Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Statesmanship
It is strange so great a statesman should
Be so sublime a poet.
Bulwer-Lytton—Richelieu. Act I. Sc. 2.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
Burke—Reflections on the Revolution in France.
Learn to think imperially.
Joseph Chamberlain—Speech at Guildhall. Jan. 19, 1904.
No statesman e’er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours and excise our brains.
Churchill—Night. L. 271.
The people of the two nations [French and English] must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other’s wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of language and race. It is God’s own method of producing an entente cordiale, and no other plan is worth a farthing.
Richard Cobden—Letter to M. Michel Chevalier. Sept., 1859. “Entente cordiale,” used by Queen Victoria to Lord John Russell, Sept. 7, 1848. Littré (Dict.) dates its use to speech in The Chamber of Deputies, 1840–41. Phrase in a letter written by the Dutch Governor-General at Batavia to the Bewinikebbers (directors) at Amsterdam, Dec. 15, 1657. See Notes and Queries, Sept. 11, 1909. P. 216. Early examples given in Stanford Dict. Cobden probably first user to make the phrase popular. Quoted also by Lord Aberdeen. Phrase appeared in the Foreign Quarterly Review, Oct., 1844. Used by Louis Philippe in a speech from the throne, Jan., 1843, to express friendly relations between France and England.
La cordiale entente qui existe entre le gouvernement français et celui de la Grande-Bretagne.
The cordial agreement which exists between the governments of France and Great Britain.
Le Charivari. Jan. 6, 1844. Review of a Speech by Guizot.
Si l’on n’a pas de meilleurs moyen de sèduction a lui offrir, l’entente cordiale nous paraît fort compromise.
If one has no better method of enticement to offer, the cordial agreement seems to us to be the best compromise.
Le Charivari. Vol. XV. No. 3. P. 4. (1846), referring to the ambassador of Morocco, then in Paris.
I have the courage of my opinions, but I have not the temerity to give a political blank cheque to Lord Salisbury.
Goschen. In Parliament, Feb. 19, 1884.
Spheres of influence.
Version of Earl Granville’s phrase. “Spheres of action,” found in his letter to Count Münster, April 29, 1885. Hertslet’s Map of Africa by Treaty. P. 596. Trans. May 7, 1885. See also phrase used in Convention between Great Britain and France, Aug. 10, 1889, in same. P. 562.
Gli ambasciadori sono l’occhio e l’orecchio degli stati.
Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.
Guicciardini—Storia d’Italia.
Learn to think continentally.
Alexander Hamilton. Paraphrase of his words in a Speech to his American fellow countrymen.
Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.
Thos. Jefferson—First Inaugural Address. March 4, 1801.
Nursed by stern men with empires in their brains.
Lowell—Biglow Papers. Mason and Slidell.
Statesman, yet friend to truth; of soul sincere,
In action faithful, and in honour clear;
Who broke no promise, serv’d no private end,
Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend;
Ennobled by himself, by all approv’d,
And prais’d, unenvy’d, by the Muse he lov’d.
Pope—Epistle to Addison. L. 67.
Who would not praise Patricio’s high desert,
His hand unstain’d, his uncorrupted heart,
His comprehensive head? all interests weigh’d,
All Europe sav’d, yet Britain not betray’d.
Pope—Moral Essays. Ep. I. L. 82.
It is well indeed for our land that we of this generation have learned to think nationally.
Roosevelt—Builders of the State.
If you wish to preserve your secret wrap it up in frankness.
Alexander Smith—Dreamthorp. On the Writing of Essays.
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state’s decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Pt. LXIII.
And statesmen at her council met
Who knew the seasons when to take
Occasion by the hand, and make
The bounds of freedom wider yet.
Tennyson—To the Queen. St. 8.
Why don’t you show us a statesman who can rise up to the emergency, and cave in the emergency’s head.
Artemus Ward—Things in New York.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation?—Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?—Why by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humour or caprice?
Washington—Farewell Address. Sept. 17, 1796.
’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world—so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it.
Washington—Farewell Address. Sept. 17, 1796.
Tell the truth, and so puzzle and confound your adversaries.
Wotton—Advice to a young diplomat.
Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendem rei publicæ causæ.
An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth.
Wotton. In the autograph album of Christopher Fleckamore. (1604). Eight years later Jasper Scioppius published it with malicious intent. Wotton apologized, but insisted on the double meaning of lie as a jest. A leiger is an ambassador. So used by Butler—Hudibras. Pt. II. III. 139. Also by Fuller—Holy State. P. 306.