49 Quotes by Andrew Lang

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than illumination

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts, for support rather than illumination.

O grant me a house by the beach of a bay, Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers! And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

. . . had I a river I would gladly let all honest anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, but where there is no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'free fishing' spells no fishing at all.

A book is a friend whose face is constantly changing. If you read it when you are recovering from an illness, and return to it years after, it is changed surely, with the change in yourself.

Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.

Life's more amusing than we thought.

Either a wise man will not go into bunkers, or, being in, he will endure such things as befall him with patience.

Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough, Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining.