary, because I, the fittest of men, am unable to make them. You will consult your own welfare, and that of the nation, Brougham, by refraining in future.”

12. “Seek for no meaning in it; it has none. What meaning is there in pain and pleasure? They are twins; that is all we know. Seek no meaning in anything you see here. Images, ideas, flashes of purpose will peer out in all our ways and deeds, but there is no intention here below. Is there any intention anywhere?”

13. “You’re young, and like anything new. It’s change you want. I’m middle-aged, and there’s nothing staler to me than change. Constant comfort and little luxuries as regular as the clock are fresher than change.”

14. “Now I have two immediate objects in view. The first is to devote myself to the evolutionary life more thoroughly than I have yet done—to think, speak, do nothing but what is evolutionary. Hitherto I have been little more than a passive Evolutionist. Henceforth I shall be the active agent, the apostle of Evolution. I shall give Evolution ample opportunity to vindicate my fitness, and that as publicly as possible in order to convert others.”