The Germans are called brutal, the Spanish cruel, the Americans superficial, and so on; but we are perfide Albion, the island of hypocrites, the people who have built up an Empire with a bible in one hand, a pistol in the other, and financial concessions in both pockets. Is the charge true? I think it is.
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
The dog is mentioned in the bible eighteen times—the cat not even once.
—W.E. Farbstein. Quoted in “Hundkeit,” Mondo Canine, ed. Jon Winokur, Dutton (1991)
The Past is dead, and has no resurrection; but the Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation. The Past is, in many things, the foe of mankind; the Future is, in all things, our friend. In the Past is no hope; The Future is both hope and fruition. The Past is the text-book of tyrants; the Future is the bible of the Free. Those who are solely governed by the Past stand like Lot’s wife, crystallized in the act of looking backward, and forever incapable of looking before.
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)