Curzon Quotes

The world turns upside down every day.

At half-past twelve next day Lord Henry Wotton strolled from Curzon Street over to the Albany to call on his uncle, Lord Fermor, a genial if somewhat rough-mannered old bachelor, whom the outside world called selfish because it derived no particular benefit from him, but who was considered generous by Society as he fed the people who amused him.

Lord Curzon who, accused of knowing nothing of the common man, jumped on a bus, then ordered it to take him to No. 1 Carlton House Terrace.

she said yes to the Curzon Soho cinema date to see a Venezuelan film on a Sunday afternoon

in 1927 she became, and would forevermore remain, the “It Girl.” “It” was first a two-part article and then a novel by a flame-haired English novelist named Elinor Glyn, who was known for writing juicy romances in which the main characters did a lot of undulating (“she undulated round and all over him, twined about him like a serpent”) and for being the mistress for some years of Lord Curzon, former viceroy of India. “It,” as Glyn explained, “is that quality possessed by some few persons which draws all others with its magnetic life force. With it you win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man.

In the case of the highest official in the Congo, the man who corresponds in Africa to Lord Curzon in India, no sooner was he placed in possession of the conclusions of the Commission than the appalling significance of their indictment convinced him that the game was up, and he went into his room and cut his throat.

Curzon stood up. He gestured with a fist. “I don’t want you to think about anything,” he said. “I want you to feel. Feel the rightness of this. The correctness of this vision. The necessity of it.” Steward could see patches of sweat under Curzon’s arms. “I want you to sense, Steward, that this is something worth having.

I rather dread doctors at one’s age, it always seems to me they take one look at you, cry cancer & remove several important portions of your anatomy. (p89)

The budget deficit for 1932, expected to be around twenty million pounds, would in fact be nearer one hundred seventy million pounds.

Yes, that was the unbearable thing: having to go on, after your life has been ripped apart, while you struggle to understand how in a split second the whole world has unbelievably changed.

The king and queen were devastated but for George there was one small, perhaps odd comfort. He loved his son, of course, but his favourite child was Octavius, and he wrote, ‘I am very sorry for Alfred, but if it had been Octavius, I should have died too.

I take no pleasure in, and set no store by, the suggestion that Professor Wessely effectively hijacked the WHO logo to give credence to his own view of ME as a mental illness. Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable that the professor does not appear to be doing his utmost to clear the air on this issue.

Mr. Airlie had lunched the day before with a leonine old gentleman who every Sunday morning thundered forth Social Democracy to enthusiastic multitudes on Tower Hill. Joan had once listened to him and had almost been converted: he was so tremendously in earnest. She now learnt that he lived in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and filled, in private life, the perfectly legitimate calling of a company promoter in partnership with a Dutch Jew. His latest prospectus dwelt upon the profits to be derived from an amalgamation of the leading tanning industries: by means of which the price of leather could be enormously increased.

I love you, Robert. No matter what happens, I always will.” “Wherever we may be, I shall never love another but you.” Thornes voice trembled, just enough for Jack to sense the trepidation in him. “And I never have until I saw you.” Jack pressed his lips to Thornes neck. “I loved you from the moment you first smiled at me.

It was also opposed by a Tory. Curzon reminded his colleagues that the British Empire was ‘the greatest Mahometan power on earth’, and was dismayed at the effect the Declaration would have on those hundreds of millions of Muslim subjects of the Crown. He presciently asked how it was proposed ‘to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman inhabitants and introduce the Jews in their place’, and he foresaw that the Arabs would not be happy ‘either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water’. As to the Jews themselves, Curzon told Montagu, ‘I cannot conceive a worse bondage to which to relegate an advanced and intellectual community than to exile in Palestine.’ Churchill was also conscious of the many ‘Mahometan’ subjects of the empire, but disdainful of them, and he was completely indifferent to the wishes or interests of the Palestinian Arabs.

