User:Julia W/Q

|1=

"The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings."
–William Hazlitt, American Literature, 'Dr Channing'

|2=

"If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation."
–William Hazlitt, Characteristics

|3=

"With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon."
–Sir William Golding, Rites of Passage

|4=

"Man's arrogance is boastful, woman's is something in the fibre . . . Men may build and destroy and play with all their toys; they are uncomfortable nuisances, ephemeral conveniences, mere scamperers-about, while woman, in mystical umbilical connection with the great tree of life itself, knows that she is indispensable."
–John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos, 'Interview with a Child'

|5=

"For who could see the passage of a goddess unless she wished his mortal eyes aware?"
–Homer, Odyssey

|6=

"I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation."
–Anthony Hope, The Dolly Dialogues

|7=

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Self-Reliance

|8=

"I could readily see in Emerson a gaping flaw. It was the insinuation that had he lived in those days when the world was made, he might have offered some valuable suggestions."
–Herman Melville, Of Ralph Waldo Emerson

|9=

"Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means—one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies."
–George Eliot, Scenes of a Clerical Life, Janet's Repentance

|10=

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and.'"
–Sir Arthur Eddington, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye

|11=

"Yes, once—many, many years ago. I thought I had made a wrong decision. Of course, it turned out that I had been right all along. But I was wrong to have thought that I was wrong."
–John Foster Dulles, Facing the Music by H. Temianka

|12=

"If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, 'tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgement is a mere lottery."
–John Dryden, Essay of Dramatic Poesy

|13=

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius."
–Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear

|14=

"We must touch his weaknesses with a delicate hand. There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence, that we can scarce weed out the fault without eradicating the virtue."
–Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man

|15=

"Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone, Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own."
–Adam Lindsay Gordon, Ye Wearie Wayfarer

|16=

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour, The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
–Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

|17=

"...at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate."
–Graham Greene, The Comedians

|18=

"It is difficult to be humble. Even if you aim at humility, there is no guarantee that when you have attained the state you will not be proud of the feat."
–Bonamy Dobrée, John Wesley

|19=

"She, and comparisons are odious."
–John Donne, Elegies, '8, The Comparison'

|20=

"I don't pretend to understand the Universe—it's a great deal bigger than I am . . . People ought to be modester."
–Thomas Carlyle

|21=

"Only change enraged him, because it touched the quick of his fear."
–John Carey, Original Copy, 'The English Scene'

|22=

"Society is now one polish'd horde, Form'd of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored."
–George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

|23=

"When Byron's eyes were shut in death, We bow'd our head and held our breath. He taught us little: but our soul Had felt him like the thunder's roll."
–Matthew Arnold, Memorial Verses

|24=

"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it."
–Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, Dale Carnegie's Scrapbook

|25=

"In real life, of course, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market . . . Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game."
–Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

|26=

"Although there exists many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet."
–Ernest Bramah, The Wallet of Kai Lung

|27=

"Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own."
–Sir James Matthew Barrie, Speech, St Andrews

|28=

"It is time for the destruction of error. The chairs are being brought in from the garden, The summer talk stopped on that savage coast Before the storms."
–W. H. Auden, It is Time

|29=

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
–Herbert Sebastian Agar, A Time for Greatness

|30=

"The most important thing in life is not the winning but the taking part; the essential thing is not conquering but fighting well."
–Pierre de Coubertin, Speech

|31=

"The wish to hurt, the momentary intoxication with pain, is the loophole through which the pervert climbs into the minds of ordinary men."
–Jacob Bronowski, The Face of Violence

|32=

"When I started out to write fiction I had the great disadvantage of having absolutely no talent for it . . . If more than two people were on scene I couldn't keep one of them alive."
–Raymond Chandler, Letter to Paul Brooks

|33=

"I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one."
–Cato the Elder

|34=

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."
–Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

|35=

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children."
–Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech, 1953

|36=

"The important thing when you are going to do something brave is to have someone on hand to witness it."
–Michael Howard, The Observer

|37=

"Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention and irreclaimable weakness of character."
–James Bridie, Mr Bolfry

|38=

"Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."
–Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

|39=

"We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world could see the motives behind them."
–François Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Maximes

|40=

"The noble causes of life have always seemed foolish to the uninspired. But this is of small concern. I worry less about the crucified than those who pounded the nails."
–Richard Paul Evans, The Letter

|41=

"He had always been more sensitive than the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty. But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. He did not even know whether any one else in the world felt as he did, or whether he was the sole victim of this mournful privilege. Then he learned that one other spirit had trembled with the same touch of wonder . . ."
–Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

