Dr. Mardy's Dictionary of Metaphorical Quotations
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“A” Quotations
ABBREVIATIONS
(see also SHORTHAND)
Abbreviations are the wheels of language, the wings of Mercury. And though we might be dragged along without them, it would be with much difficulty, very heavily and tediously. John Horne Tooke, in Epea Pteroenta, or The Diversions of Purley (1786)
QUOTE NOTE: The Greek title—taken directly from Homer—means “winged words.” Horne Tooke (1736–1812), an English cleric and philologist, used the term to refer to the power of abbreviations to speed communication.
ABDOMEN
(see also BODY and DIGESTION and EATING and HEALTH and HUNGER and STOMACH)
ABILITY
(includes CAPABILITY; see also ACHIEVEMENT and COMPETENCE and EXCELLENCE and GENIUS and INGENUITY and INTELLIGENCE and SKILL and TALENT)
Would that my ability was equal to my inclination. Abigail Adams, in letter to John Quincy Adams (Feb. 16, 1786); quoted in John P. Kaminski, The Quotable Abigail Adams (2009)
QUOTATION CAUTION: The original source for this quotation has never been identified, but it has been popular since it first appeared in Edward Parson Day’s influential 1884 anthology. Aristippus, a student of Socrates, was described by Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers (3rd c. A.D.) as “the first of the followers of Socrates to charge fees and to send money to his master.” Diogenes presents many quotations from Aristippus, but nothing close to this observation about native ability.
Ability, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis, ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability. Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
This observation has also been translated as: “The wicked are always surprised to discover ability in the just.”
He who has acquired the ability may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Worship,” in The Conduct of Life (1860)
As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities. James Anthony Froude, “Education,” address at St. Andrew’s University (Fife, Scotland; March 19, 1869); reprinted in Short Studies on Great Subjects, Vol. 4 (1893)
QUOTE NOTE: The American Heritage Dictionary defines bona fides (pronounced BO-nuh FEE-daze) this way: “Information that serves to guarantee a person’s good faith, standing, and reputation; authentic credentials.”
There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. Elbert Hubbard, “The Crying Need,” in A Message to Garcia, and Thirteen Other Things (1901)
QUOTE NOTE: Jackson was likely inspired by an Eleanor Roosevelt observation, to be found below.
The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)
Ours is a very practical age, and no matter how skillfully a man play the game of life, there is but one test of his ability—did he win? Charles Lever, the voice of the narrator, in The Martins of Cro’ Martin (1856)
Thousands of men of great native ability have been lost to the world because they have not had to wrestle with obstacles, and to struggle under difficulties sufficient to stimulate into activity their dormant powers. Orison Swett Marden, in Architects of Fate (1895)
A few pages later, Marden went on to write: “How often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent, or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has knocked the props and crutches from under him.”
All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success. Napoleon I Napoleon Bonaparte), in letter to his Minister of Foreign Affairs (Sep. 26, 1797)
He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight. John Randolph, on Edward Livingston, quoted in W. Cabell Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke (1923)
ERROR ALERT: Many books and web sites mistakenly report that Henry Clay was the target of this legendary metaphorical insult. John F. Kennedy even got it wrong in Profiles in Courage (1957), where he described the line as “the most memorable and malignant sentence in the history of personal abuse.” But Randolph, a Virginia congressman hailed by William Safire as a “master of American political invective,” said it about Edward Livingston, a former New York City mayor who had been elected to Congress. In 1998, Bill Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, titled his first novel, Mackerel by Moonlight. Appropriately, it was a tale of political corruption.
If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Joshua Reynolds, in Reynolds’ Discourses (1887; Helen Zimmern, ed.)
Ability is not something to be saved, like money, in the hope that you can draw interest on it. The interest comes from the spending. Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy. Eleanor Roosevelt, in Tomorrow is Now (1963)
Mrs. Roosevelt continued: “It is tragic to realize that the majority of human beings, even the so-called educated, call upon only the smallest fraction of their potential capacity. They leave many talents dormant. They fail to develop their mental qualities. They are almost unaware of the degree of energy upon which they might call to build a full and rewarding life.”
Out of my lean and low ability/I’ll lend you something. William Shakespeare, the character Viola, speaking to Antonio, in Twelfth-Night (1601-02)
I believe that happiness consists in having a destiny in keeping with our abilities. Our desires are things of the moment, often harmful even to ourselves; but our abilities are permanent, and their demands never cease. Germaine de Staël, in Reflections on Suicide (1813)
A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his obligations. Robert Louis Stevenson, the Doctor speaking, in the short story “The Treasure of Franchard,” first pub. in an 1883 issue of Longman’s magazine; reprinted in The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables (1887)
The doctor continued: “I must be up and doing; I must be no skulker in life’s battle.”
Temple added: “If you pull it upon your shoulders, you leave your feet bare; if you thrust it down upon your feet, your shoulders are uncovered.”
Ability is active power, or power to perform; as opposed to capacity, or power to receive. Noah Webster, in An American Dictionary of the English Language (1845 ed.)
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended. Alfred North Whitehead, remark in conversation (Dec. 15, 1939), in Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954; Lucien Price, ed.)
QUOTATION CAUTION: An original source for this quotation has never been provided and, as with the Aristippus quotation earlier, its first appearance appears to have been in Day’s Collacon. Wren (1585–1667), an Anglican cleric and scholar, was the uncle of Sir Christopher Wren.
ABNORMAL
(see also AVERAGE and CONFORMITY and DEVIANT and ECCENTRIC and DIFFERENT and HEALTHY and INDIVIDUALITY & INDIVIDUALISM and NORMAL)
Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
ABROAD
(see also ADVENTURE and AIRPLANES & AIR TRAVEL and CRUISES & CRUISING and DISCOVERY and EXPLORATION and HOTELS & MOTELS and JOURNEYS and PILGRIMAGE & PILGRIMS and SIGHTSEEING and TOURISM & TOURISTS and TRIPS and VACATIONS & HOLIDAYS and VOYAGES and WANDERING & WANDERERS and WANDERLUST)
There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost. Franz Kafka, quoted in Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (1951; 2nd expanded ed., 1971)
QUOTATION CAUTION: Some Kafka scholars have questioned the authenticity of this quotation. See explanation in the Kafka ACHIEVEMENT entry.
The great and recurrent question about Abroad is, is it worth the trouble of getting there? Rose Macaulay, the opening line of the essay “Abroad,” in Personal Pleasures (1936)
ABSENCE
(see also PARTING and SEPARATION)
QUOTE NOTE: This observation first appeared in H. L. Mencken’s A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942). Many believe it was actually authored by Mencken, who decided to include it in his collection as an anonymous quip.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;/For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923)
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. Samuel Johnson, in The Idler (Sep. 23, 1758)
Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. Alphonse de Lamartine, in Méditations Poétiques (1820)
Absence lessens the minor passions and increases the great ones, as the wind douses a candle and kindles a fire. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)
QUOTE NOTE: La Rochefoucauld, the most famous of all French aphorists, usually gets credit for this sentiment, but he may have been inspired by a similar analogy in Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1665) by Roger de Bussy-Rabutin. In a section on “Maxims of Love,” he wrote: “Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.”
When you’re gone, all the colors fade/When you’re gone, no New Year’s Parade/You’re gone, colors seem to fade. Amos Lee, lyric from the song “Colors” (written under his birth name, Ryan Anthony Massaro), on the album Amos Lee (2005)
This is a beautiful lyric from a beautiful song, written by a gifted singer-songwriter. See Lee perform the song live in concert at: “Colors”
The absent are like children, helpless to defend themselves. Charles Reade, the character Helen speaking, in Foul Play (1869)
QUOTE NOTE: Shakespeare went on to write: “What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!/What old December’s bareness everywhere.” The words are from one who is clearly smitten, and it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that they were addressed to a man! In fact, the first 126 (out of the total of 154) sonnets are addressed to a beautiful and charming young nobleman—never formally identified—who Shakespeare clearly loved. Norrie Epstein says in The Friendly Shakespeare (1993): “No other straight poet has ever written such ardent poems to a man.” Was Shakespeare gay? Or bisexual (since he was, after all, married and a father)? The question has intrigued Shakespeare fans for centuries. Nowadays, most scholars would probably agree with Epstein, who concluded: “We’ll probably never know Shakespeare’s sexual preferences, though it’s likely he was bisexual.”
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the day-time, and falling into at night. Edna St. Vincent Millay, in a 1920 letter to Whitter “Hal” Bynner and Arthur Davidson Ficke; reprinted in Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1952; A. R. Macdougall, ed.)
ABSTINENCE
(includes ABSTAINING; see also ASCETICISM and CHASTITY and LUST and MODERATION and PASSION and PLEASURE and SELF-CONTROL and SELF-DENIAL and STOICISM & STOICS and TEMPTATION)
Beecher continued: “Thus they become, as in the ancient fable, the harnessed steeds which bear the chariot of the sun.”
Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare. John Dryden, in “To My Honoured Kinsman, John Driden” (1699), in Fables (1700)
QUOTE NOTE: John Driden was John Dryden’s first cousin (Dryden the poet often spelled his own name with an “i” as well). While this line from the poem is casually understood to be about resisting temptation, Dryden was in fact complimenting his cousin’s decision to stay single and remain unmarried! Dryden continued: “Thus have you shunned and shun the married state,/Trusting as little as you can to Fate.” Reading the poem, one clearly senses Dryden’s dim view of marriage. A bit earlier in the poem, he describes his cousin as “Lord of yourself, uncumbered [sic] with a wife.” And just prior to the shun the bait phrase, he offers this memorable metaphor about the married state: “Two wrestlers help to pull each other down.”
Refrain tonight,/And that shall lend a kind of easiness/To the next abstinence; the next more easy. William Shakespeare, the title character speaking to Gertrude, in Hamlet (1601)
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want [i.e., lack] shoes. Jonathan Swift, in Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1696–1706 (1711)
ABSURDITY & THE ABSURD
(see also EXISTENCE and LUDICROUSNESS and MEANING and [Lack of] MEANING and RIDICULOUSNESS & THE RIDICULOUS)
Fashion: the search for a new absurdity. Natalie Clifford Barney, “Scatterings” (1910), in A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney (1992; Anna Livia, ed.)
Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful. Albert Camus, “Three Interviews,” in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
Life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it. Albert Camus, in a review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre; quoted in Avi Sagi, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (2002)
Absurdity is the one thing love can’t stand; it can overlook anything else— coldness, or weakness, or viciousness—but just be ridiculous and that’s the end of it! Margaret Deland, the voice of the narrator, in Philip and His Wife (1894)
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. Bertrand Russell, in Marriage and Morals (1929)
I very much like your love of pleasure, and your humour and malice: it is so delightful to live in a world that is full of pictures, and incident divertissements, and amiable absurdities. Why shouldn’t things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together. George Santayana, in letter to Logan Pearsall Smith (May 24, 1918)
ABUSE
(see also BULLIES & BULLYING and AGGRESSION and CRUELTY and INSENSITIVITY and KINDNESS and MALICE and PAIN and UNKINDNESS and RECOVERY)
He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it. James Boswell, a 1769 observation, in Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
The human race…tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What’s left of kisses? Wounds however leave scars. Bertolt Brecht, in Short Stories, 1921-1946 (1983)
Abuse is an indirect species of homage. William Hazlitt, “Common Places,” in The Literary Examiner (Sep.–Dec., 1823)
QUOTE NOTE: See a similar remark about criticism, made a century and a half later by John Maddox.
The difference between coarse and refined abuse is as the difference between being bruised by a club, and wounded by a poisoned arrow. Samuel Johnson, quoted in Boswell’s Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1791)
A wound from a tongue is worse than a wound from a sword: for the latter affects only the body, the former the spirit. Pythagoras, in Thomas Stanley, Pythagoras: His Life and Teachings (1970, James Wasserman’s updated version of Stanley’s 1678 classic The History of Philosophy)
When political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is wheeled into action. Wallace Stevens, in a speech in New York City (Sep. 22, 1952)
British prime minister Margaret Thatcher might have had this observation in mind when she said about the political abuse heaped on her: “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because…it means that they have not a single political argument left” (quoted in London’s Daily Telegraph, March 21, 1986)
(CHILD) ABUSE
(see also ABUSE and CHILDREN and CRUELTY and PAIN and UNKINDNESS and PUNISHMENT and RECOVERY and TRAUMA and VICTIMS & VICTIMHOOD)
The words come from the narrator, who adds: “The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.“
ABYSS
(see also DANGER and DARKNESS and DARKNESS & LIGHT and LIGHT and OBLIVION)
It is by going down into the abyss/that we recover the treasures of life./Where you stumble,/there lies your treasure. Joseph Campbell, in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (1991; Robert Walter, ed., from material by Diane K. Osbon)
QUOTE NOTE: Campbell continued: “The very cave you are afraid to enter/turns out to be the source of/what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave/that was so dreaded/has become the center.”
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. Friedrich Nietzsche, in
Beyond Good and Evil (1886). Note that the concluding line is a famous example of
chiasmus.
QUOTE NOTE: The observation is also commonly presented this way: “Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become one himself. And when you stare for a long time into an abyss, the abyss stares back into you.”
We can’t be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion; cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for what’s new. Margaret J. Wheatley, “Willing to Be Disturbed,” in Turning to One Another (2002)
Wheatley continued: “Of course it’s scary to give up what we know, but the abyss is where newness lives. Great ideas and inventions miraculously appear in the space of not knowing. If we can move through the fear and enter the abyss, we are rewarded greatly.”
ACADEMIA & ACADEMICS
(see also COLLEGE and ERUDITION and INTELLECT and INTELLECTUALS and KNOWLEDGE and LEARNING and PEDANTS & PEDANTRY and PROFESSORS and SCHOLARS & SCHOLARSHIP and STUDY and UNIVERSITY)
If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets. Irving Layton, “Obs II,” in The Whole Bloody Bird (1969)
ACCENT
(see also COMMUNICATION and IMMIGRANTS and LANGUAGE and [Foreign] LANGUAGE and SPEECH & SPEAKING and TALK & TALKING)
ACCEPTANCE
(see also ATTACHMENT & NONATTACHMENT and CRITICISM and EVALUATION and INEVITABILITY and JUDGMENTALISM & NONJUDGMENTALISM)
A wise man weaves a philosophy out of each acceptance life forces upon him. Elizabeth Bibesco, in Haven: Short Stories, Pems, and Aphorisms (1951)
It is better to learn early of the inevitable depths, for then sorrow and death take their proper place in life, and one is not afraid. Pearl S. Buck, in My Several Worlds (1954)
At thirty, a man should have himself well in hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures—be what he is. And above all accept these things. Albert Camus, notebook entry (July 30, 1945), in Carnets: 1942–1951 (1963)
During much of my life, I was anxious to be what someone else wanted me to be. Now I have given up that struggle. I am what I am. Elizabeth Coatsworth, in Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography (1976)
I’m Not OK, You’re Not OK—and That’s OK. William Sloane Coffin, title of book he said he would like to write, offered in a Riverside Church sermon (July 12, 1987)
There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. John Fowles, the character Maurice Conchis speaking, in The Magus (1965)
QUOTE NOTE: Conchis is speaking to Nichoas Urfe, the narrator and protagonist, and, at age twenty-five, many decades younger. Conchis added: “You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.”
My happiness goes in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations. Michael J. Fox, quoted in Brian Hiatt, “Michael J. Fox: The Toughest Man on TV,” Rolling Stone magazine (Sep. 26, 2013)
QUOTE NOTE: This has become one of Fox’s most frequently quoted observations, but it is unclear from Hiatt’s article whether the observation is original to Fox or a maxim he learned during his many years in recovery from alcoholism. At the time of the article, Fox had been sober for 21 years (about which, he quipped, “My sobriety is old enough to drink”).
He who seeks for applause only from without, has all his happiness in another’s keeping. Oliver Goldsmith, the character Sir William speaking, in The Good-Natur’d Man (1768)
Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there’s all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens. Arthur Gordon, in A Touch of Wonder: A Book to Help Stay in Love with Life (1974)
Lorde continued: “I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.”
Self-acceptance begets acceptance from others, which begets even deeper, more genuine self-acceptance. It can be done. But no one is going to bestow it on you. It is a gift only you can give yourself. Camryn Manheim, in Wake Up, I’m Fat! (1999)
I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself. I want to be rich my myself, not by borrowing. Michel de Montaigne, “On Glory,” in Essays (1580-88)
Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. Flannery O’Connor, in letter to “A” (Dec. 9, 1961); reprinted in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor (1979; Sally Fitzgerald. ed.)
Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves. Bonaro Overstreet, in The World Book Complete Word Power Library, Vol. 1 (1981)
A moment later, Rogers went on to add: “We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are, until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.”
Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it, one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world. Eleanor Roosevelt, the concluding words of the essay
“How to Take Criticism,” in
Ladies' Home Journal (Nov., 1944)
The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else. J. K. Rowling, the narrator describing a belief of the character Stuart “Fats” Wall, in The Casual Vacancy (2012)
The narrator continued: “Honesty was Fats’ currency, his weapon and defense. It frightened people when you were honest; it shocked them. Other people Fats had discovered, were mired in embarrassment and pretense, terrified that their truths might leak out.”
We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be. May Sarton, a reflection of the protagonist Hilary Stevens, in Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965)
It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble, but we do know it is our sacred duty. Florida Scott Maxwell, in The Measure of My Days (1968)
Acceptance is an art that must be mastered if we want to keep our friends for the span of life that remains to us, and presently step off the stage with our self-respect intact. Ethel Smyth, in As Time Went On… (1936)
Every acceptance of suffering is an acceptance of that which exists. The denial of every form of suffering can result in a flight from reality in which contact with reality becomes ever thinner, ever more fragmentary. Dorothee Sölle, in Suffering (1973)
Sölle continued: “It is impossible to remove oneself totally from suffering, unless one removes oneself from life itself, no longer enters into relationships, makes oneself invulnerable.”
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Henry David Thoreau, in Walden (1854)
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. Mark Twain, the Old Man speaking, in title essay, in What is Man? And Other Essays (1917)
ACCESSORY [as in HUMAN INTERACTION]
(see also ACCOMPLICE and ENABLERS & ENABLEMENT)
There is at least one thing more brutal than the truth, and that is the consequence of saying less than the truth. One becomes an accessory to any facts one attempts—however much—to conceal. Ti-Grace Atkinson, “The Older Woman,” in Amazon Odyssey (1974)
We may be accessory to another’s sin by counsel, by command, by consent, by concealment, by provoking, by praise, by partaking, by silence, by defense. John McCaffrey, in A Catechism of Christian Doctrine for General Use (1866)
ACCESSORY [as in FASHION]
(see also DRESS and FASHION)
It is tempting to think of your husband-to-be as just another bridal accessory. It may be easier for him to play along with this too. After all, you don’t expect your shoes or your beaded bag to help you make decisions. Mimi Pond, A Groom of One’s Own and Other Bridal Accessories (1993)
ACCIDENT
(see also CHANCE and MISFORTUNE)
Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
Men’s accidents are God's purposes. Sophia A. Hawthorne, quoted in a June 1, 1842 entry The American Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1932; C. M. Simpson, ed.)
Accident is the name one gives to the coincidence of events, of which one does not know the causation. Franz Kafka, quoted in Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (1953
According to Janouch, Kafka went on to add: “Accidents only exist in our heads, in our limited perceptions.”
ACCOMPLICE
(see also ACCESSORY and ENABLERS & ENABLEMENT)
Accomplice, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
Gourmont introduced the thought by writing: “Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.”
Sontag continued: “Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification. The job of the writer is to make it harder to believe the mental despoilers.”
ACCOMPLISHMENT
(see also AIMS & AIMING and ACHIEVEMENT and AMBITION and ASPIRATION and GOALS and TARGET)
We will more easily accomplish what is proper if, like archers, we have a target in sight. Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics (4th c. B.C.)
QUOTE NOTE: Another translation of the Aristotle thought has it phrased this way: “It concerns us to know the purposes we seek in life, for then, like archers aiming at a definite mark, we shall be more likely to attain what we want.”
QUOTATION CAUTION: This is how the quotation is commonly presented, but it was originally part of a larger message that Mrs. Ramsay was sending to Lucy: “Nothing really matters but living. Get all you can out of it. I’m an old woman, and I know. Accomplishments are the ornaments of life, they come second.”
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Greatness,” in Letters and Social Aims (1876)
QUOTE NOTE: Emerson believed that all people had a special leaning, or bias, they needed to identify, and then follow, in order to achieve greatness. He went on to explain: “Every individual man has a bias which he must obey, and…it is only as he feels and obeys this that he rightly develops and attains his legitimate power in the world. It is his magnetic needle, which points always in one direction to his proper path…. He is never happy nor strong until he finds it, keeps it.”
Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it. Once realized, it becomes commonplace. Robert H. Goddard, quoted in Milton Lehman, This High Man: The Live of Robert H. Goddard (1963)
Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1962)
ACCOUNTABILITY
(see also BLAME and CHARACTER and CONSEQUENCES and DUTY and RESPONSIBILITY)
Accountability is a key factor in management because it is the cornerstone of empowerment and personal growth. If no one is accountable for a project, no one gets to grow through the experience of it. Accountability has nothing to do with blame. It has everything to do with individual and corporate growth. Laurie Beth Jones, in Jesus CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership (1995)
A moment later, Jones added: “Holding people accountable allows them the opportunity to sign their name on a portrait of success, no matter how small that portrait might be. It gives them their next growth challenge in a defined and measurable form.”
Part of having a strong sense of self is to be accountable for one’s actions. No matter how much we explore motives or lack of motives, we are what we do. Janet Geringer Woititz, in Adult Children of Alcoholics (1983)
ACCURACY & INNACCURACY
(see also LIES & LYING and TRUTH and VERACITY)
Cardozo continued: “I often say that one must permit oneself . . . a certain margin of misstatement. Of course, one must take heed that the margin is not exceeded, just as the physician must be cautious in administering the poisonous ingredient which magnified will kill, but in tiny quantities will cure.”
ERROR ALERT: The Cardozo observation is often mistakenly presented as if it ended on details.
An inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both. Maria Edgeworth, in letter from Caroline to Julia, in Letters of Julia and Caroline (1795)
Caroline continued: “A skillful disputant knows well how to take advantage of this confusion, and sometimes endeavors to create it.”
Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. Anna Jameson, in A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies (1854)
Jameson continued: “If we looked into the matter we should probably find that all the varieties and modifications of conscious and unconscious lying—as exaggeration, equivocation, evasion, misrepresentation—might be traced to the early misuse of words.”
In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness. Samuel Johnson, “The Bravery of the English Common Soldier,” in The British Magazine (Jan., 1760)
Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman. Joseph Pulitzer, quoted in Alleyne Ireland, “Joseph Pulitzer: Reminiscences of a Secretary,” in
Metropolitan magazine (Dec., 1913)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is typically presented, but it was originally the concluding portion of remarks Pulitzer made to Mr. Ireland, his personal secretary. “It is not enough to refrain from printing fake news,” he said, adding that it was also insufficient to be simply on guard for mistakes and carelessness in reporting. Rather, he concluded: “You have got to do much more than that; you have got to make every one connected to the paper—your editors, your reporters, your correspondents, your re-write men, your proof-readers—believe that accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.” Pulitzer’s observation, which went on to become one of his best-known quotations, was also tweaked in a memorable way by Adlai Stevenson: “Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a lady, but a newspaper can always print a retraction.”
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. Saki (pen name of H. H. Munro), the character Lady Caroline speaking, “Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business,” in The Square Egg (1924)
ERROR ALERT: a similar observation is commonly misattributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne
ACCUSATION
(see also BLAME & BLAMING and CENSURE and CRITICISM and JUDGING OTHERS and LIBEL and SCAPEGOAT and SLANDER)
ACHIEVEMENT
(see also AIMS & AIMING and ACCOMPLISHMENT and AMBITION and ASPIRATION)
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities. James Allen, in As a Man Thinketh (1903)
ERROR ALERT: This observation is commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but nothing like it has been found in his works. It might be a paraphrase of something Emerson did say in his “Man the Reformer” lecture (Boston; Jan. 25, 1841): “Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.”
Life requires thorough preparation. Veneer isn’t worth anything; we must disabuse our people of the idea that there is a short cut to achievement. George Washington Carver, quoted in Raleigh H. Merritt, From Captivity to Fame: Or The Life of George Washington Carver (1929)
It is not the clear-sighted who lead the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm mental fog.
Joseph Conrad, voice of the narrator, in Victory: An Island Tale (1915)
There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost. Franz Kafka, quoted in Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (1951; 2nd expanded ed., 1971)
QUOTATION CAUTION: In 1920, Janouch was a 17-year-old aspiring Czech writer when he first met Kafka, a friend of his father’s, and a man twenty years his senior (Kafka and Janouch’s father both worked at Prague’s Workman’s Accident Insurance Institute). For the next several years, Kafka became something of a mentor to the young man, and Janouch attempted to faithfully record each of their interactions (Kafka died at age 40 in 1924, of complications related to tuberculosis). In 1951, a heavily-edited version of Janouch’s decades-old original manuscript was published by Kafka’s literary executor, Max Brod. In 1971, Janouch came out with his own complete version. Some of Kafka’s most popular quotations come from Conversations with Kafka, but many Kafka scholars have questioned their authenticity, arguing that Janouch took creative liberties with Kafka’s actual words.
The heights by great men reached and kept/Were not attained by sudden flight,/But they, while their companions slept,/Were toiling upward in the night. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Ladder of Saint Augustine,” in Birds of Passage (1845)
Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1962)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the modernized version of one of intellectual history’s most famous observations (Newton’s original wording was: If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants). The metaphor beautifully captures the notion that all current thinkers build on the efforts of those who preceded them. The basic idea was not original with Newton, however. He was merely restating an observation from the twelfth-century French philosopher Bernard of Chartres: “We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants.” For more on the history of the quotation, go to: "Shoulders of Giants"
Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. Theodore Isaac Rubin, in Love Me, Love My Fool: Thoughts from a Psychoanalyst’s Notebook (1976)
A bit earlier, Schultz had written: “Life is a series of near misses. But a lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It’s seeing what other people don’t see and pursuing that vision, no matter who tells you not to.”
ACQUIESCENCE
(see also COMPLIANCE and CONSENT and SUBMISSION)
ACQUISITION & ACQUISITIVENESS
(see also COMPLIANCE and CONSENT and SUBMISSION)
The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea (1955)
Desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it. Laurence Sterne, the title character describing his uncle Toby’s studies, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67)
ACTING
(see also ACTORS & ACTRESSES and ACTORS—ON THEMSELVES and ACTORS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and CINEMA and FILM and DIRECTING & DIRECTORS and PRODUCERS & PRODUCING and SHOW BUSINESS and STAGE and THEATER)
For acting, darlings, is the world’s most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives. Tallulah Bankhead, in a 1958 issue of Good Housekeeping (specific issue undetermined)
If you’re successful, acting is about as soft a job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you’re unsuccessful, it’s worse than having a skin disease. Marlon Brando, in B. Thomas, Marlon: Portrait of the Rebel as an Artist (1973)
Brando added: “The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.”
Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we’re acting. Most people do it all day long. Marlon Brando, quoted in The New York Times (July 2, 2004)
The main thing about acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made. George Burns, quoted in Playboy magazine (March, 1984)
QUOTE NOTE: Four years earlier, in The Third Time Around: An Autobiography (1980), Burns expressed the thought this way: “And remember this for the rest of your life: To be a fine actor, when you’re playing a role you’ve got to be honest. And if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” Similar observations have been attributed to Groucho Marx and Samuel Goldwyn as well, but with no supporting evidence.
According to quotation researcher Garson O'Toole, the earliest appearance of the faking honesty sentiment was in 1962, when actress Celeste Holm attributed the following remark to an unnamed actor: “Honesty. That’s the thing in the theater today. Honesty…and just as soon as I can learn to fake that, I’ll have it made.” For more on the many iterations of the saying, see this informative 2011 Quote Investigator post.
Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation. Bette Davis, in The Lonely Life (1962)
Acting is make-believe. Dylan, my kid, when he was young he said, “I do that in the park everyday.” Michael Douglas, quoted in People magazine (Sep. 7, 2016)
Acting is the conveyance of truth through the medium of the actor's mind and person. The science of acting deals with the perfecting of that medium. Minnie Maddern Fiske, quoted in Alexander Woollcott, Mrs. Fiske (1917)
Fiske continued: “The great actors are the luminous ones.”
Acting is half shame, half glory. Shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself. John Gielgud, in Gielgud Stories: Anecdotes, Sayings, and Impressions of Sir John Gielgud (1988; Clive Fisher, ed.)
Goudge continued: “It is more truthful to act what we should feel if the community is to be well served rather than behave as we actually do feel in our selfish private feelings.”
Acting is happy agony. Alec Guinness, quoted in Christopher P. Anderson,
The New Book of People (1986). Also an example of
oxymoronica.
Acting in the theater is the most direct and effective approach to emotion that has ever been devised, isn’t it? Helen Hayes, quoted in Lewis Funke and John E. Booth, Actors Talk About Acting (1961)
No matter how real the emotion, the habit of acting is hard to break. If you are a star, then it follows that you must twinkle mightily. There is a price for stardom and, unfortunately, one’s family shares in the payment. Helen Hayes, in On Reflection, An Autobiography (1968; with Sandford Dody)
Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to make a living. Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four. Katharine Hepburn, quoted in Nigel Rees, Cassell’s Movie Quotations (2000)
Acting is like making love. It’s better if your partner is good, but it’s probably possible if your partner isn’t. Jeremy Irons, remark on French TV show Cinéma, Cinémas (1991)
The important thing in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life. Glenda Jackson, quoted in a 1980 syndicated column by L.M. Boyd.
Jackson continued: “The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.”
Acting requires absorption, but not self-absorption and, in the actor’s mind, the question must always be “Why am I doing this?” not “How am I doing it?” Maureen Lipman, in How Was It for You? (1985)
Acting forces you to ask yourself, “Can my constitution take a decade of constant rejection?” And after ten years, you either make it or you don’t. And the problem is they don’t tell you in advance. Camryn Manheim, in Wake Up, I’m Fat! (1999)
Acting isn’t a profession, it’s a way of living. Jeanne Moreau, in Penelope Gilliatt, Three-Quarter Face (1980)
QUOTE NOTE: Richardson reprised this sentiment on other occasions as well. Another popular version is: “The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.”
Acting and painting have much in common. You begin with the external appearance and then strip away the layers to get to the essential core. This is reality and that is how an artist achieves truth. Edgar G. Robinson, quoted in Jim McMullan and Dick Gautier, Actors as Artists (1994)
Robinson continued: “When you are acting, you are playing a part, you are being somebody else. You are also, at the same time, being yourself.”
Acting is being susceptible to what is around you, and it’s letting it all come in. Acting is a clearing away of everything except what you want and need—and it’s wonderful in that way. And when it’s right, you’re lost in the moment. Meryl Streep, quoted in Kristen Golden and Barbara Findlen, Remarkable Women of the Twentieth Century (1998)
Acting is the developing of one’s own personality, too, you know. That’s what the public buys in a star, shall we say, the personality thing. Shelley Winters, quoted in Lewis Funke and John E. Booth, Actors Talk About Acting (1961)
Acting is like sex. You should do it, but not talk about it. Joanne Woodward, in “You” supplement to The Mail on Sunday (London, 1987)
ACTION & ACTIONS
(see also INACTION and DEEDS and DOING and INTENTION and THOUGHT and THOUGHT & ACTION and SPEECH and WORDS & DEEDS )
ERROR ALERT: Scores of blogs and web sites mistakenly present this quotation as: “Belief without action is the ruin of the soul.”
As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe the only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth. Edward Abbey, in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (1989)
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them. Abigail Adams, in letter to husband John Adams (Oct. 16, 1774)
Thought is sad without action, and action is sad without thought. Henri-Frédéric Amiel, quoted in Cesare Lombroso, The Man of Genius (1896)
A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all. Georges Bernanos, “France Before the World of Tomorrow,” in The Last Essays of George Bernanos (1955)
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in 1944 letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge; reprinted in Letters and Papers from Prison (1953; Eberhard Bethge, ed.)
QUOTE NOTE: This famous sentiment from Bonhoeffer has also been translated this way: “It is not the thought but readiness to take responsibility that is the mainspring of action.”
Bronowski added: “We are active; and indeed we know, as something more than a symbolic accident in the evolution of man, that it is the hand that drives the subsequent evolution of the brain. We find tools today made by man before he became man. Benjamin Franklin in 1778 called man ‘a tool-making animal’, and that is right.” (For a lovely elaboration of this thought, see the Bronowski entry under MIND).
Be careful how you live your life, it is the only Gospel many people will ever read. Dom Hélder Câmara, quoted in a 1985 issue of Basta (national newsletter of the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America; specific issue undetermined)
QUOTE NOTE: Câmara, a Brazilian Catholic priest who went on to serve as Archbishop of Olinds and Recife from 1964 to 1985, was a proponent of social justice and liberation theology. He devoted so much of his time to fighting poverty that he became known as “The Bishop of the Slums.” For more, see Hélder Câmara.
Every action of your life touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity. E. H. Chapin, “Advice to the Young,” in Charles W. Sanders, Sanders’ Union Fourth Reader (1873)
ERROR ALERT: This observation is often mistakenly attributed to Louisa May Alcott:
QUOTE NOTE: Clarke was a prominent Unitarian minister, abolitionist, and early exponent of what went on to be called the Social Gospel. He continued: “The man strongly possessed of an idea is the master of all who are uncertain and wavering. Clear, deep living convictions rule the world.”
The result of a single action may spread like the circles that expand when a stone is thrown into a pond, until they touch places and people unguessed at by the person who threw the stone. Robertson Davies, “Literature and Moral Purpose” (1990), in The Merry Heart: Selections 1980-1995 (1996)
ERROR ALERT: This quotation is often mistakenly presented as if it read may not always bring happiness.
An action is the perfection and publication of thought. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Discipline,” in Nature, Addresses and Lectures (1849)
ERROR ALERT: There is no evidence that Engels ever said such a thing, even though the quotation appears all over the internet and in a number of respected quotation anthologies. In most cases, no source is given, but when one is provided, the Groves book is generally cited. Groves was a pioneering figure in the British Communist Party until he was expelled in 1932 for supporting Leon Trotsky over Josef Stalin. To be fair, Groves didn’t formally quote Engels, but simply asked rhetorically: “And did not wise old Frederick (sic) Engels once say: An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory?” For a thorough discussion of the erroneous Engels attribution, as well as some similar English sayings that preceded it, go to: Ounce of Action.
Think wisely, weighing Word and Fact,/But never Think too much to Act. Arthur Guiterman, in A Poet’s Proverbs (1924)
Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers. Learned Hand, in a speech in New York City (Jan. 27, 1952)
Hoffer reprised the theme in The Ordeal of Change (1964): “Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance—a flailing of the arms to to regain one’s balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.”
QUOTATION CAUTION: The saying, even though widely cited for more than a century, has not been found in Hugo’s works and should be used with this caveat.
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. William James, “Habit,” in The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (1890)
James went on to add: “There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a Weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed.”
Oh, words are action, good enough, if they’re the right words. D. H. Lawrence, in a letter to Rolf Gardiner (Aug. 9, 1924); reprinted in The Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence (1997; James T. Boulton, ed.)
A moment later, Lewis added: “Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in “religion” mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.”
ERROR ALERT: This quotation is often mistakenly presented as The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret. Mary McCarthy, “My Confession” (1953), in On the Contrary (1961)
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear. Friedrich Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human (1878)
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the action stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. Anaïs Nin, a June, 1946 diary entry, in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4 (1971)
For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out. Theodore Roosevelt, in an 1898 speech in New York City
QUOTE NOTE: The notion that people, like machines, might rust out or wear out was popular by Roosevelt’s time, but the idea originated with Richard Cumberland (1631-1718), a seventeenth-century Anglican bishop. In Contending for the Faith (1786), George Horne, an Anglican cleric, quoted Cumberland as saying: “It is better to wear out than to rust out. There will be time enough for repose in the grave.”
Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act. Jean Paul Sartre, the character Orestes speaking, in The Flies (1943)
There is no reality except in action. Jean-Paul Sartre, in
“Existentialism Is a Humanism” (1946 lecture); reprinted in Walter Kaufmann,
Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (1956)
QUOTE NOTE: Volumnia, the mother of the title character, is advising Coriolanus to look humble in order to win the votes of Roman citizens. The full passage is a timeless lesson in political oratory: “In such business/Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant/More learned than the ears.”
It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect. Robert Louis Stevenson, “Reflections and Remarks on Human Life” (1878), reprinted in Complete Works, Vol. 26 (1924)
Thought and theory must precede all action that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory. William Wordsworth, quoted in Edwin Paxton Hood, William Wordsworth: A Biography (1856)
ACTIVISM
(see also AGITATION [Social & Political] and CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE and DEMONSTRATIONS and DISSENT and MILITANCY & MILITANTS and OPPOSITION and OUTRAGE and REBELLION and PROTEST and [Protest] SONG and RESISTANCE and REVOLUTION)
The church…is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Church and the Jewish Question” (1933), reprinted in No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes 1928-1936 (1965)
QUOTE NOTE: Bonhoeffer’s 1933 lecture on the need for church activism was addressed to fellow German clerics, many of whom were turning a blind eye to the anti-semitic pronouncements of the emerging Nazi party. Arguing that “The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community,” he said the church had three options. The first was to question the legitimacy of the state’s actions, the second was to provide aid to the victims, and the third was beautifully captured by his “spoke in the wheel” metaphor. That phrase became so centrally associated with Bonhoeffer that Renate Wind used it in the title of her 1992 biography: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Spoke in the Wheel.
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims. R. Buckminster Fuller, quoted in L. Steven Sieden, A Fuller View (2012)
If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircle us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake. Mohandas K. Gandhi, quoted in Young India (May 12, 1920)
An activist is the guy who cleans the river, not the guy who concludes it’s dirty. Ross Perot, quoted in Ken Gross, Ross Perot: The Man Behind the Myth (1992)
QUOTE NOTE: This was one of Perot’s favorite sayings, offered in slightly different ways over the years. A 1992 issue of Reader’s Digest carried the following version: “The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”
QUOTE NOTE: In the interview, Dreifus asked the question “What do you get from activism?” and Walker formally began her answer by saying, “Well, it pays the rent on….” Over the years, as the quotation grew in popularity, all of the versions of the saying mistakenly had Walker actually using activism as the first word. For more on the history of the saying, see this excellent post by Garson O’Toole, aka The Quote Investigator.
ACTORS & ACTRESSES
(see also ACTING and ACTORS—ON THEMSELVES and ACTORS–DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and CINEMA & FILM and DIRECTING & DIRECTORS and STAGE and THEATER)
For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of a Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros. Ethel Barrymore, quoted in George Jean Nathan, The Theatre in the Fifties (1953)
To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it his problem, and to express it his dedication. Marlon Brando, quoted in David Shipman, Marlon Brando (1974)
An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer. Marlon Brando, quoted in G. McCann, Rebel Males: Clift, Brando, and Dean (1991)
Brando added: “You can’t be a poet by really trying hard. It’s like being charming. You can’t be charming by working at it.”
The movie actor, like the sacred king of primitive tribes, is a God in captivity. Alexander Chase, in Perspective (1966)
Davis wasn’t nearly so kind in her assessment of the younger, sexier actresses who were beginning to make waves in Hollywood: “Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse–all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.”
Actors may know how to act, she said, but a lot of them don’t know how to behave. Carrie Fisher, the character Lucy speaking, in Postcards From the Edge (1987)
Fonda added: “This is the hardest kind of acting, and it works only if you look as if you are not acting at all.”
Modesty is the artifice of actors, similar to passion in call-girls. Jackie Gleason, quoted in Jonathan Green, Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations (1994)
The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Uta Hagen, in A Challenge for the Actor (1991)
Actor: A musician who plays on a homemade instrument—himself. Helen Hayes, quoted in a 1993 issue of
Television Guide (specific issue undetermined)
Movie actors are just ordinary mixed-up people—with agents. Jean Kerr, the character Dirk speaking , in the play Mary, Mary (1961)
A struggle with shyness is in every actor more than anyone can imagine. Marilyn Monroe, quoted in Richard Meryman, “Marilyn Lets Her Hair Down About Being Famous,” Life magazine (Aug. 3, 1962)
In the novel, the person reading the book is “The Blonde Actress” (think Marilyn Monroe). After reading the passage, she thinks: “If I am a whore, that explains me!”
The difference between being a director and being an actor is the difference between being the carpenter banging the nails into the wood, and being the piece of wood the nails are being banged into. Sean Penn, quoted in The Guardian (London; Nov. 28, 1991)
Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor’s trade. Miranda Richardson, quoted in The Guardian (London; Dec. 5, 1990)
Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run. Ralph Richardson, quoted in L. Shilling & L. Fuller, Dictionary of Quotations in Communication (1997)
The body of an actor is like a well in which experiences are stored, then tapped when needed. Simone Signoret, in J. Gruen, Close-Up (1968)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the quotation is almost always presented, but it originally came in a fuller discussion of an actor’s first impressions of a script. Here’s the full passage: “Since, in the language of an actor, to know is synonymous with to feel, he should give free rein, at a first reading of a play, to his creative emotions. The more warmth of feeling and throbbing, living emotion he can put into a play at first acquaintance, the greater will be the appeal of the dry words of the text to his senses.”
The actor is/A metaphysician in the dark, twanging/An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives/Sounds. Wallace Stevens, in “Of Modern Poetry,” in The Palm at the End of the Mind (1990)
Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic. Jennifer Stone, “Loners and Losers,” in Mind Over Media (1988)
An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal—falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox. François Truffaut, in New Yorker (Feb. 20, 1960)
QUOTE NOTE: Wills cited Diderot’s The Paradox of Acting, written between 1773-77 and published posthumously in 1830, as the source for his observation, which should be regarded as a paraphrase rather than a direct quote. Wills added: “Such actors will sense it if an audience thinks they are playing a scene too ‘broad,’ and will rein in the effects. The actor is working at several different levels of awareness—fiery in the character’s emotions, icy in the adjustment of those emotions to the intended results in onlookers. Feigned tears must be used to elicit real tears.”
