Lapham’s Quarterly

Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded.

Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.

I do desire we may be better strangers.

Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization.

Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.

It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for a while their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.

To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”

In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.

The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.

If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.

The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.

A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.

To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow man.

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.

Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.

There is no foreign land; it is the traveler only that is foreign.

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.

All of life is a foreign country.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.

France has neither winter, summer, nor morals—apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

Strangers are an endangered species.

“Abroad,” that large home of ruined reputations.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

When you name yourself, you always name another.

Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.