The people

“ The people like you and me; the men with homes they love; the men with little businesses they have fought and labored to secure; the clerks; the preachers; the doctors, the honest laborers, the God-fearing rich. I tell you, we are the people, and it is time we knew our power. ”

“ I come from the people—not from ignorance and crime and sensuality, but from the real people—who think, who aspire, who advance, who work and take [148] pleasure and pride in their work, the people who have built our republic which will perish if they decline. ”

“ Is it your fault, or mine, Gentle Reader, that we are obliged to live in this undignified, obstreperous fashion in what is called civilisation? I cannot believe it. Nearly all the best people one knows can be seen sitting in civilisation on the edge of their chairs, or hurrying along with their souls in satchels. ”

“ If they express it well in law and fact, in book and song, they prosper under its mysterious approval; if they do not, it revolts or forgets or does something else of an equally annihilatory sort. That, briefly, is the idea of the People. ”

“ I seek to describe its people as I saw them,—clear-headed, energetic, frank, and hospitable; a community suited to, and labouring for, their country's advancement, rather than for their own present comfort. ”

“ Day after day I traversed them, meeting crowds of men, who looked like the representatives of every nation and tongue and people,—and every class of society, from the greenest rustic, or the most undisguised sharper, to the man of most serious respectability, or him of highest ton. ”

“ For instance, all the propositions about the "people" are grand and true if we mean by the people every soul in the community, with all the interests and powers which give them an aggregate will and power, with capacity to suffer or to work ”

“ who once when it was objected, to some finance-scheme of his, ‘What will the people do?’—made answer, in the fire of discussion, ‘The people may eat grass:’ hasty words, which fly abroad irrevocable,—and will send back tidings! ”

“ These are the People by whose Labour the other Inhabitants are in a great Measure supported, and many of them in the Luxuries of Life: These are the People who have made no Agreement to serve us, and who have not forfeited their Liberty that we know of: These are Souls for whom Christ died, and, for our Conduct toward them, we must answer before him who is no Respecter of Persons. ”

“ The people like realities. The theory of this country is, that the people like political power; and there is nobody responsible, as the hon. and learned Gentleman in his poetical flight seemed to imagine, for the education of the people and the preparation of them for the political franchise. ”

“ The social history of this sturdy people offers us a very clear-cut example of what really makes a society or a nation. Not mountains, not dynasties, not blood, but common interests, common traditions, common beliefs; in short, mental community. ”

“ Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept the people in poverty and subjection; they kept them as they kept dogs, to fight and hunt for their service. ”

“ For these great works you may labour; yes, you are labouring, when you help forward justice, industry, when you promote the education of the people; when you practise, public and private, the virtues of a Christian man; when you hinder these seemingly little things, you hinder also the great. You are the nation's head, and if the head be wilful and wicked, what shall its members do and be? To this class let me say: Remember your position at the head of the nation ”

“ Your society there will be the most endearing, and with "a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations, and kindred, and people, and tongues, standing before the throne, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands." ”

“ Society in all its various classes and occupations is very dramatically presented in the brief description of the 'field of folk,' with incisive passing satire of the sins and vices of each class. 'Gluttonous wasters' are there, lazy beggars, lying pilgrims, corrupt friars and pardoners, venal lawyers, and, with a lively touch of realistic humour, cooks and their 'knaves' crying, 'Hot pies!' But a sane balance is preserved—there are also worthy people, faithful laborers, honest merchants, and sincere priests and monks. Soon the allegory deepens. ”

“ But the sympathetic observer could see in those debating clubs, and philosophical societies, and literary circles, in which the small towns and villages abounded, the growing processes of people great in intellectual and moral energy. ”

“ If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived. ”

“ Read the history of what has been done in this commonwealth, in this city, during the last twenty-five years for humanity, for education, for science and the arts, for every form of public use or human need, and then say, if you can, that public spirit has been dying out. Our people have never been otherwise than public spirited, and hence the promptness and unanimity of their response to this new call to public duty. ”

“ People.
People, ah God! Not mannequins. Not lords nor proletariats nor bishops nor husbands nor co-respondents nor virgins nor adultresses nor uncles nor noses. Not even white rabbits nor presidents. People. ”

“ People—persons in relation to a superior, or to some one to whom they belong.
People—the common people, the commonality; the mass of the community as distinguished from the nobility and ruling, or official, classes, etc. “A people’s voice! ”

“ But while welcoming all changes tending towards refinement and a higher civilization, the careful observer of the life of these remote people can point to some qualities among them which he would have unchangeable as their grand old mountains,—their frankness and honesty of purpose, their love of justice, and their sturdy democracy. ”