ACTORS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK
(see also ACTING and ACTORS & ACTRESSES and ACTORS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS)
It does get old to have to always be a monkey in a zoo. In the day-to-day thing to have people looking, talking, grabbing, needing something—I don't know what it’s like anymore to be anonymous. Kevin Bacon, quoted on Internet Movie Database website (www.imdb.com)
Stand-up is like drawing with primary colors crayons—it’s a beautiful and satisfying world—but acting is like the big box of 148. Brett Butler, comparing stand-up comedy with acting, in Mark Wyckoff, “Stand-Up Keeps Butler Sane,” Tucson Citizen (June 8, 1995)
QUOTE NOTE: It is not clear who originally authored the famous advice about ducks, but it was almost certainly not Caine’s mother. Jacob M. Braude, whose Complete Speaker’s and Toastmaster Library is legendary among platform speakers, is commonly cited as the author (“Always behave like a duck—keep calm and unruffled on the surface, but paddle like the devil beneath”), but without citation.
I’m the female equivalent of a counterfeit $20 bill. Half of what you see is a pretty good reproduction, the rest is a fraud. Cher, quoted in D. McClelland, Star Speak (1987)
Acting is the greatest answer to my loneliness that I have found. Claire Danes, quoted in Dotson Rader, “I Needed a Connection That Was Real,” in Parade magazine (Oct. 2, 2005)
I guess a film in which I didn’t end up in bed, in the sea, or in a hot tub, would have the same appeal as a Clint Eastwood movie in which nobody got shot. Bo Derek, in The Independent (March 25, 1995)
The stage might be the only place I really feel at home. I like the greasepaint, the lights, the romance of it all. Faye Dunaway, in Esquire The Meaning of Life (2004, Brendan Vaughan, ed.)
Dunaway continued: “I like going backstage. I like the ensemble: it’s the family that you’ve always wanted to have; it’s like a perfect love, a relationship that is always growing and changing and deepening.”
To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory vault and mix in a sad memory from one’s own life. Albert Finney, quoted in International Herald Tribune (Mar. 29, 1985)
For years people have asked if I mind being remembered as Princess Leia. I used to say no. But now I will say that it sometimes bothers me, yes. It follows me around like a little smell. Carrie Fisher, “What I’ve Learned,” in Fortune magazine (Jan. 29, 2007; originally appeared June, 2002)
Acting in Star Wars, I felt like a raisin in a gigantic fruit salad. Mark Hamill, in Screen International (Dec., 1977)
When people ask me about my story, I just go through the positive stuff: the tent-pole moments, the big landmark checkpoints. Shia LaBeouf, in interview on
The A. V. Club (
http://www.avclub.com; April 11, 2007)
I’m not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren’t straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works. Sylvester Stallone, quoted in Jon Winokur, True Confessions (1992)
ACTORS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS
(see also ACTING and ACTORS & ACTRESSES and ACTORS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and INSULTS & PUT-DOWNS)
What Einstein was to physics, what Babe Ruth was to home runs, what Emily Post was to table manners—that’s what Edward G. Robinson was to dying like a dirty rat. Russell Baker, in There’s a Country in My Cellar (1990)
He moved through a movie scene like an exquisite paper knife. Heywood Broun, on John Barrymore, quoted in Leslie Halliwell, The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (1973)
This man, in words of Emerson’s, carries the holiday in his eye; he is fit to stand the gaze of millions. Stanley Cavell, on Cary Grant’s performance in the film The Awful Truth (1937), in Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (1981)
QUOTE NOTE: Cavell, an American philosopher and Harvard professor who was also a great fan of the “screwball comedies” of the 1930s, was inspired by two phrases in an essay on “Manners” that Emerson published in English Traits (1856). In describing “the creation of the gentleman” in Western society, Emerson wrote at length about the heroic properties of people who form a natural aristocracy (a “fraternity of the best,” he called them). The portion of the essay containing the phrases the holiday in his eye and fit to stand the gaze of millions may be seen at Emerson on “Manners”
Joan always cries a lot. Her tear ducts must be very close to her bladder. Bette Davis, on Joan Crawford, quoted in S. Considine, Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud (1990)
Her ferocious will to succeed seems a grim version of the life force itself. Few men go weak in the knees dreaming about her, as they might with Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth; nor is she the kind of woman men could imagine bantering with blissfully as a lover, as they might with Katharine Hepburn or Barbara Stanwyck. David Denby, “The Glamorous, Messy Life of Joan Crawford,” The New Yorker (July 7, 2024)
Denby continued: “She’s the date who raises your blood pressure, not your libido. She was always a bigger hit with women than with men, but, at this point, young women eager to emulate her drive and success may shudder. The ravenous smile, the scything broad shoulders, the burdensome distress, the important walk and complicated hair—she’s too insistent, too laborious and heavily armed, and also too vulnerable.”
About his own face, Bronson was quoted as saying in 1976: “I guess it looks like a rock quarry that somebody has dynamited.”
There is something elemental about Bette—a demon within her which threatens to break out and eat everybody, beginning with their ears. John Huston, on Bette Davis, in An Open Book (1980)
It’s like being bombed by water-melons. Alan Ladd, on working with Sophia Loren, quoted in Donald Zec, Sophia: An Intimate Biography (1975)
QUOTE NOTE: An original source for this classic oxymoronic insult has never been found, and it may simply be a variant of something Levant wrote in The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965): “My last picture for Warners was Romance on the High Seas. It was Doris Day’s first picture; that was before she became a virgin.”
A deer in the body of a woman, living resentfully in the Hollywood zoo. Clare Booth Luce, on Greta Garbo, quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984)
She’s like a delicate fawn, crossed with a Buick. Jack Nicholson, on Jessica Lange, in Vanity Fair (Oct. 1984)
If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul. Clifford Odets, on Marilyn Monroe, in Show Magazine (Oct., 1962)
Working with her is like being hit over the head by a Valentine’s Day card. Christopher Plummer, on Julie Andrews, his The Sound of Music co-star, in L. Halliwell, The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes (1973)
A less flattering observation about Andrews, anonymously authored, was also offered around the same time that Plummer made his remark: “Julie Andrews is like a nun with a switchblade.”
A vacuum with nipples. Otto Preminger, on Marilyn Monroe, in J. R. Colombo, Popcorn in Paradise (1980)
A graduate of the Mount Rushmore School of Acting. Edgar G. Robinson, on Charlton Heston, in Nigel Rees, Cassell’s Movie Quotations (2002)
QUOTE NOTE: A similar remark has been made of many actors, including Clint Eastwood. Usually these “school of acting” references are insulting, but they can sometimes be charming. In the 1950 film All About Eve, Marilyn Monroe made her screen debut as the ingénue Claudia Casswell. At a party, she is introduced by George Sanders, as critic Addison De Witt, this way: “Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana School of the Dramatic Arts.”
Tony Randall was the Laurence Olivier of light comic actors. Tom Shales, in Washington Post (May, 5, 2004)
A fellow with the inventiveness of Albert Einstein but with the attention span of Daffy Duck. Tom Shales, on Robin Williams, quoted in C. Jarman, The Book of Poisonous Quotes (1993)
It has been said that she died in harness. That expression of a plodder overtaken by death is inadequate for so gallant, so defiantly twinkling an exit. She was a boat that went to the bottom with its orchestra playing gaily. Alexander Woollcott, on Sarah Bernhardt, “Bernhardt,” in The Portable Woollcott (1946)
ADAGE
ADAM & EVE
(see also MALE-FEMALE DYNAMICS and MEN & WOMEN)
Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both been blessed—or cursed—with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple. Stella Benson, the voice of the narrator, in I Pose (1915)
It wasn’t sin that was born on the day Eve picked her apple: what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience. Oriana Fallaci, a reflection of the unnamed narrator, in the heavily autobiographical Letter to a Child Never Born: A Novel (1975)
Ever since Eve gave Adam the apple, there has been a misunderstanding between the sexes about gifts. Nan Robertson, in a column on Christmas shopping (“‘Misunderstood’ Men Offer Words on Gifts; Most Bought Presents”), in The New York Times (Nov. 28, 1957).
ADAPTATION & ADAPTABILITY
(see also ADJUSTMENT and ALTERATION and CHANGE and GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT and PROGRESS)
We human beings cause monstrous conditions, but precisely because we cause them we soon learn to adapt ourselves to them. Only if we become such that we can no longer adapt ourselves, only if, deep inside, we rebel against every kind of evil, will we be able to put a stop to it. Etty Hillesum, in An Interrupted Life (1983)
Hillesum went on to add: “While everything within us does not yet scream out in protest, so long will we find ways of adapting ourselves, and the horrors will continue.”
If one is willing to adapt, the darkness offers a place to step beyond the known edge and explore, a place of silence and sound, a place both unpopulated and populous, filled with things we may not see by day. Cathy Johnson, in The Nocturnal Naturalist: Exploring the Outdoors at Night (1989)
Unadaptability is often a virtue. Flannery O'Connor, a 1957 remark, in The Habit of Being (1979; Sally Fitzgerald, ed.)
Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would literally rather die than change. Eleanor Roosevelt, in Tomorrow Is Now (1963)
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative. H. G. Wells, in Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945)
ADDICTS & ADDICTION
(see also ALCOHOL & ALCOHOLISM and COCAINE and DRINKING & DRUNKENNESS and DRUGS and LIQUOR and MARIJUANA and RECOVERY)
QUOTE NOTE: This is one of Adler’s most widely quoted observations (sometimes with addict replacing the word junkie), but it has never been verified. When I contacted the Stella Adler School of Acting in 2012, a spokesperson considered the quotation authentic, and surmised that Adler first offered it in one of her acting classes.
Every habit he’s ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom. Margaret Atwood, describing the character Snowman, in Oryx and Crake (2004)
I’m extremely skeptical of the “language of addiction.” I never saw heroin or cocaine as “my illness.” I saw them as some very bad choices that I walked knowingly into. I fucked myself—and, eventually, had to work hard to get myself un-fucked. Anthony Bourdain, in Medium Raw (2010)
The priority of any addict is to anesthetize the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief. Russell Brand, in a 2011 blog post about the death of Amy Winehouse (NOTE: in his post, Brand used the British spelling: anaesthetise)
I’ll die young, but it’s like kissing God. Lenny Bruce, on his heroin use, quoted in Richard Neville, Play Power: Exploring the International Underground (1970)
QUOTE NOTE: No original source for this legendary quotation has ever been found, and its appearance in Neville’s book is one of the earliest (if not the earliest) print citations. Neville told master quotation researcher Bob Deis that he did not personally hear Bruce make the remark, adding “I can’t recall the first time I heard it, though I do remember the saying being quoted in the London OZ office in the late Sixties.” For more on the quote, go to: Kissing God.
A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency, need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: Wouldn’t you? Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. William S. Burroughs, a reflection of narrator William Lee, in The Naked Lunch (1959)
Burroughs preceded the thought by writing: “The face of ‘evil’ is always the face of total need.”
Junk is the ideal product…the ultimate merchandise [ellipsis in original]. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. William S. Burroughs, narrator William Lee speaking, in The Naked Lunch (1959)
Burroughs, who used the term junk for heroin, continued with this oft-quoted example of chiasmus: “The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product.”
To be an addict is to be something of a cognitive acrobat. You spread versions of yourself around, giving each person the truth he or she needs—you need, actually—to keep them at a remove. David Carr, “Me and My Girls,” in The New York Times Magazine (July 20, 2008)
QUOTE NOTE: The article is Carr’s brutally honest—and even emotionally riveting—account of his struggle with addiction and alcoholism, told more fully in the book The Night of the Gun (2008). After his recovery, Carr went on to become a respected and influential culture reporter and media columnist for the Times. Here are the opening paragraphs of his powerful piece:
“Where does a junkie’s time go? Mostly in 15-minute increments, like a bug-eyed Tarzan, swinging from hit to hit. For months on end in 1988, I sat inside a house in north Minneapolis, doing coke and listening to Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’ and finding my own pathetic resonance in the lyrics. ‘Any place is better,’ she sang. ‘Starting from zero, got nothing to lose.’
After shooting or smoking a large dose, there would be the tweaking and a vigil at the front window, pulling up the corner of the blinds to look for the squads I was always convinced were on their way. All day. All night. A frantic kind of boring. End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame.” The full article may be seen at: “Me and My Girls”.
Doyle Melton was thinking about herself in this observation, writing, “I was what they call a ‘highly functional addict.’”
Addiction, self-sabotage, procrastination, laziness, rage, chronic fatigue, and depression are all ways that we withhold our full participation in the program of life we are offered. When the conscious mind cannot find a reason to say no, the unconscious says no in its own way. Charles Eisenstein, in The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (2013)
I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere. Carrie Fisher, a diary entry of protagonist Suzanne Vale during her fifth day in detox, in Postcards From the Edge (1987)
Vale preceded the thought by writing: “The positive way to look at this is that from here things can only go up. But I’ve been up, and I always feel like a trespasser. A transient at the top. It’s like I’ve got a visa for happiness, but for sadness I’ve got a lifetime pass.”
I was into pain reduction and mind expansion, but what I’ve ended up with is pain expansion and mind reduction. Carrie Fisher, a diary entry of protagonist Suzanne Vale during her seventh day in detox, in Postcards From the Edge (1987)
Vale added: “Everything hurts now, and nothing makes sense.”
Addiction is the disease of our age. It is cunning and powerful. It proceeds from our chronic spiritual hunger and is nourished by our focus on getting and spending, and on news and gossip outside ourselves. Erica Jong, in Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir (1994)
Jong continued: “Everything we need is happening within us. The focus on reports of others is only a distraction from the needs of our own spirit. Addiction grows fat from our chronic quashing of the inner life. We believe the spiritual does not exist because we have made insufficient space for it to manifest in our lives.”
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine, or idealism. Carl Jung, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)
I was sitting with my friend Delia, whose arms were inscribed with a grid of self-inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing. Jay McInerney, describing the heavily needle-tracked arms of a recovering heroin addict, in Brightness Falls (2014)
While susceptibility varies, addiction can happen to any of us, through a subtle process where the bonds of degradation are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. Charlie Munger, in “How to Guarantee a Life of Misery,” a
commencement speech to The Harvard School for Boys (Los Angeles, California; June 13, 1986)
ADJECTIVES
ADMIRATION
(see also APPLAUSE and APPRECIATION and AWE and PRAISE and RECOGNITION)
Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object. Joseph Addison, in The Spectator (Dec. 24, 1711)
QUOTE NOTE: In what I have always regarded as an important insight into relationships, Addison added that admiration will decay “unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.”
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. Jane Austen, the character Mr. Darcy speaking, in Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought, Vol. II (1862)
Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities. Elizabeth Bowen, the voice of the narrator, in The Death of the Heart (1938)
No nobler feeling than this, of admiration for one higher than himself, dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as Divinity,” in Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
One may have staunch friends in one’s own family, but one seldom has admirers. Willa Cather, the voice of the narrator, in The Song of the Lark (1915)
Admiration, like love, wears out. Luc de Clapiers (Marquis de Vauvenargues), in Reflections and Maxims (1746)
ERROR ALERT: The saying is often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, who presented the observation without attribution in a 1736 issue of Poor Richard’s Almanack.
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind. Théophile Gautier, quoted in Frederick W. Morton, Love in Epigram, (1899)
QUOTE NOTE: The meaning of this altered aphorism is clear, even if it does have a somewhat awkward phrasing. Many books and internet sites have changed the original wording to make it read: “…it takes the edge off of admiration.”
By simple definition, a hero is someone we can admire without apology. Kitty Kelley, “An 80-Year Hitting Streak,”
The New York Times (Feb. 25, 1995)
Americans respect talent only insofar as it leads to fame, and we reserve our most fervent admiration for famous people who destroy their lives as well as their talent. Florence King, in Lump It Or Leave It (1990)
King continued: “The fatal flaws of Elvis, Judy, and Marilyn register much higher on our national applause meter than their living achievements. In America, talent is merely a tool for becoming famous in life so you can become more famous in death— where all are equal.”
I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration to be, by all odds, the most indispensable for self-improvement. Frankly, I cannot imagine where I would now be without it. Thomas Mann, in a 1950 letter to Hans Mater, quoted in André Von Gronicka, Thomas Mann: Profile and Perspectives (1970)
I always wish to find great virtues where there are great talents, and to love what I admire. Elizabeth Montagu in a 1774 letter, quoted in Anna Letitia Le Breton, Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld (1874)
QUOTATION CAUTION: This quotation has not been found in Sand’s works.
The modern world is not given to uncritical admiration. It expects its idols to have feet of clay, and can be reasonably sure that press and camera will report their exact dimensions. Barbara Ward, “First Lady, First Person,” in a 1961 issue of The Saturday Review (specific issue undetermined)
ADOLESCENCE
(see also AGE & AGING and CHILDREN & CHILDHOOD and FAMILY and TEENAGER and PUBERTY and YOUTH and YOUTH & AGE)
QUOTE NOTE: A bit earlier. Apter had written: “One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity—not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals.”
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites attribute this quotation directly to Wilson, but in his column, he presented the quotation under the heading: “Wish I’d Said That.”
When they reach the age of fifteen and their beauty arrives, it’s very exciting—like coming into an inheritance. Eve Babitz, “The Sheik,” in Eve’s Hollywood (1974)
Babitz, who was talking about the adolescent daughters of Hollywood’s elite, added: “And, as with inheritances, it’s fun to be around when they first come into the money and watch how they spend it and on what.”
As I vaguely recalled from my own experience, adolescence was a time when you firmly believed that sex hadn’t been invented until the year you started high school, when the very idea that anything interesting might have happened during your parents’ lifetime was unthinkable. Russell Baker, “Life with Mother,” in William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth (1987)
Young children grow, but adolescents change—and change is confusing. It confuses the sprouting adolescent to wake up every morning in a new body. It confuses the mother and father to find a new child every day in a familiar body—a child contumelious of the things that yesterday’s child wanted, a child with a different rhythm of living, a child who talks knowingly about things that yesterday’s child never heard of. Donald Barr, in Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? Dilemmas in American Education Today (1971)
Barr continued: “By and large adolescents welcome their own confusion because it affords them a sort of argumentative freedom of action.”
QUOTE NOTE: If the word contumelious is unfamiliar to you, you have lots of company. The American Heritage Dictionary lists it as an adjective for the noun contumely, which they define as “Rudeness or contempt arising from arrogance; insolence.”
QUOTE NOTE: I found this wonderful phrase in a slightly longer passage that went this way: “What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.”
I have always pondered a tragic law of adolescence. (On second thought, the law probably applies to all ages to some extent). That law: People fall in love at the same time—often at the same stunning moment—but they fall out of love at different times. One is left sadly juggling the pieces of a fractured heart while the other has danced away. Robert Cormier, in Introduction to Eight Plus One: Stories (1991)
Cormier opened his Introduction with these words: “The transient quality of adolescence and the emotional debris accumulated by adolescents along the way has always fascinated me. Not merely as an observer. I have carried my own emotional luggage from those adolescent years for a long long time.”
You have a wonderful child. Then, when he’s thirteen, gremlins carry him away and leave in his place a stranger who gives you not a moment’s peace. You have to hang in there, because two or three years later, the gremlins will return your child, and he will be wonderful again. Jill Eikenberry, “On Raising Teenagers,” in Parade magazine (July 12, 1987)
With any child entering adolescence, one hunts for signs of health, is desperate for the smallest indication that the child’s problems will never be important enough for a television movie. Delia Ephron, in Funny Sauce (1986)
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites mistakenly attribute this quotation to Delia Ephron’s elder sister, Nora.
At sixteen I was stupid, confused and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing, and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure, and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence? Jules Feiffer, self-dialogue in a Feiffer cartoon; quoted in The Observer (London; Feb. 3, 1974)
Adolescents often behave much like members of an old-fashioned aristocracy. They maintain private rituals, which they often do not really understand themselves. They are extremely conservative in their dress and tastes, but the conventions to which they adhere are purely those of their own social group; they try to ignore the norms of the larger society if these conflict with their own. Edgar Z. Friedenberg, in The Vanishing Adolescent (1959)
Friedenberg continued: “They can be extravagantly generous and extravagantly cruel, but rarely petty or conniving. Their virtues are courage and loyalty; while even the necessity for even a moderate degree of compromise humiliates them greatly. They tend to be pugnacious and quarrelsome about what they believe to be their rights, but naive and reckless in defending them. They are shy, but not modest. If they become very anxious they are likely to behave eccentrically, to withdraw, or to attack with some brutality; they are less likely to blend themselves innocuously into the environment with an apologetic smile. They are honest on occasions when even a stupid adult would have better sense.”
Human life is a continuous thread which each of us spins to his own pattern, rich and complex in meaning. There are no natural knots in it. Yet knots form, nearly always in adolescence. Edgar Z. Friedenberg, in Coming of Age in America (1963)
The conveyer belt that transported adolescents into adulthood has broken down. Dr. Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., quoted in Peg Tyre,
“Bringing Up Adultolescents”,
Newsweek magazine (March 25, 2002)
Tyre’s article introduced the portmanteau word adultolescent to American culture. Her piece was based on the growing number of young adults between ages 25–34 who were still living with their parents (nearly four million, according to 2000 Census data). The week before Tyre’s article appeared, an online job-search firm (MonsterTRAK.com) reported that 60 percent of college students surveyed said they planned to live at home after graduation, with more than one in five estimating that they were likely to remain in their childhood homes for more than a year. Furstenberg, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist, had been awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant to study the phenomenon.
Instinct told her that childhood’s garden had been barred and there was no return. In some measure this simple truth is known to every adolescent. Bertita Harding, the narrator describing a realization on the part of the title character, in Farewell ’Toinette: A Footnote to History (1938)
Keillor continued: “We get through the Car Crash Age alive and cruise through our early twenties as cool dudes, wily, dashing, winsome, wearing white socks and black loafers, saying incredibly witty things, shooting baskets, the breeze, the moon, and then we try to become caring men, good husbands, great fathers, good citizens, despite the fact that guys are fundamentally unfaithful.”
The rich loam of adolescence—a time of constant crisis and ceaseless calamity—beckons writers to till and retill youthful memories; “just like a criminal; goes back to the place of his crime,” said Isaac Beshevis Singer. Ralph Keyes, in The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear (1995)
Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect. Arthur Koestler, in Arrow in the Blue: An Autobiography, Vol. 1 (1952)
Koestler continued: “The youth of sixteen that I was with the plastered-down hair and the fatuous smirk, at once arrogant and sheepish, was emotionally seasick: greedy for pleasure, haunted by guilt, torn between feelings of inferiority and superiority, between the need for contemplative solitude and the frustrated urge for gregariousness and play.”
Children from ten to twenty don’t want to be understood. Their whole ambition is to feel strange and alien and misinterpreted so that they can live austerely in some stone tower of adolescence, their privacies unviolated. Phyllis McGinley, “New Year and No Resolutions,” in Merry Christmas, Happy New Year (1958)
It is too often the case to be a mere accident that men who become eminent for wide compass of understanding and penetrating comprehension, are in their adolescence unsettled and desultory. John Morley, “Edmund Burke,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica (1876)
O Adolescence, O Adolescence,/I wince before thine incandescence./Thy constitution young and hearty/Is too much for this aged party. Ogden Nash, “Tarkington, Thou Should’st Be Living in This Hour,” in The New Yorker magazine (Sep. 20, 1947); reprinted in Versus (1949)
QUOTE NOTE: These are the opening lines of Nash’s poetic reflection on life with his own teenage children. The title of the poem is borrowed from the first line of William Wordsworth’s 1802 poem “London, 1802,” which begins: “Milton, thou should’st be living at this hour.” Nash’s poem may also be seen as an admiring nod to Booth Tarkington’s portrayal of adolescent psychology in his bestselling 1916 novel Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family, Especially William.
The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. Alden Nowlan, in “Scratchings“ (1971)
The ripeness of adolescence is prodigal in pleasures, skittish, and in need of a bridle. Plutarch, “The Education of Children,” in Moralia (c. 100 A.D.)
I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box. Anna Quindlen, “Mom, Dad, and Abortion,” in The New York Times (July 1, 1990), reprinted in Thinking Out Loud (1993)
Adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike. It is a time between: between childhood and maturity, between parental protection and personal responsibility, between life stage-managed by grown-ups and life privately held. Anna Quindlen, “Parental Rites,” in The New York Times (Sep. 25, 1991); reprinted in Thinking Out Loud (1993)
Rice continued: “You have a basically neuter-gender person who’s on an equal footing with all other neuter-gender people, and then suddenly adolescence comes and one child turns into a woman, another child turns into a man, both experience sexuality, and sexuality really turns their world upside down.”
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,/An intolerable waiting,/A longing for another place and time,/Another condition. Theodore Roethke, “I’m Here,” in The Collected Verse of Theodore Rothke (1961)
Satir preceded the observation by writing: “I feel that adolescence has served its purpose when a person arrives at adulthood with a strong sense of self-esteem, the ability to relate intimately, to communicate congruently, to take responsibility, and to take risks.”
Adolescents are like cockroaches: They come out the minute you leave town, crawl the walls, feed indiscriminately, reproduce alarmingly unless drugged, and will certainly outlast you. Gail Sheehy, in Spirit of Survival (1986)
Parental trust is extremely important in the guidance of adolescent children as they get further and further away from the direct supervision of their parents and teachers. I don’t mean that trust without clear guidance is enough, but guidance without trust is worthless. Benjamin Spock, in Raising Children in a Difficult Time (1985)
Stuart went on to say about adolescents: “When we recommend the simple life to them, it is quite useless, for it is not understood.”
Although I was well past my teenage troubles, our music was specifically designed to lubricate the passage from adolescence to adulthood. Pete Townshend, quoted in
BBC News: World Edition (Jan. 12, 2003)
A normal adolescent isn’t a normal adolescent if he acts normal. Judith Viorst, in
Necessary Losses (1986). Also an example of
oxymoronica.
ADULTS & ADULTHOOD
(see also ADOLESCENCE and AGE & AGING and AGE & AGING—MIDDLE AGE and AGE & AGING—OLD AGE and AGE & AGING—SPECIFIC AGES & DECADES and CHILDREN & CHILDHOOD and IMMATURITY and MATURITY and YOUTH and YOUTH & AGE)
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names for hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay. Brian Aldiss, in The Guardian (Manchester; Dec. 31, 1971)
Adults need to have fun so children will want to grow up. Erica Bauermeister, Sara’s father speaking, repeating the motto of a kinetic sculpture race they are competing in, in Joy for Beginners (2011)
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults. Peter De Vries, the voice of the unnamed narrator, in
The Tunnel of Love (1954). Also an example of
chiasmus.
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation almost always appears, but the full quotation reflected Geisel’s strong preference in favor of writing for children instead of adults: “Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice—that is, until we have stopped saying “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it.” Sydney J. Harris, in On the Contrary (1962)
A boy becomes an adult three years before his parents think he does, and about two years after he thinks he does. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, in remarks to the press (Dec. 30, 1951)
QUOTE NOTE: General Hershey, the Director of Selective Service at the time, was making remarks about the maturity of teenage boys who were approaching military draft age.
The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. Alden Nowlan, in “Scratchings“ (1971)
ADULTERY
ADVANCES & ADVANCEMENT
(see also IMPROVEMENT and PROGRESS and PROMOTION)
A thousand things advance, nine hundred and ninety-eight retreat: this is progress. Henri-Frédéric Amiel, entry in Journal Intime (Oct. 4, 1873)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly say “nine-hundred and ninety-nine.”
QUOTE NOTE: This is commonly referred to as “Clarke’s Third Law.” For all three, as well as the story behind them, go to: Clarke’s Three Laws.
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in address at the 4th Annual Republican Women’s National Conference, Washington, D.C. (March, 6, 1956)
The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced. Victor Hugo, the old revolutionary speaking, in Les Misérables (1862)
It is, however, reasonable to have perfection in our eye; that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached. Samuel Johnson, in The Adventurer (Aug. 28, 1753)
Lowell preceded the thought by writing: “Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.”
Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird. Jules Renard, a December 1907 journal entry, in The Journals of Jules Renard (1964; Louise Bogan & Elizabeth Roget, eds.)
The defining moments in our lives often don’t come with advance warning. Sally Yates, in
Class Day speech at Harvard Law School (May 24, 2017)
ADVENTURE
(see also DANGER and DISCOVERY and EXCITEMENT and EXPLORATION and RISKS & RISK-TAKING and THRILLS & THRILL-SEEKING)
People often ask me where they might go to find adventure. Adventure is not something you must travel to find, I tell them, it’s something you take with you. Diane Ackerman, “Worlds Within Worlds,” in
The New York Times (Dec. 17, 1995)
Never forget that Life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely, gallantly, as a splendid Adventure, in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle. Annie Besant, quoted in a 1924 article in The Theosophist (specific date undetermined)
The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favor with the social man we are obliged to be. These two sorts of life are incompatible; one we hanker after, the other we are obliged to. There is no other conflict so deep and bitter as this. William Bolitho, in Introduction to Twelve Against the Gods (1929)
Later in the book, Bolitho wrote on the subject: “An adventure differs from a mere feat in that it is tied to the eternally unattainable. Only one end of the rope is in the hand, the other is not visible, and neither prayers, not daring, nor reason can shake it free.”
The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment. George Noel Gordon (Lord Byron), in letter to Annabella Millbanke, later Lady Byron (Sep. 6, 1813)
QUOTE NOTE: Byron borrowed the term craving void from Alexander Pope, who introduced it in the poem Eloisa to Abelard (c. 1716). In the throes of love (“Oh happy state!” according to Pope), two souls are drawn so close together that “All then is full” and “No craving void is left aching [aking in the original] in the breast.”)
A little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an adventure of any lively description. George Noel Gordon (Lord Byron), journal entry (Nov. 22, 1813)
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. G. K. Chesterton, “On Running After One’s Hat,” in
All Things Considered (1908). Also an example of
chiasmus.
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites present only the first portion of the quotation, failing to accurately capture Chesterton’s full thought.
A task, any task, undertaken in an adventurous spirit acquires the merit of romance. Joseph Conrad, in A Personal Record (1912)
QUOTE NOTE: Conrad was specifically referring to the adventurous spirit of the English people, but his observation applies to all people.
We pay for security with boredom, for adventure with bother. Peter De Vries, the protagonist Chick Swallow speaking, in Comfort Me With Apples (1956)
Adventure must be held in delicate fingers. It should be handled, not embraced. It should be sipped, not swallowed at a gulp. Ashley Dukes, the Nobleman speaking, in The Man with a Load of Mischief (1924)
Hooray for the last grand adventure! I wish I had won but it was worthwhile anyway. Amelia Earhart, in letter to her father (May 20, 1928); quoted in Melinda Blau, Whatever Happened to Amelia Earhart? (1977)
QUOTE NOTE: Earhart wrote the letter on the eve of her first transatlantic flight, leaving instructions that it be delivered only in the event of her death. She continued: “You know that I have no faith we’ll meet anywhere again, but I wish we might. Anyway, goodbye and good luck to you.” The letter was never delivered. Earhart lived nine more years, disappearing somewhere over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 after taking off from an airport in New Guinea. She was thirty-nine years of age (two more years would elapse, though, before she was legally declared dead).
The thirst for adventure is the vent which Destiny offers; a war, a crusade, a gold mine, a new country, speak to the imagination and offer swing and play to the confined powers. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Boston,” in Natural History of the Intellect (1893)
Adventure is not outside a man; it is within. It is a strange thing, once the mind goes free, what may happen to any man. David Grayson, in Adventures in Solitude (1931)
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. Edwin Hubble, in “The Exploration of Space,” Harper’s Magazine (May, 1929)
QUOTE NOTE: This observation has become indelibly associated with Keller, whose life personified the words. Here’s the full passage in which her signature line originally appeared: “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run that outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
L’Amour continued: “What people speak of as adventure is something nobody in his right mind would seek out, and it becomes romantic only when one is safely at home.”
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. Dorothy Parker, in poem “Fair Weather,” in Sunset Gun (1928)
ERROR ALERT: Many quotation anthologies mistakenly present the final portion as: “who know the storm”
A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints. Wilferd A. Peterson, in The Art of Living: Thoughts on Meeting the Challenges of Life (1997)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet quotation sites mistakenly present the author’s name as Wilfred.
Adventure is something you seek for pleasure, or even for profit, like a gold rush or invading a country; for the illusion of being more alive than ordinarily, the thing you will to occur. Katherine Anne Porter, “Adventure in Living,” in Mademoiselle magazine (Aug., 1955)
QUOTE NOTE: The title of Reed’s song was borrowed from Nelson Algren’s 1956 novel (see the Algren entry in TITLES—OF BOOKS & PLAYS. Reed’s song went in a different direction, though, celebrating an array of counter-cultural characters who had inhabited the world of artist Andy Warhol (for more, see the Wikipedia entry on the song). See also the music video, which brings the characters to life.
Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure. J. K. Rowling, Dumbledore speaking to Harry, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)
Beauty and adventure have a certain value of their own, which can be weighed only in spiritual scales. Elva S. Smith, offering a “considered conviction” of Amelia Earhart, in Adventure Calls: True Stories and Some That Might Have Been True (1953)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites attribute the observation to Amelia Earhart, but it is clear from Smith’s book that she was summarizing a belief of the legendary aviator.
What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing; and who, having eyes to see what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on! Laurence Sterne, the voice of narrator and protagonist, the Rev. Mr. Yorick, in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
Adventure is hardship aesthetically considered. Barry Targan, the narrator, quoting an unnamed former teacher, in Kingdoms (1980)
So life ought to be a struggle of desire towards adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul. Rebecca West, in “The Gospel According to Granville-Barker,” in The Freewoman (March 7, 1912)
Whitehead preceded the thought by writing: “A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past.”
The test of an adventure is that when you’re in the middle of it, you say to yourself, “Oh, now I’ve got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.” Thornton Wilder, the character Barnaby speaking, in The Matchmaker (1955)
Barnaby went on: “And the sign that something’s wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.”
If we didn’t live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I’ve no doubt, but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged. Virginia Woolf, a 1924 diary entry, quoted in Leonard Woolf, A Writer’s Diary (1954)
ADVERB
ADVERSARIES
(see also ALLIES and ANTAGONISTS and ENEMIES and FOES and FRIENDS and FRIENDS & ENEMIES and OPPOSITION)
May Providence protect me from/The fool as adversary,/Whose mind to him a kingdom is/Where reason lacks dominion,/Who calls conviction prejudice/And prejudice opinion. Phyllis McGinley, “Moody Reflections,” in The New Yorker (Feb. 13, 1954). Note the chiastic reversal in the last two lines.
McGinley began the piece of verse by writing: “When blithe to argument I come,/Though armed with facts, and merry.”
Let us do as mighty adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. William Shakespeare, the character Triano speaking, in The Taming of the Shrew (1592)
ADVERSITY
(see also BURDENS and CALAMITY and CRISIS and DANGER and DIFFICULTIES and HARDSHIP and MISERY & WOE and MISFORTUNE and OBSTACLES and PROBLEMS and PROSPERITY and PROSPERITY & ADVERSITY and TEST and TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS and TROUBLE and STUMBLES & STUMBLING and STRUGGLE and SUFFERING & SORROW)
See the similar thought by Seneca the Younger below.
Even in adversity, nobility shines through, when a man endures repeated and severe misfortune with patience, not owing to insensibility but from generosity and greatness of soul. Aristotle, in The Nicomachean Ethics (4th c. B.C.)
QUOTE NOTE: in that same essay, Bacon offered these additional thoughts:
“Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.”
“Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.”
QUOTE NOTE: Shaw, a New York journalist, adopted the name Josh Billings in the 1860s and became famous for a cracker-barrel philosophy that was filled with aphorisms written in a phonetic dialect (he called them “affurisms”). Mark Twain was a big fan, once even comparing Billings to Ben Franklin. Almost all of the Billings quotations seen today first appeared in a phonetic form and were later changed into standard English (the original form of this saying was: “Adversity haz the same effekt on a man that severe training duz on the pugilist—it reduces him tew his fighting waight”).
As the flint contains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can awaken to life, so adversity often reveals to us hidden gems which prosperity or negligence would forever have hidden. Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw), in The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1873)
The phonetic version of this quotation was as follows: “Az the flint kontains the spark, unknown tew itself, which the steel alone kan wake into life, so adversity often reveals tew us hidden gems which prosperity or negligence would forever hav hid.”
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. Anne Bradstreet, in Meditations Divine and Moral (1664)
Bradstreet was the first published poet (of either gender) in the American colonies. She wrote the book for her son Simon, writing in the dedication: “You once desired me to leave something for you in writing that you might look upon when you should see me no more.” In 1630, the teenage Bradstreet, her parents, and her new husband set sail on the ship Arbella for the New World (the captain was John Winthrop). While her husband went on to become the colony’s governor, she raised eight children and privately wrote poetry.
Adversity is a good school. Charlotte Brontë, in an 1839 letter, in The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Vol. 1 (1995; Margaret Smith, ed.)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the first line of a quatrain that continues: “He who hath proved war, storm or woman’s rage,/Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty,’Has won the experience which is deem'd so weighty.”
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus, “Return to Tipasa,” originally published in the French literary magazine Combat (August 28, 1952); reprinted in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968)
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as Man of Letters,” in Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840)
Colton added: “Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For, as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.”
Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition, such as lifting weights, we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity. Stephen R. Covey, in First Things First (1994)
Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it. Robertson Davies, quoted in J. Madison Davis, Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)
Adversity is like a strong wind…it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be. Arthur Golden, in Memoirs of a Geisha (1997)
Every adversity, every defeat, every failure, every disappointment, every human frustration of whatsoever nature or cause, brings with it, in the circumstance itself, the seed of an equivalent benefit. Napoleon Hill, in You Can Work Your Own Miracles (1971)
Show me a successful coach, a successful anything, and I’m going to show you somebody who has overcome adversity. Lou Holtz, quoted in The Augusta Chronicle (August 2, 1986)
ERROR ALERT: This is the way Coach Holtz originally expressed the thought, but almost all web sites and books present slightly altered versions of the quotation (many not mentioning coaches at all). Thanks to Barry Popik at The Big Apple website for tracking down the original quotation.
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), in Epistles (1st c. B.C.)
Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. Robert G. Ingersoll, from an essay on Abraham Lincoln, in Allen Thorndike Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (1885)
QUOTE NOTE: Ingersoll added: “It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except upon the side of mercy.” Thanks to Dave Hill of the “Wish I Said That” website, I recently learned that Ingersoll had, in an 1877 lecture, suggested the following words as an inscription for Lincoln’s monument: “Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world, who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it, except on the side of mercy.”
ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, Abraham Lincoln is mistakenly quoted as the author of the saying: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” The erroneous Lincoln quotation, which has been in wide circulation since the mid-1970s, was clearly based on Ingersoll’s observation.
There is in every woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. Washington Irving, in The Sketch Book (1819–20)
Johnson continued: “And this effect it must produce by withdrawing flatterers, whose business it is to hide our weaknesses from us.”
ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, this quotation is mistakenly presented in the following way: “Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, then, especially, being free from flatterers.”
He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity. Ben Jonson, in Timber, or, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter (1640)
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, and stumble from defeat to defeat. Ryszard Kapuscinski, “A Warsaw Diary,” in Granta magazine (No. 15; 1985)
Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth. Søren Kierkegaard, an 1836 journal entry
For all-around, everyday, all-season wear, farmers can’t be beat. They are inclined to chafe under the burden of leisure (a minor vexation on the farm), but they thrive on neglect and adversity. Patricia Penton Leimbach, in All My Meadows (1977)
My ability to survive personal crises is really a mark of the character of my people. Individually and collectively, we react with a tenacity that allows us again and again to bounce back from adversity. Wilma Mankiller, quoted in Melissa Schwarz, Wilma Mankiller: Principal Chief of the Cherokees (1994)
More than anything else, what keeps a person going in the midst of adversity is having a sense of purpose. It is the fuel that powers persistence. John C. Maxwell, in Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes Into Stepping Stones (2007)
Perhaps adversity is a great teacher, but he charges a high price for his lessons, and often the profit we take from them is not worth the price they have cost us. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (1782)
QUOTATION CAUTION: This is the way the quotation appears on almost all Internet sites, but it has never been found in Schweitzer’s writings or speeches. The closest thing he ever wrote on the subject is the following passage from Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography (1933): “Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them.”
In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and a bracer. Sir Walter Scott, an 1826 journal entry, in J. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Walter Scott (1837)
Gold is tried by fire, brave men by adversity. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), “On Providence,” in Sententiae (1st. cent. B.C.)
Let me embrace thee, sour Adversity,/For wise men say it is the wisest course. William Shakespeare, the title character speaking, in King Henry VI (1592)
Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy. William Shakespeare, Friar Laurence speaking, in Romeo and Juliet (1595)
Sweet are the uses of adversity/Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,/Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. William Shakespeare, Duke Senior speaking, in As You Like It (1599)
During adverse times, the Duke suggests that people are most amenable to learning—and from all kinds of sources. He continues: “And this our life, exempt from public haunt,/Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,/Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean. Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar,” in Following the Equator (1897)
Adversity is the touchstone of character: it is not in success but in misfortune that hidden powers bear fruit. Not in such poverty as this, however, which but stunts the growth, and blunts senses and morals alike. Ethel Brilliana Tweedie, in Sunny Sicily: Its Rustics and Its Ruins (1904; written under the penname Mrs. Alec-Tweedie)
QUOTE NOTE: Mrs. Tweedie was appalled by the “indescribable” poverty she found in certain sections Sicily. In cases of such severe poverty, she believed, character was not built, but crushed. See the similar observation by John Updike below.
What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is…for us humans. Vincent van Gogh, in letter to brother Theo, quoted in Robert Wallace, The World of Van Gogh (1969)
No difficulty can discourage, no obstacle dismay, no trouble dishearten the man who has acquired the art of being alive. Difficulties are but dares of fate, obstacles but hurdles to try his skill, troubles but bitter tonics to give him strength; and he rises higher and looms greater after each encounter with adversity. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in The Art of Being Alive: Success Through Thought (1914)
I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions. Mary Wollstonecraft, in a 1785 letter to George Blood (1785), reprinted in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2003; Janet M. Todd. ed.)
ADVERTISING
(see also ADVERTISING SLOGANS and BUSINESS and COMMERCE and CUSTOMERS and INFLUENCE and MARKETING and PERSUASION and PUBLIC RELATIONS and PUBLICITY and SALES & SELLING)
Time spent in the advertising business seems to create a permanent deformity like the Chinese habit of footbinding. Dean Acheson, from letter to a friend, in David S. McLellan & David C. Acheson, Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Acehson (1980)
Advertising isn’t a science. It’s persuasion. And persuasion is an art. William Bernbach, quoted in Stuart Berg Flexner and Anne H. Soukhanov, Speaking Freely: A Guided Tour of American English (1997)
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does. Steuart H. Britt, quoted in New York Herald Tribune (Oct., 1956)
Advertising is the ability to…put the very heart throbs of a business into type, paper, and ink. Leo Burnett, quoted in J. Kufrin, Leo Burnett: Star Reacher (1995)
Politics is not really politics any more. It is run, for the most part, by Madison Avenue advertising firms, who sell politicians to the public the way they sell bars of soap or cans of beer. Helen Caldicott, in If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Save the Earth (1992)
Carnegie preceded the observation by writing: “Economically and socially, our national accent is on youth.”
