Month: January 2009

Judith Martin

“We are born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.”

Moliere

“There’s no praise to beat the sort you can put in your pocket.”

George Orwell

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

Steven Weinberg

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil …

Barbara Hall

“See, that’s all you’re thinking about, is winning. You’re confirming your sense of self- worth through outward reward instead of through inner appreciation.”

Queen Juliana

“I can’t understand it. I can’t even understand the people who can understand it.”

Minna Thomas Antrim

“Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice.”

Gore Vidal

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.”

Joseph Addison

“A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.”

John Updike

“A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.”

Russell P. Askue

“If living conditions don’t stop improving in this country, we’re going to run out of humble beginnings for our great men.”

Robert Veninga

“Human pain does not let go of its grip at one point in time. Rather, it works its way out of our consciousness over time. …

Robert Sternberg

“Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.”

Samuel Butler

“If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that …

John Adams

“In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or …

John Ciardi

“A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.”

Larry Hardiman

“The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’.”

Stephenie Meyer

“I was thinking about how disjointedly time seemed to flow, passing in a blur at times, with single images standing out more clearly than others. …

W. H. Auden

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make …

P. J. O’Rourke

“Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.”

George Best

“I’ve stopped drinking, but only while I’m asleep.”

E. Joseph Cossman

“Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.”

Nathaniel Borenstein

“The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we come in; we’re computer professionals. We …

Jackson Pollock

“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.”

Robert J. Shiller

“The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.”

Jules Renard

“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.”

Henry Ford

“An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.”

Bob Edwards

“A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.”

Kin Hubbard

“There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?”

Richard Feynman

“Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?”

Jean Kerr

“The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.”