Charles Edward Montague
4 quotes
Biography
Charles Edward Montague was an English journalist, known also as a writer of novels and essays.
"It was the fault of the war, the outlandish, innovatory war that did not conform to the proper text-books as it ought to have done; an unimagined war of flankless armies scratching each other's faces across an endless thorn hedge, not dreamt of in Staff College philosophy; a war that was always putting out of date the best that had been known and thought and invented, always sending everyone to school again."
"What I mean by reading is not skimming, not being able to say as the world saith, "Oh, yes, I've read that!," but reading again and again, in all sorts of moods, with an increase of delight every time, till the thing read has become a part of your system and goes forth along with you to meet any new experience you may have."
"Mr. Montague has written a very fine book. He has extenuated nothing and set down nothing in malice. I have seen no book about the war so temperate or so human. He was in the war, and being a man of fine intelligence must have suffered more than most from the fools from whom men then had to suffer, but the book is without any littleness or bitterness.... It is one of the very best of the books which have been written about the war."
"Patriotism has served, at different times, as widely different ends as a razor, which ought to be used in keeping your face clean and yet may be used to cut your own throat or that of an innocent person."