It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country. Raymond Chandler, letter to Carl Brandt, his literary agent (Nov. 15, 1951), in Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
QUOTE NOTE: Clow is the man behind Apple Computer’s most famous advertising campaigns, including the 1984 Super Bowl commercial and the “Think Different” manifesto. Fox’s book, a collection of Clow tweets, also included the following advice to advertising professionals: “Your ad begins as an interruption. Make paying attention to it feel like a reward.”
In the advertising business, a good idea can inspire a great commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials. Phil Dusenberry, in Then We Set His Hair on Fire: Insights and Accidents from a Hall-of-fame Career in Advertising (2005)
Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became a major industry and the middle class bought radios to hear the ads and cars to get to the stores. Barbara Ehrenreich, in Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (1989)
Ehrenreich went on to add: “But there is no question that the consumer culture had begun to crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years following World War II.”
A good ad should be like a good sermon: it must not only comfort the afflicted—it must afflict the comfortable. Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, in Macy’s, Gimbels, and Me (1967)
In this chiasticobservation, Fitz-Gibbon was clearly inspired by a famous Finley Peter Dunn observation on newspapers, to be seen here. Fits-Gibbon's memoir also contained these other observations on the subject:
“To be a success in advertising you must want to fill other people with a passion for possession.”
“Of course advertising creates wants. Of course it makes people discontented, dissatisfied. Satisfaction with things as they are would defeat the American dream.”
“Advertising prods people into wanting more and better things. Of course advertising makes people dissatisfied with what they have—makes them raise their sights. Mighty good thing it does. Nothing could be worse for the United States than 200,000,000 satisfied Americans.”
Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero. F. Scott Fitzgerald, letter to daughter Frances (Aug. 24, 1940), in The Crack-Up (1945; Edmund Wilson, ed.)
In the world of advertising, there is no such thing as a lie, Maggie. Only The Expedient Exaggeration. Cary Grant, as advertising executive Roger Thornhill, speaking to his secretary, in the 1959 film North by Northwest (screenplay by Ernest Lehman)
Copywriters may struggle to distill their messages of enthusiasm in bright prose and snappy slogans, but the one word favored by advertisers over the years, is still the old word new. Judith Groch, in The Right to Create (1970)
Groch preceded the observation by writing: “The advertising industry is well aware of the persuasive power of such words as dynamic, up-to-date, young, growing, latest.”
I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. Aldous Huxley, “Advertisement,” in On the Margin (1923)
Huxley went on to write: “It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public.”
In my firm, we dealt in lies. Advertising is that…the skillful use of the truth to mislead, to spoil, to debase. Storm Jameson, in The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell (1945)
Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. Dr. Samuel Johnson, in The Idler (Jan 20, 1759)
All our advertising is propaganda, of course, but it has become so much a part of our life, is so pervasive, that we just don’t know what it is propaganda for. Pauline Kael, in I Lost It at the Movies (1965)
The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned into advertising copy. Louis Kronenberger, “The Spirit of the Age,” in Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954)
The hidden persuaders. Vance Packard, his term for advertisers, and ultimately the title of his book, The Hidden Persuaders (1957)
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. Brad Pitt, as the character Tyler Durden, in the 1999 film Fight Club (screenplay by Jim Uhls, based on 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk)
Durden continued: “We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.” To see how the passage was originally expressed in the novel, go to: Fight Club: A Novel.
No, I most certainly do not think advertising people are wonderful. I think they are horrible, and the worst menace to mankind, next to war; perhaps ahead of war. They stand for the material viewpoint, for the importance of possessions, of desire, of envy, of greed. And war comes from these things. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, quoted in Rodger L. Tarr, Max and Marjorie (1999)
In our factory we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope. Charles Revson, Revlon founder, quoted in N. Augustine, Augustine’s Laws (6th Edition, 1997)
QUOTE NOTE: “Selling hope” was a key ingredient in Revlon’s success, according to Revson, and he returned to the theme again and again in his interviews and talks. One of the earliest articulations of the idea occurred in a 1976 issue of New York magazine, when he was quoted as saying, “In the factory we make cosmetics; in the stores we sell hope.”
Advertising is the foot on the accelerator, the hand on the throttle, the spur on the flank that keeps our economy surging forward. Robert W. Sarnoff, quoted in L. Shilling & L. Fuller, Dictionary of Quotations in Communication (1997)
Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There’s yeast in bread, but you can’t make bread with yeast alone. Truth in advertising is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow. Dorothy L. Sayers, in Murder Must Advertise (1933)
All advertising tells lies, but there are little lies and there are big lies. Little lie: This beer tastes great. Big lie: this beer makes you great. Leslie Savan, in The Sponsored Life: Ads, TV, and American Culture (1994)
Only a man seated before a television set watching a cigarette carton perform a tap dance can extract the full relish from Dr. Samuel Johnson’s pronouncement of nearly two hundred years ago: “The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose any
improvement.” E. S. Turner, in The Shocking History of Advertising (1953)
I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half. John Wanamaker, quoted in Martin Mayer, Madison Avenue, USA (1958)
QUOTE NOTE: In his 1963 book Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy credited this observation to British businessman William Lever (of Lever Brothersfame), but he provided no documentation.
Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams. E. B. White, in “Truth in Advertising,” The New Yorker (July 11, 1936)
White added: “Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our lives with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.”
As advertising blather becomes the nation’s normal idiom, language becomes printed noise. George F. Will, in The Pursuit of Happiness, and Other Sobering Thoughts (1976)
Advertising tries to be a pyromaniac, igniting conflagrations of desires for instant gratification. George F. Will, “The Madison Legacy,” in The Washington Post (Dec. 7, 1981); reprinted in The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses, 1981–1986 (1986)
ADVERTISING SLOGANS
(see also ADVERTISING and BUSINESS and COMMERCE and CUSTOMERS and INFLUENCE and MARKETING and PERSUASION and SALES & SELLING)
QUOTE NOTE: This is one of advertising history’s most successful slogans, but it wasn’t the first try out of the box, according to Jonathon Green in Says Who? A Guide to the Quotations of the Century (1988). The first slogan submitted by adman Major Patrick O’Keefe was “Flowers are words that even a babe can understand.” When this was rejected as over-wordy, O’Keefe replied, “Why, you can say it with flowers in so many words.” Green writes: “Suitably abbreviated, a slogan was born.”
ADVICE
(includes COUNSEL; see also ADVICE—EXAMPLES OF and EXPERIENCE and LEARNING and WISDOM and WRITING ADVICE)
Addison added: “We look upon the man who gives it [to] us as offering an affront to our understanding, and treating us like children or idiots.”
We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain. William R. Alger, quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, Treasury of Thought (1884)
ERROR ALERT: This quotation is widely misattributed to Tom Stoppard. Alger was a nineteenth-century Unitarian clergyman, a lesser-known member of Emerson’s “Concord Circle,” an outspoken abolitionist, and the cousin of Horatio Alger.
Something occurred while they were at Hartfield, to make Emma want their advice; and, which was still more lucky, she wanted exactly the advice they gave. Jane Austen, the voice of the narrator, in Emma (1816)
He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other. Francis Bacon, “Of Great Place,” in Essays (1625)
Festus continued: “Our deeds are sometimes better than our thoughts.”
Bakke went on to add: “The act alone says, ‘I need you.’ The decision maker and the adviser are pushed into a closer relationship.”
We hate those who will not take our advice, and despise them who do. Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw), in Josh Billings, His Sayings (1865)
Most of the advice we receive from others is not so much an evidence of their affection for us, as it is an evidence of their affection for themselves. Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw), in Josh Billings, His Sayings (1865)
On the same subject, Billings wrote:
“Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.”
“When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and give it to him.”
“I never had a man come to me for advice yet, but what I soon discovered that he thought more of his own opinion than he did of mine.”
When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?” it’s a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway. Erma Bombeck, widely attributed, but not verified.
A woman’s advice is not worth much, but he who does not heed it is a fool. Pedro Calderón, in El Médico de su Honra (n.d.); quoted in Jacob. M. Braude, Braude’s Handbook of Stories for Toastmasters and Speakers (1975)
The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries. Truman Capote, the character Randolph speaking, in Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
QUOTE NOTE: This line is engraved on a memorial stone in Bridgehampton, Long Island, one of the sites where Capote’s ashes were scattered.
All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help from other people. Alexis Carrell, in Reflections on Life (1935)
I have made three rules of writing for myself that are absolutes: Never take advice. Never show or discuss work in progress. Never answer a critic. Raymond Chandler, quoted in D. Gardiner & K. S. Walker, Raymond Chandler Speaking (1962)
Advice, like snow, the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, attributed in
The Saturday Magazine (Sep. 22, 1832)
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation has been repeated countless times for nearly two centuries (sometimes with the opening words “Advice is like snow”), but has always been suspect. Quotation researcher Garson O’Toole was recently motivated to do his own research on the observation and, as usual, he unearthed valuable new information. It now appears that the original author of the sentiment was Jeremiah Seed, an English clergyman and Oxford professor, who advanced the idea in a 1747 collection of his sermons.
Once you’ve given advice to someone, you’re obligated. Malcolm Forbes, quoted in The Forbes Book of Business Quotations (1997; Ted Goodman, ed.)
Daddy said: “All children must look after their own upbringing.” Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. Anne Frank, a July 15, 1944 entry, in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1947; first English publication in 1952)
We may give advice, but we cannot give conduct. Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack (Feb., 1751)
QUOTE NOTE: Many of Franklin’s sayings were nothing more than simplified—and Americanized—versions of popular English proverbs. This one was inspired by: “We may give good counsel, but cannot bestow good conduct.”
Fools need advice most, but wise men only are the better for it. Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack (Jan., 1758)
Advice is given freely because so much of it is worthless. James Geary, an aphorism from his
website
When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see. Baltasar Gracián, in The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
On Venus it is considered a loving gesture to offer advice. But on Mars it is not. Women need to remember that Martians do not offer advice unless it is directly requested. John Gray, in Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (1992)
Harris continued: “it is sure to be based on the assumption that what sounds ‘reasonable’ will turn out to be the right solution.”
Advice is sure of a hearing when it coincides with our previous conclusions, and therefore comes in the shape of praise or of encouragement. Arthur Helps, “Advice,” in
Essays Written in the Intervals of Business (1843)
QUOTE NOTE: Helps’s essay, written nearly two centuries ago, contains other observations that are still relevant today, including these:
“In seeking for a friend to advise you, look for uprightness in him, rather than for ingenuity.”
“It is a disingenuous thing to ask for advice, when you mean assistance, and it will be a just punishment if you get that which you pretended to want.”
“When you advise a man to do something which is for your own interest as well as for his, you should put your own motive for advising him, full in view, with all the weight that belongs to it.”
“When you have to give advice, you should never forget whom you are addressing, and what is practicable for him. You should not look about for the wisest thing which can be said, but for that which your friend has the heart to undertake, and the ability to accomplish.”
The greatest luxury of riches is that they enable you to escape so much good advice. The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment. Arthur Helps, in Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871)
Know when to speake; for many times it brings/Danger, to give the best advice to kings. Robert Herrick, “Caution in Councell,” in
Hesperides (1648)
The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in a speech in Boston (Jan. 8, 1897)
It is a little embarrassing that, after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other. Aldous Huxley, quoted in Laura Archera Huxley, This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley (1963)
ERROR ALERT: In What About the Big Stuff? (2002) Richard Carlson presented a paraphrased version of Huxley’s famous thought as if it were a verbatim quotation: “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.’”
Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious; but, for the same reason, every one is eager to instruct his neighbors. Samuel Johnson, in a 1761 edition of The Rambler
Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice. Samuel Johnson, in The Rambler (June 26, 1750)
If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and, when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, “I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.” Ann Landers, in Since You Ask Me (1961)
We may give advice, but we cannot inspire conduct. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)
QUOTE NOTE: The observation has also been commonly translated this way: “We give advice, but we do not inspire conduct.”
QUOTE NOTE: This observation is also commonly presented in these ways:
“Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.”
“Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console themselves for being no longer in a position to give bad examples.”
I am melancholy when I see, or even hear of, other people behaving badly. I often long to direct them with good advice, and refrain only because I know that friendship itself will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long. Robert Lynd, in The Peal of Bells (1924)
Lynd continued: “And so, while I am inwardly aching to preach to my errant fellow-creatures, I find myself talking to them instead about diet, diseases, cinemas, Bernard Shaw, and the day on which I backed three winning horses at Ascot.”
* Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. Edna St. Vincent Millay, in a letter to the poet Arthur Davison Ficke (October 15, 1920)
Advice almost never functions as a social lubricant; eight or nine times out of ten it makes people lose face, crushes their will, and creates a grudge. Yukio Mishima, in Mishima on Hagakure (1977)
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. Henri J. M. Nouwen, “With Care,” in Out of Solitude (1974)
Nouwen continued: “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.”
I am very handy with my advice and then when anybody appears to be following it, I get frantic. Flannery O’Connor, in letter to a person identified only as “A” (Dec. 11, 1956), in Sally Fitzgerald, The Habit of Being (1979)
If you want to improve your performance in almost any part of your life, stop asking for feedback and start asking for advice. Daniel H. Pink, in “Stop Asking for Feedback” podcast (Oct. 8, 2023)
QUOTE NOTE: Pink based his recommendation on recent research that showed advice was more effective than feedback because it was more “actionable.”
Good advice is like a tight glove; it fits the circumstances, and it does not fit other circumstances. Charles Reade, the character Mr. Rolfe speaking, in A Terrible Temptation, Vol. I (1871)
We are so happy to advise others that occasionally we even do it in their interest. Jules Renard, journal entry, in Journal, 1887-1910 (1925). Also an example of Oxymoronica.
A man takes contradiction and advice much more easily than people think, only he will not bear it when violently given, even though it be well-founded. Hearts are flowers; they remain open to the softly-falling dew, but shut up in the violent downpour of rain. Johann Paul Richter (who wrote under the pen name Jean Paul), quoted in Henry Southgate, Many Thoughts of Many Minds (1862)
I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth. Rainer Maria Rilke, in letter to Franz Xaver Kappus (Feb. 17, 1903); published posthumously in Letters to a Young Poet (in 1929)
QUOTE NOTE: As it turns out, this would not be the only advice contained in the letter. Rilke went on to offer a thought that ultimately became one of his most popular creations:
“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”
QUOTE NOTE: Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was referring to the advice he gave to Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer prior to their wedding.
To give advice to a friend, either asked or unasked, is so far from a fault that it is a duty; but if a man love to give advice, it is a sure sign that he himself wanteth it. George Savile (Lord Halifax), in Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections (1750)
QUOTE NOTE: The passage is sometimes rendered in verse form: “Safe in the port,/’Tis easy to advise.”
The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right. Hannah Whitall Smith, in May 3, 1902 letter; reprinted in Philadelphia Quaker: The Letters of Hannah Whitall Smith (1950; Logan Pearsall Smith, ed.)
QUOTE NOTE: In this observation, Chesterfield is using the term want not in the modern sense of desiring something, but in the old-fashioned sense of needing something because it is lacking in one’s life (as in, “He was found wanting”).
I wish to God that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it to you. Philip Dormer Stanhope (Lord Chesterfield), in letter to his son (Feb. 5, 1750)
In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody’s torments in this world or the next laid to my charge. Philip Dormer Stanhope (Lord Chesterfield), in letter to A. C. Stanhope (Oct. 12, 1765)
QUOTE NOTE: In crafting this observation, Steinbeck was likely inspired by an 1820 thought from Charles Caleb Colton, to be seen above.
It’s queer how ready people always are with advice in any real or imaginary emergency, and no matter how many times experience has shown them to be wrong, they continue to set forth their opinions, as if they had received them from the Almighty! Anne Sullivan, in a letter (June 12, 1887), quoted in Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (1903)
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not so much as take warning? Jonathan Swift, in Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1696–1706 (1711)
I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. Henry David Thoreau, “Economy,” in Walden (1854)
Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. J. R. R. Tolkien, the character Gildor speaking, in The Fellowship of the Rings (1954)
I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it. Harry Truman, in interview with Edward R. Murrow on CBS-TV (May 27, 1955)
He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person. Mark Twain, the character Edward Richards describing a man named Goodson, in the short story “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” in Harper’s Monthly (Dec., 1899)
Give not Advice without being Ask'd, and when desired, do it briefly. George Washington, a “Rule of Civility” that guided his life; quoted in Charles Moore, George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation (1926).
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation should be properly attributed to “Author Unknown,” but it is because of Washington that we are aware of its existence. Sometime before his sixteenth birthday, Virginia schoolboy George Washington completed a penmanship exercise in which he hand copied a list of 110 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” The list was originally prepared by French Jesuits around 1595 and first published in English in 1640. The Rules, which became popular in the education of young aristocrats, found their way to America in the early 1700s, and ultimately into the hands of Washington’s schoolmaster. For more, including a view of the 110 maxims in Washington’s original teenage handwriting, see Washington’s “Rules of Civility”.
Insistent advice may develop into interference, and interference, someone has said, is the hind hoof of the devil. Carolyn Wells, in The Rest of My Life (1937)
In the book—her autobiography—Wells added: “You give a dear friend a bit of advice today, and next week you find yourself advising two or three friends, and the week after, a dozen, and the week following, crowds.”
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal. Oscar Wilde, the narrator speaking, in “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” first published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (July, 1889); later republished in Lord Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, 2nd ed. (1901)
QUOTATION CAUTION: This quotation is extremely popular, but I’ve never found an original source. Nor have I been able to find any biographical information on Bern Williams, despite the frequency with which he has been quoted on web sites. It might be better to consider this an Author Unknown observation.
ADVICE—EXAMPLES OF
(see also ADVICE and ADMONITIONS and DEHORTATIONS and EXHORTATIONS)
If you go through life trading on your good looks, there’ll come a time when no one wants to trade. Lynne Alpern & Esther Blumenfeld, in Oh, Lord, I Sound Just Like Mama (1986)
Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely, gallantly, as a splendid adventure, in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and to lose many a battle. Annie Besant, in The Theosophist (Dec. 1924)
Whatever you do, kid—always serve it with a little dressing. George M. Cohan, acting advice to Spencer Tracy, in J. McCabe, George M. Cohan: The Man Who Owned Broadway (1973).
A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze. Diogenes (3rd c. B.C.), quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, Pearls of Thought (1882)
It is not my place to offer pep talks, aphorisms, or dictums. But if I had to give one piece of advice it would be this: Find something that you love that they’re fucking with and then fight for it. If everyone did that-imagine the difference. David Gessner, in My Green Manifesto: Does the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism (2011)
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. Cynthia Heimel, “Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics,” in The Village Voice (Nov. 13, 1993)
It is a little embarrassing that, after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other. Aldous Huxley, quoted in Laura Archera Huxley, This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley (1963)
When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees. Kenneth Kaunda, quoted in The Observer (London, Jan. 2, 1983)
If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and, when it comes, hold your head high, look it squarely in the eye and say, “I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.” Ann Landers, in Since You Ask Me (1961)
QUOTE NOTE: Was the famous advice columnist dispensing fishing advice here? No, this was simply her figurative way of telling women that going to singles bars was not an effective way to meet high-quality men.
QUOTE NOTE: In the novel, this was the motto of Annable, the woodkeeper. It’s possible that Lawrence was inspired by a similar thought expressed by English philosopher Herbert Spencer in Education (1861): “People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life, is to be a good animal.”
Lebowitz was giving advice to teenagers, but her advice applies to people of all ages. She continued: “This will give you something to think about that you didn’t make up yourself—a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.”
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. Horace Mann, in 1859 commencement address at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio
QUOTE NOTE: Mann, president of the college at the time, collapsed a few days after his address and died at age 63 a few weeks later, on August 2, 1859. This passage from his speech resonated so strongly with the Antioch community that, ever since, the words have been repeated to each graduating class. More than a century later, the saying was adopted as the college’s official motto and inscribed on a monument in Mann’s honor.
ERROR ALERT: Mann’s words are often mistakenly presented as some great victory.
Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it, nor too precisely in it…where the eye is the jury, thy apparel is the evidence. Francis Quarles, in Enchiridion (1640)
Don’t be a pawn in somebody’s game…. Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on. Anne Rice, the protagonist Rowan Mayfair speaking, in The Witching Hour (1990)
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. Rainer Maria Rilke, in letter to Franz Xaver Kappus (July 16, 1903); published posthumously in Letters to a Young Poet (in 1929)
He went on to add: “And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. Bertrand Russell, from the “How to Grow Old,” in Portraits from Memory: And Other Essays (1956)
We must live as we ride; be supple, avoid checking our steed without need, hold the bridle lightly, go ahead when the wind is favorable. George Sand, in 1842 letter to a friend
Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? Edith Sitwell, at age seventy-five, in E. Salter, Edith Sitwell (1979)
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Henry David Thoreau, in Walden (1854)
QUOTE NOTE: While the saying is often attributed directly to President Truman, he described it as an “old Missouri saying” that he first heard in the 1930s.
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate—that’s my philosophy. Thornton Wilder, the character Sabina speaking, in The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat. Woodrow Wilson, in a Jan. 29, 1916 speech (Pittsburgh, PA)
Think like a wise man but express yourself like the common people. William Butler Yeats, in letter to Dorothy Wellesley (Dec. 21, 1935); reprinted in Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley (1940)
AFFAIR
(see also ADULTERY & INFIDELITY and MISTRESS)
I liken an affair to the shattering of a Waterford crystal vase. You can glue it back together, but it will never be the same again. Dr. John Gottman, quoted in U.S. News & World Report (Jan. 1, 1994)
An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause. John Updike, the voice of the narrator, in Couples: A Novel (1968)
AFFECTATION
(see also PRETENSE & PRETENSION)
Those who assume a character which does not belong to them, only make themselves ridiculous. Aesop, “The Crow and Raven,” in Fables (6th c. B.C.)
Avoid affectation. The more merit, the less affectation, which gives a vulgar flavor. Baltasar Gracián, in The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
About affectation, Gracián added: “The most eminent merits lose most by it, for they appear proud and artificial instead of being the product of nature, and the natural is always more pleasing than the artificial. One always feels sure that the man who affects a virtue has it not.”
Once the charmer is aware of a mannerism or characteristic that others find charming, it ceases to be a mannerism and becomes an affectation. And good lord, there is nothing less charming than affectations! Rex Harrison, quoted in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (June 24, 1978)
I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected. Georgia O’Keeffe, in a 1915 letter to Anita Pollitzer, quoted in Clive Giboire, Lovingly, Georgia (1990)
AFFECTION
(see also EMOTION and FEELING and FONDNESS and HEART and HUGS & HUGGING and LOVE and TOUCH)
Nine times out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels. Jane Austen, the character Charlotte Lucas speaking, in Pride and Prejudice (1813)
When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection…of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it’s the affection I find richer. It’s that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors. Enid Bagnold, in Autobiography (1969)
O the anguish of the thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them. George Eliot, a reflection of the title character, in “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton,” in Scenes of Clerical Life (1857)
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. George Eliot, the narrator describing the somewhat strained relationship between the title character and Sir Hugo, in Daniel Deronda (1876)
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites and quotation anthologies mistakenly present the observation as if it were phrased: “A difference in taste in jokes.”
And almost the hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection and not a fountain, to show them we love them, not when we feel like it, but when they do. Nan Fairbrother, in An English Year (1954)
Trust in my affection for you. Tho’ I may not display it exactly in the way you like and expect it, it is not therefore less deep and sincere. Anna Jameson, in an 1833 letter to Ottilie Von Goethe, in Letters of Anna Jameson to Ottilie Von Goethe (1939; G. H. Needler, ed.)
The poem continued: “If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning/Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;/That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.”
QUOTE NOTE: Popova’s beautiful observation was inspired by the distraught emotional state of Emily Dickinson when she discovered that her intense feelings for love interest Susan Gilbert were not being reciprocated.
Affection is a coal that must be cool’d/Else, suffered, it will set the heart of fire. William Shakespeare, in Venus and Adonis (1593)
Human affection…is the one great curse of mankind, the principal obstruction to its progress. Take myself, for instance; all my life affection has been showered on me, and everything that I have done I have had to do in spite of it. George Bernard Shaw, quoted in S. J. Woolf, “George Bernard Shaw,” Drawn From Life (1932)
One is apt to think of people’s affection as a fixed quantity, instead of a sort of moving sea with tide always going out or coming in but still fundamentally there. Freya Stark, in The Coast of Incense (1953)
Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection—that is the last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement. Mark Twain, “When in Doubt, Tell the Truth,” in Speeches (1923; A. B. Paine, ed.)
AFFIRMATION
(see also BELIEF and MANTRA and MOTTO and SELF-HELP and SELF-TALK)
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Montaigne, or the Skeptic,” in Representative Men (1850)
Gawain preceded the thought by writing: “Affirmations are one way of supporting and strengthening our vision. To affirm means ‘to make firm,’”
Hays added: “The secret to having your affirmations work quickly and consistently is to prepare an atmosphere for them to grow in. Affirmations are like seeds planted in soil. Poor soil, poor growth. Rich soil, abundant growth.”
AFFRONT
(see also ABUSE and INDIGNITY and INJURY and OFFENSE and SLIGHT and WRONG)
AFRICA
(see also ANTARCTICA and ASIA and AUSTRALIA and CONTINENTS and EUROPE and NORTH AMERICA and SOUTH AMERICA)
In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, the brooding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires—rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all. Beryl Markham, in West With the Night (1942)
AFRICAN-AMERICANS
AFTERLIFE/LIFE AFTER DEATH
(see also DEATH & DYING and ETERNITY and HEAVEN and HELL and IMMORTALITY and REINCARNATION)
A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is. Phyllis Bottome, a reflection of the narrator and protagonist, a Viennese psychoanalyst who fled to England in the 1930s, in Survival (1943)
I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman. Aleister Crowley, in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929)
I don’t believe in an afterlife. I am an atheist. Darwin proved for me that there is birth and death and in-between evolution and that is all there is to it. John McCarthy [English entrepreneur], quoted in Charlie Berridge, Building a Billion: the Story of John McCarthy (2011)
A moment later, McCarthy added: “I don’t believe in God or some greater being than mortal man here on earth. In the end we’re just like the leaves on the trees. They start as little green shoots, grow into dense foliage, turn golden, and then drop off and fall to the ground. They are gathered up for the bonfire or rot to provide nourishment for the next generation. All the while the tree trunk grows stronger.”
I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow. Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted by William M. Salter, in Harvard Theological Review (July, 1911)
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. Carl Sagan, in Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (1997)
The grave the last sleep? No; it is the last and final awakening. Sir Walter Scott, 1827 journal entry, in Memoirs of the Life of Sir William Scott, Vol. 5 (1901)
AFTERNOON
(see also DAWN & DUSK and EVENING & NIGHT and MORNING)
AGE [as in EPOCH or ERA]
(see also EPOCH and ERA and HISTORY & HISTORIANS and PAST and ZEITGEIST)
Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Mary McCarthy, “My Confession,” in On the Contrary (1953; rev. ed., 1961)
AGE & AGING
(see also ADOLESCENCE and AGE & AGING—OLD AGE and AGE & AGING—SPECIFIC AGES & DECADES and CHILDHOOD and DEATH & DYING and MIDDLE AGE and OLD and SENESCENCE and SENILITY and YOUTH and YOUTH COMPARED TO OLD AGE)
The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball—the further I am rolled, the more I gain. Susan B. Anthony, in interview with Nelly Bly,
New York World (Feb. 2, 1896); reprinted in Ida Husted Harper,
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Vol. 2 (1898)
I speak the truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more, as I grow older. Catherine Drinker Bowen, in Family Portrait (1970)
I’ve found two gray hairs in my head the week before last, and an impertinent crow has planted a delicate impression of his foot under my right eye. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, the character Robert Audley speaking, in Lady Audley’s Secret (1862)
As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you. Gwendolyn Brooks, in Report From Part One: An Autobiography (1972)
Unexpected bonus of aging: appreciation for the miracles our bodies go about while we’re preoccupied, pretending we’re in charge. Blayney Colmore, “Notes From Zone 10” newsletter (Feb. 23, 2021)
With age, comfort becomes more seductive than beauty. Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 8th Selection (1991)
All of one’s contemporaries and aging friends are living in a delicate balance, and one feels that one’s own consciousness is no longer as brightly lit as it once was. But then, twilight with its more subdued colors has its charms as well. Albert Einstein, in letter to Gertrud Warschauer (April 4, 1952)
In that same article, Friedan was also quoted as saying: “We need to break through the age mystique by continuing to grow, solving problems, making social changes. We need to see our age as an uncharted adventure.”
Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth. Age is assessed not by what it is, but by what it is not. Betty Friedan, in The Fountain of Age (1993)
One day, there’s a hand that goes over the face and changes it. You look like an apple that isn’t young anymore. Greta Garbo, in Vanity Fair (Feb., 1994)
At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, and at eighty nothing. Baltasar Gracián, in The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
People had much rather be thought to look ill than old: because it is possible to recover from sickness, but there is no recovering from age. William Hazlitt, “Common Places,” in The Literary Examiner (Sep.–Dec., 1823)
Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist—a master—and that is what Auguste Rodin was—can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is…and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be…and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned [sic] inside her ruined body. Robert A Heinlein, the character Jubal Harshaw speaking, in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
Harshaw continued: “He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her.”
If you survive long enough, you’re revered—rather like an old building. Katharine Hepburn, in M. Freedland, Katharine Hepburn (1984)
Age, like distance, lends a double charm. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in Urania: A Rhymed Lesson (1846)
She realized that to grow old is to have taken away, one by one, all gifts of life, the food and wine, the music, and the company. Nothing unexpected is left, there is only a worn-out body mumbling over crumbs in the sure expectation of death: The gods unloose, one by one, the mortal fingers that cling to the edge of the table. Storm Jameson, the voice of the narrator, in Three Kingdoms (1926)
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. James Joyce, the voice of the character Gabriel, from the short story “The Dead,” in Dubliners (1914)
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. Carl Jung, in The Soul and Death (1955; orig. pub. in Europäische Revue, April, 1934); reprinted in Collected Works
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. Franz Kafka, quoted in Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (1951; 2nd expanded ed., 1971)
A moment earlier, Kafka introduced the thought by saying: “Youth is full of sunshine and life. Youth is happy, because it has the ability to see beauty. When this ability is lost, wretched old age begins, decay, unhappiness.” Some Kafka scholars have questioned the authenticity of these observations. See explanation in the Kafka ACHIEVEMENT entry.
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. Garson Kanin, quoted in The New York Times Book Review (Feb. 26, 1978)
I’ve been waiting a long time to become as old as I am and it was worth the wait. Garrison Keillor, “The Beauty of Falls That You Walk Away From,” a post on
www.GarrisonKeillor.com (April 26, 2024)
Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged, white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the only similarity. Anne Lamott, the opening words of “It's Good to Remember: We Are All on Borrowed Time,” in The New York Times (October 30, 2023)
In the opening paragraph, Lamott—writing at age sixty-nine—continued: “At the Safeway sushi bar during lunchtime, I look at the teenage girls in their crop tops with their stupid flat tummies and I feel bad about what lies beneath my big, forgiving shirts but—and this is one of the blessings of aging—not for long.”
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. Doug Larson, quoted in The Pantagraph [Bloomington, Illinois] (Nov. 25, 2006)
It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. Tom Lehrer, remark made when introducing his song “Alma,” on the 1965 album That Was the Year That Was
The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. Madeleine L’Engle, quoted in S. H. Anderson & D. W. Dunlap,
“New York Day By Day”, in
The New York Times (April 25, 1985)
We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather, and your own rate of living. Max Lerner, “Fifty,” in The New York Post (Dec. 18, 1952); reprinted in The Unfinished Country (1959)
Lerner added: “Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.”
All one’s life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, unnoticed and invisible. Doris Lessing, quoted in Robert Andrews, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1989)
Age is opportunity no less/Than youth itself, though in another dress,/And as the evening twilight fades away/The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. Henry Wadsworth Longellow, in Morituri Salutamus (1874)
Nothing makes people crosser than being considered too old for love. Nancy Mitford, a reflection of the narrator, a woman known only as Linda, in Love in a Cold Climate (1949)
If I had known I was going to live so long, I’d have taken better care of myself. Billy Noonan, quoted in “Billy Noonan: The Sage of Baudette,” by George L. Peterson, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (Sep. 16, 1951)
ERROR ALERT: According to Garson O’Toole, aka The Quote Investigator, this is the earliest appearance of a saying that went on to become something close to a modern proverb. Noonan, a 70-year-old Minnesota newspaper columnist, offered the thought in a dinner held in his honor by fellow journalists. The saying is commonly attributed to Eubie Blake, Adolph Zukor, and even Mickey Mantle.
Over the centuries, others had expressed a similar sentiment, but never in the eminently quotable way that Noonan did. Perhaps the earliest came around 1770, when Sir Robert Henley, the Earl of Northington and former Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain was quoted by his grandson as saying. “If I had known that these legs were one day to carry a Chancellor, I’d have taken better care of them when I was a lad.”
Age’s terms of peace, after the long interlude of war with life, have still to be concluded—Youth must be kept decently away—so many old wounds may have to be unbound, and old scars pointed to with pride, to prove to ourselves we have been brave and noble. Eugene O’Neill, in Strange Interlude (1928).
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation has appeared in a number of anthologies on the topic of aging, but it was originally offered in a poem on the fading of beauty. For the fuller quotation, see the Ovid entry in BEAUTY.
Thank God for the head. Inside the head is the only place you got to be young when the usual place gets used up. Grace Paley, the title character speaking, “Zagrowsky Tells,” in Later the Same Day (1985)
Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave. Dorothy Parker, in “The Middle or Blue Period,” (1944)) in The Portable Dorothy Parker (1988)
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. Johann Paul Richter (who wrote under the pen name Jean Paul), quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, in Treasury of Thought (1894, 15th ed.)
I’m told that after the age of 60, one loses half an inch of height every five years. This doesn’t appear to be a problem for Biden, but it presents a challenge for me, considering that at my zenith, I didn’t quite make it to five feet. If I live as long as my father did, I may vanish. Robert Reich, “A Holiday Question: How Old is Old?” a Substack post (Dec. 25, 2023)
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. Eleanor Roosevelt, widely quoted, but not sourced
There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who remain permanently at that age. Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, quoted in John W. Gardner & Francesca Gardner Reese, Quotations of Wit and Wisdom (1975)
Saint-Exupéry preceded the observation by writing: “A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves.”
In a wider sense, it can also be said that the first forty years of our life furnish the text, whereas the following thirty supply the commentary. Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Different Periods of Life,” in Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation has also been translated in the following way: “The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.”
The crucial task of age is balance, a veritable tightrope of balance; keeping just well enough, just brave enough, just gay and interested and starkly honest enough to remain a sentient human being. Florida Scott-Maxwell, in The Measure of My Days (1968)
And what would it be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through. Robert Louis Stevenson, in Virginibus Puerisque (1881)
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but I am getting old, and soon I shall remember only the latter. Mark Twain, quoted in A. E. Paine, Mark Twain, A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Vol. 3 (1912)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the most famous version of an oxymoronic sentiment that Twain expressed on a number of occasions. The very first came in a March 1907 article in The North American Review (titled “Memories of a Southern Farm: A Chapter From Mark Twain’s Autobiography”), where Twain wrote: “When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that happened.” For more, see this excellent 2013 post by Garson O’Toole, aka The Quote Investigator.
It’s true, some wine improves with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place. Abigail Van Buren, in “Dear Abby” syndicated column (April 6, 1978)
Van Buren preceded the observation by writing: “Wisdom does not automatically come with old age. Nothing does—except wrinkles.”
In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. Edith Wharton, “A First Word,” in A Backward Glance: An Autobiography (1934)
I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. Virginia Woolf, diary entry (Oct. 2, 1932), written at age fifty; in A Writer’s Diary (1953; Leonard Woolf, ed.)
He hated the sight of his beard…. He hated also the outcropping of gray that had insidiously appeared in his mustache, on the left side of his chin, and in his sideburns. These gray bristles were, he knew, the advance scouts of a relentless, wintry invasion. And there would be no stopping the march of the hours, the days, the years. Irvin D. Yalom, in When Nietzsche Wept (1992)
QUOTE NOTE: In this passage, Yalom was describing the reaction of the fictional Dr. Josef Breuer when examining his graying beard in a mirror.
AGE & AGING—MIDDLE AGE
(see also AGE & AGING and AGE & AGING—OLD AGE and AGE & AGING—SPECIFIC AGES & DECADES and ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE and DEATH & DYING and SENILITY and YOUTH and YOUTH COMPARED TO OLD AGE)
The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone—but never hustled. Henry Brooks Adams, in The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. Harry S. Broudy, “Education for Leisure,” in Paradox and Promise: Essays on American Life and Education (1961)
Broudy continued: “The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it.”
Middle age is Janus-faced. As we look back on our accomplishments and our failures to achieve the things we wanted, we look ahead to the time we have left to us. Stanley H. Cath, quoted in The New York Times (April 18, 1983)
Forty is ten years older than thirty-nine. Frank Irving Cobb, in a circa 1912 note to Joseph Pulitzer; quoted in Louis M. Starr, “Joseph Pulitzer and His Most ‘Indegaddamnpendent’ Editor,” American Heritage (June 1968)
The power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged. God has kept that good wine until now. G. K. Chesterton, “The Boyhood of Dickens,” in Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1906)
Chesterton continued: “It is from the backs of the elderly gentlemen that the wings of the butterfly should burst.”
At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” in Saturday Evening Post (May, 1920); reprinted in Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man’s life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the character Edward speaking, in Elective Affinities (1809)
Edward continued: “Woe to him who, either by circumstances or by his own infatuation, is induced to grasp at anything before him or behind him.”
I think middle age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty. W. R. Inge, quoted in The Observer (London; June 8, 1930)
At fifty, the madwoman in the attic breaks loose, stomps down the stairs, and sets fire to the house. She won’t be imprisoned anymore. Erica Jong, in Fear of Fifty (1994)
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. Carl Jung, in The Soul and Death (1955; orig. pub. in Europäische Revue, April, 1934); reprinted in Collected Works
All one’s life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, unnoticed and invisible. Doris Lessing, a reflection of protagonist Anna Wulf, in The Golden Notebook (1962)
He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets, reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards. G. C. Lichtenberg, in Aphorisms: Notebook B (written between 1768–1771)
Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea (1955)
Lindbergh continued: “Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach-living; one’s pride, one’s false ambitions, one’s mask, one’s armor. Was that armor not put on to protect one from the competitive world? If one ceases to compete, does one need it? Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!”
For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea (1955)
Lindbergh continued: “It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life. And therefore this period of expanding is often tragically misunderstood.”
It’s middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well, and it is perhaps mercifully, the period which becomes blurred in the memory, the time when you did nothing more difficult than survive. John Mortimer, in Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life (1995)
I have discovered that middle-age is not a question of years. It is that moment in life when one realizes that one has exchanged, by a series of subtle shifts and substitutes, the vague and vaporous dreams of youth, for the definite and tangible realization. Kathleen Thompson Norris, in Noon—An Autobiographical Sketch (1925)
Norris continued: “It may be a very beautiful and successful realization; it may be indeed real furs for dream furs, real travel for dream travel—but it is never the dream, it never can be the dream.”
In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made. Kathleen Thompson Norris, in Hands Full of Living: Talks with American Women (1931)
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. Henry David Thoreau, a journal entry (July 14, 1852)
AGE & AGING—OLD AGE
(see also AGE & AGING and AGE & AGING—MIDDLE AGE and AGE & AGING—SPECIFIC AGES & DECADES and ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE and DEATH & DYING and SENILITY and YOUTH and YOUTH COMPARED TO OLD AGE)
I am not well; I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement, battered by the winds and broken in upon by the storms; and, from all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair. John Adams, on his ninety-year-old body, to Daniel Webster on June 17, 1826. Adams died a few weeks later, on July 4, 1826.
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent—that is to triumph over old age. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Leaves From a Notebook,” in Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. Isaac Asimov, in Pebble in the Sky (1950)
QUOTE NOTE: The words are from the novel's narrator, who added: “They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.”
QUOTE NOTE: In a 2019 Quote Investigator post, Garson O'Toole wrote: “The adage was popularized by Ruth S. Hain starting in 1968 via an anecdote published in the Reader’s Digest. The creator was anonymous. Bette Davis owned a pillow displaying the adage which also aided its propagation.”
To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am. Bernard Baruch, quoted in Newsweek magazine (Aug. 29, 1955)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is normally presented, but the observation takes on a fuller meaning when one sees how Beecher completed the thought: “Men that look upon the perfect blade do not imagine the process by which it was completed. Man is a sword. Daily life is the workshop, and God is the artificer, and those cares which beat upon the anvil, and file his edge, and eat in, acid-like, the inscription upon his hilt—these are the very things that fashion the man.”
I have begun in old age to understand…that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. Saul Bellow, “Ralph Ellison in Tivoli” (1998), in There is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction (2015)
Bellow continued: “One of the booby traps of freedom—which is bordered on all sides by isolation—is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life’s banquet.”
It is as natural for old age to be frail, as for the stalk to bend under the ripened ear, or for the autumnal leaf to change its hue. To this law all who went before you have submitted; and all who shall come after you must yield. After they have flourished for a season, they shall fade, like you, when the period of decline arrives, and bow under the pressure of years. Hugh Blair, “On Duties and Consolations of the Aged,” in Sermons, Vol. I (1822)
Blair preceded the thought by writing: “Throughout the whole vegetable, sensible, and rational world, whatever makes progress towards maturity, as soon as it has passed that point, begins to verge towards decay.”
You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoes
and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there. George Burns, quoted in Robert Byrne, The Fourth and By Far the Most Recent 637 Best Things Ever Said (1990)
Just because you’re an old guy, you don’t have to sit around drooling in the corner. George H. W. Bush, said just after a parachute jump on his eighty-fifth birthday; quoted in George H. W. Bush, 41: A Portrait of My Father (2014)
The elder Bush continued: “Get out and do something. Get out and enjoy life.”
