F451 Quotations, Allusions, and References
Quotations, Allusions, and References in Fahrenheit 451
All the items below appear in Fahrenheit 451 in the order they are listed. The pages referenced are from a 1988
Ballantine paperback (same as 1989 78th ed.). Although the page references almost certainly will not agree with other
editions, the list of numbers will provide an approximate location in which to look for the quote, and they provide an
idea of the numbers of quotes and allusions, as they are spaced apart or clustered together, in various parts of the
book.
The list below contains approximately 110 total references: 30 quotations, 28 titles, and allusions to texts, and
somewhere in the neighborhood of 52 named authors. Of course, any such list will inevitably be incomplete,
sometimes overlooking some allusion which is obvious to one reader and invisible to another. This problem is
especially acute in the case of this particular story, filled as it is with homage to other works and writers.
Epigraph
“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” — Juan Ramon Jimenez
Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander
8 — Millay, Whitman, Faulkner
34 — Benjamin Franklin
36 — “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall
never be put out.” (See also 40: “A man named Latimer said that to a man named Nicholas Ridley, as they were
being burnt alive at Oxford, for heresy, on October 16, 1555.” — Beatty)
37 — “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.”
38 — Tower of Babel
50 — Dante, Swift, Marcus Aurelius
58 — the Constitution
59 — Little Black Sambo, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
68 — “It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break
their eggs at the smaller end.”
Part Two: The Sieve and the Sand
72 — “That favourite subject, Myself.”
76 — the Bible, Shakespeare, Plato, the Old and New Testament, Jefferson, Thoreau
78 — “Consider the lilies of the field…They toil not, neither do they…”
86 — “…Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art
mortal.’”
87 — Pirandello, Shaw, Shakespeare, Milton, Sophocles
88 — the Bible
89 — Aeschylus, O’Neill
93 — the Book of Job
99 — “Dover Beach” (Mathew Arnold)
100 — the last two stanzas from “Dover Beach”
105 — “… a very strange beast which in all tongues is called a fool.”
105 — “Who are a little wise, the best fools be.”
105 — “Job and Ruth and Willie Shakespeare”
105 — Beatty: “‘Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge,’ Sir Philip Sydney said. But on the other hand: ‘Words are
like leaves and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.’ Alexander Pope. What do
you think of that, Montag? ...Or this? ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian
spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.’ Pope. Same essay.”
106 — Beatty: “Power, I said. And you, quoting Dr. Johnson, said ‘Knowledge is more than equivalent to force!’ and I
said, ‘“Well, Dr. Johnson also said, dear boy, that “He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an
uncertainty.”’ {sic}… And you said, quoting, ‘Truth will come to light, murder will not be hid long!’ And I cried
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F451 Quotations, Allusions, and References
in good humor, ‘Oh God, he speaks only of his horse!’ And ‘The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.’ And
you yelled, ‘This age thinks better of gilded fool than of a threadbare saint in wisdom’s school!’ And I whispered
gently, ‘The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting.’ And you screamed, ‘Carcasses bleed at the sight of the
murderer!’ And I said, patting your hand, ‘What, do I give you trench mouth?’ And you shrieked, ‘Knowledge is
power!’ and ‘A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees the furthest of the two!’ and I summed my side up with rare
serenity in, ‘The folly of mistaking a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and
oneself as an oracle, is inborn in us, Mr. Valery once said.’”
107 — “A kind of excellent dumb discourse, Willie!”
108 — “All’s well that is well in the end.”
Part Three: Burning Bright
111 — title: “Burning Bright” [Cf. William Blake’s poem “The Tiger”]
113 — “Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why.”
119 — Beatty: “Why don’t you belch Shakespeare at me, you fumbling snob? ‘There is no terror, Cassius, in your
threats, for I am arm’d so strong in honesty that they pass by me as an idle wind, which I respect not!’ How’s
that?”
142 — “behind the seven veils of unreality”
150 — Thomas Hardy, Ortega y Gasset, Ecclesiastes, Revelation
151 — Plato’s Republic, Marcus Aurelius
151 — “… Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver’s Travels!”
151 — Charles Darwin, Schopenhauer, Einstein, Albert Schweitzer
151 — “… Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and
Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John.”
152 — “… all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli, or Christ,
it’s here.”
152 — “… and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of thousand colors.”
152 — “… we’re the odd minority crying in the wilderness.”
153 — Thoreau’s Walden, Bertrand Russell
154 — the Magna Carta, the Constitution
160 — “Part of Ecclesiastes and Revelation”
161 — “the Preacher”
163 — phoenix
165 — “To everything there is a season…A time to break down, and a time to build up…A time to keep silence, and a
time to speak.”
165 — “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every
month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
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