Bow was originally billed as the “Brooklyn Bonfire,” then as the “Hottest Jazz Baby in Films,” but in 1927 she became, and would forevermore remain, the “It Girl.” “It” was first a two-part article and then a novel by a flame-haired English novelist named Elinor Glyn, who was known for writing juicy romances in which the main characters did a lot of undulating (“she undulated round and all over him, twined about him like a serpent”) and for being the mistress for some years of Lord Curzon, former viceroy of India. “It,” as Glyn explained, “is that quality possessed by some few persons which draws all others with its magnetic life force. With it you win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man.” Asked by a reporter to name some notable possessors of “It,” Glyn cited Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, and Rex the Wonder Horse. Later she extended the list to include the doorman at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It the novel was a story in which the two principal characters—Ava and Larry, both dripping with “It”—look at each other with “burning eyes” and “a fierce gleam” before getting together to “vibrate with passion.” As Dorothy Parker summed up the book in The New Yorker, “It goes on for nearly three hundred pages, with both of them vibrating away like steam-launches.

Jews, notably, were defined as a ‘people’, while others, not even identified, were referred to only as ‘communities’. It was an extraordinary phrase that echoes down the decades and explains why Balfour is remembered a century later by Arabs as the architect of perfidy and disaster.16 Zionists, for opposite reasons, revere his memory; Balfour Street in Jerusalem is still the site of the official residence of the Israeli prime minister. The reservation had been inserted in the text to meet the strong objections raised by Lord Curzon, the former British viceroy of India and, as lord president of the council, an influential member of the war cabinet. Curzon – reflecting contemporary perceptions about the map and identity of the region – had referred to the ‘Syrian Arabs’ who had ‘occupied [Palestine] for the best part of 1,500 years’, and asked what would become of them. ‘They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter’, he predicted with the help of another then familiar biblical reference.17 The declaration’s second reservation – about the rights of Jews in other countries – was a response to the opposition of Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India, even though he was not in the war cabinet. Montagu was a Jewish grandee who feared that an official expression of sympathy for Zionism in fact masked anti-Semitic prejudice and would undermine the hard-won position of British Jews and their co-religionists elsewhere in the world. However, it did not weaken his vehement opposition, any more than the words about ‘non-Jewish communities’ assuaged Arab fears. Over time, Jewish attitudes to Zionism would change significantly; Arab attitudes, by and large, did not.

Keynes had been appointed to the board of the National Mutual, one of the oldest institutions in the city, in 1919.107 He had served as chairman of the insurer, and helped manage its investment portfolio from 1921. That portfolio lost £641,000 ($61 million), an enormous sum of money in 1937. While Keynes was recuperating from a heart attack, F. N. Curzon, the acting chairman of the insurer called him to account for the loss.108 Curzon and the board criticized Keynes’s investment policy of remaining invested in his “pet” stocks during the decline.109 In a response to Curzon in March 1938, Keynes wrote:110 1. I do not believe that selling at very low prices is a remedy for having failed to sell at high ones. . . . As soon as prices had fallen below a reasonable estimate of intrinsic value and long-period probabilities, there was nothing more to be done. It was too late to remedy any defects in previous policy, and the right course was to stand pretty well where one was. 2. I feel no shame at being found owning a share when the bottom of the market comes. I do not think it is the business, far less the duty, for an institutional or any other serious investor to be constantly considering whether he should cut and run on a falling market, or to feel himself open to blame if shares depreciate on his hands. . . . An investor is aiming, or should be aiming, primarily at long-period results, and should be solely judged by these. . . . The idea that we should all be selling out to the other fellow and should all be finding ourselves with nothing but cash at the bottom of the market is not merely fantastic, but destructive of the whole system. 3. I do not feel that we have in fact done particularly badly. . . . If we deal in equities; it is inevitable that there should be large fluctuations.

Lord Curzon quotes a great French agnostic and adopts his phrase: “All civilisations are the work of aristocracies.” It would be much more true to say that the upkeep of aristocracy has been the hard work of all civilisations.

