"In youth we learn;
In age we understand."
Marie Ebner-Eschenbach
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on language and literature ...
Most common letters in the English language:
"It is easy to laugh ... Yet ... is this so very far from the way in which fiction is habitually and legitimately taken as part of experience? ... is she essentially different from anyone who judges through what they read as well as what they experience?"
Elisabeth Mahoney, introduction to 'Northanger Abbey' by Jane Austen
"The appetite becomes too keen to be denied ... the contents of the circulating library, are devoured with indiscriminate and insatiable avidity. Hence the mind is secretly corrupted."
Thomas Gisborne
"Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance."
John Keats, letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818
"Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much"
Claudio, 'Much Ado About Nothing',
William Shakespeare
"The author is dead.
Long live the reader!"
Unknown
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on attitudes ...
"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances."
Martha Washington, First Lady
"If someone says something unkind about you, live so no one will believe it"
Unknown
"I did not fail 9,999 times. I succeeded 9,999 times in learning how not to make a light bulb!"
Thomas Edison, on never giving up
"If you start to take Vienna ...
... take Vienna!"
Napoleon Boneaparte, on never giving up
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battle of the sexes ...
"Behind every successful man is a surprised woman"
Anonymous
"Bigamy is having one wife too many;
Monogamy is the same!"
Oscar Wilde
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. This wasn't it."
Groucho Marx
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on gullibility ...
"October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February."
Mark Twain
"... the projects were simply ludicrous, requiring a completely gullible public to succeed.
One such, for the establishment of a coral fishery in the Mediterranean, was typical. The fact that there was no known coral in that sea was not mentioned. Another was for trading in hair on the basis that people needed it."
Margaret Allen, 'The Dirty Dozen', regarding the South Sea Bubble
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on television ...
"There is nothing wrong with your television
Do not attempt to adjust the picture
We are now controlling the transmission
We control the horizontal
And the vertical
We can deluge you with a thousand channels
Or expand one single image to crystal clarity
... and beyond
We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive
For the next hour
We will control all that you see and hear
You are about to experience the awe and mystery
That reaches from the deepest inner mind, to
THE OUTER LIMITS"
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miscellaneous ...
"Ever let the fancy roam
Pleasure never is at home"
'Fancy', John Keats
"Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?"
'Fancy', John Keats
"Birth Signs
Another piece of research has confirmed that familial birth order has a psychological impact. According to psychologist Kevin Leman, the first-born tends to be a perfectionist: reliable and serious. Middle children get the worst deal and the youngest gets by on charm."
Tatler, p.90, February 1999
"If you're not part of the solution,
You're part of the precipitate"
Steven Wright
" ... each with its element of chance, but all controlled by the prepared mind that chance favours"
Robert Hughes, of Jackson Pollock's loose painting method
What happens when you apply the statement "No rule has universal applicability" to itself?
"Efficiency means 'doing the right thing'
Effectiveness means 'doing the thing right'"
"I believe we should all pay our tax bill with a smile. I tried, but they wanted cash."
Anonymous
"He felt he was in possession of some impossible news, which made every other thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality"
G.K. Chesterton, 'The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare'