A Quote by Raymond Chandler

The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt.

Raymond Chandler

Quote Topics

American Card Civilization Cool English Englishman Friendliness Give Hearted His Irony Likely Manner None Poise Shirt Sort Very Vulgarity Warm Would

Quote Author

Raymond Chandler
American - Novelist
July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959

Sing songs that none have sung, think thoughts that ne'er in the brain have rung, Walk in paths that none have trod, weep tears as none have shed for God, Give peace to all to whom none other gave, Claim him your own who's everywhere disclaimed. Love all with love that none have felt and Brave the battle of life with strength unchained.

Paramahansa Yogananda

The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass

Virginia Woolf

Who would ever care to do brave deed, Or strive in virtue others to excel, If none should yield him his deserved meed Due praise, that is the spur of doing well? For if good were not praised more than ill, None would choose goodness of his own free will.

Edmund Spenser

None, none descends into himself, to find The secret imperfections of his mind: But every one is eagle-ey'd to see Another's faults, and his deformity.

John Dryden

You ask 20 of your friends how English and American democracy came about. None of them would say that Anglicanism or Protestantism had anything to do with it. But it was crucial to it!

Melvyn Bragg

A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look!

Farid al-Din Attar

Satan would seem to be mannerly and reasonable; making as if he would be content with one-half of the heart, whereas God challengeth all or none: as, indeed, He hath most reason to claim all that made all. But this is nothing but a crafty fetch of Satan; for he knows that if he have any part, God will have none: so the whole falleth to his share alone.

Joseph Hall

The Englishman's strong point is his vigorous insularity; that of the American his power of adaptation. Each of these attitudes has its perils. The Englishman stands firmly on his feet, but he who merely does this never advances. The American's disposition is to step forward even at the risk of a fall.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

There's a huge amount of footage of Julian [ Assange] online, but he's usually in presentation or defending mode, talking about his cause, or the revelations which Wikileaks have brought about. There's none of Assange relaxing or in private mode. There's none of the personality I tried to give him behind closed doors [in The Fifth Estate ].

Benedict Cumberbatch

There can be no love so long as there is lust- even a speck of it, as it were, in the heart. None but men of great renunciation, none but mighty giants among men, have a right to that Love Divine. If that highest ideal of love is held out to the masses, it will indirectly tend to stimulate its worldly which dominates the heart of man- for, meditating on love to God by thinking of oneself as His wife or beloved, one would very likely be thinking most of the time of one's own wife- the result is too obvious to point out.

Swami Vivekananda

But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.

Theodore Roosevelt

It was the ponderous battering ram of his novels that opened the way through the genteel reticences of American nineteenth-century fiction. . . Without [Theodore] Dreiser's treading out a path for naturalism none of us would have had a chance to publish.

John Dos Passos

I mean if it wasn't for The Beatles, none of this, none of the music we listen to would even exist. They're my favourite band of all time.

Charlie Benante

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Edward Gibbon

It is a key fact about American policy in Vietnam that the withdrawel of American troops was built into it from the start. None of the presidents who waged war in Vietnam contemplated an open-ended campaign; all promised the public that American troops would be able to leave in the not-too-remote future. The promise of withdrawel precluded a policy of occupation of the traditional colonial sort, in which a great power simply imposes its will on a small one indefinitely.