A garland of quotations XII

Culled from the finest moderates in literary history, and re-woven every Monday

It is not liberty not to bury the mess one makes, he thought. No animal has more liberty than the cat; but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.
•Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

Nihilism and bolshevism differ, but only in spelling.
•Edgar Saltus, The Imperial Orgy (1920).

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•1940 ad.

The anarchist was courageous; he risked his life to take a life. The nihilist was a man, despite his crimes of violence; but the bolshevist (the I. W. W.) is a sneak and a coward per se…
•Ole Hanson, Americanism versus Bolshevism (1920).

I am not a Nihilist in form, but I am one at heart.
•Allan Arnold, The Boy Nihilist; Or, Young America in Russia (1909).

Like the church we hate, anarchists also believe in another world. Where revolutions break out spontaneous and leaderless, and the soul’s talent for consensus allows the masses to work together without effort, automatic as the body itself.
•Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966).

The Wild Dada Ducks have nothing against democracy, except that it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
•Daniel Pinkwater, Young Adult Novel (1982).

In modern anarchy’s reign absurd,
Whatever maggot bites the herd,
The order of the day’s the word
Throughout confusion’s border;
But Heaven (the wise and worthy pray)
Will soon turn things another way,
And, for the orders of the day,
Restore the days of order.
•Samuel Bishop, Poems on Various Subjects (1796).

Fallacy upon fallacy! I was never so nauseated in my life with overplus of fallacy.
•Jack London, The Iron Heel (1908).

It’s enough to turn an author into an anarchist.
•Edgar Saltus, The Truth About Tristrem Varick (1888).

References: Burma-Shave: Frank Rowsome, Verse by the Side of the Road (Stephen Greene, 1965); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.