Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Journalism
I would***earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.
Addison—Spectator. No. 10.
They consume a considerable quantity of our paper manufacture, employ our artisans in printing, and find business for great numbers of indigent persons.
Addison—Spectator. No. 367.
Advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running footman with an ambassador.
Addison—Tatler. No. 224.
The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader’s eye; without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.
Addison—Tatler. No. 224.
Ask how to live? Write, write, write, anything;
The world’s a fine believing world, write news.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Wit without Money. Act II.
[The opposition Press] which is in the hands of malecontents who have failed in their career.
Bismarck. To a deputation from Rügen to the King. Nov. 10, 1862.
Hear, land o’ cakes, and brither Scots,
Frae Maidenkirk to Johnny Groat’s;
If there’s a hole in a’ your coats,
I rede you tent it:
A chiel’s amang you taking notes,
And, faith, he’ll prent it.
Burns—On Capt. Grose’s Peregrinations Through Scotland.
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Condemn’d to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine.
Byron—English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. L. 975.
The editor sat in his sanctum, his countenance furrowed with care,
His mind at the bottom of business, his feet at the top of a chair,
His chair-arm an elbow supporting, his right hand upholding his head,
His eyes on his dusty old table, with different documents spread.
Will Carleton—Farm Ballads. The Editor’s Guests.
A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up.
Carlyle—French Revolution. Pt. I. Bk. VI. Ch. 5.
Great is journalism. Is not every able editor a ruler of the world, being the persuader of it?
Carlyle—French Revolution. Pt. II. Bk. I. Ch. 4.
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
Carlyle—Heroes and Hero-Worship. Lecture V. Burke is credited with having invented the term, but it does not appear in his published works. The “three estates of the realm” are the Lords Spiritual, The Lords Temporal, and the Commons. David Lindslay—Ane pleasant satyre of the Three Estatis. (1535). Rabelais—in Pantagruel, 4–48 describes a monk, a falconer, a lawyer, and a husbandman called the “four estates of the island.” (Les quatre estatz de l’isle.)
A parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the Twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.
Carlyle—Latter Day Pamphlets. No. VI. Parliaments.
Get your facts first, and then you can distort ’em as much as you please.
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain)—Interview with Kipling. In From Sea to Sea. Epistle 37.
Only a newspaper! Quick read, quick lost,
Who sums the treasure that it carries hence?
Torn, trampled under feet, who counts thy cost,
Star-eyed intelligence?
Mary Clemmer—The Journalist. St. 9.
To serve thy generation, this thy fate:
“Written in water,” swiftly fades thy name;
But he who loves his kind does, first and late,
A work too great for fame.
Mary Clemmer—The Journalist. Last Stanza.
I believe it has been said that one copy of the Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
Richard Cobden—Speech at the Manchester Athenæum, Dec. 27, 1850. See The Times, Dec. 30, 1830. P. 7. Quoted in Morley’s Life of Cobden. Note. Vol. II. P. 429. Also reference to same. P. 428.
Did Charity prevail, the press would prove
A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.
Cowper—Charity. L. 624.
How shall I speak thee, or thy power address,
Thou God of our idolatry, the Press.
*****
Like Eden’s dead probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
Cowper—Progress of Error. L. 452.
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter’d boots, strapp’d waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
Cowper—The Task. Bk. IV. L. 5.
When found, make a note of.
Dickens—Dombey and Son. Ch. 15.
Miscellanists are the most popular writers among every people; for it is they who form a communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public.
Isaac D’Israeli—Literary Character of Men of Genius. Miscellanists.
None of our political writers … take notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords and Commons … passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in the community … the Mob.
Fielding—Covent Garden Journal. June 13, 1752.
Caused by a dearth of scandal should the vapors
Distress our fair ones—let them read the papers.
Garrick—Prologue to Sheridan’s School for Scandal.
The liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman.
Junius—Dedication to Letters.
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.
La Bruyère—The Characters or Manners of the Present Age. Ch. I.
The News-writer lies down at Night in great Tranquillity, upon a piece of News which corrupts before Morning, and which he is obliged to throw away as soon as he awakes.
La Bruyère—The Characters or Manners of the Present Age. Ch. I.
Tout faiseur de journaux doit tribut au Malin.
Every newspaper editor owes tribute to the devil.
La Fontaine—Lettre à Simon de Troyes. 1686.
Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
Charles Lamb—Essays of Elia. Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
Behold the whole huge earth sent to me hebdomadally in a brown paper wrapper.
Lowell—Biglow Papers. Series I. No. 6.
I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.
Napoleon I.
The penny-papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.
Wendell Phillips.
We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.
Wendell Phillips.
The press is like the air, a chartered libertine.
Pitt—To Lord Grenville. (About 1757).
The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.
Pope—Epistles of Horace. Ep. I. Bk. II. L. 108.
Cela est escrit. Il est vray.
The thing is written. It is true.
Rabelais—Pantagruel.
Can it be maintained that a person of any education can learn anything worth knowing from a penny paper? It may be said that people may learn what is said in Parliament. Well, will that contribute to their education?
Salisbury (Lord Robert Cecil)—Speeches. House of Commons, 1861. On the Repeal of the Paper Duties.
But I’ll report it
Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles.
Coriolanus. Act I. Sc. 9. L. 2.
Report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 350.
Bring me no more reports.
Macbeth. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 1.
The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villanous—licentious—abominable—infernal—not that I ever read them—no—I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.
R. B. Sheridan—The Critic. Act I. Sc. 1.
Trade hardly deems the busy day begun
Till his keen eye along the sheet has run;
The blooming daughter throws her needle by,
And reads her schoolmate’s marriage with a sigh;
While the grave mother puts her glasses on,
And gives a tear to some old crony gone.
The preacher, too, his Sunday theme lays down
To know what last new folly fills the town;
Lively or sad, life’s meanest, mightiest things,
The fate of fighting cocks, or fighting kings.
Sprague—Curiosity.
Here shall the Press the People’s right maintain,
Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain;
Here Patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw,
Pledged to Religion, Liberty, and Law.
Joseph Story—Motto of the Salem Register. Adopted 1802. Wm. W. Story’s Life of Joseph Story. Vol. I. Ch. VI.
The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair.
Thackeray—Roundabout Papers. The Thorn in the Cushion.