3 Quotes & Sayings By Charles Hamilton Sorley

Charles Hamilton Sorley was born in 1894 in Douglas, Isle of Man. He read history at Clare College, Cambridge University, and went on to become a barrister in the Middle Temple in London where he was a friend of C. S. Lewis and a member of the Cambridge Apostles group Read more

In World War I, he served with the Royal Flying Corps and was a prisoner of war in Germany from 1917 to 1918. After being awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in action, he went on to become a literary agent and publisher with offices in London and New York. In the 1930s, Sorley became increasingly interested in spiritualism and wrote about his experiences with mediums in his book The Case for Spiritism (1935).

In 1938, he began writing fiction under the pseudonym "D. D. Scott" which appeared under that name in The Saturday Evening Post from 1939 to 1944.

Sorley also began publishing fiction under his own name beginning with the novel Departure (1940) which was followed by The Enemy (1942), The Enemy Within (1943), and The Enemy Below (1944).

1
When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you'll remember. For you need not so. Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know It is not curses heaped on each gashed head? Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow. Nor honour. It is easy to be dead. Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto, " Yet many a better one has died before." Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you Perceive one face that you loved heretofore, It is a spook. None wears the face you knew. Great death has made all his for evermore. . Charles Hamilton Sorley
2
England is seen at its worst when it has to deal with men like Wilde. In Germany Wilde and Byron are appreciated as authors: in England they still go pecking about their love-affairs. Anyone who calls a book ‘immoral’ or 'moral’ should be caned. A book by itself can be neither. It is only a question of the morality or immorality of the reader. But the English approach all questions of vice with such a curious mixture of curiosity and fear that it’s impossible to deal with them. Charles Hamilton Sorley