mass quotes

What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass isTom Paine's common sense.

-John Adams
  Letter to Thomas  Jefferson, 22  Jun, referring to the Republican's treatise on independence entitled Common Sense.

I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. Asfaraspossible Ikneeldownandtell these beadsevery day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that he has spared me the indignity of being your representative.

- (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
  Election campaign speech, Salford.

And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!

- Robert Browning
  Dramatic Romances and Lyrics,'The Bishop Orders his Tomb'.

A ruinyet what ruin! from its mass Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared.

-Rochdale
^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza143.

We were so clos'd within each other's breasts The rivets were not found that join'd us first. That does not reach us yet: we were so mix'd, As meeting streams, both to ourselves were lost; We were one mass; we could not give or take, But from the same; for he was I, I he!

-John Dryden
  Antony speaking of his friendship with Dollabella.  All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act 3.

Die breite Masse einesVolkes†einer groÞen Lu«  ge leichter zum Opfer f a« llt als einer kleinen. The broad mass of a nation†will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

- Adolf Hitler
  Mein Kampf (My Struggle,1939), ch.10.

   We all have it in us to be an opium for every conceivable mass.

- A(lison) L(ouise) Kennedy
  So I  Am Glad, ch.1.

Chaos, rudis indigestaque moles. Chaos, a rough unordered mass.

-Ovid full name Publius OvidiusNaso   4317
Metamorphoses, bk.1, l.7.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

- Henry David Thoreau
  Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Economy'.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and fromthemass of thenationonlynot from its privileged classes.

- Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
  A ConnecticutYankee in King Arthur's Court, ch.25.

'God knows how you Protestants can be expected to have any sense of direction,'she said.'It's different with us,I haven't been to mass for years, I've got every mortal sinonmyconscience, but I know when I'mdoing wrong. I'm still a Catholic, it's there, nothing can take it away from me.' 'Of course, duckie,'said Jeremy†'once a Catholic always a Catholic.'

- SirAngus FrankJohnstone Wilson
  TheWrong Set,'Significant Experience'.

What soul was his, when, from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay Beneath him:Far and wide the clouds were touched, And in their silent faces he could read Unutterable love.

-William Wordsworth
  'The Excursion', bk.1, l.198^205.