Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang
Andrew Langwas a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth31 March 1844
opportunity tongue public-speaking
He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.
drunken man rather uses
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts - for support rather than for illumination.
summer weed beach
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.
book reading writing
Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.
fear remember danger
...remember that the danger that is most to be feared is never the danger we are most afraid of.
sea fishing rivers
. . . 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.
book years faces
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.
cat animal contemplative-life
Of all animals, he alone attains to the Contemplative Life.
funny-life amusing
Life's more amusing than we thought.
dream men laughing
Why should I laugh?' asked the old man. 'Madness in youth is true wisdom. Go, young man, follow your dream, and if you do not find the happiness that you seek, at any rate you will have had the happiness of seeking it.
believe people greek
Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?
thinking ideas culture
I don't think the idea of homosexuality is really taboo any more. Our culture is evolving. This is an exciting time to be living.
wise men bunkers
Either a wise man will not go into bunkers, or, being in, he will endure such things as befall him with patience.
research tradition enough
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.