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Frederick Rolfe Quotes

Truth is tarter than taradiddles; and nothing is tarter, terser, than truth on the track of tired trash in a trance.

Truth is tarter than taradiddles; and nothing is tarter, terser, than truth on the track of tired trash in a trance.

Frederick Rolfe
Tired, Track, Truth Is

An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is, to a vain and sensitive soul, a stinging insult.

Frederick Rolfe
Soul, Insult, Sensitive
"Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 296), 1963.

It's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.

Frederick Rolfe
Two, Common, Human Nature
"Don Tarquinio" by Frederick Rolfe, London: Chatto and Windus, (p. x), 1941.

Brisk and prompt to war, soft and not in the least able to resist calamity, fickle in catching at schemes, and always striving after novelties - French characteristics remained unaltered twenty centuries after Julius Caesar made a note of them for all time.

Frederick Rolfe
War, Twenties, Fickle
"Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 58), 1963.

The student of history knows no more refreshing recreation than that of nailing liars, like vermin, to the wall.

Frederick Rolfe
Wall, Liars, Students
Frederick Rolfe (1931). “A History of the Borgias”

Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it.

Frederick Rolfe
Men, People, Personality
"Hadrian the Seventh" by Frederick Rolfe, Penguin Modern Classics edition, Harmondsworth, (p. 343), 1963.

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