The man who works and is not bored is never old. Pablo Casals, quoted in Julian Lloyd Webber, Song of the Birds: Sayings, Stories, and Impressions of Pablo Casals (1985)
QUOTE NOTE: This has become something of a signature line for the debonair French actor, who likely offered slightly varying versions of the remark on different occasions. Michael Freedland’s biography Maurice Chevalier (1981) reports the actor saying, “Considering the alternative, it’s not too bad at all” when asked how he felt about how he felt on his seventy-second birthday.
ERROR ALERT: In one of the most egregious errors on the internet, the vast majority of quotation sites—and, sadly, even many respected published books of quotations—mistakenly begin the observation: “Advice in old age….” (italics mine)
As a white candle/In a holy place,/So is the beauty/Of an aged face. Joseph Campbell, from 1913 poem “The Old Woman,” in H. Monroe, The New Poetry (1917)
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life’s parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Coming of Age (1970)
Old age is particularly difficult to assume because we have always regarded it as something alien, a foreign species: “Can I have become a different being while I still remain myself?” Simone de Beauvoir, in The Coming of Age (1970)
QUOTATION CAUTION: The words do come from De Gaulle, but he was not describing his own aging process, as is suggested in many quotation anthologies. Rather, they appeared as part of a fuller observation de Gaulle made about the aging French military leader, Marshal Pétain: “The old man is losing his sense of proportion. Nothing and nobody will stop the marshal on the road to senile ambition. Old age is a shipwreck.”
In all the world there are no people so piteous and forlorn as those who are forced to eat the bitter bread of dependence in their old age, and find how steep are the stairs of another man’s house. Dorothy Dix, in Dorothy Dix—Her Book: Every-Day Help for Every-Day People (1926)
No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace,/As I have seen in one autumnal face.
John Donne, “The Autumnal,” in Elegies (1600)
Old age is an insult. It’s like being smacked. Lawrence Durrell, quoted in Sunday Times (London, Nov. 20, 1988)
One day, there’s a hand that goes over the face and changes it. You look like an apple that isn’t young anymore. Greta Garbo, in Vanity Fair (Feb., 1994)
We must not take the faults of our youth into our old age; for old age brings with it its own defects. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a remark in conversation (Aug. 16, 1824 ), quoted in Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe (1836)
At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, and at eighty nothing. Baltasar Gracián, in The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator. Jane Harrison, in Reminiscences of A Student’s Life (1925)
People had much rather be thought to look ill than old: because it is possible to recover from sickness, but there is no recovering from age. William Hazlitt, “Common Places,” in The Literary Examiner (Sep.–Dec., 1823)
If you survive long enough, you’re revered—rather like an old building. Katharine Hepburn, in M. Freedland, Katharine Hepburn (1984)
When grace is joined with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age. Victor Hugo, the narrator describing the character Marius Pontmercy, in Les Misérables (1862)
Love, the last defense against old age. Aldous Huxley, “Old Age,” in Texts and Pretexts: An Anthology of Poetry with Commentaries (1933)
Huxley continued: “The last, and for those whose good fortune it is to have some one person to care for, or who have learned the infinitely difficult art of loving all their neighbors, the best.”
She realized that to grow old is to have taken away, one by one, all gifts of life, the food and wine, the music, and the company. Nothing unexpected is left, there is only a worn-out body mumbling over crumbs in the sure expectation of death: The gods unloose, one by one, the mortal fingers that cling to the edge of the table. Storm Jameson, the voice of the narrator, in Three Kingdoms (1926)
From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. Carl Jung, in The Soul and Death (1955; orig. pub. in Europäische Revue, April, 1934); reprinted in Collected Works
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. Franz Kafka, quoted in Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (1951; 2nd expanded ed., 1971)
QUOTE NOTE: A moment earlier, Kafka introduced the thought by saying: “Youth is full of sunshine and life. Youth is happy, because it has the ability to see beauty. When this ability is lost, wretched old age begins, decay, unhappiness.” Some Kafka scholars have questioned the authenticity of these observations. See explanation in the Kafka ACHIEVEMENT entry.
Old age is not a disease—it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses. Maggie Kuhn, quoted in D. Hessel, Maggie Kuhn on Aging (1977)
Lamott added: “We may not be going in the direction we’d anticipated, or have any clue at all about which way to turn next.”
Old age is a tyrant who forbids, upon pain of death, all of the pleasures of youth. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in Maximes (1665)
The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. Madeleine L’Engle, quoted in S. H. Anderson & D. W. Dunlap,
“New York Day By Day”, in
The New York Times (April 25, 1985)
In old age our bodies are worn-out instruments, on which the soul tries in vain to play the melodies of youth. But because the instrument has lost its strings, or is out of tune, it does not follow that the musician has lost his skill. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Table-Talk,” in Driftwood (1857)
Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. André Maurois, in The Art of Living (1940)
Old age has ts pleasures, which though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth. W. Somerset Maugham, in The Summing Up (1938)
Maugham preceded the thought by writing: “The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquility of the evening.“
Maugham continued: “In old age the taste improves and it is possible to enjoy art and literature without the personal bias that in youth warps the judgment.”
Old age is never fun. It presents in an acute form the human predicament: everyone must become neglected, forgotten, or replaced. Robert McCrum, in “Gore Vidal: A Lion in Winter,”
The Guardian (June 16, 2007)
Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do. Golda Meir, quoted by Oriana Fallaci, L’Europeo (1973)
Meir continued: “You can’t stop the plane, you can’t stop the storm, you can’t stop time. So one might as well accept it calmly, wisely.”
One must make the most of old age. We can laugh at it, we can be lachrymose about it, we can certainly deplore it, but we must seek the best in it. Jan Morris, “On Getting Old: An Agnostic Sermon,” in Allegorizings (2021)
In the essay, Morris also offered these other observations on the subject:
“There are a few advantages in getting old, and to some degree they compensate for the disadvantages. Make the most of them! With luck, never again will you have to stand in a crowded train: somebody is sure to offer you their seat with a sweet smile.”
“One of the prizes of old age is its release from competition.”
“Old age is the right to be absolutely ourselves. Laugh, cry, satirize it my friends, when your time comes—but make the most of it too!”
If I had known I was going to live so long, I’d have taken better care of myself. Billy Noonan, quoted in “Billy Noonan: The Sage of Baudette,” by George L. Peterson, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune (Sep. 16, 1951)
ERROR ALERT: According to Garson O’Toole, aka The Quote Investigator, this is the earliest appearance of a saying that went on to become something close to a modern proverb. Noonan, a 70-year-old Minnesota newspaper columnist, offered the thought in a dinner held in his honor by fellow journalists. The saying is commonly attributed to Eubie Blake, Adolph Zukor, and even Mickey Mantle.
Over the centuries, others had expressed a similar sentiment, but never in the eminently quotable way that Noonan did. Perhaps the earliest came around 1770, when Sir Robert Henley, the Earl of Northington and former Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain was quoted by his grandson as saying. “If I had known that these legs were one day to carry a Chancellor, I’d have taken better care of them when I was a lad.”
It is easier to counterfeit old age than youth. Elizabeth Peters, in The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog (1992)
What’s an old man to do,/But reshape/The landscape of desire. Louis Phillips, “What’s An Old Man To Do,” in Sunlight Falling to the Lake (2020)
Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score. Alexander Pope, in Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. Johann Paul Richter (who wrote under the pen name Jean Paul), quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, in Treasury of Thought (1894, 15th ed.)
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. Eleanor Roosevelt, widely quoted, but not sourced
The greatest tragedy of old age is the tendency for the old to feel unneeded, unwanted, and of no use to anyone; the secret of happiness in the declining years is to remain interested in life, as active as possible, useful to others, busy, and forward looking. Eleanor Roosevelt, in Eleanor Roosevelt’s Book of common Sense Etiquette (1962)
For inside all the weakness of old age, the spirit, God knows, is as mercurial as it ever was. May Sarton, in Kinds of Love (1974)
Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light. May Sarton, in “The Family of Woman,” in Ms magazine (1982)
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force. Dorothy L. Sayers, the character Sir Impey speaking, in Clouds of Witness (1956)
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped. Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Different Periods of Life,” in Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation, and a bit more, has also been translated in the following way: “Towards the end of life, much the same happens as at the end of a masked ball when the masks are removed. We now see hothouse really were with whom we had come in contact during the course of our life. Characters have revealed themselves, deeds have borne fruit, achievements have been justly appreciated, and all illusions have crumbled away.”
In a wider sense, it can also be said that the first forty years of our life furnish the text, whereas the following thirty supply the commentary. Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Different Periods of Life,” in Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation has also been translated in the following way: “The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.”
There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation. Logan Pearsall Smith, “Age and Death,” in Afterthoughts (1931)
One evil in old age is, that as your time is come, you think that every little illness is the beginning of the end. When a man expects to be arrested, every knock at the door is an alarm. Sydney Smith, in letter to Sir Wilmot Horton (Feb. 8, 1836); quoted in Lady Holland (Saba Smith), A Memoir of The Reverend Sydney Smith: by His Daughter (1855)
And what would it be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through. Robert Louis Stevenson, in Virginibus Puerisque (1881)
Do not go gentle into that good night./Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage, against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” in In Country Sleep (1952)
This is the most famous portion of one of Thomas's most famous poems. You can hear the author reciting the entire poem on: YouTube
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man. Leon Trotsky, diary entry (May 8, 1935), in Diary in Exile—1935 (1958)
Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. Mark Twain, in letter to Joe T. Goodman (April, 1891); reprinted in The Letters of Mark Twain, Vol. 4: 1886–1900 (A. B. Paine, ed.)
QUOTE NOTE: Twain was writing to console an old friend who had become ill. He preceded the thought by writing: “It is dreadful to think of you in ill health—I can’t realize it; you are always to me the same that you were in those days when matchless health and glowing spirits and delight in life were commonplaces with us.”
I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can’t reach old age by another man’s road. Mark Twain, in a Dec. 5, 1905 speech at Delmonico’s restaurant, at a party to celebrate Twain’s 70th birthday
In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. Edith Wharton, “A First Word,” in A Backward Glance: An Autobiography (1934)
In the book, Wharton also wrote: “There’s no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow.”
Old age is a special problem for me because I’ve never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself—a lad of about nineteen. E. B. White, a remark on his seventieth birthday, in “E. B. White: Notes and Comment by Author” (interview with Israel Shenker), The New York Times (July 11, 1969)
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. Oscar Wilde, the character Harry speaking, in The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)
QUOTE NOTE: I consider this one of the most powerful things ever said on the subject of old age. While researching the quotation’s authenticity, I learned that it did indeed come from Willour (pronounced Will-HOUR), although I was unable to locate a precise original source. Born in Troy, Pennsylvania in 1892, Willhour served as a combat nurse during WWI. After the war, she worked as a Pennsylvania public heath nurse for 18 years before becoming one of the first—if not the first—female agents for New York Life. In 1985, at age ninety-two (and three years before her death), she was honored by New York Life for fifty years of service with the company. According to a family member I interviewed, she made the foregoing “needs so little” remark in the last decade of her life.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick. William Butler Yeats, in “Sailing to Byzantium” (1926), in The Tower (1928)
QUOTATION CAUTION: This is how the couplet appears in almost every quotation anthology I’ve seen. Presented this way, it is a depressing sentiment, but the full stanza in Yeats’s famous poem indicates that he added an extremely important unless caveat: “An aged man is but a paltry thing,/A tattered coat upon a stick, unless/Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing/For every tatter in its mortal dress.”
AGE & AGING—SPECIFIC AGES & DECADES
(see also AGE & AGING and AGE & AGING—OLD AGE and DEATH & DYING and MIDDLE AGE and YOUTH and YOUTH COMPARED TO OLD AGE)
When you’re forty, half of you belongs to the past—and when you are seventy, nearly all of you. Jean Anouilh, the Duchess speaking, in Time Remembered (1939)
QUOTE NOTE: Burns offered numerous versions of this line in his later years, but it looks like he may have borrowed the quip from Jack Benny. In B. S. I Love You: Sixty Funny Years with the Famous and the Infamous (1989), Milton Berle wrote: “Jack Benny’s line about Burns and sex was a big winner too: ‘George Burns having sex is like shooting pool with a rope’”).
Forty is ten years older than thirty-nine. Frank Irving Cobb, in a circa 1912 note to Joseph Pulitzer; quoted in Louis M. Starr, “Joseph Pulitzer and His Most ‘Indegaddamnpendent’ Editor,” American Heritage (June 1968)
I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere. Carrie Fisher, diary entry of protagonist Suzanne Vale during her fifth day in detox, in Postcards From the Edge (1987)
Vale preceded the thought by writing: “The positive way to look at this is that from here things can only go up. But I’ve been up, and I always feel like a trespasser. A transient at the top. It’s like I’ve got a visa for happiness, but for sadness I’ve got a lifetime pass.”
At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” in Saturday Evening Post (May, 1920); reprinted in Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. F. Scott Fitzgerald, a reflection of the narrator, Nick Carraway, in The Great Gatsby (1925)
To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., quoted by Richard Henry Dana in remarks at 1906 meeting of the
Cambridge Historical Society (April 27, 1906)
QUOTE NOTE: I’ve read that Holmes offered the observation at a party celebrating the seventieth birthday of Julia Ward Howe in 1889, but have been unable to confirm this.
When I was as you are now, towering in [the] confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am. Samuel Johnson, in letter to Bennet Langton (Jan. 9, 1759), quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites, and many published volumes of quotations, mistakenly present this observation as if it read, “Towering is the confidence of twenty-one.”
At fifty, the madwoman in the attic breaks loose, stomps down the stairs, and sets fire to the house. She won’t be imprisoned anymore. Erica Jong, in Fear of Fifty (1994)
There’s a point, around the age of twenty…when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Ursula K. Le Guin, the character Bedap speaking, in The Dispossessed (1974)
QUOTE NOTE: In the novel, Bedap makes this remark to the character Shevek, who replies: “Or at least accept them with resignation.” The Dispossessed is one of LeGuin’s most acclaimed works, one of a small number of sci-fi novels to win the Hugo, Lotus, and Nebula Awards for Best Novel.
He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets, reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards. G. C. Lichtenberg, in Aphorisms: Notebook B (written between 1768–1771)
By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth. If it is bad, it is not because you are older but because you have not grown. Marya Mannes, in More in Anger: Some Opinions, Uncensored and Unteleprompted (1958)
Mannes preceded the thought by writing: “There is no “trick” in being young: it happens to you. But the process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained.”
As you get older, you have to watch it [free will] dwindle. At twenty your choices are almost unlimited. At fifty you’re a prisoner of past decisions. At seventy you have no free will left at all. Helen McCloy (pen name of Helen Clarkson), the character Alcott speaking, Mr. Splitfoot (1968)
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs. James Thurber, cartoon caption, New York Post (June 30, 1955)
Let her who is forty call herself forty; but if she can be young in spirit at forty, let her show that she is so. Anthony Trollope, a reflection of the narrator, in The Small House at Allington (1864)
To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in an 1877 letter
Approaching eighty I sometimes see myself from a little distance, as a man I know, but not intimately. John Updike, a reflection of the unnamed narrator, in the short story “The Full Glass,” in My Fathers Tears and Other Stories (published posthumously in 2009)
AGE & YOUTH
AGGRESSION & AGGRESSIVENESS
(see also ABUSE and ANGER and BELLIGERENCE and BULLYING and COMBATIVENESS and CRUELTY and HATRED and HOSTILITY and PUGNACITY and RAGE and VIOLENCE)
(see also ABUSE and ANGER and BELLIGERENCE and COMBATIVENESS and CRUELTY and HOSTILITY and PUGNACITY and VIOLENCE)
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth. Alfred Adler, in The Problems of Neurosis (1929)
In my experience of fights and fighting, it is invariably the aggressor who keeps getting everything wrong. Martin Amis, “Gore Vidal” (1977), in The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act. Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” in Janet Sternburg, The Writer on Her Work, Vol. 1 (1980)
Didion continued: “You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions—with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating—but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.”
Comparing boys and girls, Eldredge added: “Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where blood is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something—and so does a man, even if it’s only a little white ball on a tee.”
Writing is an aggressive act because you aren’t leaving well enough alone. Some people will love you for it and others will feel threatened by your nerve. Whenever you write you reject being a passive receiver or a victim. When you finish a piece, you’re refusing to be silenced or ignored. Writing is brave. Bonni Goldberg, in Room to Write (1996)
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, in The Folks at Home (1952)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is usually presented, but when LBJ was defending his decision to keep troops in Vietnam, his fuller remark indicates he was talking about totalitarian aggression: “We learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite of aggression.” President Jimmy Carter returned to the theme in a 1980 speech: “Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.”
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it. Lewis H. Lapham, “Citizen Goetz,” in Harper’s magazine (March, 1985)
Rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression. Audre Lorde, in 1980 speech (“Age, Race, Class, and Sex”); reprinted in Sister Outsider (1984)
She added: “Actually, it is worse. The ringing alarm would be annoying, but it would do no harm. Aggression at best is annoying, and at worst, itself, becomes life threatening.”
So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others. Eleanor Roosevelt, in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (1960)
AGITATION [Internal]
(see ANXIETY and DISTRESS)
I feel so agitated all the time, like a hamster in search of a wheel. Carrie Fisher, a reflection of protagonist Suzanne Vale, in Postcards From the Edge (1987)
AGITATION [Social & Political]
(see also ACTIVISM and CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE and DEMONSTRATIONS and DISSENT and MILITANCY & MILITANTS and OPPOSITION and OUTRAGE and REBELLION and PROTEST and [Protest] SONG and RESISTANCE and REVOLUTION)
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Frederick Douglass, in an 1857 speech
Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. Oscar Wilde, in The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Wilde added: “That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization. Slavery was put down in America…through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere who…set the torch alight, who began the whole thing.”
AGNOSTICISM & AGNOSTICS
(see also ATHEISM & ATHEISTS and BELIEF and CHRISTIANITY and DOUBT and FAITH and HERESY & HERETICS and RELIGION and SKEPTICISM & SKEPTICS and THEOLOGY)
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? Douglas Adams, a reflection of the character Ford Prefect, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
I say that I am an agnostic. People think that's pusillanimous and covering your bets. But it's not based on any belief or yearning for an afterlife but on the fact that we actually know so little about the cosmos. It is a tribute to the complexity and, at our present stage of development, the unknowability of the universe. Martin Amis, in “The New Amis” in The Telegraph (London; May 13, 2000)
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure—that is all that agnosticism means. Clarence Darrow, in speech at the trial of biology teacher John T. Scopes for teaching evolution, popularly known as the “Monkey Trial” (Dayton, Tennessee; July 13, 1925)
I think I'm a love agnostic—not sure, one way or another, if it really exists. Joan M. Drury, in Silent Words (1996)
One should not have the arrogance to declare that God does not exist. Umberto Eco, quoted in “Belief or Nonbelief?: A Confrontation By Umberto Eco and Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini,” The Los Angeles Times (March 18, 2000)
My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment. Albert Einstein, in
letter to Morton Berkowitz (Oct. 25, 1950)
QUOTE NOTE: Einstein sometimes described himself as an agnostic, and at other times as something closer to a pantheist. Never, however, did he express a belief in a personal God. In 1929, Herbert S. Goldstein a rabbi at the Institutional Synagogue in New York sent a cable to Einstein in which he famously asked: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Prepaid reply fifty words.” Einstein needed only twenty-nine words to reply, and his answer has become part of his legacy: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
[I call myself] an atheist. Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this. Richard Feynman, his response when asked whether he called himself an atheist or an agnostic; quoted in Denis Brian, The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995)
Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Sydney J. Harris, “Atheists, Like Fundamentalists, are Dogmatic,” in Pieces of Eight (1982)
Harris was contrasting agnosticism with atheism. He continued: “Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason; because, though rational argument may take us to the edge of belief, we require a ‘leap of faith’ to jump the chasm.”
It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts; and, in my opinion, it is all that is essential to agnosticism. T. H. Huxley, “Agnosticism” (1889), in The Nineteenth Century (Feb., 1889)
Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It’s not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other. Wendy Kaminer, “Absolutisms on Parade,” in Free Inquiry (2001)
In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. H. P. Lovecraft, in letter to Robert E. Howard (Aug. 16, 1932)
Lovecraft preceded the thought by writing: “All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine.”
AGONY
(see also PAIN and SUFFERING)
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;/And after dreams of horror, comes again/The welcome morning with its rays of peace. William Cullen Bryant, “Mutation: A Sonnet” (1824), in The Complete Poems of William Cullen Bryant (1836)
This was the continuation of a lovely piece of metaphorical verse on the fleeting nature of deep pain. It began this way: “They talk of short-lived pleasure—be it so—/Pain dies as quickly: stern, hard-featured pain/Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.”
ERROR ALERT: Even though this is one of Hurston’s most famous quotations, it is often mistakenly attributed to Maya Angelou, even by people who should know better. In America I AM Legends (2009), a beautiful coffee table book published to accompany Tavis Smiley’s national traveling exhibition celebrating the African-American experience, Angelou is quoted as saying: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
A poem like that cannot be written by technique alone. It is carved out of agony, just as a statue is carved out of marble. Louise Bogan, on a poem by Rilke, in a 1935 letter to Theodore Roethke
QUOTE NOTE: The underlying meaning is that valuable lessons are contained in life’s most painful moments if we pay sufficient attention to what is happening. Regarding the educational value of the darker moments in our lives, Merle Shain wrote in Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others (1980): “One often learns more from ten days of agony than from ten years of contentment.”
AGREEMENT
(see also ACCORD and COMPROMISE and DISAGREEMENT and DISSENT and OPPOSITION and QUARRELS and TREATIES)
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree. Charles Baudelaire, in Intimate Journals (1887)
AIDS
(see also DEATH & DYING and HOMOSEXUALITY and ILLNESS and VIRUS)
QUOTE NOTE: This passage is taken from a powerful poem Doty wrote about the struggle and eventual death of his partner, Wally Roberts, from AIDS in 1994, five years after he was diagnosed. The full poem may be seen at “Faith”.
An illness in stages, a very long flight of steps that led assuredly to death, but whose every step represented a unique apprenticeship. It was a disease that gave death time to live and its victims time to die, and in the end to discover life. Hervé Guibert, on AIDS, in To the Friend who did not Save My Life (1991)
AIMS & AIMING
(see also ACHIEVEMENT & ACCOMPLISHMENT and ASPIRATION and GOALS and MISSION and OBJECTIVES and PURPOSE and TARGET)
It concerns us to know the purposes we seek in life, for then, like archers aiming at a definite mark, we shall be more likely to attain what we want. Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics (4th c. B.C.)
QUOTE NOTE: Another translation of the Aristotle thought has it phrased this way: “We will more easily accomplish what is proper if, like archers, we have a target in sight.”
QUOTE NOTE: Clausewitz introduced this saying by describing it as “a maxim which should take first place among all causes of victory in the modern art of war.”
Be winged arrows, aiming at fulfillment and goal, even though you will tire without having reached the mark. Paul Klee, quoted in Leo Bronstein, Kabbalah and Art (1980)
Aim at a high mark and you’ll hit it. No, not the first time, nor the second time. Maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally you’ll hit the bull’s-eye of success. Annie Oakley, quoted in Brenda Haugen, Annie Oakley: American Sharpshooter (2006)
Know your aim, and live for that one thing. We have only one life. The secret of success is concentration; wherever there has been a great life, or a great work, that [concentration] has gone before. Taste everything a little, look at everything a little; but live for one thing. Olive Schreiner, the character Lyndal speaking to her friend Waldo, in The Story of an African Farm (1883; orig. published under the pen name Ralph Iron)
When the soul is without a definite aim, she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere. Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship,” in Essays (1580-88)
QUOTE NOTE: The familiar saying alluded to is an epigram from the Roman writer Martial. Montaigne’s full quotation has also been translated in this way: “The soul that has no established aim loses itself, for, as it is said, ‘He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere.’”
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), Letter LXXI, in Letters to Lucilius (c. 65 A.D.)
QUOTE NOTE: This observation has also been commonly presented this way: “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. Henry David Thoreau, in Walden (1854)
All my life I've always wanted to be somebody. But I see now I should have been more specific. Jane Wagner, in words written for Lily Tomlin, from The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)
A noble aim,/Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed,/In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed. William Wordsworth, in “Brave Schill! By Death Delivered, Take Thy Flight” (written 1809; pub. 1815)
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites and quotation anthologies provide the mistaken phrasing is a noble deed.
AIRPLANES
(see also AIRPORTS & AIR TRAVEL and AVIATION and FLYING & FLIGHT)
A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you’ve been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Shana Alexander, in The Feminine Eye (1967)
The airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Richard Bach, in Nothing by Chance (1969)
The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together. Bill Gates, quoted in Phyllis R. Moses, Orville, Wilbur & Me: Magic at Kitty Hawk (2003)
Alexander, a professor of English Literature at Oxford University, became the official historian of the Royal Air Force. The War in the Air became the definitive work on the role of the airplane and the nature of air warfare in WWI.
ALABAMA
ALARM
A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation. Fanny Burney, the character Mrs. Arlbery speaking, in Camilla, or A Picture of Youth (1796)
ALASKA
ALCOHOL & ALCOHOLISM
(includes DIPSOMANIA & DIPSOMANIACS; see also ADDICTS & ADDICTION and BARS, PUBS, & TAVERNS and BEER & ALE and COCKTAILS and DRINKING & DRINKS and DRUGS & RECOVERY and DRUNKENNESS & DRUNKS and LIQUOR—DISTILLED BEVERAGES and WINE)
Alcohol may also persuade us that we have found the truth about life, a comforting experience rarely available in the sober hour. Through the lens of alcohol, the world seems nicer. Joan Acocella, “A Few Too Many,“ in The New Yorker (2008)
QUOTE NOTE: Whiskey Lullaby is an extremely sad song about an American G.I. who returns home from war to find his wife in bed with another man. Devastated by the betrayal, he drinks to end the pain, ultimately killing himself. The song, which first appeared on Brad Paisley’s 2004 album Mud On the Tires, became a surprise hit after Paisley and Allison Krauss released it as a single. To see the music video, which is in many ways a five-minute morality play, go to: “Whiskey Lullaby” (note the simile in the very first line of the song: “She put him out like the burnin’ end of a midnight cigarette.” In 2004, Billboard magazine also did a background story on the song.
Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat. Charles Bukowski, in Factotum (1975)
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Willa Cather, the voice of the narrator, from “On the Divide,” in The Troll Garden: Short Stories (1983)
Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you just take the girl’s clothes off. Raymond Chandler, in The Long Goodbye (1954)
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. Winston Churchill, quoted in Quentin Reynolds,
By Quentin Reynolds (1964). Also a famous example of
chiasmus.
No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation. Marguerite Duras, “Alcohol,” in Practicalities (1987)
Alcohol removes inhibitions, like that scared little mouse who got drunk and shook his whiskers and shouted: “Now bring on the damn cat!” Eleanor Early, quoted in Carol Turkington, The Quotable Woman, (2000)
QUOTE NOTE: I have been unable to find the original observation, but Turkington says the quotation appeared in news summaries in January, 1950. Early was a popular American travel writer in the first half of the twentieth-century.
Alcohol is a pervasive fact of life, but an extraordinary fact—pleasurable and destructive, anathematized and adulated, and deeply ambiguous…the genie in the bottle. Griffith Edwards, in Alcohol: The World’s Favorite Drug (2002)
Happiness is a fragile thing, and alcohol, as I know from the house I grew up in, is dangerous to it. Marian Engel, “Share and Share Alike,” in The Tattooed Woman (1985)
I was into pain reduction and mind expansion, but what I've ended up with is pain expansion and mind reduction. Carrie Fisher, on her alcohol and drug use, in
Postcards From the Edge (1987). Also an example of
chiasmus.
In her book, Halsey also wrote: “Employed as I had been employing it, liquor is a fixative of old patterns.”
They [the reasons for drinking] counted for nothing in the face of the one fact: you drank and it was killing you. Why? Because alcohol was something you couldn’t handle, it had you licked. Why? Because you had reached the point where one drink was too many and a hundred not enough. Charles R. Jackson, a reflection of protagonist Don Birnam, in The Lost Weekend (1944)
QUOTE NOTE: The sentiment was carried into Billy Wilder's classic 1945 film adaptation, starring Ray Milland, but the wording was slightly changed. In the film, a bartender says to Birnam: “One’s too many and a hundred’s not enough.”
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
James added: “Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the YES function in man.”
Jong was thinking about the “drinking we do in search of ecstasy” that is so common among writers, artists, and other creative types. She began the thought by writing: “The door into the unconscious has to be pried open somehow, and we always think alcohol will facilitate that. For a while it does and then it may well slam shut.”
Even though you get the monkey off your back, the circus never really leaves town. Anne Lamott, quoting a friend who’d recently gotten sober, in Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith (2007)
Almost anything can be preserved in alcohol, except health, happiness, and money. Mary Wilson Little, in A Paragrapher’s Reveries (1904)
The authors added: “Because alcohol is encouraged by our culture, we get the idea that it isn’t dangerous. However, alcohol is the most potent and most toxic of the legal psychoactive drugs. It is ‘harder’ than heroin, cocaine, LSD, and many other illegal drugs.
QUOTE NOTE: I regard this as the single best observation ever offered on the subject of alcoholism. It comes from an autobiographical novel about a smart-talking Cleveland woman with a major drinking problem. The novel was adapted into an ABC-TV “Movie of the Week” in 1979, with Natalie Wood in the starring role. The complete film is available for viewing (in segments) on YouTube.
The fun, joy, and humor dry up in a relationship when one of the partners is swimming in gin. To my way of thinking, it is selfishness personified to see life through the bottom of a liquor bottle. Ginger Rogers, in Ginger: My Story (1991)
The true alcoholic takes the first drink for the person, or situation, or insult, that upsets him. He takes the rest of the drinks for himself. Lillian Roth, in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1954; with Mike Connolly and Gerold Frank)
In her memoir, Roth also wrote about alcohol:“Your medicine is your poison is your medicine is your poison and there is no end but madness.”
O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! William Shakespeare, Cassio speaking about alcohol, in Othello (1602–04)
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life. George Bernard Shaw, quoted in J. Bryan, III, Hodgepodge: A Commonplace Book (1986)
QUOTATION CAUTION: I’ve been unable to locate this widely-quoted observation in any of Shaw’s work, but am not yet ready to declare it apocryphal.
“Alcohol flings back, almost illimitably, the boundaries of humor so that we can find uproarious things which our poor sober friends miss altogether. Jean Stafford, in Boston Adventure (1944)
Stafford continued: “It is necessary, if the joke is really good and really should be shared, to repeat it time and again until finally it penetrates those solemn skulls.”
I lived on rum, I tell you. It’s been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me. Robert Louis Stevenson, in Treasure Island (1883).
The words come from the Captain, who pleads with Jim to provide him with rum, against the advice of the ship’s doctor. He continued: “If I’m not to have my rum now I’m a poor old hulk on a lee shore, my blood’ll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab.”
The reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it. Rebecca West, in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)
As an alcoholic, you will violate your standards quicker than you can lower them. You will do shit that even the Devil would go “Dude!” Robin Williams, in stand-up routine for his 2010 “Weapons of Self Destruction” tour
ALIMONY
(see also DIVORCE and MARRIAGE)
Billing minus cooing. Mary C. Dorsey, on alimony, quoted in Dorothy Sarnoff, Speech Can Change Your Life (1971)
Alimony is the curse of the writing classes. Norman Mailer, quoted by Caroline Phillips, in “A Legend in His Own Mind,” Evening Standard (London, Oct. 25, 1991)
QUOTE NOTE: The original source for this popular quotation has not been identified, but the observation itself has been making the rounds for so many decades that it appears to be authentic. Manville, heir to the Johns-Manville asbestos fortune, was one of Manhattan’s most colorful celebrities in the mid-1900s. He was married thirteen times to eleven women. His eleven divorces earned him an place in the Guinness Book of World Records. About his penchant for marriage, he once joked: “When I meet a beautiful girl, the first thing I say is ‘Will you marry me?’ The second thing I say is, ‘How do you do?’”
QUOTATION CAUTION: I have been unable to find an original source for this quotation, but in Dick Schaap as Told to Dick Schaap (2001), the popular sportswriter did offer this related observation: “I did…become a workaholic, an addiction that has driven me during my lifetime to great productivity and considerable alimony.”
Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity that is found only in men who are giving away somebody else’s cash. P. G. Wodehouse, “Fashionable Weddings and Smart Divorces,” in Louder and Funnier (1963)
ALLERGIES
(includes ALLERGIC REACTIONS; see also HYPERSENSITIVITY)
Mother, Mother,/Tell me please,/Did God who gave us flowers and trees,/Also provide the allergies? E. Y. Harburg, “A Nose is a Nose is a Nose,” in Rhymes for the Irreverent (1965)
[Being] ALONE
(see also LONELINESS and RELATIONSHIPS and SOLITARINESS and SOLITUDE)
QUOTE NOTE: Adams, a great lover of poetry, was advising his son to always travel with a volume of poetry. In the letter, pocket was originally spelled poket.
QUOTE NOTE: I don’t recall exactly when I first came across this observation, or where I first saw it, but I quickly adopted it as a personal motto, and it has remained so ever since.
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites begin the quotation with the male pronoun He.
All that poets sing, and grief hath known,/Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word—ALONE! Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, in The New Timon: A Romance of London (1846)
What is the worst of woes that wait on age?/What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?/To view each loved one blotted from life’s page,/And be alone on earth, as I am now. George Noel Gordon (Lord Byron), in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage II (1812)
I love people. I love my family, my children…but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up. Pearl S. Buck, quoted in The New York Post (April 26, 1959)
ERROR ALERT: This is the way the quotation originally appeared, but nearly all internet quotation sites present the following slightly edited version: “Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.”
We live, as we dream—alone. Joseph Conrad, a reflection of narrator Charles Marlow, in Heart of Darkness (1899)
When I am alone, God knocks on the door and says, “We need to talk.” M. A. “Fred” Dietze, in personal communication to the compiler (Oct. 8, 2016)
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. Epictetus, in Discourses (2nd. c. A.D.)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is typically presented, but it was originally part of a larger observation in which Gibbon reflected on his love of reading and the importance of a well-stocked library: “At home I occupied a pleasant and spacious apartment; the library on the same floor was soon considered as my peculiar domain, and I might say with truth that I was never less alone than when by myself.”
The poem continued: “Dare to look in the chest; for ’tis thine own:/And tumble up and down what thou find’st there.”
If you don’t like being alone, it may be because you don’t like the company. Ronald Johnson, in a personal communication to the compiler (March 29, 2018)
Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea (1955)
The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gift From the Sea (1955)
Lindbergh continued: “If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!”
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being, His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, “To you On Your First Birthday,” in To My Daughters With Love (1967)
Lindbergh continued: “His mind shrinks away if hears only the the echoes of his own thoughts and fins no other inspiration.”
To ensure moral salvation, it is primarily necessary to depend on oneself, because in the moment of peril we are alone. Maria Montessori, in The Advanced Montessori Method: Spontaneous Activity in Education, Vol. I (1917)
Montessori continued: “And strength is not to be acquired instantaneously. He who knows that he will have to fight, prepares himself for boxing and dueling by strength and skill; he does not sit still with folded hands.”
I have often said that man’s unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room. Blaise Pascal, “Diversion,” in Pensées (1670)
QUOTE NOTE: This is a translation done for Oxford University Press by Honor Levi. Pervious translations have been all over the map with regard to this observation, with some saying “all man's miseries” and one even saying “all human evil” derive from man’s inability to sit quietly alone in a room.
All men, at some moment in their lives, feel themselves to be alone. And they are. To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the mysterious future. Octavio Paz, in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950)
Paz continued: “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another.”
How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into. Sylvia Plath, a journal entry (circa 1950–53), in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he can count on nothing but himself: that he is alone, left alone on earth in the middle of his infinite responsibilities, with neither help nor succor, with no other goal but the one he will set for himself, with no other destiny but the one he will forge on this earth. Jean-Paul Sartre, in “A More Precise Characterization of Existentialism” (1944)
QUOTE NOTE: The 17th century playwrights Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher were clearly inspired by this Sidney observation when they had a character in their 1647 play Love’s Cure offer a very similar thought: “He never is alone that is accompanied with noble thoughts.”
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off. Henry David Thoreau, “Economy,” in Walden (1854)
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. Henry David Thoreau, “Solitude,” in Walden (1854)
Thoreau continued: “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Henry David Thoreau, “Solitude,” in Walden (1854)
Tillich added: “Although, in daily life, we do not always distinguish these words, we should do so consistently and thus deepen our understanding of the human predicament.” The full context of the quotation may be found online at The Eternal Now
ERROR ALERT: The beginning of the Tillich quotation is almost always wrongly presented as if it began the two sides, not these two sides.
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly. Paul Valéry, “Moralités,” in Tel Quel (1941)
We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. Orson Welles, in the role of an unnamed character reflecting on loneliness, in the film Someone to Love (1987; written and directed by Henry Jaglom)
I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone. Robin Williams, in the role of Lance Clayton, in the 2009 film World’s Greatest Dad (screenplay by Bobcat Goldtwait )
ALTERNATIVES
(see also CHOICE and PREFERENCES and FREEDOM and OPTIONS and WILL and [FREE] WILL)
When a decision has been made and the die is cast, then murder the alternatives. Mrs. Emory S. Adams, Jr., quoted in Dorothy Sarnoff, Speech Can Change Your Life (1970)
Alternatives, and particularly desirable alternatives, grow only on imaginary trees. Saul Bellow, a diary entry of the protagonist, a man named Joseph, in Dangling Man (1944)
If decisions were a choice between alternatives, decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives. Kenneth Burke, in Towards a Better Life: Being a Series of Epistles or Declamations (1932)
ALTRUISM
(see also BENEVOLENCE and CHARITY and COMPASSION and EMPATHY and GENEROSITY and GIFTS & GIVING and HUMANITARIANISM and SELF-SACRIFICE and SERVICE and PHILANTHROPY and UNSELFISHNESS)
Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism. Karen Armstrong, “Empathy,” in Twelve Steps To a Compassionate Life (2010)
A moment earlier, Armstrong wrote: “‘Compassion’ derives from the Latin patiri and the Greek pathein, meaning ‘to suffer, undergo, or experience. So ‘compassion’ means ‘to endure [something] with another person,’ to put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes, to feel her pain as though it were our own, and to enter generously into his point of view. That is why compassion is aptly summed up in the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstances, to inflict that pain on anybody else.”
If tempted by something that feels “altruistic,” examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it! Robert A. Heinlein, an entry in “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,” in Time Enough for Love (1973)
Long preceded this observation by writing: “Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.”
QUOTE NOTE: After the character Merrill Meewee is told that he is about to be honored by the Mandela Prize Foundation for his work in alleviating human suffering, he immediately replies, “I’m not worthy.” When his assertion is challenged by a friend who cites his humanitarian efforts, he thinks, “That wasn’t what he had meant.” His thought process continues this way: “He was having difficulty putting his thoughts into words. What he had meant was that the person who works for recognition devalues the work he does, that awards are first and foremost political instruments, that altruism’s name is always Anonymous.”
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Ayn Rand, the character Howard Roark speaking, in The Fountainhead (1943)
Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he’s potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God. Benjamin Spock, in Decent and Indecent: Our Personal and Political Behavior (1970)
Altruism has always been one of biology’s deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own…choose to give up its life in aid of someone else? Lewis Thomas, “Altruism,” in Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (1983)
After offering a number of examples—like birds getting killed while attempting to divert predators from a nest—Thomas answered his own question: “Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.”
Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred. Gore Vidal, “Growing Up With Gore Vidal,” in Point to Point Navigation (2007)
ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
(see also AGE & AGING—OLD AGE and DEMENTIA and DISEASE and SENILITY)
I seem to lose words like another person loses blood. Everyday, every day there’s something gone. It leaks everywhere. J. Bernlef, the narrator and protagonist Maarten Klein reflecting on the early stages of his Alzheimer’s disease, in Out of Mind (1989)
QUOTE NOTE: See the New York Times review of Bernlef’s novel at “The Narrator Has Alzheimer’s”.
If curing heart disease and cancer means we get to stick around and die of Alzheimer’s, we’ll look back on them as our friends. Dr. Roderick Bronson, quoted in Richard I. Kirkland, Jr., “Why We Will Live Longer. . .and What it Will Mean,”
Fortune magazine (Feb. 21, 1994)
It’s like a tornado that cuts a very narrow path, destroying buildings in a strip 100 yards wide but leaving everything else standing. Dr. Antonio Damasio, quoted in Lawrence K. Altman, “Alzheimer’s Disease Linked to Damaged Areas of Brain,” in
The New York Times (Sep. 7, 1984)
She floated away on the riptide of dementia, ultimately a speck on the horizon, waving for as long as she could to her deeply confused children onshore. Anne Lamott, on her mother’s worsening Alzheimer’s Disease, in Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith (2007)
About six months ago, he stopped recognizing me. Now I no longer recognize him. Edmund Morris, on Ronald Reagan’s developing Alzheimer’s disease, quoted in Newsweek magazine (Jan. 23, 1996)
QUOTE NOTE: Morris made the remark while working on the authorized biography of Reagan, published three years later as Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (1999)
I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. Ronald Reagan, in handwritten letter to “My fellow Americans” about his Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis, five years after leaving the office of the Presidency, The Washington Post (Nov. 6, 1994)
AMAZING
Note to writers: “Amazing” is very tired. “Amazing” needs a long vacation. Therefore, please don’t write about your amazing party, your amazing girlfriend’s amazing dress, or your amazing vacation. Something more pungent & specific, please. Stephen King, in a Tweet (Oct. 29, 2018)
AMBASSADORS
(see also DIPLOMACY & DIPLOMATS and GOVERNMENT and INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS and NEGOTIATION and POLITICS and TACT and TREATIES)
An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth. Sir Henry Wotton, a remark that Wotton described in 1612 as a “merry definition of an ambassador,” in Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651)
AMBIGUITY
(includes AMBIGUOUSNESS; see also DOUBT and UNCERTAINTY and MEANING and VAGUENESS)
Everything is ambiguous. It’s exciting, in a way, if you can tolerate ambiguity. I can’t, but I’m taking a course where it’s taught, in the hope of acquiring the skill. It’s called Modern Living, and you get no credit. Sheila Ballantyne, a reflection of the title character, in Norma Jean the Termite Queen (1975)
Leaders seem to have a high tolerance for ambiguity. Recognizing that the brain does not work in a completely linear fashion, leaders demonstrate a comfort with the chaos of exploding ideas, many of them seemingly unrelated to the stimulus that caused them. Marlene Caroselli, in The Language of Leadership (1990)
QUOTE NOTE: Lakoff preceded the observation by writing: “Reagan's genius as a communicator lies in his use of ambiguity.”
