Directory

Just Quotes
Nerds overheard
Sad, but true

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance"

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born ..."
- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

"Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land, -
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?"
- William Blake, "Holy Thursday," Songs of Experience

"Where is this new bird called the true American? Show us the homunculus of the new era. Go on, show us him. Because all that is visible to the naked European eye, in America, is a sort of recreant European. We want to see this missing link of the next era . . . it´s high time now that someone came to lift out the swaddled infant of truth that America spawned some time back. The child must be getting pretty thin, from neglect."
- D. H. Lawrence, from the Foreword to his Studies in Classic American Literature

"That is the true myth of America. She starts old, old, wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America."
- D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classical American Literature

"Don´t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
- J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing came of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn´t so. I tried it. Once I got a fishline, but no hooks. It warn´t any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn´t make it work."
- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she´s going to adopt me and sivilise me, and I can´t stand it. I been there before."
- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"He bestowed
A veil on truth; for evermore did wind
About his bosom a most crafty mind."
- Homer, The Odyssey, xiii.370.

"Of all pursuits that require analysis, history . . . stands first."
- George Bancroft (1854)

"A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments."
- T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

"Adam saw it in a brighter sunshine, but never knew the shade of pensive beauty which Eden won from his expulsion."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun

"And you O my soul where you stand
Surrounded, detached in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the
spheres to connect them . . . "
- Walt Whitman, untitled poem, from Leaves of Grass

"The admirers of poetry, then, may give up the ancient mythology without a sigh. Its departure has left us what is better than all it has taken away; left us the creatures and things of God´s universe."
- William Cullen Bryant, "Lectures on Poetry" (1825)

"Prince, subject, father, son are things forgot
For every man alone thinks he has got
To be a Phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind, of which he is, but he."
- John Donne, "First Anniversary"

"Democracy . . . is revolutionary, not formative. It is born of denial. It comes into existence in the way of denying established institutions. Its office is rather to destroy the old world, than fully to reveal the new."
- Henry James, Sr., "Democracy and Its Issues" (1853)

"Shall we never, never get rid of this Past? It lies upon the present like a giant´s dead body! In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried. [...]A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats; and living judges do but search out and report his decisions. We read in dead-men´s books! We laugh at dead men´s jokes, and cry at dead men´s pathos! [...]We worship the living Deity according to dead men´s forms and creeds. Whatever we do of our own free motion, a dead man's icy hand obstructs us . . . and we must be dead ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influence on our own world, which will then be no longer our world, but the world of another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of right to interfere."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

"Take your devils,
Which hell calls angels! These cursed gifts would make
You a corruptor, me an impudent traitor,
and should I take these, they´d take me to hell"
- John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, (I.i.265-68)

"There´s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced by the by
The parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
Make the new boss, same as the old boss . . ."
- The Who, "We Won´t Get Fooled Again"

"Fairness for everyone would only be possible if everyone´s interests were the same."
- Stanley Fish, There´s No Such Thing as Free Speech (and It´s a Good Thing, Too!)

"People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens."
- Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

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In graduate school, one often receives the opportunity to hear nerds tell nerd jokes. What follows are true accounts of nerds in action. Do you have your own tale? E-mail me.

Overheard before a final exam:
Nerd 1 - "How long did you study?"
Nerd 2 - "About five hours. How about you?"
Nerd 1 - "Just three or so. I had a ton of other stuff to work on, and this is not my main priority as classes go."
Nerd 2 - In a singsong, childlike voice - "Ha! I studied longer than yoouuuuu did. I´m in possession of determinate meaning!"

Overheard during a literary theory lecture:
"You know, I believe that scientists only speak so cryptically so that nobody else can understand what they say. They want to appear smarter than us. Now, back to Bakhtin. In ridding the reader of notions of unity in language, thereby illuminating the difficulty in adequate reproduction of the heteroglossia, Bakhtin makes explicit the superiority of the novel. Linguistic norms characterize the novelistic discourse as artistically superior, despite its self-conscious break with the Aristotelian principles of poetics." - I was there. I swear it is true.

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Americans provide a number of humorous and hilarious vignettes. Many border on the pathetic, but they are all the more funny for so being. All of the following are true. Do you have your own? E-mail me.

Sign on the first floor of a three-story building on a college campus:
"Handicapped Restrooms on Third Floor."

Real headline in a local newspaper
"Thieves Steal Burglar Alarm"

Thanks to Adam McGinnis for sending a photo of a sign from his office:
"Would the person who took the stepladder yesterday please return it immediately? If not, further steps will be taken"

Sign seen on a Florida Roadway
"Caution: Water on Road During Rain"

Sign in library stacks at a college library:
"No sleeping!"

A true story from Moore Township, Pennsylvania:
8 July 2003: A sixteen-year old boy was shocked when a bowl of gunpowder blew up in his face. At the time, the youth was heating the bowl with a blowtorch, after failing with a grill lighter.

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