The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Fools! you go about and see the kingdoms of the earth, and are liberal and wise and cosmopolitan, which is all that the devil can give you—all that he could offer to Christ, only to be spurned away. I am doing what the truly wise do. When a child goes out into the garden and takes hold of a tree, saying, 'Let this tree be all I have,' that moment its roots take hold on hell and its branches on the stars. The joy I have is what the lover knows when a woman is everything. It is what a savage knows when his idol is everything. It is what I know when Notting Hill is everything. I have a city. Let it stand or fall."

Quoted on April 8, 2012

Laughter and love are everywhere together. The cathedrals, built in the ages that loved God, are full of blasphemous grotesques. The mother laughs continually at the child, the lover laughs continually at the lover, the wife at the husband, the friend at the friend.

Quoted on April 8, 2012

"How large now, my lord," he cried, "is the Empire of Notting Hill?"

Wayne smiled in the gathering dark.

"Always as large as this," he said, and swept his sword round in a semicircle of silver.

Quoted on April 8, 2012

"I thought nothing of being a grocer then," he said. "Isn't that odd enough for anybody? I thought nothing of all the wonderful places that my goods come from, and wonderful ways that they are made. I did not know that I was for all practical purposes a king with slaves spearing fishes near the secret pool, and gathering fruits in the islands under the world. My mind was a blank on the thing."

Quoted on April 8, 2012

Thank Heaven, I am bringing to at least one human being the news that is at bottom the only good news to any son of Adam. Your life has not been useless. Your work has not been play.

Quoted on April 8, 2012

What a farce is this modern liberality! Freedom of speech means practically, in our modern civilisation, that we must only talk about unimportant things. We must not talk about religion, for that is illiberal; we must not talk about bread and cheese, for that is talking shop; we must not talk about death, for that is depressing; we must not talk about birth, for that is indelicate. It cannot last. Something must break this strange indifference, this strange dreamy egoism, this strange loneliness of millions in a crowd. Something must break it. Why should it not be you and I?

Quoted on April 8, 2012

It is too often forgotten that just as a bad man is nevertheless a man, so a bad poet is nevertheless a poet.

Quoted on April 8, 2012

You do really propose to fight these modern improvers with their boards and inspectors and surveyors and all the rest of it?"

"Are they so terrible?" asked Wayne, scornfully.

Quoted on April 8, 2012

"That which is large enough for the rich to covet," said Wayne, drawing up his head, "is large enough for the poor to defend."

Quoted on April 8, 2012

Every man is dangerous," said the old man without moving, "who cares only for one thing. I was once dangerous myself."

Quoted on April 8, 2012

When you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. ... You say your civilisation will include all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus?

Quoted on April 8, 2012

He discovered the fact that all romantics know—that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song.

Quoted on April 8, 2012

If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

Quoted on April 8, 2012

'Do you know, Mr. Buck,' said the King, staring gloomily at the table, 'the admirable clearness of your reason produces in my mind a sentiment which I trust I shall not offend you by describing as an aspiration to punch your head. You irritate me sublimely. What can it be in me? Is it the relic of a moral sense?'

Quoted on July 20, 2010

'For you and me, and for all brave men, my brother,' said Wayne, in his strange chant, 'there is good wine poured in the inn at the end of the world.'

Quoted on July 20, 2010

'Oh you kings, you kings,' cried out Adam, in a burst of scorn. 'How humane you are, how tender, how considerate. You will make war for a frontier, or the imports of a foreign harbour; you will shed blood for the precise duty on lace, or the salute of an admiral. But for the things that make life itself worthy or miserable--how humane you are. I say here, and I know well what I speak of, there were never any necessary wars but the religious wars. There never were any humane wars but the religious wars. For these men were fighting for something that claimed, at least, to be the happiness of a man, the virtue of a man. A Crusader thought, at least, that Islam hurt the soul of every man, king or tinker, that it could really capture.'

Quoted on July 20, 2010