James Thomson

“ The women of Cairo are less strictly guarded than in most Eastern lands; wives are proud of the restraint as showing that the husbands value them highly, looking upon themselves as hidden treasures. To such an absurd extent do Muslims carry their feeling of the sacredness of women that entrance into the tombs of some women is forbidden to men; and a man and woman are never buried in the same vault, without a wall between them—as if their very corpses might get up to mischief. ”

“ A periodical to live must be a commercial success; the faintest thrill of new ideas would affect its circulation by shocking off some of its regular readers; it must suit its articles to the size of its customers—a very little hat for a very little head, a very little thought for a very little brain. Thus, though in thinking of their criticisms I spoke so contemptuously of our critics, I do not doubt that many of them are much wiser than their articles. The most honest of them must live by their pen, so they do not attempt to tell the whole truth though they will not tell a lie ”

“ How do we know that the good husband will desire the good wife, however good, when he has two-and-seventy maidens of Paradise all to himself? The trust that he will, cannot be trusted; it is a perfidious consolation to poor women. No wonder Muslim wives are obsequious, when it depends on the will, pleasure or caprice of their husbands whether they shall be re-married in the other world or not. ”

“ For periodicals—newspapers, magazines, reviews—are the Fools' Paradise of the commonplace, the mediocre, the orthodox, the respectable. As the strength of a chain must be measured by its weakest link, so the thought of a periodical must be measured by the thought of its most imbecile subscribers. ”

“ It climbs to God by trampling on Man, it builds Heaven in contempt of Earth, its soul is a phosphorescence from the slain and rotting Body; its fervent faith vilifies us worse than the coldest sneer of Mephistopheles. ”

“ I do not complain of the kitchen-garden literature; many of the vegetables are very wholesome and savory in their season, very good for eating to-day and forgetting to-morrow; I complain that in the interest of kitchen-gardens the rearing of all grander and loftier vegetation, the growth of secular forest-kings has become almost impossible in England. The stupidest popular book would not be popular did it not find a large number of people still more stupid than itself, to whom it is really entertaining and instructive. ”

“ For the condition of our literature in these days is disgraceful to a nation of men: Bumble has drugged all its higher powers, and only the rudest shocks can arouse them from their torpor. We have still, indeed, by the inscrutable bounty of nature, three or four great writers, the peers of the greatest in Europe ”

“ When deity speaks and deity reports the speeches, all should be absolute truth transparently self-consistent, else what advantage or gain have we by the substitution of God for Man? Why bring in God to utter and record what could have been as well uttered and recorded by man?
Everything for which we love and venerate the man Jesus becomes a bitter and absurd mockery when attributed to the Lord Christ. The full heart is praising the man ”

“ In brief, it may be fairly affirmed as a general rule that no Commission of Inquiry is of any value at all; the appointment of one being merely a dodge by which people who don't want to act on what they and everybody else see quite well with their naked eyes, set a number of elderly gentlemen to pore upon it with spectacles and magnifying glasses until dazed and stupid with poring, in the hope that this process will last so long that ere it is finished the public will have forgotten the matter altogether. ”

“ Now as a wise man in the course of his existence meets errors of many sorts, some of a quite opposite tendency to others, and as he proves his wisdom by applying to each error its relative or pertinent truth, the rule is almost rigidly exact: that the wiser the man the more of apparent contradictions can be found in his writings or conversation treating of actual life.
But deity is beyond the sphere of the relative and conditioned. ”

“ Is it not the worst of sacrilege, a foul profanation of our human nature, which for us, at least, should be holy and awful, when the heroic and saintly martyrdom of a true Man is thus falsified into the self-schemed sham sacrifice, ineffectual, of a God? ”

“ Whatever enormities a reputed saint may commit (and there are many who are constantly infringing precepts of their religion) such acts do not affect his fame for sanctity: for they are considered as the results of the abstraction of his mind from worldly things; his soul, or reasoning faculties, being wholly absorbed in devotion, so that his passions are left without control. Lunatics who are dangerous to society are kept in confinement; but those who are harmless are generally regarded as saints. Most of the reputed saints of Egypt are either lunatics, or idiots, or impostors. ”

“ He loved the poor, he taught the ignorant: if God, why did he let any remain poor and ignorant? He rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees: if God, why did he not wholly purify them from formalism, hypocrisy, and unbelief? He died for love of mankind: if God, why did he not restore mankind to himself without dying? ”

“ A debtor is only kept imprisoned for debt if he cannot prove himself insolvent; but if able, he may be made work out what he owes. Apostacy from the faith is death if not recanted on three warnings. Blasphemy against God or any of the Great Prophets, whether repented or not, is instant death: on the ground that apostacy or infidelity is but ignorance and misjudgment, while blasphemy shows utter depravity. If Christians blaspheming Mohammed were punished as are Muslims blaspheming Christians, what a number of our enlightened clerical teachers would have died the death of malefactors! ”

“ One cannot without a keen pang of shame and rage think of what we are when one remembers what we were, when one recalls our old and glorious literature, in the wide world unsurpassed; our literature noble and renowned, ever most glorious when most manly and daring. ”