The goal is to live a full, productive life even with all that ambiguity. No matter what happens, whether the cancer never flares up again or whether you die, the important thing is that the days that you have had you will have Lived. Gilda Radner, in It’s Always Something (1989)
My life…is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. Gilda Radner, on her cancer, in It’s Always Something (1989)
Radner introduced the thought by writing: “I wanted a perfect ending…. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.”
The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is “ambiguity”; the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces—both individual and social. Paul Tillich, in Time magazine (May 17, 1963)
AMBITION
(see also ACHIEVEMENT & ACCOMPLISHMENT and ASPIRATION)
ERROR ALERT: This orphan quotation is widely attributed to Elvis Presley, but there is no evidence he ever said anything like it. In an obvious effort to give the quotation an even greater semblance of credibility, some of the Elvis citations even have him adding a concluding line: “Ain’t nowhere else in the world where you can go from driving a truck to a Cadillac overnight.”
QUOTE NOTE: This was Sir Harry’s reply to Kate, his former fiancée, who had just said to him: “One’s religion is whatever he is most interested in, and yours is—Success.” Both lines ultimately became extremely popular quotations on their own, but few realize they were paired together in the same play.
Ambition is a passion, at once strong and insidious, and is very apt to cheat a man out of his happiness and his true respectability of character. Edward Bates, in a July 1859 letter, quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005)
This was the conclusion to a line of thinking that began this way: “A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man by one which is lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other, ambition.”
ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, variations of this Beecher observation are mistakenly attributed to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, they still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top. Robert Burton, on ambitious men, in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621–51)
ERROR ALERT: In almost all quotation collections, this quotation is wrongly worded as Ambitious men still climb and climb. It is clear that Burton was referring to ambitious men, though. Just prior to this quotation, he wrote: “The mind, in short, of an ambitious man is never satisfied; his soul is harassed with unceasing anxieties, and his heart harrowed up by increasing disquietude.”
A man without ambition is like a bird without wings. He can never soar in the heights above, but must walk like a weakling, unnoticed, with the crowds below. Walter H. Cottingham, “The Greatest Game in the World,” in System: The Magazine of Business (Dec., 1908)
Cottingham continued: “He never feels the thrill of enthusiasm which pulsates through the veins of the ambitious man as he presses forward in the exciting struggle to reach his aim.”
QUOTE NOTE: For more on the Cottingham quotation and a peek at how the concept of a bird without wings has shown up in metaphorical observations about other subjects, see this 2015 post by Garson O’Toole, the Quote Investigator.
Ambition is exhausting. It makes you friends with people for the wrong reasons, just like drugs. Carrie Fisher, “What I’ve Learned,” in Fortune magazine (Jan. 29, 2007; originally appeared June, 2002)
Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Benjamin Franklin, “On True Happiness,” in Pennsylvania Gazette (Nov. 20, 1735)
Franklin added: “Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.”
If your ambition comes at the price of such an unbalanced life, that there’s nothing else that gives you comfort but success, it’s not worth it. Doris Kearns Goodwin, referring to the unbalanced life of Lyndon B. Johnson, in
interview at meeting of the Academy of Achievement, Sun Valley, Idaho, (June 28, 1996) [quotation at 4'42'' of the interview]
Senor d’Aguilar preceded the observation by saying: “I have abandoned worldly ambitions—most of them. They are troublesome, and for some people, if they be born too high and yet not altogether rightly, very dangerous.”
Great ambition, unchecked by principle or the love of glory, is an unruly tyrant. Alexander Hamilton, in letter to James A. Bayard (Jan. 16, 1801)
Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions. David Hume, “William the Conqueror,” in The History of England (1754–61)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly present the observation in the following way: “Where ambition can cover its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of passions.”
Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility. P. D. James, the voice of the narrator, in A Taste for Death (1986)
The highly ambitious person, in spite of all his successes, always remains dissatisfied, in the same way as a greedy baby is never satisfied. Melanie Klein, in “Our Adult World and Its Roots in Infancy” (1959); reprinted in Envy and Gratitude & Other Works 1946-1963 (1975)
When I started to write these plays, I wanted to attempt something of ambition and size even if that meant I might be accused of straying too close to ambition’s ugly twin, pretentiousness. Tony Kushner, “Afterword,” in Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika (1992)
Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked. Walter Savage Landor, Lorde Brooke speaking, in “Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney,” Imaginary Conversations, Third Series (1828)
We often pass from love to ambition, but we hardly ever return from ambition to love. François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, in
Maximes (1665). Also an example of
chiasmus.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true of not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed. Abraham Lincoln, in a speech in his first run for public office, at age twenty-three (Sangamon County, Illinois; March 9, 1832; quoted in Francis Grant Blair,
The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln (1908)
QUOTE NOTE: In offering this thought, Lincoln was almost certainly inspired by a similar observation on the subject of ambition, first offered by George Washington in 1788 (see the Washington entry below)
Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Table-Talk,” in Driftwood (1857)
Ambition hath one heel nailed in hell, though she stretch her finger to touch the heavens. John Lyly, the character Martius speaking, in Midas: A Comedy (1592)
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites present the quotation with the mistaken phrase nailed in well, and many of these sites wrongly attribute the quotation to the Chinese sage Lao-Tzu.
They fight for the sake of ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that, no matter the rank to which a man may rise, he never abandons it. Niccolò Machiavelli, in Discourses on Livy (1513–1517)
Ambition is so vigilant, and…is so prompt in seizing its advantages, that it cannot be too closely watched or too vigorously checked. James Madison, in letter to Thomas Jefferson (Dec 25, 1797)
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. Barack Obama, in June 4, 2005 commencement address at Knox College (Galesburg, IL)
Then-Senator Obama continued: “It’s asks too little of yourself…because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.”
Ambition, old as mankind, the immemorial weakness of the strong. Vita Sackville-West, in No Signposts in the Sea (1961)
An ambition is a little creeper that creeps and creeps in your heart night and day, singing a little song, “Come and find me, come and find me.” Carl Sandburg, “Three Boys with Jugs of Molasses and Secret Ambitions,” in Rootabaga Stories (1922)
Ambition, if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others. Susan Sontag, in The Benefactor (1963)
Ambition/Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink/The more you thirst—yea—drink too much, as men/Have done on rafts of wreck—it drives you mad. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in The Cup (1884)
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. Mark Twain, quoted in Gay MacLaren,
Morally We Roll Along (1938)
QUOTE NOTE: McLaren’s book represented the first appearance of this saying in print, and it is clear that she was recalling something Twain had said to her decades earlier, when she was a child. The saying—in a number of variant forms—has become very popular, especially in inspirational and self-help books. For more, see the 2013 post by Garson O’Toole, the Quote Investigator.
Van Dyke added: “There is a nobler character than that which is merely incorruptible. It is the character which acts as an antidote and preventive of corruption.”
All my life I've always wanted to be somebody. But I see now I should have been more specific. Jane Wagner, in words written for Lily Tomlin, from The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)
It is said that every man has his portion of ambition. I may have mine, I suppose, as well as the rest, but if I know my own heart, my ambition would not lead me into public life. My only ambition is to do my duty in this world as I am capable of performing it and to merit the good opinion of all men. George Washington, in letter to Benjamin Lincoln (Oct. 26, 1788)
QUOTE NOTE: This thought inspired Abraham Lincoln to make a similar remark (see his entry above)
Ambition will, and should, always outstrip achievement. Fay Weldon, Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (1984)
Ambition is peculiarly the passion of great minds. It is the aspiration after a sphere of those who feel within them the capability of filling one. Lady Jane Wilde, “Charles Kean as King Richard,” in Notes on Men, Women, and Books (1891)
Lady Jane continued: “The ambition of such is not the vulgar passion for the possession of an object, be it a fortune or a crown, but a passionate desire for the power which accompanies such possession, enabling the hand to execute what the soul conceives.”
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. Oscar Wilde, in “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young,” first published in The Chameleon (Dec., 1894) an Oxford student magazine
QUOTE NOTE: For more last refuge observations on a host of topics (and the original observation that stimulated them all) go to REFUGE METAPHORS.
Ambition is the death of thought. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a 1948 notebook entry, in Culture and Value (1980; G. H. von Wright and Heikki Nyman, eds.)
AMBIVALENCE
(see also [Inner] CONFLICT)
AMERICA & AMERICANS
(see also UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
(see also CANADA & CANADIANS and ENGLAND & THE ENGLISH and other nations & their citizens, including China, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia)
American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it. Henry Brooks Adams, in a 1911 letter
I am a Californian, and we have twice the individuality and originality of any people in the United States. We always get quite huffy when we are spoken of as merely Americans. Gertrude Atherton, in Transplanted (1919)
A long while ago an eager group of reformers wrote to me asking if I could suggest anything that would improve the morals of the American people. I replied that the trouble with the American people in general was not lack of morals but lack of brains. Gertrude Atherton, in The Adventures of a Novelist (1932)
QUOTE NOTE: Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty, is said to have made this remark during an 1871 American trip organized to raise funds for the construction of his famous gift to the people of the United States. Bartholdi loved America, but was disgusted by the tobacco-chewing habits of many of its citizens. Another European who was fond of Americans but detested tobacco chewing—and the spitting associated with it—was Oscar Wilde, who said: “America is one long expectoration.”
I have fallen in love with American names,/The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,/The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,/The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,/Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat. Stephen Vincent Benét, in “American Names” (1927)
Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. Ken Burns, in a
Washington Post Op-Ed column (Nov. 22, 2021)
Burns continued: “The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.”
What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty, and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice. Louis Brandeis, in “True Americanism, ” a speech at Fanueil Hall, Boston (July 4, 1915)
If there is a single image to crystallize the American dream, it would be house ownership. William F. Buckley, “It’s Really Quite Simple,” his
syndicated column (Jan. 19, 2008)
In the end, the American dream is not a sprint or even a marathon, but a relay. Julian Castro, in Democratic National Convention address (Sep. 4, 2012)
QUOTE NOTE: Castro, the 37-year-old Mayor of San Antonio, was the first Hispanic to deliver the keynote speech at a Democratic national convention. Here, he found a way to breathe new life into a popular metaphor.
There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect. Bruce Catton, in This Hallowed Ground (1956)
America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. G. K. Chesterton, in What I Saw in America (1923
Most Americans…have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. G. K. Chesterton, quoted in The New York Times (June 28, 1931)
The Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted. Winston Churchill, a circa 1944 remark, quoted in Richard Langworth, Churchill by Himself (2008)
ERROR ALERT: This extremely popular observation, which has appeared in a variety of slightly different phrasings, has never been found in any of Churchill’s speeches, writings, or conversations. In an editor’s note on the quotation in Churchill by Himself, Richard Langworth had this to say about the observation: “Unattributed and included tentatively. Certainly he would never have said it publicly; he was much too careful about slips like that. It cannot be found in any memoirs of his colleagues. I have let it stand as a likely remark, for he certainly had those sentiments from time to time in World War II.”
America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still. e. e. cummings, “Why I Like America,” in Vanity Fair magazine (May, 1927)
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through. Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1835)
Also in his classic work, de Tocqueville wrote: “Americans rightly think their patriotism is a sort of religion strengthened by practical service.”
America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warmhearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures. Edna Ferber, in A Peculiar Treasure: An Autobiography (1939)
Ferber continued: “Its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
Only remember—west of the Mississippi it's a little more look, see, act. A little less rationalize, comment, talk. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in 1934 letter to Andrew Turnbull
America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. E. M. Forster, “Impressions of America,” in The Listener (London, Sep. 4, 1947)
ERROR ALERT: This is how the quotation is typically presented, but Frost never said it exactly this way. It’s a modification of a remark he made in a Meet the Press appearance on March 22, 1959. Responding to a question from Newsweek’s Ernest Lindley about whether American civilization had improved or deteriorated in his lifetime, he said: “We’re like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made the father such a man. We are in that sort of position.”
I think that’s still what the American Dream means: that with perseverance, with hard work, you can become something, that the classes won’t prevent you from becoming, that there’s a movement up that ladder with hard work. Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Lessons of Presidential Leadership,”
Academy of Achievement Interview,
www.achievement.org (June 28, 1996)
Jung added: “Everybody has to meet everybody, and they even seem to enjoy this enormity.”
Americans are fascinated by their own love of shopping. This does not make them unique. It’s just that they have more to buy than most other people on the planet. And it's also an affirmation of faith in their country, its prosperity and limitless bounty. They have shops the way that lesser countries have statues. Simon Hoggart, in America: A User’s Guide (1990)
QUOTE NOTE: Howells was talking about the American taste in theater and drama, but Wharton believed it captured Americans as a whole. She wrote: “What Mr. Howells said of the American theater is true of the whole American attitude toward life. ‘A tragedy with a happy ending’ is exactly what the child wants before he goes to sleep: the reassurance that ‘all’s well with the world’ as he lies in his cozy nursery. It is a good thing that the child should receive this reassurance; but as long as he needs it he remains a child, and the world he lives in is a nursery-world. Things are not always and everywhere well with the world, and each man has to find it out as he grows up.”
QUOTE NOTE: Hughes, age thirty-three when he wrote “Let America Be America Again,” believed deeply in an American Dream that had not been fully extended to him and other members of his race. The entire poem is a powerful piece of verse that concludes on a hopeful note, however, with Hughes writing: “O, yes,/I say it plain,/America never was America to me,/And yet I swear this oath—/America will be!” To read the entire poem, go here.
Someone we didn’t know asked how it was that everything goes so well with the Americans, though they swear at every second word. Franz Kafka, diary entry (July 12, 1912), in The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910–1923 (1948; Max Brod, ed.)
I distrust the rash optimism in this country that cries, “Hurrah, we’re all right! This is the greatest nation on earth,” when there are grievances that call loudly for redress. Helen Keller, in Optimism (1903)
The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned into advertising copy. Louis Kronenberger, “The Spirit of the Age,” in Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954)
Lawrence added: “But anyhow it doesn’t grind on an old nerve as Europe seems to.”
If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture you would be pretty much left with “Let's Make a Deal.” Fran Lebowitz, “The Impact of AIDS on the Artistic Community,” The New York Times (Sep. 13, 1987)
America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind. Norman Mailer, in Advertisements for Myself (1959)
I don’t see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Jacques Maritain, in Reflections on America (1958)
Maritain added: “Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught.”
The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof. Mary McCarthy, “America the Beautiful,” in Commentary magazine (Sep., 1947)
In the article, McCarthy also wrote: “The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.”
McMurtry preceded the observation by writing: “Americans’ lack of passion for history is well known. History may not quite be bunk, as Henry Ford suggested, but there’s no denying that, as a people, we sustain a passionate concentration on the present and the future.”
Mead added: “The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he as oldest resident will pick on the newcomers.”
America is not a melting pot. It is a sizzling cauldron. Barbara Mikulski, in a Washington, DC speech (June, 1970)
It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd. Henry Miller, “Raimu,” in The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)
Americans relate all effort, all work, and all of life itself to the dollar. Their talk is of nothing but dollars. Nancy Mitford, “The English Aristocracy,” in Noblesse Oblige (1956; Hamish Hamilton, ed.)
Moyers added: “The right wing would see to it that economic interests had their legitimate concerns addressed. The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. Both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it’s no longer an eagle and it’s going to crash.”
I believe there’s an intrinsic irreverence in the American psyche, and when something comes along that offers even an echo of that irreverence, people respond to it. Martin Mull, “20 Questions with Martin Mull,” in Playboy magazine (April, 1984)
America is the world’s policeman, all right—a big, dumb, mick flatfoot in the middle of the one thing cops dread most, a “domestic disturbance.” P. J. O’Rourke, “Jordan,” in Rolling Stone (Aug., 1990); reprinted in Give War a Chance (1992)
America stands unique in the world: the only country not founded on race but on a way, an ideal. Ronald Reagan, quoting himself in a White House bill signing ceremony (August 10, 1988)
QUOTE NOTE: in signing a bill providing restitution for the WWII Internment of Japanese-American civilians, President recalled some remarks he had made as a young actor—and, at the time, also a U. S. Army captain—at a December 1945 ceremony that posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross to a Japanese-American soldier who died in combat. Then-Captain Reagan continued: “Not in spite of but because of our polyglot background, we have had all the strength in the world. That is the American way.” For Reagan’s complete remarks at the 1988 signing ceremony, go: here.
ERROR ALERT: Despite the enormous popularity of this quotation, you will not find these exact words in any of Steinem’s speeches or writings. It’s a paraphrase of something she wrote in Moving Beyond Words (1995), when Steinem described how her view about America’s place in the world shifted after she returned from a 1958 trip to India: “I was seeing my own overdeveloped country through the eyes of the underdeveloped world for the first time. In search of imagery for this revelation, I remember saying to all who would listen, ‘Imagine a giant frosted cupcake in the midst of hungry millions.’”
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. Arnold J. Toynbee, quoted in BBC news broadcast (July 14, 1954)
I very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American. Frances Trollope, in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)
This is the only country where failure to promote yourself is widely considered arrogant. Garry Trudeau, on America, quoted in Newsweek magazine (Oct. 15, 1990)
The political and social morals of America are not only food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. Mark Twain, in unpublished memoirs, quoted in Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain in Eruption (1940)
America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. John Updike, the unnamed narrator speaking, in “How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time,” The New Yorker (Aug, 19, 1972); reprinted in Problems: And Other Stories (1979)
That peculiarly American religion, President-worship. Gore Vidal, “President and Mrs. Grant” (1975), in Matters of Fact and Fiction: Essays 1973-1976 (1978)
America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot, where all races of Europe are melting and re-forming. Israel Zangwill, in his play The Melting Pot (1908)
AMERICA & ENGLAND
(see also AMERICA & AMERICANS and ENGLAND & THE ENGLISH)
No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute. Paul Gallico, quoted in The New York Times (Jan. 14, 1962)
The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a “good guy.” Louis Kronenberger, in Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954)
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. Oscar Wilde, in The Canterbury Ghost (1887)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the quotation is typically presented, but it originally appeared in the narrator’s description of Mrs. Otis, the American-born wife of Hiram B. Chase, an American Minister who purchased Canterville Chase, an English property reputed to be haunted. The full passage is: “Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” A similar observation (“England and America are two countries separated by the same language”) was attributed without citation to George Bernard Shaw in a Reader’s Digest issue (Nov. 1942), but there is no evidence that Shaw ever wrote or said such a thing.
[The] AMERICAN DREAM
(see also AMERICA & AMERICANS and DREAMS and HOPES and WISHES)
If there is a single image to crystallize the American dream, it would be house ownership. William F. Buckley, “It’s Really Quite Simple,” his
syndicated column (Jan. 19, 2008)
ANALOGY
(see also ARGUMENT & ARGUMENTATION and FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE and METAPHOR and PERSUASION and SIMILE)
The role of analogy in scientific research is clearly an essential feature of any work in natural science, even if it is not always obvious. Niels Bohr, in letter to Harald Høffding (Sep. 22, 1922)
QUOTATION CAUTION: This is the way the quotation appears in the Humes book and many other quotation anthologies, but be aware that it is an abridgment of Churchill’s original words. In “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric,” an unpublished essay on political oratory that the twenty-one-year-old Churchill wrote in 1897, the full passage is phrased this way: “The influence exercised over the human mind by apt analogies is and has always been immense. Whether they translate an established truth into simple language or whether they adventurously aspire to reveal the unknown, they are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.”
The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a photograph. Kenneth Clark, in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951)
Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvellously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth. Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820)
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home. Sigmund Freud, in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933)
Later in the book, Koestler expanded on the theme: “The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings—of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse—whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem.”
While they often operate unnoticed, analogies aren’t accidents, they’re arguments—arguments that, like icebergs, conceal most of their mass and power beneath the surface. In many arguments, whoever has the Best analogy wins. John Pollack, in Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas (2014)
The most seductive analogies are not always true and, like a baited hook, swallowing them can be costly. John Pollack, “Watch Your F#*k%^g Language,” in Change This blog (Sep. 24, 2014)
ANALYSIS & ANALYTICAL THINKING
When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. Robert M. Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
ANATOMY
(see also BODY and BIOLOGY and DOCTORS and MEDICINE)
QUOTE NOTE: In their extensive compilation of social science quotations, Sills and Merton point out that Freud’s famous—or to some, infamous—assertion was inspired by an 1808 comment that Napoleon made to Goethe: “Politics is fate.”
ANCESTORS & ANCESTRY
(see also BREEDING and FAMILY and GENEALOGY and HEREDITY and HEREDITY & ENVIRONMENT and ROOTS)
Abbot began by writing: “We all grow up with the weight of history upon us.”
We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. Penelope Lively, a reflection of the protagonist Claudia Hampton, in Moon Tiger (1987)
We are all motivated far more than we care to admit by characteristics inherited from our ancestors which individual experiences of childhood can modify, repress, or enhance, but cannot erase. Agnes E. Meyer, in Out of These Roots (1953)
The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors, is like a potato, the only good belonging to him is under ground. Sir Thomas Overbury, quoted in The New-York Mirror and Ladies’ Literary Gazette (May 8, 1824)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the earliest citation I’ve found for this popular observation from Overbury (1581–1613), a prominent English poet and essayist. We do not know for certain how Sir Thomas exactly phrased his thought, though, as The New-York Mirror attribution appeared to be a paraphrase rather than a direct quotation. It began, “Among the admirable axioms of Sir Thomas Overbury, there is one which places the knight’s opinion of family honours in a very conspicuous point of view. He says that the man who has not anything to boast of….”
Each has his own tree of ancestors, but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal. Robert Louis Stevenson, “Pastoral” essay, in Memories & Portraits (1887)
QUOTE NOTE: Arboreal is defined as “living in or among trees.” Stevenson continued: “In all our veins there runs some minims [sic] of his old, wild, tree-top blood; our civilized nerves still tingle with his rude terrors and pleasures; and to that which would have moved our common ancestor, all must obediently thrill.” Stevenson got the probably arboreal phrase from Charles Darwin, who had written in On the Origin of Species (1859): “We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.”
On this journey we will reach into the future and commit ourselves to thinking in generations. We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children. And we do so with a sense of sacredness in that reaching. Paul Tsongas, in a 1991 issue of the National Journal (specific issue undetermined)
ANDROGYNY
(see also BOYS & GIRLS and GENDER and IDENTITY and MALE–FEMALE DYNAMICS and MASCULINE & FEMININE and MEN & WOMEN and SEX & SEXUALITY and SEXISM and SOCIALIZATION and TRANSSEXUALITY)
The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Table Talk (Sep. 1, 1832)
QUOTE NOTE: About the term androgyny itself, Heilbrun wrote: “This ancient Greek word—from andro (male) and gyn (female)—defines a condition under which the characteristics of the sexes, and the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly assigned. Androgyny seeks to liberate the individual from the confines of the appropriate.”
ANECDOTE
(see also ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE and EXAMPLE and EPISODE and STORIES & STORYTELLING)
QUOTE NOTE: This counter-proverb or anti-proverb began to appear in the early 1980s, clearly inspired by an earlier observation from the American political scientist Raymond Wolfinger: “The plural of anecdote is data” (see the Wolfinger entry below). The original author of the tweaked saying is unknown, even though it is commonly attributed to George Stigler and to Roger Brinner, both American economists (never, however, with any definitive source information). The saying is sometimes also phrased: “The plural of anecdote is not evidence.”
Brooks was describing a familiar pattern among biographers. She preceded the observation by writing: “After a person dies, his biographers feel free to give him a glittering list of intimate friends.”
QUOTE NOTE: Despite the popularity of this observation (Clifton Fadiman even employed it in the Introduction to his 1985 Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes), an original source has never been found.
It would seem that in youth we sow our wild oats, in old age our tame anedcotes. Clifton Fadiman, in The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (1985)
The plural of anecdote is data. Raymond Wolfinger, quoted in his obituary in
The Daily Californian (Feb. 11, 2015)
QUOTE NOTE: First offered in 1969-70, this saying has achieved the status a modern proverb (and also inspired an equally popular counter-proverb, seen above). It was originally offered by professor Wolfinger as a rejoinder to a smart-alecky grad student in one of his classes. Here’s how Wolfinger expressed it in a 2004 e-mail to the Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred R. Shapiro: “I said ‘The plural of anecdote is data’ some time in the 1969-70 academic year while teaching a graduate seminar at Stanford. The occasion was a student’s dismissal of a simple factual statement—by another student or me—as a mere anecdote. The quotation was my rejoinder. Since then I have missed few opportunities to quote myself.”
According to The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (2012), the saying appeared in print for the first time a decade later in Roger C. Noll’s “The Game of Health Care Regulation,” an article in Issues in Health Care Regulation (1980; Richard S. Gordon, ed.). The full passage went this way: “Most of the evidence is anecdotal. Nevertheless, in the words of a leading political scientist, Raymond Wolfinger, the plural of anecdote is data.” It’s extremely rare for a quotation to move from an off-the-cuff classroom rejoinder to a relatively obscure technical article and then on to popular usage, but that appears to be the case with this observation.
ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
(includes ANECDOTAL THINKING; see also ANECDOTE and EXAMPLE and EVIDENCE)
Anecdotal evidence is a springboard used to jump (or push people) to misguided and inaccurate conclusions. Mark Holmboe, in letter to the editor, Rockford [Illinois] Register Star (Jan, 8, 2020)
Holmboe’s article was published under the title: “Legislation shouldn’t be based on anecdotes.”
Shermer preceded the thought by writing: “The problem we face is that superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old.”
ANGER
(see also AGGRESSION & AGGRESSIVENESS and EMOTION and FURY and HATRED and HOSTILITY and MAD and RAGE and TEMPER)
QUOTE NOTE: The words come from Ruby, one of the five people that Eddie, the story’s protagonist, meets in heaven. She continued: “We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.”
ERROR ALERT: This quotation is commonly misattributed to Mark Twain.
Barreca continued: “Trying to recall why you were angry about something when you've calmed down is like trying to remember why you were in love with someone who no longer attracts you: the initial impulse triggering the emotion is impossible to recapture.”
Barreca continued: “Those voices are most effective when they are raised in unison, when they have mercy as well as anger behind them, and when, instead of roaring at the anger of old pain, they sing about the glorious possibilities of a future where anger has a smaller house than hope.”
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation occurred in a passage that began with this famous Beecher observation: “Never forget what a man has said to you when he was angry.”
A man who cannot get angry is like a stream that cannot overflow, that is always turbid. Sometimes indignation is as good as a thunder-storm in summer, clearing and cooling the air. Henry Ward Beecher, in Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)
QUOTE NOTE: Lord Krishna, speaking to Prince Arjuna, adds: “For your own sake, Arjuna, give up these three.”
Anger repressed can poison a relationship as surely as the cruelest words. Dr. Joyce Brothers, “When Your Husband’s Affection Cools,” in Good Housekeeping (May, 1972)
Buechner continued: “To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. Frederick Buechner, in Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (1973)
QUOTATION CAUTION: This quotation appears in numerous anthologies and quotation collections, but never from an authoritative source.
Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation. Truman Capote, “Handcarved Coffins,” in Music for Chameleons (1980)
The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820)
Colton added: “We injure our own cause in the opinion of the world when we too passionately defend it.”
QUOTE NOTE: The first portion of the passage is also commonly translated as “Anger is a brief lunacy.”
Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one [sic] should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm. Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Christian Religion” (1881), in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 6 (1909)
A man can’t eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul. Garrison Keillor, “Could I Have Been Any More Inept?”
Salon.com (Oct. 26, 1999)
Anger is the common refuge of insignificance. People who feel their character to be slight, hope to give it weight by inflation. But the blown bladder at its fullest distention is still empty. Hannah More, “On the Comparatively Small Faults and Virtues,” in Practical Piety (1811)
When anger spreads through the breast, guard thy tongue from barking idly. Sappho, a 6th c. B.C. couplet, in Henry Thornton Wharton, Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings (1885)
Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one. George Savile (Lord Halifax), “Of Anger,” in Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections (1750)
Shain continued: “So people often need to renew their anger a long time after the cause of it has died, because it is a protection against helplessness and emptiness just like howling in the night. And it makes them feel less vulnerable for a little while.”
Tavris introduced the thought by writing: “When anger is not trampling roughshod through our nervous system, it is sitting sullenly in some unspecified internal organ. ‘She’s got a lot of anger in her,’ people will say (it nestles, presumably, somewhere in the gut), or, ‘He’s a deeply angry man’ (as opposed, presumably, to a superficially angry one).”
ANGLING
ANGUISH
(see also AGONY and DEPRESSION and GRIEF & GRIEVING and MISERY and MISFORTUNE and PAIN and SADNESS and SORROW and SUFFERING and TEARS)
O the anguish of the thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them. George Eliot, a reflection of the title character, in “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton,” in Scenes of Clerical Life (1857)
ANIMAL RIGHTS
(includes ANIMAL CRUELTY; see also ANIMALS and HUMAN RIGHTS and HUNTING and RIGHTS and SPORT and VEGETARIANISM & VEGANISM and ZOOS)
A moment earlier, Bentham presciently wrote: “The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.”
I would not enter on my list of friends,/(Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense,/Yet wanting sensibility) the man/Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. William Cowper, “Winter Walk at Noon,” in The Task (1785)
The poem continued: “An inadvertent step may crush the snail/That crawls at evening in the public path;/But he that has humanity, forewarn'd,/Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.”
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. W. R. Inge, “The Idea of Progress,” in Outspoken Essays (1922)
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman. Joseph Wood Krutch, “The Vandal and the Sportsman,” in The Great Chain of Life (1956)
A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end any discussion of animal rights. Lance Morrow, “Has Your Paradigm Shifted,” in
Time magazine (Nov. 11, 2001)
In nothing does man, with his grand notions of heaven and charity, show forth his innate, low-bred, wild animalism more clearly than in his treatment of his brother beasts. From the shepherd with his lambs to the red-handed hunter, it is the same; no recognition of rights—only murder in one form or another. John Muir, in a journal entry (July 23, 1881); later reprinted in The Cruise of the Corwin (1917)
Muir preceded the thought by writing: “These magnificent animals are killed oftentimes for their tusks alone, like buffaloes for their tongues, ostriches for their feathers, or for mere sport and exercise.”
QUOTE NOTE: Muir kept a journal while serving on the USS Corwin during an expedition exploring the massive Glacier Bay in Alaska. Observing a small boat from a nearby schooner approaching a herd of walruses on a huge ice flow, he is shocked to see three men raising their rifles. His description of the slaughter is chilling: “A puff of smoke now and then, a dull report, and a huge animal rears and falls—another, and another, as they lie on the ice without showing any alarm, waiting to be killed, like cattle lying in a barnyard! Nearer, we hear the roar, lion-like, mixed with hoarse-grunts [sic], from hundreds, like black bundles on the white ice. Then the three men pull off to their schooner, as it is now midnight and time for the other watch to go to work.”
Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or wings, is it, for that reason, to be of no account? Jean Paul (pen name of Johann Paul Richter), in Levana (1807)
And as it was the saying of Bion, that, though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest; so in hunting and fishing, the fault is in the men delighting in the torments and cruel deaths of beasts, and tearing them without compassion from their whelps and their young ones. Plutarch, quoting the ancient Greek philosopher Bion and then building on his observation, in Moralia (1st. c. A.D.)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly attribute this quotation to Peter Singer, the “Animal Liberation” pioneer. Pratt was discussing Singer’s viewpoint when he wrote this, but he was expressing his own though and not quoting Singer.
It can truly be said: Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls. Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Religion” (1851), reprinted in Essays and Aphorisms (1970; R. J. Hollingdale, ed.)
Schweitzer continued: “It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.”
The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position. Christine Stevens, quoted in Michael W. Fox, Returning to Eden: Animal Rights and Human Responsibility (1980)
Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals “love” them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more. Edwin Way Teale, “April 28,” in Circle of the Seasons (1953)
ANIMALS
(see also ANIMALS—SPECIFIC TYPES and ANIMAL METAPHORS and BIRDS and CATS and CATS & DOGS and DOGS and FISH and HORSES and INSECTS and PETS and PIGS)
I like handling newborn animals. Fallen into life from an unmappable world, they are the ultimate immigrants, full of wonder and confusion. Diane Ackerman, in The Moon by Whale Light (1991)
QUOTATION CAUTION: This one of the modern era’s most popular quotations, almost always attributed to Anatole France, and found in thousands of internet sites and hundreds of books. However, after years of sleuthing, I’ve found no documentary evidence to support an attribution to France.
The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer? Jeremy Bentham, on animals, in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)
Bentham introduced the thought by writing: “The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.”
QUOTE NOTE: This is an early expression—perhaps the earliest—of an animal rights principle. Bentham’s observation may also have inspired a memorable memorable passage in Anna Sewell’s classic 1877 novel Black Beauty (see the Sewell entry below).
Why does it enrage an animal to be given what it already knows? Anne Carson, “Kinds of Water,” in Grand Street (Summer, 1987); reprinted in Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1995)
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation speaks to a fascinating human phenomenon—people getting angry when they’re told something they already know. I’ve always written it off as intellectual insecurity, but Carson’s observation—and especially her use of the word enrage—suggests something more primitive or atavistic in such a reaction.
Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. George Eliot, “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story,” in Scenes of Clerical Life (1857)
QUOTE NOTE: Dawkins was talking about the similar genetic structure of animals, and not about the way they look (their form and structure, or as he put it, their morphology).
Some animals, like some men, leave a trail of glory behind them. Marguerite Henry, in Brighty of the Grand Canyon (1953)
Henry added: “They give their spirit to the place where they have lived, and remain forever a part of the rocks and streams and the wind and sky.”
From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at a time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought. Victor Hugo, the voice of the narrator, in Les Misérables (1862)
QUOTE NOTE: I’ve also seen the passage translated this way: “We could easily recognize this truth…that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each of them is in a man. Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect.”
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. W. R. Inge, “The Idea of Progress,” a May27, 1920 lecture; reprinted in Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922)
Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way. John Muir, journal entry (Aug. 30, 1880); reprinted in John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938; Wanda Muir Hanna, ed.)
Muir went on to add: “Those who dwell in the wilderness are sure to learn their kinship with animals and gain some sympathy with them, in spite of the blinding instructions suffered in civilization.”
There is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared with us—I mean their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment. Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Suffering of the World,” in Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words. Anna Sewell, an unnamed lady speaking, in Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse (1877)
QUOTE NOTE: As the subtitle indicates, the entire book is told from the perspective of the horse. The quotation above, though, comes from an unnamed lady who has observed some cruelty on the part of one of Black Beauty’s cart drivers (a man named Jakes). In attempting to educate the driver about how to treat the animal more humanely, she precedes the thought by saying, “We have no right to distress any of God’s creatures without a very good reason.” Sewell might have been inspired by a 1789 observation on animal suffering by Jeremy Bentham (see his entry above).
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men. Alice Walker, in Foreword to Marjorie Speigel, The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery (1988; rev. ed. in 1997)
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,/I stand and look at them long and long./They do not sweat and whine about their condition,/They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,/They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Walt Whitman, in ‘song of Myself” (1855 ed.)
Whitman continued: “Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,/Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,/Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”
ANIMALS—SPECIFIC TYPES
(see also ANIMALS and ANIMAL METAPHORS and BIRDS and CATS and DOGS and FISH and HORSES and INSECTS and PETS and PIGS)
BATS.
QUOTE NOTE: The full poem in which this intriguing metaphor first appeared is as follows: “By day the bat is cousin to the mouse./He likes the attic of an aging house./His fingers make a hat about his head./His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead./He loops in crazy figures half the night/Among the trees that face the corner light./But when he brushes up against a screen,/We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:/For something is amiss or out of place/When mice with wings can wear a human face.”
BUTTERFLIES.
The garden was absolutely enormous. It had no design or plan, and there wasn’t a straight line in it; it was like a blossoming meadow; from the house it suggested a many-colored sea of petals floating above the ground. Over the surface of this sea there were always butterflies dancing, rather like flowers detached from their stems. Janet Gillespie, in The Joy of a Small Garden (1963)
Flung wide open, they were the color of a forest on fire. Closed, they were mottled tree bark, hands folded in prayer. Trina Moyles, on Compton tortoiseshell butterflies, in Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest (2021)
Yellow butterflies/look like flowers flying through/the warm summer air. Andrea Willis, “Yellow Butterflies,” quoted in Louis M. Savary and Thomas J. O’Connor, The Heart Has Its Seasons (1970)
The least thing upset him on the links. I have personally seen him miss short putts because of the uproar of butterflies in the adjoining fields. P. G. Wodehouse, the narrator (“The Oldest Member”) describing a fellow golfer, in The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922)
CAMELS.
He carries a fresh-water cistern in his stomach; which is meritorious. But the cistern ameliorates neither his gait nor his temper—which are abominable. Amelila B. Edwards, on the camel, in One Thousand Miles Up the Nile (1877)
Edwards continued: “Irreproachable as a beast of burden, he is open to many objections as a steed. It is unpleasant, in the first place, to ride an animal which not only objects to being ridden, but cherishes a strong personal antipathy to his rider.”
CATERPILLAR.
CATTLE.
DOLPHINS.
ELEPHANTS.
Elephants suffer from too much patience. Their exhibitions of it may seem superb—such power and such restraint, combined, are noble—but a quality carried to excess defeats itself. Clarence Day, in This Simian World (1920)
I had seen a herd of Elephant travelling through dense Native forest, where the sunlight is strewn down between the thick creepers in small spots and patches, pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world. Isak Dinesen, in Out of Africa (1937)
Nature’s great masterpiece, an Elephant,/The only harmless great thing. John Donne, in “The Progress of the Soul” (1601)
GIRAFFES.
I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the Giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness, as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long-stemmed, speckled gigantic flowers slowly advancing. Isak Dinesen, in Out of Africa (1937)
KAKAPO.
You want to hug it and tell it everything will be all right, although you know that it probably won’t be. Douglas Adams, on the kakapo, in Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, “Heartbeats in the Night,” in Last Chance to See (1990)
KANGAROOS.
I, like every other stupid American, assumed the kangaroos would meet us at the airport and they would want to hug us as much as we wanted to hug them. Kristen Bell, on her first impression of Australia; quoted in “US Star Disappointed no Kangaroos at Airport,” in The Sydney Morning Herald (Oct. 15, 2009)
Envy the kangaroo. That pouch setup is extraordinary; the baby crawls out of the womb when it is about two inches long, gets into the pouch, and proceeds to mature. I’d have a baby if it would develop in my handbag. Rita Rudner, in Naked Beneath My Clothes: Tales of a Revealing Nature (1992)
LLAMAS.
The Llama is a wooly sort of fleecy hairy goat,/With an indolent expression and an undulating throat/Like an unsuccessful literary man. Hilaire Belloc, “The Llama,” in More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)
PENGUINS.
Short, potbellied penguins, whose necks wobbled with baby fat, huddled together like Russian businessmen in fur coats. Diane Ackerman, in The Moon by Whale Light (1991)
PLATYPUSES.
PORCUPINES.
The self-assured porcupine, endearingly grotesque, waddles up the road in broad daylight. He looks as if he had slept in his rumpled spiky clothes, and he probably has. Bertha Damon, in A Sense of Humus (1943)
The Porcupine, whom one must handle glove’d/May be Respected, but is never Loved. Arthur Guiterman, in A Poet’s Proverbs (1924)
SEALS.
Your elephant seal has an issue with motivation: he is not a natural self-starter. Start him, however, and he goes, not like a rocket, but a sort of turbo-charged mega-caterpillar. Matthew Parris, “Another Voice” in The Spectator (London, June 17, 2000)
Parris, a British politician who had just returned from a elephant seal-watching trip, described his experiences with the animal in a metaphor-rich essay. He continued: “Have you ever seen an elephant seal running? The earth shakes as great rolls of leather-bound blubber go rippling down his 12ft [read twelve-foot] frame and he buckles and unbuckles along the beach. You too would move like this if someone tied your legs together and your hands to your sides and swaddled you in black foam-rubber.” For several other delightful elephant seal metaphors, see the entire article at: The Spectator.
SHARKS.
SHEEP.
I never heard of anybody who admired the character of sheep. Even the gentlest human personalities in contact with them are annoyed by their lack of brains, courage and initiative, by their extraordinary ability to get themselves into uncomfortable or dangerous situations and then wait in inert helplessness for someone to rescue them. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, in Vermont Tradition (1935)
SKUNKS.
* We know by the odor that occasionally we are visited by skunks, which are not poetic but very beautiful. Gene Stratton-Porter, quoted in Jeannette Porter Meehan, The Lady of the Limberlost: Life and Letters of Gene Stratton-Porter (1928)
SQUIRRELS.
November is chill, frosted mornings with a silver sun rising behind the trees, red cardinals at the feeders, and squirrels running scallops along the tops of the gray stone walls. Jean Hersey, in The Shape of a Year (1967)
* To me, squirrels are almost fairy people. They are marvelously round: roundly curved body, curved shell-like ears, curved haunches, tail either S-curved over the back like a mantle, or flying straight out behind the long slender body. Joan Ward-Harris, in Creature Comforts (1979)
SWANS.
A single white shoelace danced and undulated above the treetops…a floating ribbon Trina Moyles, on trumpeter swans, in Lookout: Love, Solitude, and Searching for Wildfire in the Boreal Forest (2021)
TORTOISES
Tortoises are not intrepid travelers. They spend their whole lives in one small, intimately memorized patch of desert, maybe a mile square. Claire Faye Watkins, “Sacrifice Zone: Yellow Pine,” in The Believer (Dec. 9, 2022)
WARTHOGS.
I know animals more gallant than the African warthog, but none more courageous. He is the peasant of the plains—the drab and dowdy digger in the earth. He is the uncomely but intrepid defender of family, home, and bourgeois convention, and he will fight anything of any size that intrudes upon his smug existence. Beryl Markham, in West With the Night (1942)
Markham went on to add: “His eyes are small and lightless and capable of but one expression—suspicion. What he does not understand, he suspects, and what he suspects, he fights.”