|42=

"If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished."
–Unknown

|43=

"Of course I don’t look busy. I did it right the first time."
–Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

|44=

"Get inside my head: if you are afraid, it's only because you don't comprehend—am I strange, or are you ignorant?"
–Unknown

|45=

"If you can’t convince them, confuse them."
–Harry S Truman

|46=

"Everyone thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."
–Leo Tolstoy

|47=

"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."
–Rod Sterling

|48=

"The credit belongs to those people who are actually in the arena . . . who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions to a worthy cause; who, at best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
–Theodore Roosevelt

|49=

"The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse."
–Jules Renard

|50=

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
–William James

|51=

"Humility is not my forte, and whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the startling defects in other people’s characters."
–Margaret Halsey

|52=

"And then he said to himself, I thought I was rich because I had just one flower, and all I own is an ordinary rose. That and my three volcanoes, which come up to my knee, one of which may be permanently extinct. It doesn’t make me much of a prince . . . And he lay down in the grass and wept."
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

|53=

"'If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, "My flower's up there somewhere . . ." But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?' He couldn’t say another word. All of a sudden he burst out sobbing. Night had fallen. I dropped my tools. What did I care about my hammer, about my bolt, about thirst and death? There was, on one star, on one planet, on mine, the Earth, a little prince to be consoled! I took him in my arms. I rocked him. I told him, 'The flower you love is not in danger . . . I'll draw you a muzzle for your sheep . . . I'll draw you a fence for you flower . . . I . . .' I didn't know what to say. How clumsy I felt! I didn't know how to reach him, where to find him. . . . It's so mysterious, the land of tears."
–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

|54=

"The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it. If you can’t ignore it, top it. If you can’t top it, laugh at it. If you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved."
–Russell Lynes

|55=

"Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself."
–Max Lucado

|56=

"It was a city of paradox, from the sidewalks, where apples were sold by the hungry to the well fed, to the rising skyscrapers that optimistically stretched heavenward, casting their shadows on the homeless below."
–Richard Paul Evans, The Letter

|57=

"People are in agreement that the world is full of stupid people, but they think that the realization excludes them from that group."
–Travis Renk

|58=

"I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could."
–Orson Welles

|59=

"Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticise them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes."
–Unknown

|60=

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
–Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

|61=

"12:35 p. m. The phone rings. I am not amused. This is not my favorite way to wake up. My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish."
–Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life

|62=

"I refuse to endure months of expensive humilation only to be told that at the age of four I was in love with my rocking-horse."
–Noel Coward

|63=

"I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn’t poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don’t have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary."
–Jules Feiffer, Village Voice, cartoon

|64=

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."
–Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

|65=

"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line."
–H. L. Mencken, Prejudices

|66=

"We must first deal with the question of what is life. Here we discover that others have preceded us and provided quite a range of answers. We consider each answer individually but we are invariably disappointed. A bowl of cherries? Too pat. A cabaret? Not in this neighbourhood. Real? Hardly. Earnest? Please."
–Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life

|67=

"I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something in-conceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering."
–W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado

|68=

"The NRA is attempting to lift the ban on machine-gun sales. Well, as an avid hunting enthusiast, I’ve been hoping to buy a fully automatic Uzi. One thing about a machine gun, it really takes the guesswork out of duck hunting."
–Mark Russell

|69=

"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."
–Oscar Wilde, 'The Critic as Artist'

|70=

"How sick one gets of being 'good', how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours . . ."
–Alice James, in a letter to her brother

|71=

"Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens."
–Fran Lebowitz, Social Studies

|72=

"All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others."
–Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

|73=

"Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise."
–Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

|74=

"I'd like somebody to breed a male, genus homo, who would go and fetch a 12-inch by 8-inch black suede purse lying in the middle of a white bedspread and not come back looking baffled and saying he couldn't find it."
–Margaret Halsey

|75=

"Men read maps better than women because only a male mind could conceive of an inch equalling a hundred miles."
– 'Roseanne' television programme

|76=

"People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."
–Rebecca West

|77=

"My second favourite household chore is ironing, my first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint."
–Erma Bombeck

|78=

"As a source of entertainment, conviviality and good fun, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate."
–Dorothy Parker

|79=

"The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons."
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

|80=

"Snowboarding is an activity that is very popular with people who do not feel that regular skiing is lethal enough."
–Dave Barry

|81=

"A few summers like this and we'll all be behaving like Italians."
–John Mortimer

|82=

"For twenty years, I've stared my level best to see if evening—any evening—would suggest a patient etherized upon a table; in vain. I simply wasn't able."
–C. S. Lewis

