Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vassal lie
Emptied of its poetry. W H Auden, In Memory of W B Yeats
It was like watching someone organize her own immortality. Every phrase and gesture was studied. Now and again, when she said something a little out of the ordinary, she wrote it down herself in a notebook. Harold Laski, re Virginia Woolf
There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn’t have any beginning or any end. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment. Jackson Pollock
He was a handsome, well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit. John Aubrey, re William Shakespeare
A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,
Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life. Frances Cornford nee Darwin, 1886-1960, ‘Youth’, re Rupert Brooke
My wife is dead. I firmly believe there is not her equal in the world. William Godwin re wife Mary Wollstonecraft
How soon the film of death obscured the eye,
Whence genius wildly flashed. John Keats, The Death of Chatterton, 1815
She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world. Adlai Stevenson, re Eleanor Roosevelt
Hats off, gentlemen – a genius! Robert Schumann, re Frederic Chopin
Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. Genesis 49:3, Jacob
The world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Nothing is so silly as the expression of a man who is being complimented. Andre Gide
He is one of those rare and enviable human beings who excels at everything he tries. His first love was medicine. The Parkinson Show 1975, re Jonathan Miller
I would like to say though I am eternally grateful to the way she runs the home, looks after the children, looks after me – the home comes first really I think I’m right in saying. But I think for someone who is so busy all the time and so much in the public eye all the time to do all these things is a very difficult and a jolly neat trick. John le Mesurier to Hattie Jakes on Hattie’s This is Your Life
I thought you were absolutely brilliant in court. You were so brave and, well, commanding. Rumpole of the Bailey s7e3: Rumpole and the Eternal Triangle, admirer to Rumpole, ITV 1997
More is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons. Robert Whittington, re Thomas More, 1520
One of the best national socialists [Heinrich], one of the best believers in the German ideology, and one of the greatest opponents to all enemies of the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler
I suppose she’s attractive in a skinny bitch evil murderesque kind of a way. Utopia IV, Channel 4 2013
A very upstanding chap [who had] done a great job in Italy. Thomas Lamont, J P Morgan partner of Mussolini
Steve McManaman once described Zinedine Zidane as ridiculous. You can’t get a higher compliment than that. Jason McAteer
Mikhail Gromov, the geometer whose book Partial Differential Relations builds on Nash’s work ... ‘Many of us have the power to develop existing ideas. We follow paths prepared by others. But most of us could never produce anything comparable to what Nash produced. It’s like lightning striking. Psychologically the barrier he broke is absolutely fantastic. He has completely changed the perspective on partial differential equations. There has been some tendency in recent decades to move from harmony to chaos. Nash says chaos is just around the corner.’ Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind
He enriched many lives. Mine was one of them. Anne Robinson re Robert Maxwell, cited Spitting Image s12e1
John Major is on a winning streak. He is monarch of all he surveys. He has all the prestige and authority he needs to transform Britain. The Sun editorial 9th May 1992, cited Spitting Image s13e1
I love him because of his courage. He faced the world unafraid. There wasn’t anybody or anything he feared. Irene Johnson (nee Pineau), third wife of Jack Johnson
Having served his screen apprenticeship he went on from being documentary subject to documentary presenter. Fred Dibnah: A Tribute to Fred, BBC 2004
Fred served his apprenticeship as a joiner but all the time despite parental disapproval he pursued his goal of becoming a steeplejack. ibid.
‘I have neglected my business, everything really, for the sake of his ten ton of iron.’ ibid. Fred
‘Traction engines are good things; they don’t answer back.’ ibid. Fred to group of old ladies
‘He was a great television presenter.’ ibid. Paul Daniels
But there was always a sense of sadness, a great sense of loss for the sights and sounds of industries that have long disappeared. ibid.
As a young man Fred went to art school. ibid.
Fred’s cancer was first diagnosed in 2001. ibid.
If we are to place Hardy among his fellows, we must call him the greatest tragic writer among English novelists. Virginia Woolf
Thomas Hardy: The Wessex Novels are not one book, but many. They cover an immense stretch; inevitably, they are full of imperfections – some are failures, and others exhibit only the wrong side of the marker’s genius. But undoubtedly, when we have submitted ourselves fully to them, when we come to take stock of our impression of the whole, the effect is commanding and satisfactory. We have been freed from the cramp and pettiness of life. Our imaginations have been stretched and heightened; our humour has been made to laugh out; we have drunk deep of the beauty of the earth. Also we have been made to enter the shade of a sorrowful and brooding spirit which, even in its saddest mood, bore itself with a grave uprightness and never, even when most moved to anger, lost its deep compassion for the sufferings of men and women. Thus it is no mere transcript of life at a certain time and place that Hardy has given us. It is a vision of the world and of man’s lot as they revealed themselves to a powerful imagination, a profound and poetic genius, a gentle and humane soul. Virginia Woolf
Fucking diamond geezer. One of your own. Rise of the Footsoldier IV: Marbella 2019 starring Craig Fairbrass & Terry Stone & Roland Manookian & Josh Myers & Andrew Loveday & Emily Wyatt & Nick Nevern & Conor Benn & Byron Gibson et al, director Julian Gilbey, Tony to Pat
I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all. Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all my fellow mortals. John Muir
Christ! You are Willy Wonka! Breaking Bad s2e3: Bit by a Dead Bee, friend on seeing lab to Jesse, Netflix 2009
The battle of Britain’s breakfast cereal has been fought for decades between two main players, American giant Kellogs and from Northamptonshire Weetabix. In the fight for sales nothing is off limits. The Secret World of Cereal, Channel 4 2023
But Kelloggs from Michigan won us over. And in 1938 opened Europe’s largest cereal factory in Manchester. ibid.
I don’t really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me. Jimi Hendrix, interview Dick Cavett 1969
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. George MacDonald