This missive, the first time the Pope had spoken on the Irish question, was highly unwelcome to the British. Curzon thought it ‘just the sort of casuistic performance that might have been expected from the Vatican

Churchill. His epic career intersected with the Middle East at several key points (and remember that he is credited with pioneering the very term Middle East); but the most important was his role as Colonial Secretary. He was a little surprised to be offered the post, at the end of 1920; but it is easy to see why Lloyd George thought he was the right man for the job. He had shown immense energy and dynamism as Minister for Munitions—equipping Britain with the tanks, planes and other technology that helped win the war. As Secretary of State for War he had been masterly in his demobilisation strategy: quelling mutinies by ensuring that those who had served the longest were the first to be reunited with their families. He had shown his gifts of charm and persuasion in the pre-war Ulster talks—and those gifts would be needed in spades. The First World War had left some snortingly difficult problems, and especially in the Middle East. — THE POST OF Colonial Secretary might sound less grand than that of Foreign Secretary—a role still occupied by that most superior person, George Nathaniel Curzon. But that is to forget the scale of the British Empire in 1921. The First World War was not meant to be an acquisitive conflict;

The other distinctive thing about them, and the reason I like to go to Hazlitt's, is that they cannot bear to admit that they don't know the location of something they feel they ought to know, like a hotel, which I think is rather sweet. to become a London cab driver you have to master something called The Knowledge--in effect, learn every street, hospital, hotel, police station, cricket ground, cemetery, and other notable landmarks in this amazingly vast and confusing city. It takes years and the cabbies are justifiably proud of their achievement. It would kill them to admit that there could exist in central London a hotel that they have never heard of. So what the cabbie does is probe. He drives in no particular direction for a block or two, then glances at you in the mirror and in an over casual voice says, “Hazlitt’s–that’s the one on Curzon Street, innit, guv? Opposite the Blue Lion?” But the instant he sees a knowing smile of demure forming on your lips, he hastily says, “No, hang on a minute, I’m thinking of Hazelbury. Yeah, Hazelbury. You want Hazlitt’s, right?” He’ll drive on a bit in a fairly random direction. “That’s this side of Shepherd’s Bush, innit?” he’ll suggest speculatively. When you tell him that it’s on Frith Street, he says, “Yeah, that’s the one. Course it is. I know it–modern place, lots of glass.” “Actually, it’s an eighteenth-century brick building.” “Course it is. I know it.” And he immediately executes a dramatic U-turn, causing a passing cyclist to steer into a lamppost (but that’s all right because he has on cycle clips and one of those geeky slip-stream helmets that all but invite you to knock him over). “Yeah you had me thinking of the Hazelbury,” the driver adds, chuckling as if to say it’s a lucky thing he sorted that one out for you, and then lunges down a little side street off the Strand called Running Sore Lane or Sphincter Passage, which, like so much else in London, you had never noticed was there before. Hazlitt’s is a nice hotel, but the thing I like about it is that it doesn’t act like a hotel. It’s been there for years, and the employees are friendly–always a novelty in a big-city hotel– but they do manage to give the slight impression that they haven’t been doing this for very long. Tell them that you have a reservation and want to check in and they get a kind of panicked look and begin a perplexed search through drawers for registration cards and room keys. It’s really quite charming. And the delightful girls who cleans the rooms–which, let me say, are always spotless and exceedingly comfortable–seldom seem to have what might be called a total command of English, so that when you ask them for a bar of soap or something you see that they are watching your mouth closely and then, pretty generally, they return after a bit with a hopeful look bearing a potted plant or a commode or something that is manifestly not soap. It’s a wonderful place. I wouldn’t go anywhere else.

Chernivtsi's history renders foolish the idea that multiculturalism was new to European history; the ethnically cleansed straight-line borders such as the Oder-Neisse Line or the Curzon Line were the real innovations. They were there because of the escalation in hatred and violence in mid 20th-century Europe that had resulted in catastrophe. Different peoples have lived together - not always comfortably, of course - for longer than they have lived apart. A living continent is constantly changing, as Friedrich Naumann imagined his Mitteleuropa pullulating with life; the rigid, sterile classifications that Hitler and Stalin imposed on Europe and with which we lived for decades are deadly as well as boring.

The large hall, together with the tomb chamber over the actual burials below and the outer dome above, was the Taj Mahal’s core. A bronze lamp hanging above the cenotaphs cast a golden glow. During the day nobody noticed the lamp, even fewer were aware of its romantic history. A gift from Lord Curzon, a viceroy of British India, it was inlaid with silver and gold, and modelled on the design of a lamp that hung in the mosque of Sultan Beybars II of Cairo. The story went that on a visit to the Taj, Lord Curzon was so dismayed by the smoky country lanterns used by his guides to show him around, that he resolved to present the Taj with worthy lighting. For a century now, Mehrunisa reflected, an Englishman’s love had illuminated the imperial Mughal tomb.