(see also ANIMALS and ANIMALS—SPECIFIC TYPES and BIRDS and CATS and DOGS and FISH and INSECTS and PETS)
(see also metaphors involving: BASEBALL, BIRDS, BOXING & PRIZEFIGHTING, CANCER, DARKNESS, DISEASE, FOOTBALL, FLOWERS, FOOTNOTES, FRUIT, HEART, ICEBERGS, JOURNEYS, MONTHS, MOVIES, MUSIC, PARTS OF SPEECH, PATH, PLANTS, PUNCTUATION, RETAIL/WHOLESALE, NAUTICAL and VEGETABLES)
When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time. Gen. Creighton Abrams, quoted in Paul Dickson, The Official Rules (1978)
By God, you gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are. Edward Albee, the character George speaking, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. Maya Angelou, quoted in M. A. Monroe, The Butterfly’s Daughter (2011)
What tigress is there that does not purr over her young ones, and fawn upon them in tenderness? Saint Augustine, in The City of God (5th c.); cited in H. L. Mencken, A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942)
QUOTE NOTE: In The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred Shapiro lists this as a Modern Proverb and pinpoints its first appearance in print to a Dec. 25, 1927 New York Times article.
QUOTE NOTE: I found this wonderful phrase in a slightly longer passage that went this way: “What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.”
A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings. Anton Chekhov, in letter to A.N. Kanaev (March 26, 1883)
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber. Winston Churchill, quoted in James. C. Humes, The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill (1995)
High positions are like the summit of high, steep rocks: eagles and reptiles alone can reach them. Suzanne Curchod (Madame Necker), quoted in J. De Finod, A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1880)
The quickest horse that carries you to perfection is suffering. Meister Eckhart, quoted by Thomas Mann in May 18, 1939 Princeton University address, in The Princeton Alumni Weekly (May 26, 1939)
At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel, at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, and at eighty nothing. Baltasar Gracián, in The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly. Robert A. Heinlein, an entry in “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,” in Time Enough for Love (1973)
It is sensible to dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing at the last, he makes the spectators laugh. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), on retiring old horses, in Epistles (1st c. B.C.)
Be like the bird, who/Halting in his flight/On limb too slight/Feels it give way beneath him,/Yet sings/Knowing he hath wings. Victor Hugo, quoted in Z. Sutherland et. al., The Scott, Foresman Anthology of Children’s Literature (1984)
QUOTE NOTE: Hugo’s poem, originally undated and untitled, has enjoyed great popularity, especially in America, since the late 1800s. Translated in many different ways over the years, it’s also been given many different titles, including “Wings,” “A Bird’s Faith,” and even “Simile.” In the 1890s, a song version by Laura Sedgwick Collins, titled “Be Like That Bird,” was an American hit.
When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees. Kenneth Kaunda, quoted in The Observer (London, Jan. 2, 1983)
That creature on whose back abound/Black spots upon a yellow ground/A panther is—the fairest beast/That haunteth in the spacious East:/ He underneath a fair outside/Does cruelty and treachery hide. Mary Ann Lamb, “The Beasts in the Tower,” in Poetry for Children (1809)
QUOTE NOTE: Was the famous advice columnist dispensing fishing advice here? No, this was simply her figurative way of telling women that going to singles bars was not an effective way to meet high-quality men.
What kills the skunk is the publicity it gives itself. Abraham Lincoln, in an 1859 interview, quoted in A. T. Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1896)
QUOTE NOTE: Lincoln was referring to slavery, but his words can be applied to anything that gives off a foul odor. He offered the metaphor in an interview with journalist David R. Locke, prefacing his words by saying: “Slavery is doomed, and that within a few years. Even Judge Douglas admits it to be an evil, and an evil can’t stand discussion. In discussing it we have taught a great many thousands of people to hate it who had never given it a thought before.”
There was a part of me that wanted to be liked, and despite all my years of reporting, I never quite adjusted to the role of skunk at the garden party. Andrea Mitchell, in Talking Back: …to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels (2005)
Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream. Malcolm Muggeridge, quoting an unnamed source, in Radio Times (July 9, 1964); reprinted in London à la Mode (1966)
QUOTE NOTE: This passage is also commonly translated: “What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee.”
Don’t ask who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life. Giorgos (George) Seferis, quoted in
“A Greek Poet’s Odyssey,” Life magazine (Jan. 17, 1964)
Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? Edith Sitwell, at age seventy-five, in E. Salter, Edith Sitwell (1979)
It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs. Margaret Thatcher, in remarks to a group of London business people, quoted in Wall Street Journal (May 12, 1987)
The cocks may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the egg. Margaret Thatcher, quoted in Sunday Times (London, April 9, 1989)
Men of all degrees should form this prudent habit: never serve a rabbit stew before you catch the rabbit. James Thurber, moral to “Ivory, Apes, and People,” in Further Fables for our Time (1956)
QUOTE NOTE: This was Thurber’s updated version of “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” first recorded by Aesop in the fable “The Milkmaid and Her Pail” (6th cent. B.C.)
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. Arnold J. Toynbee, quoted in BBC news broadcast (July 14, 1954)
An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal—falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox. François Truffaut, in New Yorker (Feb. 20, 1960)
You can straighten a worm, but the crook is in him and only waiting. Mark Twain, quoted in Merle Johnson, More Maxims of Mark (1927)
What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is…for us humans. Vincent van Gogh, in letter to brother Theo, quoted in Robert Wallace, The World of Van Gogh (1969)
ANNIVERSARY
(see also COMMEMORATION and JUBILEE and MARRIAGE and WEDDING)
The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Locked Rooms and Open Doors (1974)
QUOTE NOTE: This observation first appeared in a diary entry made by Mrs. Lindbergh on the first anniversary of her son’s kidnapping and death in 1932.
The holiest of holidays are those/Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;/The secret anniversaries of the heart. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Holidays,” in The Mask of Pandora and Other Writings (1875)
A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity. The order varies for any given year. Paul Sweeney, quoted in a 1978 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined)
Are there memories that are safe from the clutches of phony anniversarists? W. J. Wetherby, in The Guardian (London, Aug. 18, 1989)
ANONYMITY
(see also ANONYMOUS and UNKNOWN)
In a nation of celebrity worshipers, amid followers of the cult of personality, individual modesty becomes a heroic quality. I find heroism in the acceptance of anonymity, in the studied resistance to the normal American tropism toward the limelight. Shana Alexander, in Talking Woman (1976)
Anonymity cannot be bought for any price, once you have lost it. Robyn Davidson, in Tracks: The Exhilarating Tale of a Willful Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback (1980)
Davidson preceded the thought by writing: “Some of us just don’t want to be famous.”
ANONYMOUS
(see also ANONYMITY and UNKNOWN)
A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it. Simone Weil, in Gravity and Grace (1947)
Anonymous: Prolific female author. Has written hundreds of thousands of books, articles, poems, essays, memos, broadsides, and treatises. Under this name many women for centuries have written, published, or produced art, either deliberately to avoid the problems and punishments awaiting the woman artist or by default because their names were lost or forgotten. Paula A. Treichler, quoted in Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler, A Feminist Dictionary (1985)
QUOTE NOTE: In this observation, Treichler was clearly inspired by a famous Virginia Woolf observation, to be seen below.
I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own (1929
QUOTE NOTE: In a 2011 article in the Yale Alumni Magazine, Fred Shapiro wrote: “Woolf was right: Anonymous was a woman. Many of the great quotesmiths have been women who are now forgotten or whose wit and wisdom are erroneously credited to more-famous men.”
ANSWERS
(see also QUESTIONS and QUESTIONS & ANSWERS)
The trouble with life isn’t that there is no answer, it’s that there are so many answers. Ruth Benedict, journal entry (Jan. 7, 1913), in An Anthropologist at Work (1959)
Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything. Ray Bradbury, quoted in Neil Gaiman, “A Man Who Won't Forget Ray Bradbury,” in
The Guardian (London; June 6, 2012)
His answer trickled through my head,/Like water through a sieve. Lewis Carroll, the Knight speaking, in a song to Alice about an aged man sitting on a gate, in Through the Looking-Glass (1872)
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. Bob Dylan, lyric in the song “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1962)
QUOTE NOTE: In Dylan’s folk anthem, the answers that are blowing in the wind are in response to such important questions as “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?” and “How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?”
There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room. George Eliot, in Middlemarch (1871)
QUOTE NOTE: The novel’s narrator is describing Edward Casaubon’s state of mind as he is thinking about a disagreeable conversation he and his wife have just sidestepped. The narrator concludes with one of my favorite observations about human interaction in general, and marital communication in particular: “To have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.” For another allusion to “A soft answer turneth away wrath” (Book of Proverbs, 15:1), see the Kronenberger entry just below.
Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers. Learned Hand, in a speech in New York City (Jan. 27, 1952)
In the interview, Kesey also said: “The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”
Most people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. They want answers that are, in effect, escapes. Louis Kronenberger, in “Unbrave New World,” in The Cart and the Horse (1964)
You should know that there are some things for which there are no answers, no matter how beautiful the words may be. Patricia MacLachlan, the character Byrd speaking, in Baby (1993)
Warped with satisfactions and terrors, woofed with too many ambiguities and too few certainties, life can be lived best not when we have the answers—because we will never have those—but when we know enough to live it right out to the edges, edges sometimes marked by other people, sometimes showing only our own footprints. Rosalie Maggio, in Introduction to Quotations by Women on Life (1997)
They are useless. They can only give you answers. Pablo Picasso, on computers, quoted in William Fifield, In Search of Genius (1982)
ERROR ALERT: This is the way the quotation appeared in Fifield’s book, but almost all internet sites present it this way: “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
“Questions don’t have to make sense, Vincent,” said Miss Susan. “But answers do.” Terry Pratchett, in Thief of Time (2001)
The words are spoken in an instructional, even didactic, tone to the title character. Marius, a 2,000-year-old vampire who has accumulated much wisdom over the centuries, preceded the thought by saying: “Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds–justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on.”
Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received. Tom Robbins, a female character known only as “the weigher” speaking, in Jitterbug Perfume (1984)
In the Book of Life, the answers are not in the back. Charles Schulz, Charlie Brown speaking, in
Peanuts cartoon strip ((Jan. 25, 1972). To see the original cartoon, go to:
1972 Peanuts Cartoon.
ANTAGONISTS
(see also ADVERSARIES and ALLIES and ENEMIES and FOES and FRIENDS and FRIENDS & ENEMIES and OPPOSITION)
From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you. Franz Kafka, notebook entry # 23 (written 1917-18), in The Zürau Aphorisms (original published posthumously in 1931 by Kafka friend Max Brod under the title Reflections of Sin, Hope Suffering, and the True Way)
ANTHOLOGISTS & ANTHOLOGIES
(see also COLLECTING & COLLECTORS and EPIGRAMS and MAXIMS and PROVERBS and QUOTATIONS and VERSE and SAYINGS)
Most of those who make collections of verse or epigrams are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all. Nicolas Chamfort, in Maxims and Considerations (1796)
As long as mixed grills and combination salads are popular, anthologies will undoubtedly continue in favor. Elizabeth Janeway, quoted in Helen Hull, The Writer’s Book (1950)
Reframing an extract as a quotation constitutes a kind of coauthorship. With no change in wording, the cited passage becomes different. I imagine that the thrill of making an anthology includes the opportunity to become such a coauthor. Gary Saul Morson, in The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture (2011)
There is usually no dreamer so unworldly as the anthologist. He wanders in a vast garden, lost in wonder, unable to decide often between flowers of equal loveliness. Mary Webb, in 1926 article in The Bookman (title and specific date presently undetermined)
Webb went on to add: “The true anthologist has the greatest difficulty in finishing his book. There is always just one more, a new, delicious discovery.“
ANTHROPOLOGY & ANTHROPOLOGISTS
(see also PSYCHOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGISTS and SOCIAL SCIENCE and SOCIOLOGY & SOCIOLOGISTS)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the portion of the remark that is remembered, but Graves actually went on to add this caveat: “Though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.”
ANTICIPATION
(see also DISAPPOINTMENT and EXPECTATION and FUTURE and HOPE and WAITING)
Nothing is ever so good or so bad in reality as it is in the anticipation. Marie Bashkirtseff, an 1883 journal entry, in Mary J. Serrano, The Journal of a Young Artist (1919)
Night breeds its own sort of anticipation. Jacqueline Carey, “The Ex Files,” in The New York Times Book Review (May 7, 2000)
There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it. Alfred Hitchcock, quoted in Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984)
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before. Samuel Johnson, the character Nekayah speaking, in The History of Rasselas (1759)
Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinions of others. Henry Taylor, in The Statesman (1836)
Anticipation of pleasure is a pleasure in itself. Sylvia Townsend Warner, from a 1960 letter, in William Maxwell, Letters: Sylvia Townsend Warner (1982)
(see also metaphors involving: ANIMALS, BASEBALL, BIRDS, BOXING & PRIZEFIGHTING, CANCER, DARKNESS, DISEASE, FOOTBALL, FRUIT, HEART, ICEBERGS, JOURNEYS, PARTS OF SPEECH, PATH, PLANTS, PUNCTUATION, RETAIL/WHOLESALE, NAUTICAL and VEGETABLES)
As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe the only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth. Edward Abbey, in A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (1989)
A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is. Phyllis Bottome, a reflection of the narrator and protagonist, a Viennese psychoanalyst who fled to England in the 1930s, in Survival (1943)
We’ve licked pneumonia and T.B./And plagues that used to mock us,/We’ve got the virus on the run,/The small pox cannot pock us./We’ve found the antibodies for/The staphylo-strepto-cocus.
But oh the universal curse/From Cuba to Korea,/The bug of bugs that bugs us still/And begs for panacea!/Oh, who will find the antidote/For Pentagonarea? E. Y. Harburg, “An Atom a Day Keeps the Doctor Away,” in Rhymes for the Irreverent (1965)
Van Dyke added: “There is a nobler character than that which is merely incorruptible. It is the character which acts as an antidote and preventive of corruption.”
ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
(see also FOLLY and FOOLS & FOOLISHNESS and IDIOTS & IDIOCY and IGNORANCE and ILLUSION and INTELLECT and INTELLECTUALS and INTELLIGENCE and LEARNING and LUNATICS & LUNACY and STUPIDITY)
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Isaac Asimov, “A Cult of Ignorance,” in Newsweek magazine (Jan. 21, 1980)
QUOTE NOTE: The full article, as relevant today as when it was written nearly four decades ago, may be seen at Asimov/My Turn.
ANTIPATHY
(includes CONSOLATION; see also and COMPASSION and EMPATHY and KINDNESS and INDIFFERENCE and PITY and SYMPATHY and UNDERSTANDING)
There are, I sometimes think, only two sorts of people in this world—the settled and the nomad—and there is a natural antipathy between them, whatever the land to which they may belong. Freya Stark, in A Winter in Arabia: A Journey Through Yemen (1940)
What vitiates nearly all that is written about antisemitism is the assumption in the writer’s mind that he himself is immune to it. “Since I know that antisemitism is irrational,” he argues, “it follows that I do not share it.” He thus fails to start his investigation in the one place where he could get hold of some reliable evidence — that is, in his own mind.
ANTISEMITISM
(see also HATRED and JEWS & JUDAISM and NAZISM and PREJUDICE and RACISM)
One social evil for which the New Testament is clearly in part responsible is anti-Semitism. Steve Allen, in Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality (1990)
I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy. Joseph Epstein, in an interview with Robert Birnbaum on
www.identitytheory.com (August 31, 2003)
I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you’re desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward—well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism. Henry Louis Gates, in an interview on PBS-TV’s “The Tavis Smiley Show” (March 19, 2008)
When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted in Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Socialism of Fools: The Left, the Jews and Israel,” Encounter magazine (December 1969)
It came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize. Mary McCarthy, “Artists in Uniform” (1953), in On the Contrary (1961)
Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility. Mary McCarthy, in The Humanist in the Bathtub (1964
What vitiates nearly all that is written about antisemitism is the assumption in the writer’s mind that he himself is immune to it. “Since I know that antisemitism is irrational,” he argues, “it follows that I do not share it.” He thus fails to start his investigation in the one place where he could get hold of some reliable evidence—that is, in his own mind. George Orwell, “Antisemitism in Britain,” in The Contemporary Jewish Record (April 1945)
Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America. William Howard Taft, in “Anti-Semitism in the United States,” address to the Anti Defamation League, Chicago, Illinois (Dec. 23, 1920)
ANTS
(see also ANIMALS and INSECTS and NATURE)
Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. Lewis Thomas, “On Societies as Organisms,” in The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)
Thomas continued; “The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.”
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites present this mistaken version of the quotation: “Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war , use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.”
ANXIETY
(see also DEPRESSION and DREAD and FEAR and NERVES & NERVOUSNESS and PANIC and STRESS and WORRY)
QUOTE NOTE: The Age of Anxiety is a lengthy, six-part poem that explores the search for meaning and identity in a modern, industrialized society. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1948.
Bardwick went on to add: “By protecting people from risk, we destroy their self-esteem. We rob them of the opportunity to become strong, competent people.”
Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective. Saul Bellow, “The Sealed Treasure” (1960), in There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction (2015; Benjamin Taylor, ed.)
Anxiety can be defined as the response of an organism to a threat, real or imagined. It is a process that, in some form, is present in all living things.
Murray Bowen, quoted in Michael Kerr and Murray Bowen, in Family Evaluation: An Approach Based on Bowen Theory (1988)
The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is anxiety. Deepak Chopra, in a
Tweet (Sep. 26, 2012)
We are anxious, not because we think so little of ourselves, but because we think so much of ourselves. We are anxious, not that we may appear in the worst light, but that we may not appear in the best light. Anxiety is born of self-consciousness, and it is alleviated to the exact extent that we can drop consciousness of the self. Jo Coudert, in Advice From a Failure (1965)
When you put yourself wholeheartedly into something, energy grows. It seems inexhaustible. If, on the other hand, you are divided and conflicted about what you are doing, you create anxiety. And the amount of physical and emotional energy consumed by anxiety is exorbitant. Helen De Rosis, quoted in Joyce Brothers, The Successful Woman (1988)
Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally occasion ourselves. Benjamin Disraeli, the voice of the narrator, in Lothair (1870)
ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites present the quotation as if it ended: “and generally create ourselves.”
Fosdick introduced the thought by writing: “Fear is a basic emotion; it’s part of our native equipment, and like all normal emotions, it has a positive function to perform.”
Freedom, although it has brought [modern man] independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. Erich Fromm, in Foreword to Escape From Freedom (1941)
Stupidity is without anxiety. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an 1824 observation, quoted in Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe (1836)
In fact, the harder we chase after pleasurable feelings, the more we are likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. Russ Harris, in The Happiness Trap (2007)
Harris preceded the thought by writing: “Like all human emotions, feelings of happiness don’t last. No matter how hard we try to hold on to them, they slip away every time. And as we shall see, a life spent in pursuit of those good feelings is, in the long term, deeply unsatisfying.”
Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. Søren Kierkegaard, an 1847 journal entry, in Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, Vol. 3 (1967; E.H. Hong, ed.)
Kierkegaard continued: “One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away.”
QUOTE NOTE: In early translations of this passage, anxiety was replaced by the word dread.
Anxiety and distress, interrupted occasionally by pleasure, is the normal course of man’s existence. Louis Kronenberger, “May,” in The Twelve Seasons (1949)
This is, I think, very much the Age of Anxiety, the age of the neurosis, because along with so much that weighs on our minds there is perhaps even more that grates on our nerves. Louis Kronenberger, “The Spirit of the Age,” in Company Manners (1954)
Most people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing. They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. They want answers that are, in effect, escapes. Louis Kronenberger, in “Unbrave New World,” in The Cart and the Horse (1964)
We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read. Abraham Lincoln, in speech in Bloomington, Illinois (May 19, 1856)
Anxiety is not merely an abstract theoretical concept, any more than swimming is to a person whose boat has capsized a mile from shore. Rollo May, in Foreword to the 1950 edition of The Meaning of Anxiety
Because it is possible to create—creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities (and these are two phases of the same process)—one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever. Rollo May, in The Meaning of Anxiety (1950; rev. 1977)
Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation; but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within. Rollo May, in The Meaning of Anxiety (1950; rev. 1977)
It is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible. Rollo May, in Man’s Search for Himself (1953)
In any age courage is the simple virtue needed for a human being to traverse the rocky road from infancy to maturity of personality. But in an age of anxiety, an age of her morality and personal isolation, courage is a sine qua non. Rollo May, in Man’s Search for Himself (1953)
May continued: “In periods when the mores of the society were more consistent guides, the individual was more firmly cushioned in his crises of development; but in times of transition like ours, the individual is thrown on his own at an earlier age and for a longer period.” And a bit later, he went on to add:
“Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom. It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependence to new levels of freedom and integration.”
A bit earlier, May had written: “Anxiety occurs because of a threat to the values a person identifies with his existence as a self…most anxiety comes from a threat to social, emotional and moral values the person identifies with himself. And here we find that a main source of anxiety, particularly in the younger generation, is that they do not have viable values available in the culture on the basis of which they can relate to their world.”
Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine madness” to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. Rollo May, in Psychology and the Human Dilemma (1967)
May continued: “They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.”
Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head. Mignon McLaughlin, in The Neurotic’s Notebook (1963)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is presented on almost all internet sites, but it was originally part of this larger thought: “Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions—because they might turn out to have no answer.”
Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It creates the failures. Anaïs Nin, diary entry (Feb, 1947), in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–47, Vol. 4 (1971)
Nin added: “It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”
Without anxiety life would have very little savor. May Sarton, “Tuesday, January 7th,” in The House by the Sea: A Journal (1977)
When you’re faced with fear and anxiety, don’t medicate. Meditate instead. Russell Simmons, in Facebook
post (July 25, 2015)
Economics anxiety may be even more common than the often identified “math anxiety,” for unlike math, which has its personal uses, economics is seen as a mysterious set of forces manipulated from above. Gloria Steinem, in Moving Beyond Words (1994)
QUOTE NOTE: Szasz was contrasting anxiety with courage, about which he went on to write: “Courage is the willingness to play even when you know the odds are against you.”
Catching something is purely a by-product of our fishing. It is the act of fishing that wipes way all grief, lightens all worry, dissolves fear and anxiety. Gladys Taber, in The Book of Stillmeadow (1948)
APATHY
(see also CARING & UNCARING and DETACHMENT and INDIFFERENCE and PASSIVITY)
Anstruther-Thomson preceded the thought by writing: “Science, far from being the enemy of Art, is the only way to hand Art on, to make it a tradition.”
I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate—it’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn. Leo Buscaglia, in Living, Loving, and Learning (1982)
Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy. Joseph Conrad, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Charles Marlow, in Heart of Darkness (1899)
It is, therefore, far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one. Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, Vol II (1840)
The greatest danger to our future is apathy. Jane Goodall, “The Power of One,” in Time magazine (Aug. 26, 2002)
Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there’s all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens. Arthur Gordon, in A Touch of Wonder: A Book to Help Stay in Love with Life (1974)
Apathy is the death knell of any order. Once a system has degenerated to the point that apathy is the only thing holding it in place it, it is in its twilight phase. Then one day the music stops. John Berling Hardy, in Have We Been Played? The Hidden Game Revealed (2010)
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. Robert M. Hutchins, in Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (19
Apathy is the capitulation of personhood, the refusal to grow, to become who we really are. It is the ultimate cop-out—the insistence that things will never change, so why should we. Albert J. LaChance, in Cultural Addiction: The Greenspirit Guide to Recovery (1991)
Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, in Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America (1991)
So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others. Eleanor Roosevelt, in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (1960)
Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy. J. K. Rowling, in a speech (June 5, 2008)
Toleration of exploitation, oppression, and injustice points to a condition lying like a pall over the whole of society; it is apathy, an unconcern that is incapable of suffering. Dorothee Sölle, in Suffering (1973)
Procrastination results in apathy, discouragement, and depression. Alexandra Stoddard, in Making Choices (1994)
Languor can only be conquered by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be kindled by two things: an ideal which takes the imagination by storm, and a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. Arnold Toynbee, “The Education of Co-Operators,” an 1882 Oxford University lecture, reprinted in Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England (pub. posthumously in 1884)
ERROR ALERT: All over the Internet, the observation is worded as if it began Apathy can only be conquered by enthusiasm, and with the word aroused rather than kindled. The source of the error is Norman Vincent Peale, who originally misquoted Toynbee in Enthusiasm Makes the Difference (1967).
What is called “apathy” is, I believe, a feeling of helplessness on the part of the ordinary citizen, a feeling of impotence in the face of enormous power. It’s not that people are apathetic; they do care about what is going on, but don’t know what to do about it, so they do nothing, and appear to be indifferent. Howard Zinn, in the Huffington Post (Jan. 28, 2010)
APHORISMS
(includes ADAGES; see also ANTHOLOGISTS & ANTHOLOGIES and EPIGRAMS and MAXIMS and PROVERBS and QUOTATIONS and SAYINGS)
To read more than a few aphorisms at once is like continuing to water the lawn once it is fully saturated. The excess reading just runs off without soaking, in the same way excess watering runs off the soil. Wallace Alcorn, journal entry (March 20, 2009); in a personal communication to the compiler
The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. William R. Alger, “The Utility and the Futility of Aphorisms,” in Atlantic Monthly (Feb., 1863)
Alger continued: “They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs.” These are the beginning words of the article; to see the full piece, go to ALGER ON APHORISMS
ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites present an abridged version of Alger’s thought: Aphorisms are portable wisdom. This should be regarded as a paraphrase, not a direct quotation.
Auden added: “The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.”
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigram. Our heart’s blood, as we write with it, turns to mere dull ink. F. H. Bradley, in Aphorisms (1930)
ERROR ALERT: This observation is often mistakenly presented as if it read cold epigrams. Also, many internet sites mistakenly say “as we write it,” and not “as we write with it.”
How many of us have been incited to reason, have first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, in “The New Phaedo,” in The Student: A Series of Papers (1835)
Coleridge continued: “And the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.”
QUOTATION CAUTION: This observation has not been found in any of Diderot’s published works.
All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in a sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character, or illustrates an existence. Benjamin Disraeli, the narrator, in Coningsby (1844)
Aphorisms give you more for your time and money than any other literary form. Only the poem comes near to it, but then most good poems either start off from an aphorism or arrive at one. Louis Dudek, in Notebooks, 1960–1994 (1994)
Dudek concluded: “Aphorisms and epigrams are the corner-stones of literary art.”
We should treat them not as food but as condiments, not to sufficiency but for delight. Desiderius Erasmus, on adages, in Adages (1508)
Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose. Northrop Frye, quoted In Richard Kostelanetz, “The Literature Professors’ Literature Professor,” Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall, 1978)
Like a good joke, a good aphorism has a punch line, a quick verbal or psychological flip, a sudden sting in the tail that gives you a jolt. James Geary, in The World in a Phrase (2005)
Geary continued: “Both jokes and aphorisms lift you into a wonderful weightless state—that giddy point just after the joke is finished and just before you get it—then drop you back down to earth in some completely unexpected place. Aphorisms, like jokes, teach the mind to do the twist.”
Aphorisms are literary loners, set apart from the world because they’re worlds unto themselves. They’re like porcupines, bristling with prickly philosophical spines. Rub them the wrong way and you’re in for a surprise. James Geary, in The World in a Phrase (2005)
Like sushi, aphorisms come in small portions, are exquisitely formed, and always leave you wanting more. James Geary, in Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists (2007)
The aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a general. Stefan Kanfer, “Proverbs or Aphorisms,” a Time magazine essay (June 11, 1983)
In a striking metaphorical contrast between aphorisms and proverbs, Kanfer added about the latter: “A proverb is anonymous human history compressed to the size of a seed.”
Aphorisms are the blossoms of thought. They may depend on stalk and soil, but their beauty is independent of those prerequisites. Roger Kimball, “G. C. Lichtenberg: A ‘Spy on Humanity,’” in The New Criterion (May, 2002)
An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half. Karl Kraus, in Die Fackel (Jan. 19, 1909); later reprinted in Thomas Szasz, Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry (1976)
An aphorism need not be true, but it should surpass the truth. It must go beyond it with one leap. Karl Kraus, in Dicta and Contradicta (2001; orig. pub. 1909 as Sprüche und Widersprüche [Sayings and Gainsayings])
Aphorisms respect the wisdom of silence by disturbing it, but briefly. Yahia Lababidi, “Aphorisms on Art, Morality & Spirit,”
Elephant Journal Nov. 3, 2013)
An aphorism/should be/like a burr;/sting,/…/and leave/a little soreness. Irving Layton, in The Whole Bloody Bird: Obs, Aphs & Pomes (1969)
QUOTE NOTE: A short flight is a brilliant metaphor for an aphorism, and a perfect title for a compilation of aphorisms. Lough and Stein’s quotation anthology was subtitled: Thirty-Two Modern Writers Share Aphorisms of Insight, Inspiration, and Wit.
The essence of aphorism is the compression of a mass of thought into a single saying…it is good sense brought to a point. John Morley, quoted by Elizabeth Lee, in Introduction to La Bruyère and Vauvenargues (1903
There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion. Vladimir Nabokov, in The Gift (1937; tr. 1963)
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book—what everyone else does not say in a whole book. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Things the Germans Lack,” in Twilight of the Idols (1888)
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog. Friedrich von Schlegel, Aphorism No. 207, in Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)
Just prior to this observation, Smith had written: “What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?”
APHRODISIAC
(see also MALE-FEMALE DYNAMICS and SEX and SEX APPEAL)
ERROR ALERT: This is the way the quotation originally appears, the conclusion to a passage about contrasting sexual triggers in men and women. In a number of popular quotation anthologies, and on hundreds of internet sites, the quotation is mistakenly presented this way: “For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.”
I grew suspicious when I first encountered the erroneous quotation, believing Allende would have more likely written best aphrodisiac is words rather than best aphrodisiacs are words. When I tracked down the original quotation, I discovered the widely-quoted version is also wrong in several other ways, appearing to be a paraphrase of Allende’s original thought rather than a direct quotation. I present her full original thought below. In contrast to men, who primarily respond to a visual stimulus, Allende writes:
“We women have a better developed sense of the ridiculous, and besides, our sensuality is tied to our imagination and our auditory nerves. It may be that the only way we will listen is if someone whispers in our ear. The G spot is in the ears, and anyone who goofs around looking for it farther down is wasting his time and ours. Professional lovers, and I am referring not just to lotharios like Casanova, Valentino, and Julio Iglesias, but to the quantities of men who collect amorous conquests to prove their virility with quantity—since quality—is a question of luck—know that with women the best aphrodisiac is words.”
Talent is a very potent aphrodisiac. When someone is incredibly gifted, I find them incredibly sexy. Patricia Clarkson, quoted in
Los Angeles magazine (Feb., 2004)
Greene was likely inspired by the popular French proverb: “Power is an aphrodisiac” (more on this—including the famous Kissinger update—in the Kissinger entry below). Greene had previously used the fame-as-aphrodisiac metaphor in his novel A Burnt-Out Case (1961), where the protagonist says to another character: “You are famous among your readers and fame is a potent aphrodisiac. Married women are the easiest.”
QUOTE NOTE: Two years earlier (Jan. 19, 1971), The New York Times quoted Kissinger as making a similar remark: “Power is the great aphrodisiac.” The essential idea, however, was not original to Kissinger. A student of history, he was almost certainly inspired by a similar observation Napoleon made to his personal valet, Louis Constant Wairy. In Wairy’s memoirs, first published in Paris in 1830, he quoted the French emperor as saying about women: “Power is what they like—it is the greatest of all aphrodisiacs.”
APOCALYPSE
(see also ANNIHILATION and CATACLYSM and CATASTROPHE and ARMAGEDDON) )
The premonition of apocalypse springs eternal in the human breast. Irving Kristol, “Our Shaken Foundations,” Fortune magazine (July, 1968)
APOLOGY
(includes SAYING “I’M SORRY”; see also ATONEMENT and FORGIVENESS and RECONCILIATION and REGRET and REMORSE)
ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites attribute this saying to Kimberly Johnson or Ann Landers (some even cite Benjamin Franklin). According to quotation researcher Barry Popik, the saying first emerged as an anonymous saying in 1996, and only later began to be attributed to others. There is a respected American poet and critic by the name of Kimberly Johnson, but she has disavowed authorship of the saying.
QUOTE NOTE: This quotation has become quite popular in recent years and has all the characteristics—succinctness, salience, sensibility—that might one day elevate it to the status of a modern proverb (actor Will Smith even passed along a version of it in a June 10, 2014 Tweet).
ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites attribute the quotation to Brin only, and mistakenly phrase it: Why do people always apologize to corpses?
Apology is birthed in the womb of regret. We regret the pain we have caused, the disappointment, the inconvenience, the betrayal of trust. Regret focuses on what you did or failed to do and how it affected the other person. Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas, in The Five Languages of Apology (2006)
Earlier in the book, Chapman and Thomas had written: “Genuine apology opens the door to the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation. Then we can continue to build the relationship. Without apology, the offense sits as a barrier, and the quality of the relationship is diminished.”
A stiff apology is a second insult…. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt. G. K. Chesterton, “The Real Dr. Johnson,” in The Common Man (1950)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation appears in almost all anthologies and, technically, it is accurate as presented. You might be interested in knowing, though, that the full quotation appeared in an admiring essay that Chesterton wrote about Dr. Samuel Johnson. Here’s the full passage:
“We have all heard enough to fill a book about Dr. Johnson’s incivilities. I wish they would compile another book consisting of Dr. Johnson’s apologies. There is no better test of a man’s ultimate chivalry and integrity than how he behaves when he is wrong; and Johnson behaved very well. He understood (what so many faultlessly polite people do not understand) that a stiff apology is a second insult. He understood that the injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.”
It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize. Stephen R. Covey, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
An insult is twice as deep as an apology. Charles William Day, in The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos (1844)
Day continued: “An insult strikes to the heart, and rankles there; whilst an apology merely skins over the surface, but never heals the wound.”
Never apologize for showing feeling, my friend. Remember that when you do so, you apologize for truth. Benjamin Disraeli, the title character speaking, in Contarini Fleming (1832)
Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past—the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive. Tyron Edwards, in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly present this version of the thought: “Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past.”
An apology is the superglue of life! It can repair just about anything. Lynn Johnston, the character Sharon Edwards speaking, in the syndicated comic strip For Better or For Worse (May 31, 1994)
QUOTE NOTE: This saying has become so popular it’s almost achieved the status of a modern proverb. Johnston, an award-winning Canadian cartoonist began writing the strip in 1978, and it is currently syndicated in nearly 2000 newspapers around the world. After years of unsuccessful attempts to track down the original source of the quotation, I put the incomparable quotation sleuth Garson O’Toole on the case—and he didn’t disappoint. See this 2016 Quote Investigator post.
Apology is humanity’s perfect response to imperfection. John Kador, in Effective Apology: Mending Fences, Building Bridges, and Restoring Trust (2009)
Kador went on to add: “Apology sends the clearest signal that we have the strength of character to reconcile ourselves with the truth. Apology is the most courageous gesture we can make to ourselves.”
Apologies rebuild the bridge that gets severed when we hurt someone else, either intentionally or by accident. Apologies don’t require us to grovel or wallow in guilt. We simply acknowledge that our actions were insensitive, unkind, or harmful and say we are sorry. Charlotte Kasl, in If the Buddha Dated: A Handbook for Finding Love on a Spiritual Path (1999)
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. Alexander Pope, “Thoughts on Various Subjects,” in Miscellanies, Vol. 2 (1712)
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. P. G. Wodehouse, the narrator, in The Man Upstairs (1914)
APOTHEGM
(see also APHORISM and EPIGRAM and MAXIM and QUOTATION and PLATITUDES and PROVERBS and SAYINGS)
Nor do apothegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use: as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knot of business and affairs. Francis Bacon, in De Augmentis Scientarum (1623)
APPAREL
(see also APPEARANCE and CHIC and CLASS and CLOTHES & CLOTHING and CONFORMITY and DRESSES and ELEGANCE and FASHION and GLAMOUR and HATS & HEADWEAR and SHOES and STYLE and TASTE and TRENDS)
Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it, nor too precisely in it…where the eye is the jury, thy apparel is the evidence. Francis Quarles, in Enchiridion (1640)
APPEARANCE & REALITY
(see also DECEPTION and ILLUSION and MASKS and REALITY and SUPERFICIALITY)
QUOTE NOTE: Writing twenty-five-hundred years later, Thomas Carlyle was almost certainly inspired by Aesop’s fable when he wrote in Sartor Resartus (1833–34): “How we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake!”
If you go through life trading on your good looks, there’ll come a time when no one wants to trade. Lynne Alpern & Esther Blumenfeld, in Oh, Lord, I Sound Just Like Mama (1986)
Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? Edith Sitwell, at age seventy-five, in E. Salter, Edith Sitwell (1979)
APPEASERS & APPEASEMENT
(see also ACCOMMODATION and AGREEMENT and COMPROMISE and CONCILIATION and TREATIES)
Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian. Heywood Broun, quoted in Lin Yutang, The Wisdom of China and India (1942)
QUOTE NOTE: Yutang expressed his admiration for the observation by writing: “The folly of appeasers was once wittily expressed by Heywood Broun in Aesop fashion.”
ERROR ALERT: This is the way the quotation appeared in a Dec., 1954 issue of Reader’s Digest, but it has never been found in Churchill’s writings, speeches, press conferences, radio addresses, or parliamentary debates. Some respected quotation anthologies say it was offered in a House of Commons debate in 1938 or 1940, but that does not appear to be the case. It does not show up at all in Richard Langworth’s definitive collection of Churchill quotations, Churchill by Himself (2008). I now regard it as a paraphrase of remarks Churchill made in a radio address to the British people on January 20, 1940. Speaking of European nations that attempted to remain neutral in the early stages of WWII, he said:
Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear—I fear greatly—the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar, even more loudly, even more widely.
It was a prescient speech. Within four months, three nations that had earlier proclaimed a strict neutrality (Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium) were overrun by German forces.
QUOTE NOTE: The remark came one of FDR’s famous “Fireside Chats.” He continued: “There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.”
I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air—the rather nauseating stench of appeasement. Margaret Thatcher, in House of Commons debate (Oct. 30, 1990) after Saddam Hussein’s armed forces invaded Kuwait
QUOTE NOTE: The British Prime Minister kept her cool in the contentious debate, during which one House member disrespectfully called her a “stupid, negative woman” and recklessly charged: “You would love a war.” She ended her response by saying: “Saddam Hussein started a war, and it continues day after day with the killing, murder, torture and brutal treatment of people. Some people—and most Members of the House—have the guts to stand up to him.”
APPETITE
(see also COOKERY & COOKING and DINNERS & DINING and FOOD and EATING and GASTRONOMY and GLUTTONY and HUNGER and OBESITY)
The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves. Joseph Addison, in The Spectator (July 18,1711)
Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur’. That is the way to inculcate strength of mind. Charles Dickens, Mr. Squeers speaking, in Nicholas Nickleby (1838–39)
QUOTE NOTE: This admonition from the hypocritical schoolmaster to his young charges appears in one of literary history’s most famous scenes on the theme of do as I say and not as I do.
I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Montaigne; Or, The Skeptic,” in Representative Men (1850)
Appetite is essentially insatiable, and . . . will infallibly discover congenial agencies (mechanical and political) of expression. Marshall McLuhan, “American Advertising,” in Horizon (London; October 1947)
And appetite, a universal wolf,/So doubly seconded with will and power,/Must make perforce an universal prey/And last eat up himself. William Shakespeare, the character Ulysses speaking, in Troilus and Cressida (1602)
QUOTE NOTE: As a result of this passage, it is now popular to view an out-of-control appetite as a hungry beast that will ultimately prey upon—and devour—itself.
’Tis not the meat, but ’tis the appetite/Makes eating a delight. Sir John Suckling, “Of Thee, Kind Boy,” in Fragmenta Aurea (1646)
The appetite grows for what it feeds on. Ida B. Wells, an 1889 remark, quoted in Linda O. McMurry, To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells (1998)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is presented in almost all quotation anthologies, but it originally appeared as part of a larger remark. Wells, a pioneering African-American civil rights activist with a desire to edit and publish her own newspaper, originally said about her dream: “Since the appetite grows for what it feeds on, the desire came to own a paper.”
APPLAUSE
(see also ADMIRATION and APPRECIATION and OVATION and PRAISE)
Why, if there’s nothing else, there’s applause. I’ve listened backstage to people applaud. It’s like, like waves of love coming over the footlights. Anne Baxter, as the character Eve Harrington, in the 1950 film All About Eve (screenplay by Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
O, popular applause! What heart of man/Is proof against thy sweet, seducing charms? William Cowper, in The Task (1785)
QUOTE NOTE: The observation originally appeared in a 1908 issue of Fra magazine, where it was written this way: “We flatter only those we fear—the highest applause is silence.” Hubbard was almost certainly inspired by an 1838 observation by Ralph Waldo Emerson, seen above. See also the Alfred Jarry entry below.
The applause of silence is the only kind that counts. Alfred Jarry, from a 1960 French publication, reprinted in The Selected Works of Alfred Jarry (1965; R. Shattuck & S. W. Taylors, eds.)
The applause of a single human being is of a great consequence. Samuel Johnson, a 1780 remark, quoted by James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
There is no applause that so flatters a man as that which he wrings from unwilling throats. Ouida (pen name of Maria Louise Ramé), the title character speaking, “Pipistrello,” in Pipistrello and Other Stories (1880)
Applause is a receipt, not a note of demand. Artur Schnabel, explaining why he did not perform encores after extended applause, in The Saturday Review of Literature (Sep. 29, 1951)
When most the world applauds you, most beware/’Tis often less a blessing than a snare. Edward Young, “Satire VI. On Women,” in Love of Fame, The Universal Passion (1728)
APPLES
(includes APPLE PIE; see also BANANAS and FRUIT and FRUIT METAPHORS and FRUITS, N.E.C., and GRAPES and ORANGES and VEGETABLES)
Three Apples that changed the world: The first tempted Eve, the second inspired Newton, and the third was offered to the world half eaten by Steve Jobs. Author Unknown, sign on window of Apple Store Museum in Prague (reported by Bill Case)
Imagination seems to be a glory and a misery, a blessing and a curse. Adam, to his sorrow, lacked it. Eve, to her sorrow, possessed it. Had both been blessed—or cursed—with it, there would have been much keener competition for the apple. Stella Benson, the voice of the narrator, in I Pose (1915)
It wasn’t sin that was born on the day Eve picked her apple: what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience. Oriana Fallaci, a reflection of the unnamed narrator, in the heavily autobiographical Letter to a Child Never Born: A Novel (1975)
A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard—by stealing what he has a taste for and can carry off. Archibald MacLeish, quoted in Charles Poore, “Mr. MacLeish and the Disenchantmentarians,” The New York Times (Jan. 25, 1968)
QUOTE NOTE: The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) reports that proverb scholar Wolfgang Mieder has traced this proverb to 1554 in German.
