Andrew Lang Quotes

An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.

You can cover a great deal of country in books.

O grant me a house by the beach of a bay, Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers! And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Of all the minor creatures of mythology, fairies are the most beautiful, the most numerous, the most memorable.

I am the batsman and the bat, / I am the bowler and the ball, / The umpire, the pavilion cat, / The roller, pitch, and stumps, and all.

Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the comtemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha.

I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, for a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

There's a joy without canker or cark, There's a pleasure eternally new, 'T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that's ancient and blue.

Life's more amusing than we thought.

Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough, Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining.

Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?

He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.

Why should I laugh?' asked the old man. 'Madness in youth is true wisdom. Go, young man, follow your dream, and if you do not find the happiness that you seek, at any rate you will have had the happiness of seeking it.

Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-postsfor support rather than illumination.

A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself.

Either a wise man will not go into bunkers, or, being in, he will endure such things as befall him with patience.

Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.

And remember that the danger which is most to be feared is never the danger we are most afraid of.

. . . had I a river I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, but where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'free fishing' spells no fishing at all.

Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.

I don't think the idea of homosexuality is really taboo any more. Our culture is evolving. This is an exciting time to be living.