“ The Commission of Inquiry having thus triumphantly vindicated our beloved and gracious Sovereign against the cruel aspersions of people in general, and having moreover drafted a plan for obviating such aspersions against any British King or Queen in future, ends its Report, and dissolves itself, with humble thankfulness to God Almighty whose grace alone has empowered it to conclude its arduous labors so speedily, and with results so incalculably beneficial. ”

“ If the Development Theory plants our feet in the slime, the Christian Theory bows our head to the dust. It asserts that human nature could not possibly be so good as Jesus, that human genius could not possibly write the books which tell of him ”

“ He sent apostles to preach salvation to all men: if God, why did he not reveal it at once to all men, and so reveal it that doubt had been impossible? He lived an example of holiness to us all: if God, how can our humanity imitate Deity? ”

“ To divorce her, he simply has to say, "Thou art divorced," or "I divorce thee"; but the woman cannot separate herself from her husband against his will, unless it be for some considerable fault on his side, such as cruel treatment or neglect. The facility of divorce has depraving effects, upon both sexes. Many men in the course of ten years have married twenty, thirty, or more wives; and women not far advanced in age have been wives to a dozen or more successively. "I have heard of men who have been in the habit of marrying a new wife almost every month." ”

“ The contents of this volume show marks of the same strong hand. There is never, perhaps, so continuous an exertion of power; but there is more versatility, more freedom, and often more abandon. I fancy, too, there is more rapidity and suppleness, and I am sure there is more mirth.
Thomson's satire was always bitterest, or at any rate most trenchant, when it dealt with Religion, which he considered a disease of the mind, engendered by folly and fostered by ignorance and vanity. ”

“ We have suppressed mention of all facts which Bumble would fain ignore, and utterance of all opinions likely to disturb his sacred peace; we have canted enough to nauseate the angels, and have continually lied for God as for a man to pleasure him; so our popular books are fit for emasculated imbeciles, the Times is our leading journal, and the Daily Telegraph boasts the largest circulation in the world! ”

“ If, indeed, the realities not reflected became unrealities, were annihilated, then there would be some sense in veiling those portions of the mirror in front of which certain features of our life are exposed. And if that which sees not could not be seen, it would be very sensible of the hunted ostrich to hide its head in the sand. But we all know that in darkness what is filthy and vile grows ever filthier and viler, what is pure and sweet sickens and decays. ”

“ As to the general questions, I will start by avowing frankly my conviction, that, in the present state of England, every thoughtful man who loves literature should rejoice in the advent of any really able book which outrages propriety and shocks Bumbledom, should rejoice in its advent simply and exactly because it does outrage propriety and shock Bumbledom, even if this book be nauseous to his own taste and bad in his own judgment. ”

“ Could we conceive an abstract intellect, we might conceive it dwelling continually in the sphere of abstract and absolute truth; but no man, however wise, dwells continually in this sphere. As a man living in the world, his intellect no less than his body lives in the relative and the conditioned, and naturally reflects the character of this sphere. The wise man finds himself surrounded and obstructed by certain concrete errors, and he attacks these errors with relative truths. ”

“ Though wine is forbidden in this life, he may drink of it ad libitum in the next, and the wine of Paradise doth not inebriate. He shall have perpetual youth, and as many children as he may desire. He shall be ravished with the songs of the angel Israfeel, "whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures." ”

“ Our literature should be the clear and faithful mirror of our whole world of life, but at present there are vast realms of thought and imagination and passion and action, of which it is not allowed to give any reflex at all, or is allowed only to give a reflex so obscure and distorted as to be worse than none. ”

“ If a husband without any witnesses accuses his wife of adultery, he must swear four times by God that he speaks the truth, and the fifth time imprecate God's curse on himself if he is a liar; but the wife can counterbalance this by swearing four times by God that he is a liar, and the fifth time imprecating God's wrath on herself if he speaks the truth. ”

“ I have yet to learn that the whole of its world of spirits, now for many years at the beck and call of countless mediums, professional and private, has ever dictated or written a single great sentence, revealed a single great truth—discovered a single important fact. ”

“ In Egypt, as in other countries of the East, Muslims, Christians, and Jews adopt each other's superstitions, while they abhor the leading doctrines of each other's faith. "In sickness, the Muslim sometimes employs Christian and Jewish priests to pray for him: the Christians and Jews, in the same predicament, often call in Muslim saints for the like purpose!" So much human nature is there in man, not to speak of woman. ”

“ We are compelled to accuse the religion which has been so long dominant among us, of fostering the state of mind which welcomes these miserable marvels instead of rejecting them with scorn. The Bible with its Witch of Endor, its recognition of witchcraft, its magicians, its angels releasing the Apostles, its doctrines of the supernatural, its abounding miracles, has saturated the people with superstitiousness, whose evil effects Science can but slowly counteract. ”

“ No intelligent man in England, without (which is a contradiction in terms) his ideas are exactly coincident with the non-ideas of Bumble, or without he is rich and independent, can afford to devote himself to honest treatment of any great religious or social, moral or philosophical question. If treated in a book, he must himself pay the expense of publication; if treated in an article, not even by payment could he get the portals of any popular periodical to open unto him. ”