Neither man spoke, both lost in thought. Lucien was visited by the awful memory of the day when Cedric’s parents died. Lucien knew that Cedric had been watching over Audrey at the Sheridan townhouse on Curzon Street when a footman had come running. Cedric once told him that everything seemed to slow from that moment on. The footman was flushed and sputtered about a carriage accident and finally blurted out, “Dead, sir. Both Lord and Lady Sheridan are dead. Your sister suffered a broken arm, but is alive. Lord Rochester was nearby and helped in rescuing your sister.” Lucien would never forget that moment when he’d brought Horatia home after the accident. Cedric had taken two steps towards the door and his legs gave out, sinking to his knees.

They waited for the bill. On the borders there were new guerrilla armies. The rouble and the dollar had replaced the pound sterling. The kilometre and the kilogram and the litre were new ways of measuring miles and imperial pounds and fluid ounces. In Zaire, Patrice Lumumba had been murdered on the instruction of the White House. They wanted to expel her son for possessing two bottles of brandy. The measurements made by Curzon College were as outdated as yards and inches. They didn’t know what counted.

But even in Curzon Street society, if you say, for instance, that you are a tough guy they will consider you a vulgar, irritating and objectionable person. Should you declare, however, that you are an inquisitorial and peremptory homo sapiens, they will have no idea what you mean, but they will feel in their bones that you must be something wonderful.

I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering what kind of creature Curzon Dax was, to weave so tangled a web.

Lozan Antlaşması'nın bir amacı vardır: Diğer devletlerle aynı statülere sahip olmak. Bu şu demek: Kapitülasyonlar kabul edilemez. Benim elçim senin başkentinde oturuyorsa, senin elçin de benim başkentimde oturacak. Eşit haklarımız olacak. Benim Misak-ı Milli sınırlarım vardır vs. Lozan'da başaramadığımız ve sonucu en hüsran verici olan konu Türkiye'nin güney sınırının belirlenmesinin ertelenmesi, yani esasen Kerkük ve Musul'u kaybedişimizdir. Çünkü orada petrol olduğu biliniyordu. Bunu bilen de Anglo-Persian Oil Company idi, yani bugünkü BP'nin atası olan şirket. Bunun bilindiğini biz nereden biliyoruz? 1929 senesinde yazılmış bilimsel bir makale var. Bunun yazarlarından George Martin Lees (1898-1955) 20 yılını Kürtlerle dağlarda jeoloji ile uğraşarak geçirmiş. Kürt kabilelerinde misafir olmuş ve bugünkü Türk sınırından Basra Körfezi'ne kadar olan bölgenin jeolojik haritalarını çıkartmış. Onun ve diğer iki arkadaşının değerlendirmeleri önce doğal olarak Anglo-Iranian Petrol şirketine sunulmuş. Şirket de devleti yani Lozan'da bizim karşımıza dikilecek olan İngiliz Dışişleri Bakanı 1. Kedeleston Markisi Lord George Curzon'u haberdar etmiş.

and

The existing Arab population of Palestine is small and at a low stage of civilisation’, he wrote. ‘It contains within itself none of the elements of progress, but it has its rights, and these must be carefully respected.’ Balfour told Curzon in 1919, in the same vein, that ‘Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.’22 This brutally candid display of partiality, ‘dripping with Olympian disdain’, in the words of a leading Palestinian historian,23 would still arouse Arab anger a turbulent century later.

Sir William Curzon Wyllie?

When Curzon was rash enough to say that ‘all civilisation has been the work of aristocracies’, Churchill retorted, ‘The upkeep of aristocracies has been the hard work of all civilisations

In the years to come, Elizabeth would use her talent for illustration to benefit her favourite charities, producing books of illustration and donating the profits from their sale.

On a personal level, the king liked Spencer and even appointed him as an equerry. Now at least Spencer was nearby, if still unobtainable, and at some point, it seems that he and Augusta became lovers when she was in her early thirties. She called him ‘the secret of her heart’ and she knew that there could be no marriage between them, but it didn’t stop her from hoping.