|83=

"The public is not really concerned with atomic fallout, because so far it has not affected television reception."
–Dennis Miller

|84=

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
–Winston Churchill

|85=

"You have to remember one thing about the will of the people—it wasn't so long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena."
–Jon Stewart

|86=

"If, one morning, I walked over the River Thames, the headline that afternoon would read, 'Prime Minister Can't Swim.'"
–Margaret Thatcher

|87=

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
–Jack Handey

|88=

"'My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre,' Ford muttered to himself, 'and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.'"
–Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

|89=

"The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be there in the first place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
–Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

|90=

"Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell."
–Edward Abbey

|91=

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."
–Edward Abbey

|92=

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
–Douglas Adams

|93=

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
–Samuel Adams

|94=

"People are so conditioned to take sides that a balanced analysis looks to them like hatred."
–Scott Adams

|95=

"Perhaps the true society will grow tired of development and, out of freedom, leave possibilities unused, instead of storming under a confused compulsion to the conquest of strange stars."
–Theodor Adorno

|96=

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."
–Aesop

|97=

"There is, for instance, the female relative in the country who 'knows a tie is always useful,' and sends you some spotted horror that you could only wear in secret or in Tottenham Court Road. It might have been useful had she kept it to tie up currant bushes with, when it would have served the double purpose of supporting the branches and frightening away the birds–for it is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country."
–Saki, 'Reginald on Christmas Presents'

|98=

"Isn't there a bishop or somebody who believes we shall meet all the animals we have known on earth in another world? How frightfully embarrassing to meet a whole shoal of whitebait you had last known at Prince's! I'm sure in my nervousness I should talk of nothing but lemons. Still, I daresay they would be quite as offended if one hadn't eaten them. I know if I were served up at a cannibal feast I should be dreadfully annoyed if any one found fault with me for not being tender enough, or having been kept too long."
–Saki, 'Reginald at the Carlton'

|99=

"I've been carefully brought up, and I don't like to play games of skill for milk-chocolate, so I invented a headache and retired from the scene."
–Saki, 'Reginald's Christmas Revel'

|100=

"I saw her tearing little bits out of her programme for a minute or two, and then she leaned back and snorted, “You're not the boy I took you for,” as though she were an eagle arriving at Olympus with the wrong Ganymede. That was her last audible remark, but she went on tearing up her programme and scattering the pieces around her, till one of her neighbours asked her with immense dignity whether she should send for a wastepaper-basket."
–Saki, 'The Innocence of Reginald'

|101=

"It was one of those exuberant peaches that meet you halfway, so to speak, and are all over you in a moment. It was a beautiful unspoiled product of a hothouse, and yet it managed quite successfully to give itself the airs of a compote. You had to bite it and imbibe it at the same time. To me there has always been something charming and mystic in the thought of that delicate velvet globe of fruit, slowly ripening and warming to perfection through the long summer days and perfumed nights, and then coming suddenly athwart my life in the supreme moment of its existence. I can never forget it, even if I wished to. And when I had devoured all that was edible of it, there still remained the stone, which a heedless, thoughtless child would doubtless have thrown away; I put it down the neck of a young friend who was wearing a very décolleté sailor suit. I told him it was a scorpion, and from the way he wriggled and screamed he evidently believed it, though where the silly kid imagined I could produce a live scorpion at a garden-party I don't know. Altogether, that peach is for me an unfading and happy memory–"
–Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis, 'The Talking-Out of Tarrington'

|102=

"'I came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient,' said Clovis, 'but it seems I asked too much of fate.'"
–Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis, 'The Recessional'

|103=

"And Yeovil saw himself, in moments of disgust and self-accusation, settling down into this life of rustic littleness, concerned over the late nesting of a partridge or the defective draining of a loose-box, hugely busy over affairs that a gardener's boy might grapple with, ignoring the struggle-cry that went up, low and bitter and wistful, from a dethroned dispossessed race, in whose glories he had gloried, in whose struggle he lent no hand. In what way, he asked himself in such moments, would his life be better than the life of that parody of manhood who upholstered his rooms with art hangings and rosewood furniture and babbled over the effect?"
–Saki, When William Came

|104=

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds."
–Carl Sagan, "Reflections on a Mote of Dust", speech, fuller quote

|105=

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
–Matt Groening

|106=

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."
–Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957

|107=

"We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."
–Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928

|108=

"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation."
–Susan B. Anthony, On the Campaign for Divorce Law Reform, 1860

|109=

"The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief."
–Chris Hedges

|110=

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
–Marcus Aurelius

|111=

"Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves."
–John Danforth, Faith and Politics, 2006