James Payn

James Payn (28 February 1830 – 25 March 1898) was an English novelist and editor. Among the periodicals he edited were Chambers's Journal in Edinburgh and the Cornhill Magazine in London.

Quotes

• May he perish, inch by inch, within reach of the aid that shall never come, ere the God of the poor take him into his hand.
  • Lost Sir Massingberd (1864), vol. 1, ch. 6; vol. 2, ch. 18, the gipsy woman's curse

• To the truly benevolent mind, indeed, nothing is more satisfactory than to hear of a miser denying himself the necessaries of life a little too far and ridding us of his presence altogether.
  • "The Pinch of Poverty", in The Nineteenth Century (May 1880), p. 866

• I had never had a piece of toast
    Particularly long and wide,
  But fell upon the sanded floor,
    And always on the buttered side.
  • "The Muse of Parody", in Chambers's Journal (2 February 1884), p. 71
  • Parodying Moore's famous lines from Lalla Rookh (1817):

    I never nursed a young gazelle
      To glad me with its soft dark eye,
    But when it came to know me well,
      And love me, it was sure to die—

• He was no coward, but it had suddenly struck him that the present was a very ill-chosen time for a row with his younger relative, however successful might be the issue. Such violence should not go unpunished, but vengeance is a dish that can be eaten cold.
  • A Modern Dick Whittington‎ (1892), vol. 1, p. 222
  • Cf. revenge is a dish best served cold