Monday, June 26, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 137

"It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning." --Bill Watterson, comic strip artist (1958- ), in Calvin & Hobbes

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 136

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched--they must be felt with the heart." --Hellen Keller

"By the age of six the average child will have completed the basic American education...From television, the child will have learned how to pick a lock, commit a fairly elaborate bank holdup, prevent wetness all day long, get the laundry twice as white, and kill people with a variety of sophisticated armaments." --Russell Baker, columnist and author (1925- )

"Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us; but most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do." --Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)

"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." --G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936)

Friday, June 16, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 135

"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit." --W. Somerset Maugham

"You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider."
--Robert Frost

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 134

"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence." --Charles A. Beard, historian (1874-1948)

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 134

"We do what we must, and call it by the best names."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Monday, June 12, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 133

"Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good."
--Samuel Johnson

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 132

"Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."
--William Butler Yeats, poet, dramatist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)

"When action grows unprofitable, gather information. When information grows unprofitable, sleep." --Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Friday, June 09, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 131

"He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors." --Rudyard Kipling

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good." --Robert Graves

"You will find relief from vain fancies if you do every act in life as though it were your last." --Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and writer (121-180)

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 130

"Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible." --Stanislaw Lem

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 129

"If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture--that is immortality enough for me." --Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

Monday, June 05, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 128

"In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning." --George Orwell

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is." --Chuck Reid

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 127

"We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity, the intolerable labor of thought. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)

"Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today." --Phil Connors in Groundhog Day

"He who does not have the courage to speak up for his rights cannot earn the respect of others." --Rene G. Torres

Friday, June 02, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 126

"Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." --Colette, writer (1873-1954)