Ever since Eve gave Adam the apple, there has been a misunderstanding between the sexes about gifts. Nan Robertson, in a column on Christmas shopping (“‘Misunderstood’ Men Offer Words on Gifts; Most Bought Presents”), in The New York Times (Nov. 28, 1957)
QUOTE NOTE: This has become one of Sagan’s most popular quotations, even though many have trouble explaining exactly what the saying actually means. In the book, a companion volume to his historic 1980 PBS television series, Sagan preceded the observation by writing:
“To make an apple pie, you need wheat, apples, a pinch of this and that, and the heat of the oven. The ingredients are made of molecules—sugar, say, or water. The molecules, in turn, are made of atoms—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and a few others. Where do these atoms come from? Except for hydrogen, they are all made in stars. A star is a kind of cosmic kitchen inside which atoms of hydrogen are cooked into heavier atoms. Stars condense from interstellar gas and dust, which are composed mostly of hydrogen. But the hydrogen was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos.”
Ingratitude is the frost that nips the flower even as it opens, that shrivels the generous apple on the branch, that freezes the fountain in mid-flow and numbs the hand, even in the very act of giving. Ann Wroe, “Ingratitude Is the Deadliest Sin,” in
Intelligent Life magazine (May/June, 2014)
Wroe continued: “It is a sin of silence, absence and omission, as winter’s sin is a lack of light; a sin against charity, which otherwise warms the heart and, in the truest sense, makes the world turn.”
APPRECIATION
(see also ADMIRATION and APPLAUSE and COMPLIMENTS and ENCOURAGEMENT and FLATTERY and OVATION and PRAISE and RECOGNITION)
We humans are appreciation junkies, especially when it comes from an authority figure or someone in a leadership position. Jack Altschuler, in personal communication to the compiler (Feb. 11, 2018)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all Internet sites—and many published quotation anthologies—attribute this quotation to Voltaire, but it has not been found in his writings.
QUOTE NOTE: Brooks felt that those in leadership and management positions needed to be especially cognizant of the needs for praise and appreciation. Just earlier, He wrote: “I beg you to think of this, you who are set in positions of superintendence and authority.”
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Dale Carnegie, quoted in Dorothy Carnegie, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking (1962)
Carnegie continued: “Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.”
The very heart of appreciation, according to Chesterton, was the simple ability to experience enjoyment—over even the smallest things. He went on to write: “The real difficulty of man is not to enjoy lamp-posts or landscapes, not to enjoy dandelions or chops, but to enjoy enjoyment. That is the practical problem which the philosopher has to solve.”
The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship. Amelia Earhart, “My Husband,” in Redbook magazine (Sep., 1932)
The greatest humiliation in life is to work hard on something from which you expect great appreciation, and then fail to get it. E. W. Howe, “Miscellany of Life,” in
Ventures in Common Sense (1919)
Howells continued: “Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from a fine physical state. It cannot be brought. But it is the keenest joy, after all, and the toiler’s truest and best reward.”
I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have, than to have things I am not able to appreciate. Elbert Hubbard, in
The Philistine (March, 1902)
The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty! William Hurt, quoted in Deborah Caulfield, “William Hurt: Through A Glass Darkly,” the Los Angeles Times (Sep. 15, 1985)
QUOTE NOTE: James wrote the letter six years after he had come out with Psychology, the first textbook of psychology published in America. After receiving the gift of an azalea plant from the young women in his Philosophy 2A class, James was so moved by the gift and accompanying note of appreciation that he penned a letter to the class. The letter is so intriguing, I’m reproducing it in its entirety below:
“Dear Young Ladies,
I am deeply touched by your remembrance. It is the first time anyone ever treated me so kindly, so you may well believe that the impression on the heart of the lonely sufferer will be even more durable than the impression on your minds of all the teachings of Philosophy 2A. I now perceive one immense omission in my Psychology—the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated, and I left it out altogether from the book, because I had never had it gratified until now. I fear that you have let lose a demon in me, and that all my actions will now be for the sake of such rewards.”
One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. Carl Jung, “The Gifted Child,” (1942), in The Development of Personality (1954)
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. John F. Kennedy, in Thanksgiving Day Proclamation (Nov. 4, 1963)
Brains, on the whole, are like hearts, and they go where they are appreciated. Robert S. McNamara, in The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office (1968)
There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude. Friedrich Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (1878)
QUOTE NOTE: Appreciation is a good thing, of course, but like all good things, it can be carried too far. And few people have expressed that thought better than Nietzsche does here.
I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what’s best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we’re doing what God does all the time; so, in appreciating our neighbor, we’re participating in something truly sacred. Fred Rogers, in
Commencement Address, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont (May, 2001)
This wonderful passage about the sacred nature of appreciation came at the very beginning of the address, directly after the opening words: “For a long time I wondered why I felt like bowing when people showed their appreciation for the work that I’ve been privileged to do. And I’ve come to understand that those of us who bow are probably, whether we know it or not, acknowledging the presence of the eternal in our neighbor.”
Stoddard Continued: “When we’re conscious of all the good and beautiful things and people in our lives, not judging, but living in continuous gratitude, we’re free to connect with the great, timeless truth. When we show appreciation, we’re recognizing the divinity within us, our true identity.”
Only a just appreciation of things will enable us to possess them in tranquility, or console ourselves for their loss. Anne Sophie Swetchine, in The Writings of Madame Swetchine (1869; Count de Falloux, ed.)
When you don’t come from struggle, gaining appreciation is a quality that’s difficult to come by. Shania Twain, in interview with Holly George Warren,
Redbook magazine (Nov. 6, 2007)
QUOTE NOTE: Twain, the Country & Western music superstar who grew up in poverty in rural Ontario, was thinking about how different life was going to be for her six-year-old son Eja. She added: “We go out of our way to try to keep him appreciative.”
APPROBATION
(see also ACCEPTANCE and ADMIRATION and APPLAUSE and APPRECIATION and APPROVAL and COMPLIMENTS and ENCOURAGEMENT and PRAISE and RECOGNITION)
APPROVAL
(includes SEEKING APPROVAL; see also ACCEPTANCE and ADMIRATION and APPLAUSE and APPRECIATION and APPROBATION and COMPLIMENTS and ENCOURAGEMENT and PRAISE and RECOGNITION)
I believe that we, as a nation, have a complex about being being liked and admired that gets in the way of our true functions. Dorothy Carnegie, Don’t Grow Old—Grow Up! (1956)
Material things aside, we need not advice but approval. Coco Chanel, quoted in Marcel Haedrich, Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets (1972)
Understanding is the beginning of approving. André Gide, a 1902 entry, in Journals (Justin O'Brien, ed.)
Be careful not to enter the world with any need to seduce, charm, conquer what you do not really want only for the sake of approval. Otto Rank, quoted in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4 (1971)
Rank continued: “This is what causes the frozen moment before people, and cuts all naturalness and trust.”
I wanted him to cherish and approve of me, not as he had when I was a child, but as the woman I was, who had her own mind and had made her own choices. Adrienne Rich, on her father, “Split at the Root,” in Blood, Bread, and Poetry (1986)
Never in her life had any object, or friendship, or experience acquired value for her save through the eyes of others. Gabrielle Roy, in The Tin Flute (1947)
I will not ask that you, nor you, approve. The wild thyme is itself, nor asks consent of rose nor reed. Muriel Strode, in My Little Book of Prayer (1905)
There’s a big difference between tolerance and approval, and I have no right to expect or demand the latter from anyone. Norah Vincent, “Tolerance, Not Approval,” in
The Advocate (Oct. 9, 2001)
QUOTE NOTE: Vincent's article was a kind of open letter to the gay community. She went on to write: “I'm an adult. I don't need unconditional approval anymore. If the gay movement is to grow out of its adolescence, it too has to move beyond the puerile need for approval and graduate to the more sensible appeal for and practice of tolerance.”
ARCHITECTS & ARCHITECTURE
(see also ART and ARTISTS and BEAUTY and BUILDERS & BUILDING and CITY PLANNING and DESIGN and DRAWING and ENGINEERS & ENGINEERING and HOUSE and SKYSCRAPERS)
Architect, n. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money. Ambrose Bierce, in
The Devil’s Dictionary (1911). Also an example of
chiasmus.
We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. Winston Churchill, in House of Commons speech (Oct. 28, 1943). Another example of
chiasmus.
Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul. Ernest Dimnet, in What We Live By (1932)
The home of the Utopian impulse was architecture rather than painting or sculpture. Painting can make us happy, but building is the art we live in; it is the social art par excellence, the carapace of political fantasy, the exoskeleton of one’s economic dreams. It is also the one art nobody can escape. Robert Hughes, “Trouble in Utopia,” in The Shock of the New (1991; 2nd ed.)
ERROR ALERT: This observation has also been commonly presented in this abridged version: “Architecture is the one art nobody can escape.”
Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book. Victor Hugo, the voice of the narrator, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831)
QUOTE NOTE: This is a modern translation of a passage that was originally presented this way: “Architecture has been the great manuscript of the human race. And this is true to such a degree, that not only every religious symbol, but every human thought, has its page and its memorial in that cast book.” Hugo’s classic novel was originally titled Notre-Dame de Paris when it was published in 1931. Because Gothic novels were all the rage at the time, the title was changed to The Hunchback of Notre-Dame when an English edition was published in 1833.
QUOTE NOTE: Philip Johnson was one of the twentieth century’s most influential architects, and this is one of his most popular quotations. While I’ve long admired Johnson, I’ve never been particularly fond of this observation. However, it did inspire me to pen this spin-off: “Architecture is the art of how to taste space.”
Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms. Now it is persuasive, even flattering, and at other times merely commanding. Friedrich Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols (1888)
QUOTE NOTE: This passage has been translated in several other ways, including: “Architecture is a sort of eloquence of power embodied in forms, sometimes persuading, even flattering, and sometimes merely commanding.”
QUOTE NOTE: This observation is often attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and it is true that Goethe did describe architecture as frozen music (or petrified music in some translations) in an 1829 letter, according to Johann Peter Eckermann in Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of His Life, Vol. II (1836). Schelling should be regarded as the original author of the thought.
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines. Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted in The New York Times (Oct. 4, 1953)
A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart. Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted in Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright: Master Builder (1997)
Wright continued: “It is the love of the thing he does that really qualifies him in the end.”
ARGUMENTS & DISPUTES
(see also ADVERSARIES & ANTAGONISTS and ANGER and CONFLICT and DISAGREEMENTS and ENEMIES and FIGHTS & FIGHTING and OPPOSITION and QUARRELS and SHOUTING & YELLING)
Our disputants put me in mind of the skuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible. Joseph Addison, in The Spectator (Sep. 5, 1712)
Addison was describing a marine creature now known as the cuttlefish. Like a squid or octopus, an endangered cuttlefish is able to expel an ink-like pigment from an internal sac to evade predators.
ERROR ALERT: Many books and internet sites mistakenly attribute this quotation to W. C. Fields. The observation is also commonly presented as a piece of advice (“You don't have to attend every argument you’re invited to”).
An inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both. Maria Edgeworth, in letter from Caroline to Julia, in Letters of Julia and Caroline (1795)
The best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments. R. A. Fisher, in Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference (1956)
Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic. William E. Gladstone, in The Might of Right (1880, E. E. Brown, ed.)
The successful conciliation of a dispute is marked by the feeling of each side that it has “won.” (If each side feels the other has got the better of it in the settlement, the dispute has only been postponed, not resolved.) Sydney J. Harris, in his “Strictly Personal” syndicated column (Oct. 19, 1979)
The most important tactic in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face. Sydney J. Harris, in Pieces of Eight (1982)
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites and far too many books present a mistakenly-phrased version of this quotation: The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.
Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding. Samuel Johnson, a June, 1784 remark, quoted by James Boswell, in Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton, in Aeropagitica (1644)
Earlier, Milton had written: “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”
It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing. John Henry Newman, in an 1831 sermon on “The Usurpations of Reason”; reprinted in Oxford University Sermons (1843)
Pope introduced the thought by writing: “True disputants are like true sportsmen, their whole delight is in the pursuit.”
Rand began the essay by writing: “There is a certain type of argument which, in fact, is not an argument, but a means of forestalling debate and extorting an opponent’s agreement with one’s undiscussed notions. It is a message of bypassing logic by means of psychological pressure.”
At Cambridge I was taught a laudable method of argument: you never personalize, but you have absolutely no respect for people’s opinions. You are never rude to the person, but you can be savagely rude about what the person thinks. Salman Rushdie, “Do We Have to Fight the Battle for the Enlightenment All Over Again?” in
The Independent (London; Jan. 22, 2005)
Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one. George Savile (Lord Halifax), “Of Anger,” in Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections (1750)
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation; as it is generally in books the worst sort of reading. Jonathan Swift, “Hints on Good Manners,” in A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding (1754; published posthumously)
ERROR ALERT: On almost all internet sites, the first portion of this observation is mistakenly presented: “Argument is the worst sort of conversation.”
ARISTOCRACY & ARISTOCRATS
(see also and AUTOCRACY and CLASS and DEMOCRACY and DICTATORSHIP and ELECTIONS and EQUALITY and FREEDOM and GOVERNMENT and LIBERTY and MERITOCRACY and POLITICIANS and POLITICS and REVOLUTION and TYRANNY and VOTING and WEALTH)
The aristocracy of wealth is the lowest and commonest possible. It is a pity that one meets it in America more than one ought to. One can even, in walking through the streets, hear the expression, “He is worth so and so many dollars!” Fredrika Bremer, from an 1850 letter, in America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer (1924)
Bremer preceded the thought by writing: “People who are so arrogant on account of their wealth are about equal in civilization to Laplanders, who measure a man’s worth by the number of his reindeer. A man with a thousand reindeer is a very great man.”
The aristocrat, when he wants to, has very good manners. The Scottish upper classes, in particular, have that shell-shocked look that probably comes from banging their heads on low beams leaping to their feet whenever a woman comes into the room. Aristocrats are also deeply male chauvinist, and…on the whole they tend to be reactionary. Jilly Cooper, in Class (1979)
I believe in aristocracy, though—if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. E. M. Forster, “What I Believe,” in The Nation (July 16, 1938)
Forster added: “They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.”
In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way. Celia Green, in The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)
Even if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. Harriet Martineau, in Society in America, Vol. 1 (1837)
Martineau continued: “The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away.”
Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme. Harriet Martineau, in Society in America, Vol. 3 (1837)
In her book, Martineau also wrote: “Even if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away.”
Whatever advantages may have arisen, in the past, out of the existence of a specially favored and highly privileged aristocracy, it is clear to me that today no argument can stand that supports unequal opportunity or any intrinsic disqualification for sharing in the whole of life. Margaret Mead, in Blackberry Winter (1972)
Black is the most aristocratic color of all. The only aristocratic color. For me this is the ultimate. You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing. There is no color that will give you the feeling of totality. Of peace. Of greatness. Of quietness. Of excitement. I have seen things that were transformed into black, that took on just greatness.” Louise Nevelson, in Dawns + Dusks (1976)
Nevelson preceded the thought by writing: “But when I fell in love with black, it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors.”
The aristocratic rebel, since he has enough to eat, must have other causes of discontent. Bertrand Russell, in The History of Western Philosophy (1946)
When properly trained and cared for, the horse has about him an aristocratic air that is unmatched by any other animal, domesticated or wild. Marietta Whittlesey, in Majesty of the Horse (1989)
ARIZONA
ARKANSAS
ARMS
ARROGANCE
(see also BOASTING and BRAGGING & BLUSTERING and CONCEIT and HUMILITY and SELF-IMPORTANCE and SELF-PROMOTION)
QUOTATION CAUTION: So far, I’ve been unable to confirm the authenticity of this quotation.
Truth, acceptance of the truth, is a shattering experience. It shatters the binding shroud of culture trance. It rips apart smugness, arrogance, superiority, and self-importance. Paula Gunn Allen, in Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting, Border-Crossing Loose Cannons (1998)
Allen continued: “It requires acknowledgment of responsibility for the nature and quality of each of our own lives, our own inner lives as well as the life of the world. Truth, inwardly accepted, humbling truth, makes one vulnerable. You can't be right, self-righteous, and truthful at the same time.”
He realized…that the loudest are the least sincere, that arrogance is a quality of the ignorant, and that flatterers tend to be vicious. Isabel Allende, in Zorro (2006)
If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, “Do I really have anything to add?” If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation. Margaret Atwood, “An End to Audience?” in Second Words: Selected Critical Prose (1982)
All politicians are humble, and seldom let you forget it. They go around the country boasting about their humility. They are proud of their humility. Many are downright arrogant about their humility and insist that it qualifies them to be President. Russell Baker, “The Big Town,” in So This Is Depravity (1980)
The arrogance of race prejudice is an arrogance which defies what is scientifically known of human races. Ruth Benedict, a 1943 remark, quoted in Margaret Mead, An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict (1959)
There are some things the arrogant mind does not see; it is blinded by its vision of what it desires. Wendell Berry, “People, Land, and Community,” in Standing by Words (1983)
A bit later in the book, Bradshaw went on to add: “Arrogance is a way for a person to cover up shame. After years of arrogance, the arrogant person is so out of touch, she truly doesn’t know who she is. This is one of the greatest tragedies of shame cover-ups: not only does the person hide from others, she also hides from herself.”
The truest characters of ignorance/Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance. Samuel Butler (1613–1680), “Miscellaneous Thoughts,” in The Genuine Poetical Remains of Samuel Butler (Rev. ed., 1827; Robert Thyer, ed.)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the portion of the couplet that is routinely presented these days, but it formally ended this way: “As blind men use to bear their noses higher/Than those that have their eyes and sight entire.”
Born to wealth that he believed would make him always independent, [Robert] Moses felt no compulsion to turn associates into friends; arrogance is, after all, one of the coefficients of money. Robert A. Caro, in The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974)
The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. Rachel Carson, in Silent Spring (1962)
Arrogance occurs in people who have achieved something and believe that they independently caused their own success with no assistance, support, or input from others. Chérie Carter-Scott, in If Success Is a Game, These Are the Rules (2000)
Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves. Willa Cather, in Epilogue to Shadows on the Rock (1931)
Arrogance rides triumphantly through the gates, barely glancing at the old woman about to cut the rope and spring shut the trap. Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 4th Selection (1987)
Two ideas militate against our consciously contributing to a better world. The idea that we can do everything or the conclusion that we can do nothing to make this globe a better place to live are both temptations of the most insidious form. One leads to arrogance; the other to despair. Joan Chittister, in In a High Spiritual Season (1995)
Cumberland continued: “Let fortune shift the scene, and make the poor man rich, he runs at once into the vice that he declaimed against so feelingly; these are strange contradictions in the human character.”
No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex (1949)
The arrogance of some Christians would close heaven to them if, to their misfortune, it existed. Simone de Beauvoir, in All Said and Done (1972)
The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages. Cyrano de Bergerac, in The Other World (1657)
I regret nothing, says arrogance; I will regret nothing, says inexperience. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, in Aphorisms (1880)
He was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. George Eliot, Mrs. Irwin’s description of Craig, in Adam Bede (1859)
QUOTE NOTE: For the full passage in which this quotation appears, as well as some admiring remarks about the observation, see the accompanying note in DESCRIPTIONS—OF PEOPLE
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos. Stephen Jay Gould, summarizing a thought from Sigmund Freud, “Jove’s Thunderbolts,” in Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (1995)
Don’t confuse confidence with arrogance. Arrogance is being full of yourself, feeling you’re always right, and believing your accomplishments or abilities make you better than other people. Christie Hartman, in It's Not Him, It's You (2010)
Dr. Hartman continued: “People often believe arrogance is excessive confidence, but it’s really a lack of confidence. Arrogant people are insecure, and often repel others. Truly confident people feel good about themselves and attract others to them.”
Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities. David Hume, in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-42)
Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes. Erica Jong, “Jane Eyre’s Unbroken Will,” in What Do Women Want? (1998)
Cats are narcissistic. Their needs come before ours. They don’t understand the word No. They carry themselves with that aloof, arrogant sense of perpetual entitlement, they will jump up and insinuate themselves wherever they please–on your lap, on your newspaper, on your computer keyboard–and they really couldn’t care less how their behavior affects the people in their lives. I’ve had boyfriends like this; who needs such behavior in a housepet? Caroline Knapp, “Lucille Versus Stumpy: The (Real) Truth About Cats and Dogs,” in The Merry Recluse (2004)
QUOTE NOTE: Knapp’s essay, originally published in 1998, was written in response to an article (“Stumpy Versus Lucille: The Great Pet Debate”) that her friend and fellow journalist Ron Rosenbaum had written in his regular column in the New York Observer (Aug. 8, 1998). Rosenbaum, in proclaiming the superiority of cats–particularly his cat Stumpy–over dogs, had disparaged canines as “the pathetic transparent brown-nosers of the domestic animal kingdom” (see more on Rosenbaum’s views in DOGS and in CATS & DOGS). Knapp’s essay, a rejoinder to Rosenbaum’s thesis, proclaimed the superiority of dogs–particularly her dog Lucille–over cats.
Whenever men in their arrogance and pride set themselves up as absolute, they will be beaten to the ground. Benjamin E. Mays, “The Inescapable Christ” an address at Howard University (June 8, 1945)
Arrogance in persons of merit affronts us more than arrogance in those without merit; merit is itself an affront. Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, The Viking Book of Aphorisms (1962)
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood. George Santayana, in The Life of Reason (1905–06)
Because arrogance is born in personal vanity, arrogant people are driven without mercy. They can never get enough power to fill the soul’s needs or enough respect to overcome the fear that they deserve less than they are getting. Lewis B. Smedes, in Love Within Limits (1978)
Smedes, a popular Christian author, was one of the earliest writers to make a connection between acting superior as a defense against feeling inferior. His book also contained these other observations on the subject:
“When vanity creates arrogance, it creates a monster.”
“The root cause of arrogance is pride, but between the two stands vanity. Pride leaves us vain, and vanity pushes us toward arrogance.”
“Since the arrogant person can think of power only in terms of being more powerful than other people, he will always be fearful that that somebody else will threaten his power. To cover his insecurity, he becomes even more arrogant, and is ready to use any means to make his power more secure.”
Arrogant and domineering people can’t stand the least, lightest, faintest breath of criticism. It just kills them. Booth Tarkington, the character Eugene Morgan speaking, in The Magnificent Ambersons (1918)
Eugene preceded the thought by saying: “In all my life, the most arrogant people that I’ve known have been the most sensitive. The people who have done the most in contempt of other people’s opinion, and who consider themselves the highest above it, have been the most furious if it went against them.”
Arrogance really comes from insecurity, and in the end our feeling that we are bigger than others is really the flip side of our feeling that we are smaller than others. Desmond Tutu, in God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (2004)
Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as Superior Knowledge in all too many universities. Alice Walker, “A Talk: Convocation 1972,” in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983)
Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change. Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted in the Chicago Tribune (Sep. 26, 2004)
ART
(see also [Modern] ART and [Work of] ART and ARTIST and ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and PAINTING & PAINTERS and SCIENCE & ART and SCULPTURE & SCULPTORS)
True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Leaves From a Notebook,” in Ponkapog Papers (1903)
Art is an experience, not the formulation of a problem. Lindsay Anderson, quoted in The Times (London; March 29, 1989)
The object of art is to give life a shape, and to do it by every conceivable artifice. Jean Anouilh, the Count speaking, in The Rehearsal: A Play (1961, tr. By P. H. Johnson & K. Black); orig. La Répétition ou l’Amour puni (1950)
QUOTE NOTE: I’ve also seen the observation translated this way: “Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It’s the aim of art to give it some.”
Ardrey continued: “Not all of us pursue the inaccessible landscapes of the twelve-tone scale, just as not all of us strive for inaccessible mountain-tops, or glory in storms at sea. But the human incidence is there. Could it be that these two impractical pursuits—of beauty and of adventure's embrace—are simply two differing profiles of the same uniquely human reality?”
Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb. Jean Arp, quoted in Robert Motherwell, On My Way (1948)
The only real rival of love is Art, for that in itself is a deep personal passion, its function an act of creation, fed by some mysterious perversion of sex, and demanding all the imagination’s activities. Gertrude Atherton, in Julia France and Her Times (1912)
Baldwin added: “All artists, if they are to survive, are forced at last to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.”
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers. James Baldwin, “The Creative Process,” in The National Cultural Center’s Creative America (1962); reprinted in The Price of the Ticket (1985)
The first mistake of Art is to assume that it’s serious. Lester Bangs, “James Taylor Marked For Death,” in Who Put the Bomb (Winter/Spring, 1971)
Barnes added: “Art is not a brassière. At least, not in the English sense. But do not forget that brassière is the French for life-jacket.”
All expression, all art, is an indiscretion we commit against ourselves. This is not an “impoverishment” but an increase in wealth, for it is in this way that we make the short hours of our lives live on beyond themselves. Natalie Clifford Barney, “Scatterings” (1910), in A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney (1992; Anna Livia, ed.)
In another memorable line from the work, Barney wrote: “If only art were as rare as good taste.“
At the center of everything we call “the arts,” and children call “play,” is something which seems somehow alive. Lynda Barry, in What It Is (2008)
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity. John Barth, quoted in Charles B. Harris, Passionate Virtuosity: The Fiction of John Barth (1983)
QUOTE NOTE: The phrase passionate virtuosity, which Barth offered on a number of occasions over the years, became so singularly associated with him that Charles B. Harris selected it as the title of his 1983 critical study of Barth’s work (the Harris book also presented Barth’s most quotable version of the sentiment). Barth introduced the idea in an August, 1967 Atlantic Monthly article (“The Literature of Exhaustion”), in which he wrote: “My feeling about technique in art is that it has about the same value as technique in love-making. That is to say, on the one hand, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and, on the other hand, so does heartless skill; but what you want is passionate virtuosity.” He reprised the sentiment in his 1972 novel Chimera, where he had The Genie say to another character: “Heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal, Dunyazade; so does heartless skill. But what you want is passionate virtuosity.”
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. Mikhail Baryshnikov, quoted in “Baryshnikov: Gotta Dance,” Time magazine (May 19, 1975)
Later in the article, Baryshnikov observed: “There comes a moment in a young artist’s life when he knows he has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something out. Many performers are physically well trained but not morally disciplined and content onstage. They fall apart.” The full article may be seen at: "Gotta Dance"
Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal. Charles Baudelaire, in Salon of 1846 (1846); reprinted in Art in Paris, 1845–1862 (1981)
It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. Henry Ward Beecher, in Star Papers, or, Experiences of Art and Nature (1855)
Beecher added: “But those who have a passion for nature in the natural way, need no pictures nor galleries. Spring is their designer, and the whole year their artist.”
Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Clive Bell, in Art (1914)
Bell added: “Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.”
Art is the big yes. In art, you get a chance to make something where there was nothing. Marvin Bell, quoted in Garrison Keillor, The Writer’s Almanac (Aug. 3, 2012)
Bell, a poet who taught at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop for forty years, was named the first poet laureate of the state of Iowa in 2000. He began his observation this way: “Much of our lives involves the word ‘no.’ In school we are mostly told, ‘Don’t do it this way. Do it that way.’” Bell might have been inspired by an observation from Gore Vidal, to be found below in (WORK OF) ART.
Art strives for form, and hopes for beauty. George Bellows, quoted in Stanley Walker, City Editor (1934)
Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness that characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. Saul Bellow, in
Paris Review interview (Winter, 1966)
QUOTE NOTE: John Cheever, in the introduction to The Short Stories of John Cheever (1978) may have been inspired by this Bellow observation when he said more succinctly: “Art is the triumph over chaos.”
If Freud was right in saying that happiness is nothing more than the remission of habitual suffering, then it may be legitimate to say that art, in bringing relief from the absurd strivings of consciousness, from the enslaving superego, frees us for aesthetic bliss. Saul Bellow, in “The Distracted Public,” a 1990 Romanes Lecture at Oxford University; reprinted in It All Adds Up: From the Dim Past to the Uncertain Future (1994)
Later in the lecture, Bellow said: “If the remission of pain is happiness, then the emergence from distraction is aesthetic bliss.”
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly present the quotation without the word anyway.
Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. Georges Braque, journal entry, in Le Jour et la nuit: Cahiers 1917–52 (1952)
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. Samuel Butler, in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
After all, perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent, Albert Camus, “The Artist and His Time,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1961)
What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose. Willa Cather, a reflection of protagonist Thea Kronborg, in The Song of the Lark (1915)
Her secret? It is every artist’s secret…passion [ellipsis in original]. That is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is inimitable in cheap materials. Willa Cather, the character Mr. Harsanyi reflecting on Thea’s secret, in The Song of the Lark (1915)
Willa Cather, in a 1921 interview, quoted in L. Brent Bohlke, Willa Cather in Person (1986)
Cather introduced the thought by saying: “Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of.”
Chabon added: “The novelist, the cartoonist, the songwriter, knows that the gesture is doomed from the beginning but makes it anyway, flashes his or her bit of mirror, not on the chance that the signal will be seen or understood but as if such a chance existed.”
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Raymond Chandler, in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
QUOTE NOTE: This observation appeared under the heading “Great Thought.” Chandler continued: “Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.”
We talk of art as something artificial in comparison with life. But I sometimes fancy that the very highest art is more real than life itself. G. K. Chesterton, “A Defense of Humility,” in The Defendant (1902)
Art is to beauty what honor is to honesty. Winston Churchill, quoted in Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: Youth, 1874-1900 (1966)
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse. Winston Churchill, in speech to Royal Academy of Arts (May 11, 1953)
All great art comes from a sense of outrage. Glenn Close, quoted in Nina Darnton, “Glen Closer,” More magazine (June, 2002)
More than a decade earlier, in a December 1991 issue of Us magazine, Close had offered a similar thought: “I’ve always felt that behind any great creation, there’s a sense of outrage. I don’t think complacent people can do disturbing art.”
ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly present the observation as if it ended pram in the hallway.
QUOTE NOTE: Many anthologies and internet sites present only this portion of Connolly’s art-as-intoxication metaphor, leaving out the memorable conclusion: “that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”
Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. Joseph Conrad, in the Preface to The Nigger of Narcissus (1897)
Conrad continued: “Art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect.”
Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand triumphs. Charlotte Cushman, quoted in Emma Stebbin, Charlotte Cushman (1879)
Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master. Thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grandchild. Dante Alighieri, “The Inferno,” The Divine Comedy (1310-21)
Davies described the process as “Art’s distillation.” See the similar quote by Jacques Barzun earlier.
Art is vice. You don’t marry it legitimately, you rape it. Edgar Degas, quoted in Paul Lafond, Degas (1918)
QUOTE NOTE: Not surprisingly, this observation has been controversial. For a pithy rebuttal, see the Susan Sontag observation below.
QUOTE NOTE: Dewey’s point was that art should be more democratic and accessible, a part and parcel of everyday human experience—and not something restricted to sophisticates who live and work in the seclusion of ivory towers.
Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality. John Dewey, in Time and Individuality (1940)
Dewey continued: “Those who have the gift of creative expression in unusually large measure disclose the meaning of the individuality of others to those others. In participating in the work of art, they become artists in their activity. They learn to know and honor individuality in whatever form it appears. The fountains of creative activity are discovered and released. The free individuality which is the source of art is also the final source of creative development in time.”
ERROR ALERT: This is how the quotation appears on scores of web sites, but it is not how Dillard originally expressed the thought. It is an abridgment of what she wrote about the creations of artists in Living by Fiction (1983): “The art object is always passive in relation to its audience. It is alarmingly active, however, in relation to its creator. Far from being like a receptacle in which you, the artist, drop your ideas, and far from being like a lump of clay which you pummel until it fits your notion of an ashtray, the art object is more like an enthusiastic and ill-trained Labrador retriever which yanks you into traffic.”
Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. Theodore Dreiser, in Life, Art, and America (1917)
Art is the most passionate orgy within man’s grasp. Jean Dubuffet, a 1946 observation, later reprinted in Mildred Glimcher, Jean Dubuffet (1987)
QUOTE NOTE: The observation has also been translated: “Art is the most frenzied orgy man is capable of.”
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites mistakenly attribute this quotation to Aristotle.
If Art does not enlarge men’s sympathies, it does nothing morally. George Eliot, in an 1859 letter to Charles Bray, in The George Eliot Letters, Vol. 3 (1954; Gordon S. Haight, ed.)
Emerson added: “And, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.” George Bernard Shaw picked up on the theme in Man and Superman (1903), when he had the character Tanner say: “The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.” See also the earlier Cushman quotation and the related ARTIST quotation by Faulkner.
Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Notebook L,” in The Crack-Up (1945; Edmund Wilson, ed.)
Human life is a sad show, undoubtedly; ugly, heavy, and complex. Art has no other end, for people of feeling, than to conjure away the burden and bitterness. Gustave Flaubert, in letter to Amelie Bosquet (July 1864)
Forster continued: “Men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”
Art gropes, it stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce. John W. Gardner, in On Moral Fiction (1979)
QUOTE NOTE: In a number of recent quotation anthologies, the observation has been presented: “Art is either a revolutionist or a plagiarist.”
In art the best is good enough. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a journal entry (March, 1787), Italian Journey (1816)
The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity. Glenn Gould, quoted in Peter F. Ostwald, Glenn Gould: The Ecstasy and Tragedy of Genius (1998)
Gourmont introduced the thought by writing: “Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.”
Art…is the flower of life and, as seed, it gives back life. Rémy de Gourmont, in Selected Writings (1966)
Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper. Günter Grass, Professor Kuchen speaking, in The Tin Drum (1959)
Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Günter Grass, in interview in New Statesman & Society (June 22, 1990)
Grass continued: “Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.”
Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life. Robert Hayden, in Collected Prose: Robert Hayden (1984; Frederick Glaysher, ed.)
Art is, after all, only a trace—like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness. Robert Henri, in The Art Spirit (1923)
Henri’s book, a collection of his thoughts about art and life, also contained this observation: “No nation as yet is the home of art. Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.”
The highest art…sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood. Hermann Hesse, in Reflections (1974; V. Michels, ed.)
Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus. David Hockney, quoted in The Guardian (London; Oct. 26, 1988)
Art is the solution of a problem which cannot be expressed explicitly until it is solved. Piet Hein, quoted in Jim Hicks, “Piet Hein Bestrides Art and Science,” in
Life magazine (Oct. 14, 1966); later reprinted in
Grooks (1966)
There is/one art,/no more,/no less:/to do’all things/with art-/lessness. Piet Hein, quoted in Jim Hicks, “Piet Hein Bestrides Art and Science,” in
Life magazine (Oct. 14, 1966); later reprinted in
Grooks (1966)
Victor Hugo, in Preface to the play Cromwell (Oct., 1827)
QUOTE NOTE. In the Preface, which went on to become a kind of manifesto of the Romantic Movement, Hugo also wrote: “Mediocrity has no existence so far as art is concerned; art supplies wings not crutches.”
That fine problem of art—the finest of all, perhaps— truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal.* Victor Hugo, in William Shakespeare (1864)
The book also contained these other observations on the subject:
“Art moves. Hence its civilizing power.”
“In the domain of art there is no light without heat.”
“Civilization is exhaled from art as perfume from the flower.”
Dear God! How beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh. Victor Hugo, “Utility of the Beautiful,” in Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Biography: Postscriptum De Ma Vie (pub. posthumously 1901). Also an example of chiasmus.
Huxtable preceded the thought by writing: “Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes.”
Art requires, above all things, a suppression of self, a subordination of one’s self to an idea. Henry James, “Walt Whitman, Drum-Taps,” in The Nation (Nov. 16,1865)
ERROR ALERT: This observation is commonly presented as, “In art economy is always beautiful.”
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance. Henry James, in letter to H. G. Wells (specific date undetermined)
QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation often appears, but it was originally part of the following larger observation: “Perfectionism is the enemy of art. Since art is essentially divine play, not dogged work, it often happens that as one becomes more professionally driven one also becomes less capriciously playful.”
Art keeps one young, I think, because it keeps one perpetually a beginner, perpetually a child. Erica Jong, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Jessica Pruitt, in Shylock’s Daughter [formerly titled Serenissima] (1987)
Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end, James Joyce, the character Stephen Dedalus speaking, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
There is, in any art, a tendency to turn one’s own preferences into a monomaniac theory. Pauline Kael, in I Lost It at the Movies (1965)
Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. Paul Klee, “Creative Credo” (1920), in The Inward Vision (1958)
The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation. Hilton Kramer, quoted in Marilyn Bender, The Beautiful People (1967)
Art’s natural enemy—and man’s—is chaos. Today art is our most advanced attempt to map out our chaos so we can avoid disappearing into it. Jack Kroll, in “Arts in America,” a 1973 special issue of Newsweek; recalled in his New York Times obituary (June 9, 2000)
QUOTE NOTE: Here, Kronenberger is playing off the concluding lines of William Wordsworth’s ode: “Intimations of Immortality” (c. 1804): “To me the meanest flower that blows can give/Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” Kronenberger had preceded his spin-off by writing, “In art the reverse of Wordsworth’s saying is also true and immensely important.”
Art is that chalice into which we pour the wine of transcendence. Stanley Kunitz, “Speaking of Poetry” (written “Instead of a Foreword”), in Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected (1995)
Brave art…the best sense we can make of our time. Tony Kushner, quoted by John Lahr, in “After Angels,” The New Yorker magazine (Jan. 3, 2005)
Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass. Fran Lebowitz, in Metropolitan Life (1974)
Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo; after all, they have the same enemy, sterility. Ursula K. Le Guin, “A Citizen of Mondath,” in Language of the Night (1979)
Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. Ursula K. Le Guin, in Language of the Night (1979)
Le Guin continued: “To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.”
Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself if it is good. W. R. Lethaby, “Art and Workmanship,” in Form in Civilization: Collected Papers on Art and Labour (1922)
Here, Longfellow is playing off the familiar Latin proverb Ars longa, vita brevis (Art is long,life is short”).
Art, true art, is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. Amy Lowell, in Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917)
Art can excite, titillate, please, entertain, and sometimes shock; but its ultimate function is to ennoble. Marya Mannes, in More in Anger (1958)
I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot. Steve Martin, a
Facebook post (Nov. 27, 2011)
QUOTATION CAUTION: One of Matisse’s most famous observations, this is how it is typically presented. But it appears to be a condensation of a larger thought, originally written in “Notes of a Painter,” a 1908 essay in Paris’s La Grande Review: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman was well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”
Art…is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life. W. Somerset Maugham, in Of Human Bondage (1915)
Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia. W. Somerset Maugham, playing off the familiar Karl Marx observation about religion, in A Writer’s Notebook (1949)
I think of Art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system, that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it. Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media (1964)
Elizabeth Janeway echoed the theme in Between Myth and Morning: Women Awakening (1974): “For what society requires from art . . . is that it function as an early warning system.”
Following this lovely example of oxymoronic phrasing Merton added: “The mind that responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve.”
Merton continued: “Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God because they induce a kind of contact with the Creator and Ruler of the Universe.”
If the real world is orange juice, then art is like orange-juice concentrate. Martin Mull, in “20 Questions with Martin Mull,” Playboy magazine (April, 1984)
Mull began by saying: “Most visual art is, to some extent, distillation. You’ve drawn perimeters; the canvas gives you a top, bottom, and sides. But those edges aren’t there when you walk down the street.”
All art deals with the absurd and aims at the simple. Good art speaks truth, indeed is truth, perhaps the only truth. Iris Murdoch, “Bradley Pearson’s Foreword,” in The Black Prince (1973)
All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous. Iris Murdoch, the voice of protagonist Bradley Pearson, in The Black Prince (1973)
ERROR ALERT: Many quotation anthologies mistakenly have a instead of the struggle.
Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing. Iris Murdoch, the closing words of the novel, from the character P. Loxias, in The Black Prince (1973)
Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. George Jean Nathan, “Intelligence and Drama,” in The American Mercury (December 1925); reprinted in The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary (1998; C. S. Angoff, ed.)
Art is the sex of the imagination. George Jean Nathan, “Art and Criticism,” in The World in Falseface (1923); reprinted in The American Mercury magazine (July, 1926)
Nathan preceded the thought by writing, “To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex.”
QUOTE NOTE: This observation is now often presented in the following translation: “We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
ERROR ALERT: Many quotation anthologies and internet sites mistakenly have Camus saying: “We have art in order not to die of life.”
Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one’s self from enslavement by the earth. Anaïs Nin, in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. Five, 1947–1955 (1974)
Nin added: “The earth demands servitude from us, menial tasks, earthy tasks, every day, every hour, and only at this moment at which we discard the servitude and enter the world of the spirit through music or painting or writing are we free.”
Take a quart of nature, boil it down to a pint, and the residue is art. Austin O’Malley, in Keystones of Thought (1914)
ERROR ALERT: In this widely-quoted line, Picasso clearly “borrowed” (and might even have plagiarized) a magnificent metaphor from Berthold Auerbach: “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” See the Auerbach entry in MUSIC & MUSICIANS for more.
QUOTE NOTE: In almost all anthologies, the Picasso quotation is presented without the ellipsis, but in European Erotic Art (1972), Francis Carr presented a fuller version: “Art is the best possible introduction to the culture of the world. I love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch. It washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” I have recently learned that this observation has also lifted key phrases from L. E. Landon’s 1831 novel Romance and Reality (see the Landon entry in MUSIC & MUSICIANS). I now view the entire Picasso observation as erroneous, and believe it might even be regarded as a hoax). Many thanks to Garson O’Toole, the Quote Investigator, for pointing out the similarity between the Landon and Picasso quotations.
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term “Art,” I should call it “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” Edgar Allan Poe, in “Marginalia” (1844)
QUOTE NOTE: Both Cézanne and Gauguin were familiar with Poe’s observation, and even adopted it as a kind of motto. As a result, the quotation is often mistakenly attributed to both of them. Regarding the value of looking at things through a veil, Poe explained: “Something of the kind appears indispensable in Art. We can, at any time, double the true beauty of an actual landscape by half closing our eyes as we look at it. The naked Senses sometimes see too little—but then always they see too much.” See also the similar WORK OF ART quotation by Émile Zola.
The greatest art comes out of warmth and conviction and deep feeling, but then, very few people, even geniuses, have all that. Katherine Anne Porter, in a letter to Paulo Porter (Aug. 28, 1943), in Letters of Katherine Anne Porter (1990; Isabel Bayley, ed.)