On 5 February 1811, the Prince of Wales was appointed Prince Regent and Queen Charlotte was compelled to face the sad truth that the husband she had known and loved was gone forever. She drew her daughters closer than ever and their small, isolated cabal became the most exclusive female club in England. It was one to which nobody would want to belong.

It is a mistake my living at Court; it was certainly intended that I should live in the Country, and been a younger brother’s Wife, for I do not understand Court quarrels; kiss and make friends should be one of the mottos for a Palace.’15

In other words, the queen intended to make her daughters suffer. What better way than withdrawing into isolation to lick her wounds? Thanks, mum.

The thing with Augusta is that one could never tell what she was really thinking behind her placid smile. As her father once noted of her, ‘she looks interesting – she looks as if she knew more than she would say.’4 Such was the cabal of the Georgian princesses.

In 1775 she wrote to the governess of the children, Lady Charlotte Finch, and told her, ‘if every body is well behaved, at the Queens House of the Female party I should be glad to see my Daughters on Wednesday morning between 10 and 11.’20 Before your eyebrows hit your hairline, remember that this was the Queen of Great Britain. Even her children needed an appointment.

If you did a double take, you could be forgiven. Queen Charlotte not hating the idea of one of her daughters marrying and leaving home? It was virtually unheard of.

It won’t come as a surprise to learn that Princess Sophia, the fifth of the six daughters of George and Charlotte, had the same unremarkable upbringing as her sisters.

Four companies of Ghurka soldiers were encamped at Dehra Dun—a short sturdy race of men closely resembling the Japanese; they were proud of the fact that they were the highest paid of all Native Infantry. In addition to a rifle and bayonet they were also armed with a large curved knife called a Kukri, which many of them could throw accurately at a given target. The Kukri was a symbol of honour for them, and they attached much the same importance to it as what I have read the Greeks of old attached to their shields—they would rather die than lose it in battle. They came from the mountainous country of Nepal, the most truly independent kingdom in India. As a result of a treaty that Lord Curzon made with the King of Nepal, no white man is allowed to settle there except at the King’s personal invitation.

Pianist Clifford Curzon tells about his celebrated teacher Artur Schnabel cautioning his piano students: " 'Play nothing before you hear it'—or, 'First hear, then play.' He knew that only certainty of conception could produce clarity of presentation." And it is so in mining a text for its meaning and message.

The East is a University in which the scholar never takes his degree. It is a temple where the suppliant adores but never catches sight of the object of his devotion.

Curzon

Let me ask you something. We’re fighting for freedom, right?” I picked my words carefully. “So why is that man allowed to own Baumfree and Bett?” “Well,” he said slowly, “we’re fighting for our freedom. Not theirs.” He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, put his hands on his belt and crossed his arms again. “Nobody in my family owns slaves, you know.” “That is not the point. Do you think only white people can be free?” “Of course not. There are plenty of free blacks, like you and those other fellows in Saratoga and Albany. We had a family two villages over from mine, they were all free black people.” “But the colonel’s slaves are not allowed to be free.” He frowned. “They can’t be free, Curzon. They’re slaves. Their master decides for them.” “What if they ran away?” “Then they’d be breaking the law.” “Bad laws deserve to be broken.” “Don’t talk like that!” He kicked a rock deep into the field. “You want to get in trouble? Laws have to be followed or else you go to the jail.” “What if a king made bad laws; laws so unnatural that a country broke them by declaring its freedom?

A scientific frontier, as defined in 1907 by the former viceroy, George Curzon, was “a Frontier which unites natural and strategical strength.”67 The period term “scientific” reflected a process of merging precise geographical information with military or political strategy, and revealed the development of geopolitics as an analytic frame derived from the premise that geography was a determining factor in the success or failure of states. Frontiers were “the razor’s edge” upon which the “life or death” of nations rested; their strategic aspects could shift alongside the geopolitical fluctuations of imperial politics.

The tension between Patriot and Loyalist New Yorkers, the Tea Water Pump, the taking of lead from houses, the pulling down of King George’s statue, the chaos surrounding the British invasion of the city, the fire, prisoners of war, the Queen’s Birthday Ball: all of these are historical facts. I wove the fictional characters of Isabel and Curzon into the history to give readers a sense of what life might have been like in those days.

the spring sunshine chasing shadows through the clouds.