1918 Quotes

“Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.”
― Aleister Crowley, Complete Astrological Writings of Aleister Crowley

“Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies — loaf givers.”
― John Ruskin as quoted in the Boston Cooking School Cookbook 1918

“The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Speeches of Eugene V. Debs with a Critical Introduction

“Above all, for his merciless, contemptuous treatment of Clifford Chatterley, blown to bits in Flanders in 1918, Lawrence can be damned to hell. Damned but not banned.”
― Germaine Greer

“Shut your eyes,” said Miss Tanner.
“Oh no,” said Miranda, “for then I see worse things…”
― Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider

“But this is a general objection of the sceptical sort to all miracles of whatever kind, and leadeth anon into the quagmire of arguments about Free Will. The Adept will do better to rely upon The Book of the Law , which urgeth constantly to action. Even rash action is better than none, by that Light; let the Magician then argue that his folly is part of the natural order which worketh all so well.
—Liber DCXXXIII De Thaumaturgia”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4

“A circular letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to all German authorities abroad shortly after the November pogroms of 1918 stated: "The emigration movement of only about 100,000 Jews has already sufficed to awaken the interest of many countries to the Jewish danger.... Germany is very interested in maintaining the dispersal of Jewry... the influx of Jews in all parts of the world invokes the opposition of the native population and thereby forms the best propaganda for the German Jewish policy.... The poorer and therefore more burdensome the immigrating Jews is to the country absorbing him, the stronger the country will react.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“The free artistic fiction and the formation produced in the real world by means of the connection of fictions creates a predelineation for the one contemplating art. But it extends only as far as the artist has tied his unitary forms to such predelineations; beyond that, everything is again an empty possibility that can be shaped by phantasies chosen at will with any sense one likes. The perception as such determines nothing. One sees this in the fact that we would not live with one another in a pure phantasy world and that obviously nothing at all would change in what has been said if we had the same immediate freedom of perceptual phantasy as we do of reproductive phantasy: hence if we could hallucinate at will.”
― Edmund Husserl, Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory, 1898-1925

“Bells Screamed all off key, wrangling together as they collided in midair, horns and whistles mingled shrilly with cries of human distress; sulphur-colored light ex-ploded through the black windowpane and flashed away in darkness. Miranda waking from a dreamless sleep asked without expecting an answer, “What is happening?” for there was a bustle of voices and footsteps in the corridor, and a sharpness in the air; the far clamour went on, a furious exasperated shrieking like a mob in revolt.

The light came on, and Miss Tanner said in a furry voice, “Hear that? They’re celebrating . It’s the Armistice. The war is over, my dear.” Her hands trembled. She rattled a spoon in a cup, stopped to listen, held the cup out to Miranda. From the ward for old bedridden women down the hall floated a ragged chorus of cracked voices singing, “My country, ’tis of thee…”

Sweet land… oh terrible land of this bitter world where the sound of rejoicing was a clamour of pain, where ragged tuneless old women, sitting up waiting for their evening bowl of cocoa, were singing, “Sweet land of Liberty-”

“Oh, say, can you see?” their hopeless voices were asking next, the hammer strokes of metal tongues drowning them out. “The war is over,” said Miss Tanner, her underlap held firmly, her eyes blurred. Miranda said, “Please open the window, please, I smell death in here.”
― Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider

“I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
― Eugene V. Debs, Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs

“At that time the authorities used to love to set up their concentration camps in former monasteries: they were enclosed by strong walls, and had good building, and they were empty. (After all, monks are not human beings and could be tossed out at will.)”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

“It is, however, when the human soul is ploughed and harrowed by suffering that the seeds of truth may be planted,”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The New Revelation

“Practical politics consists in ignoring facts, but education and politics are two different and often contradictory things.”
― Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams Volume 2

“With my own eyes I have seen sailors taking a man out onto the ice in order to shoot him - and I have seen the condemned man hopping over puddles to keep his feet dry and turning up his collar to shield his chest from the wind. Those few steps were the last steps he would ever take, and instinctively he wanted to make them as comfortable as possible.

We were no different. We bought ourselves some "last scraps" of fabric. We listened for the last time to the last operetta and the last exquisitely erotic verses. What did it matter whether the verses were good or terrible? All that mattered was not to know, not to be aware - we had to forget that we were being led onto the ice.”
― Teffi, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

“Izolarea la care au fost supuși basarabenii în timpul regimului țarist a făcut ca aceștia să nu fie pregătiți pentru evenimentele care au avut loc în anii 1917‑1918. După cum am văzut în capitolele precedente, unii dintre ei se „deșteptau“ în timpul studiilor din marile orașe ale Imperiului Rus, când luau exemplu de la estonieni, polonezi, ucraineni etc. Văzând că aceștia vorbeau în propria limbă, aveau un cult pentru propriii lor scriitori etc., moldovenii au început să aibă idealuri precum introducerea limbii române în școală, biserică și administrație sau chiar proclamarea unei autonomii locale în Basarabia. Acestor idealuri li se adăuga, sub influența mișcărilor socialiste din Rusia, necesitatea de a dobândi „pământ și voie“, cum spuneau ei, ceea ce se traducea prin introducerea votului universal și realizarea unei reforme agrare. În special aceste două deziderate îi mobilizau pe moldoveni, iar pământul era cerința cea mai importantă pentru ei. În ceea ce privește unirea cu România, aceasta nu exista în lista de deziderate ale elitei basarabene în 1917, cu mici excepții. Atașamentul față de Rusia era unul puternic, moldovenii considerând că problemele pe care le întâmpinau se datorau doar regimului țarist. Guvernul provizoriu sau „vremelnica stăpânire“, cum i se spunea, avea o componentă socialistă solidă, ceea ce le dădea încredere românilor din Basarabia că viitorul le va aduce realizarea reformelor sociale de care aveau nevoie. Pe de altă parte, majoritatea moldovenilor nici nu erau conștienți de apartenența lor la poporul român, mulți aflând de acest lucru cu ocazia intrării în contact cu frații lor de peste Prut, pe frontul din România. În plus, chiar dacă unii ar fi vrut, în sinea lor, ca Basarabia să se unească cu România, acest lucru părea imposibil din moment ce România era aliată cu Rusia în război.”
― Andrei Popescu, Elita Basarabiei la 1917-1918. Zece personalități care au făcut Unirea

“In your gaze / show me the vanquished vigil of my days”
― Siegfried Sassoon