Thursday, June 14, 2007

So They Say

The latest installment of collected quotations, mostly (actually, this time, all of 'em, I think) from the excellent A Word a Day newsletter:

Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste ... Let's put it this way: if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn't get our deposit back. -John Ross

Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want. It isn't charity to give away things you want to get rid of and it isn't a sacrifice to do things you don't mind doing. -Myrtle Reed, author (1874-1911)

The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness, and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o'clock. -Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself. -Emily Bronte, novelist (1818-1848)

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten? -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious. -Letitia E. Landon, author (1802-1838)

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

No comments: