Friday, September 29, 2006

Brainy Smurf 178 and R.I.P. Great Writ of Habeas Corpus (d. 2006)

"Virtue is its own punishment." --Aneurin Bevan

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 177

"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police." --Jeff Marder

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." --Paul Dirac

Monday, September 25, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 176

"America is not only big and rich, it is mysterious; and its capacity for the humorous or ironical concealment of its interests matches that of the legendary inscrutable Chinese." --David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 175

"In politics, absurdity is not a handicap."
--Napoleon Bonaparte

"Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." --Samuel Johnson

"People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest." --Hermann Hesse

Friday, September 22, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 174

"Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing... you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn't affect two-thirds of the people of the world." --Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, Nobel laureate (1924- )

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 173

"The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions." --James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 172

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
--William Congreve, "The Mourning Bride"

"I had an epiphany a few years ago where I was out at a celebrity party and it suddenly dawned on me that I had yet to meet a celebrity who is as smart and interesting as any of my friends." --Moby, quoted on CNN.com, March 2005

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 171

"Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them."
--Suzanne Necker, author (1739-1794)

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 170

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." --John Keats, poet (1795-1821)

"One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end." --William Butler Yeats, W. B. Yeats Memoirs

Monday, September 18, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 169

"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play." --Warren Beatty

"The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough." --Bede Jarrett, The House of Gold

"Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ... are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends." --Walter Lippman, journalist (1889-1974)

"If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow." --Chinese Proverb

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 168

"At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone." --Jean de la Bruyere, essayist and moralist (1645-1696)

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 167

"It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life." --PD James

"We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action."
--Frank Tibolt

Monday, September 11, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 166

"Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others." --Jules Renard

"All things are difficult before they are easy."
--Dr. Thomas Fuller

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

A TSA interlude...

George R R Martin on airline security, or lack thereof.

Kyle=

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 165

Doubly true for me?

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment." --Robert Benchley


"What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?" --Woody Allen

"In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart." --Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939)

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 164

"Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established." --Ludwig Feuerbach, philosopher (1804-1872)

"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it." --Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

"Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments." --Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-92)

"Near and far, near and far
I am happy where you are;
Likewise I have never larnt
How to be it where you aren't.
Then grudge me not my fond endeavor
To hold you in my sight forever;
Let none, not even you, disparage
Such a valid reason for a marriage."
-- Ogden Nash, "Tin Wedding Whistle"




Hag: Two things you must know about the wise woman. First...she is a woman. Second...she is...

Blackadder: Wise?

Hag: Oh! You know her then?

Blackadder: No, just a stab in the dark, which is what you'll be getting in a minute if you don't become more helpful.

--EB to Old Hag : Bells, Blackadder 2

Friday, September 01, 2006

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 163

"Never tell anyone that you're: writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They'll encourage you to death." --Lynn Johnston

"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."
--Robert Heinlein