“ The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public, more than that of people of some rank and fortune. ”

“ In the category of People, we observe that individuals, self and others, and this in interest, perhaps even more than in interests, commonly take precedence of groups. Institutions and Government are, however, of general interest, the state being much more prominent than is the church ”

“ From a small community we have risen to a people powerful in numbers and in strength; but with our increase has gone hand in hand the progress of just principles. ”

“ To get into the best society nowadays one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people—that is all. ”

“ THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. ”

“ That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest? ”

“ In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; ”

“ Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that each of the component elements making up the expanding civilization--each people, city, state, nation, empire--developed its own total culture pattern, subject to the pressures mutually exerted by neighboring communities. ”

“ No other people have a government more worthy of their respect and love or a land so magnificent in extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion to enterprise and labor. ”

“ We have now seen, gentlemen, two periods of the world, each of which is dominated by the ruling idea of a particular class of the community which impresses its own principle on all the social arrangements of its time. ”

“ In a sentence, they were honorable and exemplary members of that great mass of humanity which has the custody of the present and the future of the race—those who live by the sweat of their own brows or their own brains, and train their children to do likewise, those who maintain the true ideals of happiness and progress, those from whom spring all the workers and all the leaders of thought and action. ”

“ Comrades, we are dwelling,—
We who with collected might,
Bravely cling together,
Both in fortune's sunshine bright,
And in stormy weather.
Just as we are gather'd thus,
Others are collected;
On them, therefore, as on us,
Be Fate's smile directed!
From the springhead to the sea,
Many a mill's revolving,
And the world's prosperity
Is the task I'm solving. ”

“ Look at the state of the human society at this moment, particularly that portion of it which is governed by the ideas of what is boastfully called "civilization"! Look at the external results of the internal influence of this civilization! ”

“ The powers of state, therefore, should embrace individual life in its entirety; from infancy to mature age, “in all conditions and relations, whether domestic, religious, social, industrial or political.” ”

“ She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society is salted. ”

“ the spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom--they are the pillars of society. ”

“ For a space the star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky ”

“ I wanted Isabel that night, no sentiment or memory of her, but Isabel alive,—to talk to me, to touch me, to hold me together. I wanted unendurably the dusky gentleness of her presence, the consolation of her voice.
We were alone together on the cliff! I startled a passing cabman into interest by laughing aloud at that magnificent and characteristic sentimentality. What a lie it was, and how satisfying it had been! That was just where we shouldn't remain. We of all people had no distinction from that humanity whose lot is to forget. ”

“ If it came to a question of believing you or believing me, who do you think Society would believe—a man of some position, one in the baronetage of Great Britain, or a man—well, not to put too fine a point on it—like you? ”

“ With a little more common sense, and much less of the uncommon sort, we should better understand Scripture, the institutions under which we live, the several rights of our fellow-citizens in all sections of the country, and the good, sound, practical, social relations, which ought to contribute infinitely more than they do to the happiness of mankind. ”

“ We will now leave this extraordinary nation, which has furnished materials for history of the most interesting nature, as it regards the character of man; their civil, political, and religious institutions, and the moral and social ties that connect society. ”

“ But no power upon earth is so worthy of honor for itself, or of reverential obedience to the rights which it represents, that I would consent to admit its uncontrolled and all-predominate authority. When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on a people or upon a king, upon an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I recognize the germ of tyranny, and I journey onward to a land of more hopeful institutions. ”

“ Therefore, in comparison with what we call country—that is, our particular form of government, or our particular set of rulers, or our particular stake in it—what you call the sacredness of human life occupies a very subordinate position. ”

“ Every nation is a motley assemblage of different characters, and contains, under any political form, some examples of that variety, which the humours, tempers, and apprehensions of men, so differently employed, are likely to furnish. Every profession has its point of honour, and its system of manners; the merchant his punctuality and fair dealing; the statesman his capacity and address; the man of society his good breeding and wit. ”

“ Look, for example, at the great mass of your populace in town and country—a tremendous proportion of the whole community! Are their bodily wants better, or more easily supplied? Are they subject to fewer calamities? Are they happier in childhood, youth, and manhood, and more comfortably or carefully provided for in old age, than when the land was unenclosed, and half covered with woods? ”

“ When you have a society like this, you have what we roughly call a civilisation, and it leaves its character and canons in all its surroundings and its literature. Its definite ideas lend themselves readily to expression. ”