Art is never didactic, does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon. Agnes Repplier, “Fiction in the Pulpit,” in Points of View (1891)
While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing. Agnes Repplier, “Pleasure: A Heresy,” in Points of View (1891)
Compared to art, all other professions are but chores. T. L. Rese, in a personal communication to the compiler (Feb. 6, 2018)
The big art is our life. M. C. Richards, in Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person (25th Anniversary Edition; 1989)
It is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. Robert D. Richardson, paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau, in Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (1986)
ERROR ALERT: This observation, which is often mistakenly attributed to Henry David Thoreau, is in fact quite similar to an actual Thoreau observation (see his entry below)
Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it. Rainer Maria Rilke, in letter to Franz Xaver Kappus (Dec. 26, 1908); published posthumously in Letters to a Young Poet (1929)
He continued: “In everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art—as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature.”
Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. Rainer Maria Rilke, in letter to his wife (June 24, 1907); reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952; Clara Rilke, ed.)
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated. Auguste Rodin, in
L’Art: Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell [Art: Interviews Brought Together by Paul Gsell] (1911; trans. in 1912 by
Romilly Fedden
A moment later, Rodin went on to add: “Art is the most sublime mission of Man, since it is the expression of thought seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.”
Whatever may be the means, or whatever the more immediate end of any kind of art, all of it that is good…is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it. John Ruskin, in Stones of Venice, Vol. III (1853)
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites mistakenly present the following abridged version of the thought: “All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.”
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. John Ruskin, “The Unity of Art” lecture, in The Two Paths (1859)
All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul. John Ruskin, in The Stones of Venice, Vol. III (1853)
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, quoted in Frank Muir, The Frank Muir Book: An Irreverent Companion to Social History (1976)
Art is not a study of positive reality; it is a search after ideal truth. George Sand, “The Author to the Reader,” in first chapter of The Devil's Pool (1851; also published in English under the title The Haunted Pool)
Art belongs to all times and to all countries; its special benefit is precisely to be still living when everything else seems dying. George Sand, in an 1863 letter, in Letters of George Sand, Vol. 2 (1886; Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort, ed.)
Art, for the sake of art itself, is an idle sentence. Art, for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good, that is the creed I seek. George Sand, in letter to Gustave Flaubert (April 9, 1872); reprinted in Letters of George Sand, Vol. 3 (1886, R. L. de Beaufort, ed.)
Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends. George Santayana, in The Sense of Beauty (1896)
The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited. William Saroyan, quoted in Manhattan memorial service, reported in The New York Times (Oct. 31, 1983)
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. George Bernard Shaw, the character Ecrasia speaking, in Back to Methuselah (1921)
A bit later, after the character Acis disparages the “make-believe” quality of art, Ecrasia spoke for countless numbers of artists throughout history when she replies: “You have no right to say that I am not sincere. I have found a happiness in art that real life has never given me. I am intensely in earnest about art. There is is a magic and mystery in art that you know nothing of.”
Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures. You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul. George Bernard Shaw, the character the She-Ancient speaking, in Back to Methuselah (1921)
Art thaws even the frozen, darkened soul, opening it to lofty spiritual experience. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “The Gift of Art,” his 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Solzhenitsyn added: “Through Art we are sometimes sent—indistinctly, briefly—revelations not to be achieved by rational thought. It is like that small mirror in the fairy tales—you glance in it and what you see is not yourself; for an instant, you glimpse the Inaccessible, where no horse or magic carpet can take you. And the soul cries out for it.”
QUOTE NOTE: See the earlier Degas observation which stimulated this line.
The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness. Susan Sontag, “On Style” (1965), in Against Interpretation (1966)
The purpose of art is always, ultimately, to give pleasure— though our sensibilities may take time to catch up with the forms of pleasure that art in a given time may offer. Susan Sontag, “On Style” (1965), in Against Interpretation (1966)
In that same essay, Sontag wrote: “The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.”
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art—like physical beauty in a person—is extremely perishable. Susan Sontag, “Camus’ Notebooks” (1963), Against Interpretation (1966)
Art is a form of consciousness. Susan Sontag, a 1964 remark, quoted in David Rieff, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (2012)
See also the related “transgression” thought by E. L. Doctorow in [Work of] ART.
A part of all art is to make silence speak. The things left out in painting, the note withheld in music, the void in architecture—all are as necessary and as active as the utterance itself. Freya Stark, “On Silence,” in The Cornhill Magazine (Autumn, 1966)
In the book, Stoddard also wrote: “When an object is made by skilled hands, it has a soul that is felt.”
Art’s a staple, like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Those who think it is a luxury have only a fragment of a mind. Man’s spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food. Irving Stone, in Depths of Glory (1985)
In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects. Rabindranath Tagore, in “What is Art?” lecture delivered at Twentieth Century Club, Buffalo, NY (Dec. 11, 1916); reprinted in Pritwish Neogy, Rabindrnath Tagore on Art and Aesthetics (1961)
Tharp continued: “Metaphor is our vocabulary for connecting what we’re experiencing now with what we have experienced before. It’s not only how we express what we remember, it’s how we interpret it—for ourselves and others.”
Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all. Leo Tolstoy, a journal entry (May 17, 1896)
Tolstoy preceded the thought by writing: “The chief purpose of art, if there is art and if it has a purpose, is to manifest and express the truth about man’s soul, to express those secrets which can’t be expressed in simple words. That is the origin of art.”
Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings, and also experience them. Leo Tolstoy, in “What is Art?” (1897)
Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments. But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out. Leo Tolstoy, in “What is Art?” (1897)
Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes. Leon Trotsky, in Literature and Revolution (1924)
ERROR ALERT: A similar observation (“Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it”) is commonly attributed to both Bertolt Brecht and Vladimir Mayakovsky, but there is no evidence that they wrote or said anything like this. Trotsky should be regarded as the original author of the sentiment.
All lasting art, one might argue, is an SOS in a bottle, dispatched in desperate hope. Carll Tucker, in Montaigne for Jane (an unpublished 2018 manuscript)
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art. Kenneth Tynan, “Ionesco and the Phantom,” quoted in Observer (London, July 6, 1958)
Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn. John Updike, the title character speaking, “Alphonse Peintre,” in The New Yorker (March 18, 1961); reprinted in Assorted Prose (1965)
QUOTE NOTE: The article was a humorous interview with the imaginary French painter Alphonse Peintre, conducted in his shack near Roeun, France. In most anthologies, the quotation is presented as a straight-on Updike observation.
QUOTE NOTE: In the novel, the narrator credits the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline with the line, although it is more likely a paraphrasing of something the French author wrote. Here’s the full passage: “Céline was a brave French soldier in the First World War-until his skull was cracked. After that he couldn’t sleep, and there were noises in his head. He became a doctor, and he treated poor people in the daytime, and he wrote grotesque novels all night. No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.”
The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one’s soul to grow. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Despite Tough Guys, Life is Not the Only School for Real Novelists,” in
The New York Times (May 24, 1999)
QUOTE NOTE: In Man Without a Country (2005). Vonnegut reprised the sentiment, and expanded upon it: “Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
Art is not a luxury, but a necessity. Rebecca West, the title essay, in The Strange Necessity (1928)
In that same essay, West also offered these thoughts on the subject of art:
“Art is at least in part a way of collecting information about the universe.”
“I cannot see that art is anything less than a way of making joys perpetual.”
“Bad art is maintained by the neurotic, who is deadly afraid of authentic art because it inspires him to go on living, and he is terrified of life.”
Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted. Rebecca West, in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)
What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience. The artist says: “I will make that event happen again, altering its shape, which was disfigured by its contacts with other events, so that its true significance is revealed. Rebecca West, in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)
To make art is to realize another’s sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people’s lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger. Marianne Wiggins, the voice of the narrator, in The Shadow Catcher (2007)
QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the quotation is typically presented on internet quotation sites, but it was originally part of a larger passage in which the character Clara was reflecting on her father often saying that art was the ability to recognize sadness in others, and often to “imagine sadness greater than his own.” Here’s the fuller passage:
“Art, their father had frequently told them, was exactly that: to make art is the realize another’s sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people’s lives, to feel with and for a stranger.”
Details are of no importance in life, but in art details are vital. Oscar Wilde, an 1892 remark to Sir George Alexander as they were preparing to stage Lady Windermere’s Fan; quoted in Peter Raby, The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (1997)
Art, all art, not just painting, is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar. Jeanette Winterson, in Art Objects (1995)
If art, all art, is concerned with truth, then a society in denial will not find much use for it. Jeanette Winterson, in Art Objects (1995)
If art is not living in a continuous present, it is living in a museum, only those working now can complete the circuit between the past, present and future energies we call art. in Jeanette Winterson, in Art Objects (1995)
Winterson preceded the thought by writing: “Sometimes we forget that if we do not encourage new work now, we will lose all touch with the work of the past we claim to love.”
[Abstract] ART
(see also ART and [Work of] ART and ARTIST and ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and PAINTING & PAINTERS and SCULPTURE & SCULPTORS)
A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. Al Capp, on abstract art, quoted in the National Observer (July 1, 1963)
Fear is the deep motive of abstract art—fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things. Storm Jameson, a reflection of the title character, in The Journal of Mary Hervey Russell (1945)
Russell continued: “Who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?”
Abstract art: a construction site for high fashion, for advertising, for furniture. Adrienne Monnier, a 1939 remark, quoted in Richard McDougall, The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier (1976)
[Modern] ART
(see also ART and [Work of] ART and ARTIST and ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and PAINTING & PAINTERS and SCIENCE & ART and SCULPTURE & SCULPTORS)
Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals. Susan Sontag, in On Photography (1977)
[Work of] ART
(see also ART and ARTIST and ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and PAINTING & PAINTERS and SCULPTURE & SCULPTORS)
Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity. Daniel Barenboim, quoted in International Herald Tribune (Jan. 20, 1989)
Any great work of art…revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world—the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air. Leonard Bernstein, “What Makes Opera Grand?” in Vogue (December 1958)
A work of art does not answer questions: it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between their contradictory answers. Leonard Bernstein, “The Unanswered Question,” a 1976 talk at Harvard University; reprinted in Findings (1982)
Camus preceded the observation by writing: “A guilty conscience needs to confess.”
Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love. Truman Capote, quoted in Harvey Breit, “Talk with Truman Capote,” New York Times Book Review (Feb. 24, 1952)
Every work of art is one half of a secret handshake, a challenge that seeks the password, a heliograph flashed from a tower window, an act of hopeless optimism in the service of bottomless longing. Michael Chabon, “The Loser’s Club,” in Manhood for Amateurs (2000)
Chabon added: “Every great record or novel or comic book convenes the first meeting of a fan club whose membership stands forever at one but which maintains chapters in every city—in every cranium—in the world.”
Surely even the most self-confident and assured of artists must have moments of battling with self-doubt and so, in a way, every finished work of art is the triumph of one part of its creator’s nature over another, and thus record of a Pyrrhic victory, gained and lost on the terribly personal battleground of one's own brainpan. Elisabeth Cobb, in My Wayward Parent: A Book About Irvin S. Cobb (1945)
Every major work of art is a transgression, but the artist is not necessarily, by nature, a transgressor. E. L. Doctorow, “Theodore Dreiser: Book One and Book Two,” in Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (1993)
See also the related “transgression” thought by Susan Sontag in ART.
A great work of Art demands a great thought, or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. Neither in Art nor literature more than in life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well dressed. Margaret Fuller, in At Home and Abroad (1856)
The work of art is the exaggeration of an idea. André Gide, journal entry (undated, 1889), in Journals, 1889–1913 (1949; Justin O’Brien, ed.); later repeated in the epilogue to Prometheus Unbound (1899)
No work of art is ever finished, nothing is ever static, no performance is for keeps. Uta Hagen, quoted in Marlo Thomas and Friends, The Right Words at the Right Time (2002)
In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know to what you don’t know. Ann Hamilton, “Making Not Knowing,” in Mary Jane Jacob and Jacquelynn Baas, Learning Mind : Experience into Art (2010)
Hamilton preceded the thought by writing: “One doesn’t arrive—in words or in art—by necessarily knowing where one is going.” Her essay was adapted from her 2005 commencement address at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Any work of art, regardless of its form or formlessness, is great when it makes you feel that its creator has dipped into your very heart. Fannie Hurst, in Lummox (1923)
A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind. Eugène Ionesco, “Address Delivered to a Gathering of French and German Writers” (Feb., 1960), in Notes and Counter-Notes (1962).
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. Garson Kanin, quoted in The New York Times Book Review (Feb. 26, 1978)
To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order. Madeleine L’Engle, in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (1980)
L’Engle preceded the thought by writing: “A life lived in chaos is an impossibility for the artist. No matter how unstructured may seem the painter’s garret in Paris or the poet’s pad in Greenwich Village, the artist must have some kind of order or he will produce a very small body of work.”
I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, “Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.” Madeleine L’Engle, in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (1980)
One thing living in Japan did for me was to make me feel that what is left out of a work of art is as important as, if not more important than, what is put in. Katherine Paterson, in The Spying Heart: More Thoughts on Reading and Writing Books (1989)
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. Eleanor Roosevelt, widely quoted, but not sourced
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable. Susan Sontag, title essay (1964), in Against Interpretation (1966)
The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences. Susan Sontag, “On Style” (1965), in Against Interpretation (1966)
A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot—whatever the artist’s personal intention—advocate anything at all. Susan Sontag, “On Style” (1965), in Against Interpretation (1966)
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it. Leo Tolstoy, in What is Art? (1910)
The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small “yes” at the center of a vast “no.” Gore Vidal, in Rocking the Boat (1962)
Style is not a seductive decoration added to a functional structure; it is of the essence of a work of art. Evelyn Waugh, quoted in David Lodge, “The Fugitive Art of Letters,” in David Pryce-Jones, Evelyn Waugh and His World (1973)
A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it. Simone Weil, in Gravity and Grace (1947)
A work of art may be simple, though that is not necessary. There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence. Rebecca West, “Battlefield and Sky,” in The Strange Necessity (1928)
In that same essay, West wrote: “Whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.”
Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication. Rebecca West, in Ending in Earnest (1931)
Zola’s observation was inspired by the earlier ART quotation by Edgar Allan Poe.
ARTICULATION & ARTICULATENESS
(see ELOQUENT and FACILE and FLUENT)
It’s not “natural” to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little—have few verbal means. Eloquence—thinking in words—is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it’s more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech. Susan Sontag, a 1976 remark, quoted in David Rieff, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (2012)
ARTISTS
(see also ART and [WORK OF] ART and ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and PAINTING & PAINTERS and SCULPTURE & SCULPTORS)
This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art. James Baldwin, “Autobiographical Notes” (1952), in Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Baldwin preceded the thought by writing, “One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.”
Every artist is involved with one single effort, really. which is to dig down to where reality is. James Baldwin, “Words of a Native Son,” in Playboy magazine (December 1964)
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone. James Baldwin, “The Creative Process,” in The National Cultural Center’s Creative America (1962); reprinted in The Price of the Ticket (1985)
If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work…as the soldier flings himself into the enemy’s trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner…he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent. Honoré de Balzac, in La Cousine Bette (1846)
QUOTE NOTE: It is rare to find a phrase as dramatic and moving as “The suicide of his own talent.” I regard it as one of the best things ever said on the subject of squandered talent.
Every artist joins a conversation that’s been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene. John Barth, quoted in Naomi Epel, Writers Dreaming (1993)
The true artist is not proud, he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal; and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun. Ludwig van Beethoven, in letter to a young girl (July 17, 1812); quoted in Michael Hamburger, Beethoven: Letters, Journals, and Conversations (1978)
QUOTE NOTE: Beethoven was replying to a young aspiring pianist named Emilie, who had recently sent him a fan letter and a hand-embroidered gift. He preceded the thought above by writing: “Do not only practice art, but get at the very heart of it; this it deserves, for only art and science raise men to the God-head. If, my dear Emilie, you at any time wish to know something, write without hesitation to me.”
The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he’s in business. John Berryman, in Paris Review interview (Winter, 1972)
The artist is the most interesting of all phenomena, for he represents creativity, the definition of man. Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
Artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger. Phyllis Bottome, the title character speaking, in “Brother Leo,” in The Century Magazine (June, 1913; reprinted in Innocence and Experience: Stories (1934)
ERROR ALERT: This observation is often mistakenly presented as: “The great artist is a slave to his ideals.”
The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist. Robert Brault, in
Round Up the Usual Suspects (2014). Also an example of
chiasmus.
The artist has never been a dictator, since he understands better than anybody else the variations in human personality. Heywood Broun, “Bring on the Artist,” in The New World Telegram (Jan. 19, 1933)
Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. William S. Burroughs, quoted in A. Charters, The Beats (1983)
QUOTE NOTE: This was Capote’s full reply to Grobel’s question, “You’ve always thought of yourself as a two-headed calf. In other words, in your own eyes, you felt that you were different, a freak. Is that the way you really feel about yourself?”
One who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing cannot be an artist. Anton Chekhov, in an 1892 letter to Alexey S. Suvorin
An artist carries on throughout his life a mysterious, uninterrupted conversation with his public. Maurice Chevalier, in Holiday magazine (Sep., 1956)
The artist of to-day…walks at first with his companions, till one day he falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above. Cyril Connolly, in The Condemned Playground (1945)
I have often described the artist as the seismograph of his age. He is the rabbit in the submarine or the canary in the coal mine. Robert W. Corrigan, in 1968 remarks accepting position of President of the California Institute of the Arts; quoted in Arts in Society (Univ. of Wisc. Ext. Division, 1970)
Corrigan continued: “And what he creates is an act of discovery, an act of discovery which simultaneously reveals and reflects the reality of the present moment.”
To give a body and a perfect form to your thought, this alone is what it is to be an artist. Jacques-Louis David, a 1796 statement to his students, quoted in Jules David, in Le Peintre Louis David 1748–1825 (1880)
The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves. Willem De Kooning, in Trans/formation (1951)
Life, the raw material, is only lived in potentia until the artist deploys it in his work. Lawrence Durrell, the voice of the unnamed narrator, in Justine (1957)
In proportion to his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper character. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art,” in Essays: First Series (1841)
Emerson continued: “He must not in any manner be pinched or hindered by his material, but through his necessity of imparting himself the adamant will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate communication of himself, in his full stature and proportion.”
The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Power,” in The Conduct of Life (1860)
QUOTE NOTE: The American Heritage Dictionary defines torpid as “Sluggish, lethargic, or inactive.”
The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Inspiration,” in Letters and Social Aims (1876)
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. William Faulkner, in Paris Review interview (Spring, 1956)
Faulkner added: “Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind…. This is the artist’s way of scribbling ‘Kilroy was here’ on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they chose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done. William Faulkner, in Paris Review interview (Spring, 1956)
Faulkner famously added: “The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.” See the related ART quotation by Emerson.
QUOTE NOTE: Oscar Wilde was thinking similarly when he wrote in the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891): “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.” See also the similar James Joyce ARTIST quotation below.
Gide introduced the observation by writing: “Panem et circenses cried the Roman mob; bread first, games next.”
When you make any kind of artwork, you have to serve it. You could easily call the artist a servant. M. B. Goffstein, “Conversations: M. B. Goffstein,” in the children’s literature review The Five Owls (May/June, 1991)
No artist is pleased…. No satisfaction whatever at any time…. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. Martha Graham, quoted in Agnes de Mille, Dance to the Piper (1952)
The artist’s work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. Patricia Hampl, in Spillville: A Collaboration (1978; engravings by Steven Sorman)
Hampl added: “And something terrible resides at the heart of wonder. Celebration is social, amenable. Wonder has a chaotic splendor. It moves into experience rather than into judgement. It zooms headlong into the act of perception.”
Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist—a master—and that is what Auguste Rodin was—can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is…and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be…and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned [sic] inside her ruined body. Robert A Heinlein, the character Jubal Harshaw speaking, in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
Harshaw continued: “He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her.”
When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. Hermann Hesse, the voice of the narrator, in Narcissus and Goldmund: A Novel (1930)
The narrator preceded the thought by writing about Goldmund: “He thought that fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life’s instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in out hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear.”
It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots. Erica Jong, the voice of protagonist Jessica Pruitt, in Shylock’s Daughter, A Novel of Love in Venice (1987); originally published as Serenissima: A Novel of Venice.
An artist or writer is a specimen human being who just goes about the world hoping to be a bundle of nerve endings that take in everything and transform it into a voice. Erica Jong, quoted in S. Mitchell, Icons, Saints & Divas: Intimate Conversations with Women who Changed the World (1997)
The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails. James Joyce, the character Stephen Dedalus speaking, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
See the similar Gustave Flaubert ARTIST quotation above.
Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity. Madeleine L’Engle, from a 1976 lecture, quoted in Carole F. Chase, Madeleine L'Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life (2001)
With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance. Norman Mailer, in The Deer Park (1955)
Aschenbach continued: “Though we may be heroes in our fashion and disciplined warriors…it is passion that exalts us, and the longing of our soul must remain the longing of a lover—that is our joy and our shame.”
For in almost every artist’s nature is inborn a wanton and treacherous proneness to side with the beauty that breaks hearts, to single out aristocratic pretensions and pay them homage. Thomas Mann, the narrator describing Aschenbach, in Death in Venice (1912)
An artist must never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of reputation. Henri Matisse, in Jazz (1947)
Matisse preceded the thought by writing about artists: “For most of them, success = Prison, and the artist must never be a prisoner.”
Maugham continued: “It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.”
May continued: “They love to emerse [sic] themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.”
The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be. H. L. Mencken, in Prejudices: First Series (1919)
QUOTE NOTE: Merton was born in France in 1915, not long after WWI had darkened most of Europe (“That world was the picture of hell”). Here, he was reflecting on a valuable life perspective he learned from his parents. About them, he wrote: “My father and mother were captives in that world, knowing they did not belong with it or in it, and yet unable to get away from it. They were in the world and not of it—not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists.”
The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you. James Michener, quoted in Caryn James, “The Michener Phenomenon,” The New York Times (Sep. 8, 1985)
One doesn’t become an artist overnight. First you have to be crushed, to have your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. Henry Miller, “My First Book—Tropic of Capricorn,” in Henry Miller on Writing (1964)
Miller continued: “You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the last common denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from the very roots of your being.”
I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected. Georgia O’Keeffe, in a 1915 letter to Anita Pollitzer, quoted in Clive Giboire, Lovingly, Georgia (1990)
There is a chord in every human heart than has a sigh in it if touched aright. When the artist finds the keynote, which that chord will answer to, in the dullest as in the highest—then he is great. Ouida (pen name of Maria Louise Ramé), the voice of the narrator, in Signa (1875)
It is possible…that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal. Walker Percy, in Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (1983)
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. Pablo Picasso, “Conversation avec Picasso,” in Cahiers d’Art (1935, vol. 10, no. 10); reprinted in Alfred H. Harr, Jr., Picasso: Fifty Years of His Art (1946)
When I say artist I don’t mean in the narrow sense of the word—but the man who is building things…. It’s all a big game of construction—some with a brush—some with a shovel—some choose a pen. Jackson Pollock, in a 1932 letter to his father; reprinted in Jackson Pollock: A Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 4 (1978)
QUOTE NOTE: This is a slightly abridged version of the full thought, which was as follows: “When I say artist I don’t mean in the narrow sense of the word—but the man who is building things—creating molding the earth—whether it be the plains of the west—or the iron ore of Penn. It’s all a big game of construction—some with a brush—some with a shovel—some choose a pen.”
Artists are the antennae of the race, but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists. Ezra Pound, “Henry James,” in the Little Review (Aug, 1918); reprinted in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (1954)
Reik added: “The originality of their thought is as provoking as the prominence of the lightning conductor which directs the electricity to the salient point on the roof.”
The great artist, and by this I mean the poet as well as the painter and the sculptor, finds even in suffering, in the death of loved ones, in the treachery of friends, something which fills him with a voluptuous though tragic admiration. Auguste Rodin, in
L’Art: Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell [Art: Interviews Brought Together by Paul Gsell] (1911; trans. in 1912 by
Romilly Fedden)
Rodin continued: “At times his own heart is on the rack, yet stronger than his pain is the bitter joy which he experiences in understanding and giving expression to that pain.”
The artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances. Auguste Rodin, in
L’Art: Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell [Art: Interviews Brought Together by Paul Gsell] (1911; trans. in 1912 by
Romilly Fedden)
The artist who parades his drawing, the writer who wishes to attract praise to his style, resemble the soldier who plumes himself on his uniform but refuses to go into battle, or the farmer who polishes the ploughshare instead of driving it into the earth. Auguste Rodin, in
L’Art: Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell [Art: Interviews Brought Together by Paul Gsell] (1911; trans. in 1912 by
Romilly Fedden)
The word artist, in in its widest acceptation, means to me the man who takes pleasure in what he does. Auguste Rodin, in
L’Art: Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell [Art: Interviews Brought Together by Paul Gsell] (1911; trans. in 1912 by
Romilly Fedden)
Rodin continued: “So it would be desirable were there artists in all trades—artist carpenters, happy in skillfully raising beam and mortice—artist masons—spreading the plaster with pleasure—artist carters, proud of caring for their horses and of not running over those in the street. Is it not true that that would constitute an admirable society?”
The artist…sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature. Auguste Rodin, in
L’Art: Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell [Art: Interviews Brought Together by Paul Gsell] (1911; trans. in 1912 by
Romilly Fedden
He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his work, the greatest number of the greatest ideas. John Ruskin, in Modern Painters, Vol. I (1843)
What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see. Edith Sitwell, “Experiment in Poetry,” in Tradition and Experiment in Present-Day Literature (City Literary Institute; 1929); reprinted in Edith Sitwell: Fire of the Mind (1976; E. Salter and A. Harper, eds.)
If you’re an artist, you try to keep an ear to the ground and an ear to your heart. Bruce Springsteen, in interview on CBS-TV’s Sixty Minutes (Jan. 21, 1996)
A nation may be moved by its statesmen and defended by its military but it is usually remembered for its artists. It does seem to me that you, sir, have discovered or rather rediscovered this lost truth. John Steinbeck, in letter to John F. Kennedy (Jan. 23, 1961); quoted in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (1989; E. Steinbeck & R. Wallsten, eds.)
QUOTE NOTE: Steinbeck was writing to thank president Kennedy for inviting him to his inauguration, held a few days earlier. He preceded the thought above by writing: “Personally, of course, I am honored to have been invited, but much more sharply felt is my gratification that through me you have recognized the many good members of my profession as existing at all.”
If there is any reason to single out artists as being more necessary to our lives than any others, it is because they provide us with light that cannot be extinguished. They go into dark rooms and poke at their souls until the contours of our own are familiar to us. Phyllis Theroux, in The Book of Eulogies (1997)
In her journal, Truitt also wrote about artists: “Their essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without having any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse’s neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again.”
Artists often lie behind on the field long after the art combine, the broad-bladed harvester of informed criticism, has mowed, bailed, and stored the crop. Anne Truitt, in Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (1982)
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of his age and not go flopping along; he must offer some little opposition. Evelyn Waugh, in Paris Review interview (Summer–Fall, 1963)
Children, like animals, use all their senses to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way, all over again. Eudora Welty, in One Writer’s Beginnings (1984)
The romantic artist, off alone in his storm-battered castle, fuming whole worlds from his brain, reflects his culture’s most persistent myth, of God creating from a primal loneliness. Garry Wills, in Confessions of a Conservative (1979)
This is the artist, then—life’s hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty’s miser, glory’s slave. Thomas Wolfe, in Of Time and the River (1935)
There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman. Émile Zola, in letter to Paul Cézanne (April 16, 1860)
ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK
(see also ART and [WORK OF] ART and ARTISTS and ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and PAINTING & PAINTERS and SCULPTURE & SCULPTORS)
No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell. Antonin Artaud, quoted in Lewis Wolpert, Malignant Sadness (1999)
QUOTE NOTE: Artaud makes the common mistake here of saying literally when he means metaphorically. But his point is still clear—people gravitate toward art in order to exorcize personal demons.
I became an animal painter because I loved to move among animals. I would study an animal and draw it in the position it took, and when it changed to another position I would draw that. Rosa Bonheur, quoted in Dore Ashton, Rosa Bonheur: A Life and a Legend (1981)
Nothing grows in the shade of great trees. Constantin Brancusi, on giving up his early studies with Auguste Rodin, quoted in Town & Country magazine (Oct., 1995)
Most artists, ashamed of their need for encouragement, try to carry their work to term like a secret pregnancy. Julia Cameron, in The Sound of Paper (2005)
Cameron went on to write: “We bunker in with our projects, beleaguered by our loneliness and the terrible secret that we carry: We need friends to our art. We need them as desperately as friends to our hearts. Our projects, after all, are our brainchildren, and what they crave is a loving extended family, a place where ‘How’d it go today?’ can refer to a turn at the keys or the easel as easily as a turn in the teller’s cage.”
The biggest part of painting perhaps is faith, and waiting receptively, content to go any way, not planning or forcing. The fear, though, is laziness. It is so easy to drift and finally be tossed up on the beach, derelict. Emily Carr, in Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr (1966)
I don’t know if color chose me or I chose color, but since childhood I’ve been married to color in its pure state. Marc Chagall, quoted in R. McMullen and I. Bidermass,
The World of Marc Chagall (1968). Also an example of
chiasmus.
Chagall began by saying: “You might say that in my mother’s womb I had already noticed the purity of the colors of the flowers.”
The soil that had nourished the roots of my art was Vitebsk [his home town in Russia]; but my art needed Paris as much as a tree needs water. Marc Chagall, on his first stay in Paris, from 1910–14; quoted in I. F Walther & R. Metzger, Chagall (2000)
QUOTE NOTE: This observation is often presented: “I needed Paris as a tree needs rain.”
If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing. Marc Chagall, quoted in Roy McMullen, The World of Marc Chagall (1968)
With this painting, I tried to make everything breathe faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style and great nature with its scream. Paul Gauguin, referring to his painting
Breton Calvary: The Green Christ, in letter to Theo Van Gogh (Nov. 20, 1889)
This place is my psychotherapist. Robert Genn, on his studio, “A Safe Place,” title of one of his twice-weekly e-newsletters from
The Painter’s Keys (Sep. 20, 2013)
I go to my studio every day, because one day I may go and the angel will be there. What if I don’t go and the angel came? Philip Guston, quoted in The Washington Post (March 7, 1991)
To give life to sculpture I found it must have a pulse, a breathing quality that could change in a flash, and it must never appear static, hard, or unrevealing. All these demands formed themslves in my thoughts, and became like an endless obsession. Malvina Hoffman, in Yesterday Is Tomorrow: A Personal History (1965)
A little snow, a little rain, but altogether a pleasant day. It’s always pleasant when I paint well. Rockwell Kent, a journal entry, in Wilderness: A Journey of Quiet adventure in Alaska (1920)
All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer—at least the answer for myself. Art is an action against death. It is a denial of death. Jacques Lipchitz, quoted in Bert Van Bork, Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work (1966)
I have only too much of a wife in this art of mine, who has always kept me in tribulation, and my children shall be the works I leave, which, even if they are naught, will live for a while. Michelangelo, replying to a comment that he had never married or had children, quoted in Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists (1568)
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. Claude Monet, a 1924 remark made while admiring his own garden, quoted in Claire Joyes, Monet at Giverny (1975)
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites present this remark as if it were immediately preceded by, “I am following Nature without being able to grasp her.” Monet did say this—but without the added comment about flowers—in an 1889 letter (see the Monet entry in NATURE). The two observations were separated by thirty-five years and do not belong together
Nevelson preceded the thought by writing: “I’m a work horse. I like to work. I always did. I think that there is such a thing as energy, creation overflowing. And I always felt that I have this great energy and it was bound to sort of burst at the seams, so that my work automatically took its place with a mind like mine. I've never had a day when I didn't want to work. I've never had a day like that. And I knew that a day I took away from the work did not make me too happy. I just feel that I'm in tune with the right vibrations in the universe when I'm in the process of working.”
Since I cannot sing, I paint. Georgia O’Keeffe, “Austere Stripper,” in Time magazine (May 27, 1946)
The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it. Georgia O’Keeffe, “Horizons of a Pioneer,” Life magazine (March 1, 1968)
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. Pablo Picasso, quoted in John Golding, Cubism (1959)
I am only a public entertainer, who understands his age. Pablo Picasso, in Le Spectacle du Monde (Paris, Nov., 1962); reprinted in Duncan Williams, The Trousered Ape (1971)
Picasso began by saying: “Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when I am alone with myself, I haven’t the courage to consider myself an artist, in the great and ancient sense of that word.”
I invent nothing. I rediscover. Auguste Rodin, quoted in Camille Mauclair, Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works (1905)
Lines and colors are only the symbols of hidden realities. Our eyes plunge beneath the surface to the meaning of things and when afterward we reproduce the form, we endow it with the spiritual meaning which it covers. Auguste Rodin, in
L’Art: Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell [Art: Interviews Brought Together by Paul Gsell] (1911; trans. in 1912 by
Romilly Fedden)
Every time I make a sculpture, it breeds ten more, and then time is too short to make them all. David Smith, in Art in America magazine (January-February, 1966)
I will always be a thoroughbred hitched up to a rubbish cart. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, referring to his wild, artistic temperament lodged in a frail and sickly body, quoted in Julia Frey, Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life (1994); originally in Thadée Natanson, Un Certain Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1951)
I’m like a prostitute; I’m never off duty. Andrew Wyeth, quoted in Richard Corliss, “Andrew Wyeth’s Stunning Secret,” Time magazine (Aug. 18, 1986)
QUOTE NOTE: Wyeth said this with a laugh as he explained to Corliss that on the morning of their interview he'd been out painting, just as he had every morning for the previous fifty years!
ARTISTS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS
(see also ART and [WORK OF] ART and ARTISTS and ARTISTS—ON THEMSELVES & THEIR WORK and PAINTING & PAINTERS and SCULPTURE & SCULPTORS)
It was Sophie who, by the example of her work and her life, both of them bathed in clarity, showed me the right way. Jean Arp, on his wife Sophie Tauber-Arp, quoted in Serge Fauchereau, Arp (1988)
Arp continued: “In her world, the high and the low, the light and the dark, the eternal and the ephemeral, are balanced in perfect equilibrium.”
Berger began by writing: “It is comparatively easy to to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one color to dominate, or by muting all the colors. Matisse did neither.”
ASCETICISM
(see also ABSTINENCE and CHASTITY and FASTING and MODERATION and SELF-CONTROL and SELF-DENIAL and STOICISM & STOICS and TEMPTATION)
Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. William James, in The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1 (1890)
James continued: “Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to the habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.”
QUOTE NOTE: Guru Nanak (1469–1539), the founder of Sikhism, introduced this thought by saying: “Asceticism doesn’t lie in ascetic robes, or in walking staff, nor in the ashes. Asceticism doesn’t lie in the earring, nor in the shaven head, nor blowing a conch. Asceticism lies in remaining pure amidst impurities.”
The ascetic makes a necessity of virtue. Friedrich Nietzsche, reversing the proverbial saying about making a virtue of necessity, in Human, All Too Human (1878)
I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity. Henri J. M. Nouwen, in The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery (1989)
ERROR ALERT: Many internet sites mistakenly attribute this quotation to Thomas Merton.
ASIDES
(see also DISGRESSIONS)
For, let’s face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones. Ray Bradbury, in “Coda” (1979), an afterword to the 1979 edition of Fahrenheit 451 (first published in 1953)
Bradbury continued: “Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer—he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.”
’Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Success,” in Society and Solitude (1870)
ASKING
(see also ANSWERS and ENTREATY and INQUIRY and QUESTIONING and QUESTIONS and QUESTIONS & ANSWERS and REQUESTS)
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. The Bible: Matthew 7:7 KJV)
After the nun offered this observation to Maugham, he replied: “How true, and yet how hard to remember!”
QUOTE NOTE: In The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred Shapiro says the first appearance in print of this modern American proverb was a 1921 issue of The New York Times.
The great pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen. Robert Lynd, in The Pleasure of Ignorance (1921)
Lynd preceded the thought by writing: “One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.”
The words are spoken in an instructional, even didactic, manner to the title character. Marius, a 2,000-year-old vampire who has accumulated much wisdom over the centuries, preceded the thought by saying: “Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds—justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on.”
ASPIRATION
(see also ACHIEVEMENT & ACCOMPLISHMENT and AIMS & AIMING and AMBITION and DREAMS—ASPIRATIONAL and GOALS & GOAL-SETTING and STRIVING)
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I cannot reach them: but I can look up, and see their beauty; believe in them, and follow where they lead. Louisa May Alcott, in Work: A Story of Experience (1873)
QUOTE NOTE: Allen was an English philosophical writer who wrote a number of popular inspirational books, including As a Man Thinketh, a classic in self-help literature (the title was inspired by the biblical passage, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The book (in reality, a lengthy essay) heavily influenced Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and a generation of later writers. He preceded the thought above by writing: “Aspiration makes all things possible. It opens the way to advancement. Even the highest state of perfection conceivable it brings near and makes real and possible; for that which can be conceived can be achieved.”
Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil. James Allen, in As a Man Thinketh (1903)
He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. James Allen, in As a Man Thinketh (1903)
A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man by one which is lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other, ambition. Ambition is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. Henry Ward Beecher, in Life Thoughts (1858)
ERROR ALERT: It is common for variations of this observation to be mistakenly attributed to the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, “Thus far and no farther.” Ludwig von Beethoven, quoted in Samuel Smiles, “Workers in Art,” Self-Help (1859)
QUOTE NOTE: Smiles described the saying as “Beethoven’s favorite maxim.”
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,/Or what’s a heaven for? Robert Browning, in the poem “Andrea del Sarto” (1855)
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Daniel Burnham, in 1910 speech in London, later quoted in Collier’s magazine (July 6, 1912)
If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Table Talk (Aug. 30, 1833)
We never know how high we are/Till we are called to rise;/And then, if we are true to plan/Our statures touch the skies. Emily Dickinson, in No. 1176 (c. 1870), in Poems: Third Series (1896; Mary Loomis Todd, ed.)
The poem was originally untitled, only numbered (like all of Dickinson’s poems), but Todd gave it the title “Aspiration” in her anthology.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. William Faulkner, in Paris Review interview (Spring, 1956)
Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day. Brendan Francis (pseudonym of Edward F. Murphy), in Edward F. Murphy, The Crown Treasury of Relevant Quotations (1978)
ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites mistakenly attribute this quotation to Brendan Behan.
Frankl continued: “What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration. Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
QUOTE NOTE: It’s fascinating to see how different translators render the same passage in different ways. For an alternate translation that makes this a happiness observation, see Freud in HAPPINESS. Regardless of translation, Freud’s original thought might have been stimulated by a fragment from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus, who wrote in the second century: “A ship should not ride on a single anchor, nor life on a single hope.”
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to. Kahlil Gibran, in The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran (1995)
Leaders talk about communicating a vision as an instrument of change, but I prefer the notion of communicating an aspiration. It’s not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “The Enduring Skills of Change Leaders,” Leader to Leader (Summer, 1999)
Kanter continued: “It reminds us that the future does not just descend like a stage set; we construct the future from our own history, desires, decisions.”
A fierce unrest seethes at the core/Of all existing things:/It was the eager wish to soar/That gave the gods their wings. Don Marquis, the opening quatrain of “Unrest” (1915), reprinted in Louis Untermeyer (ed.), Modern American Poetry (1919; rev. ed. 1921)
QUOTE NOTE: The full poem may be seen at “Unrest”. Marquis had presented a slightly different version of this quatrain when the poem made its first appearance in The Pacific Monthly (Jan., 1909): “A fierce unrest seethes at the core/Of all existing things—/It is the restless wish to soar/That gave a god his wings.”
Do whatever you do so well that no man living and no man yet unborn could do it better. Benjamin E, Mays, “What Man Lives By,” quoted in William M. Philpot, Best Black Sermons (1972)
Let the youthful soul look back on life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has drawn your soul aloft, what has mastered it and at the same time blessed it? Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” in Untimely Meditations (1874)
Nietzsche continued: “Set up these revered objects before you and perhaps their nature and their sequence will give you a law, the fundamental law of your own true self.” A traditional translation of the first portion of the quotation goes this way: “Let the youthful soul look back on life with the question, ‘What hast thou up to now truly loved, and what has drawn thy soul upward, mastered it and blessed it too?’”
We all run the risk of declining, if somebody does not rise to tell us that life is on the heights, and not in the cesspools. George Sand, in letter to M. Charles Edmond (Jan. 9, 1858); reprinted in Letters of George Sand, Vol II (2009; R. L. De Beaufort, ed.)
An aspiration is a joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity. Robert Louis Stevenson, “El Dorado,” (1878), reprinted in Virginibus Puerisque (1881)
QUOTE NOTE: In composing this observation, Stevenson was almost certainly influenced by the immortal John Keats line about a thing of beauty being a joy for ever, to be seen in BEAUTY.
Always aspire higher than you can. For, however high you aspire, you will never arrive more than halfway up the cliff of your aspiration. Caitlin Thomas, in Not Quite Posthumous Letter to My Daughter (1963)
Associate reverently and as much as you can with your loftiest thoughts. Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid. Henry David Thoreau, journal entry (Jan. 22, 1852)
ERROR ALERT: Many of the most popular internet quotation sites mistakenly omit the “a” before the phrase conscious endeavor.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Oscar Wilde, Lord Darlington speaking, in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. Marianne Williamson, in A Return to Love (1992)
ASSASSINATION
ASSUMPTIONS
(see also ASSUMING and BELIEFS and PREMISES and SUPPOSITIONS)
QUOTE NOTE: The entire opening paragraph goes this way: “Assumptions are the things you don’t know you’re making, which is why it is so disorienting the first time you take the plug out of a wash-basin in Australia and see the water spiraling down the hole the other way around. The very laws of physics are telling you how far you are from home.”
QUOTE NOTE: Alda first offered this thought in a commencement address at Connecticut College in May, 1980. Instead of addressing all of the graduates, he spoke directly to his daughter Eve, a member of the graduating class. The device worked so well that Alda’s speech is now often described as one of the best commencement addresses of all time. About assumptions, he continued:
If you challenge your own, you won’t be so quick to accept the unchallenged assumptions of others. You’ll be a lot less likely to be caught up in bias or prejudice or be influenced by people who ask you to hand over your brains, your soul, or your money because they have everything all figured out for you.
For a transcript of the complete address, go to: Alda commencement speech.
Assumptions are dangerous things. Agatha Christie, the character Sir Henry speaking, in the short story “The Herb of Death,” in Thirteen Problems (1932)
Assumption is the mother of screw-up. Angelo Donghia, in “Behind Angelo Donghia’s Gray Flannel Success,” The New York Times (Jan. 20, 1983)
Donghia was interior designer to the stars in the latter part of the 20th century, with a client list that included Diana Ross, Barbara Walters, and Ralph Lauren. His observation applies to all who provide consulting and other personal services—assuming one understands the needs and desires of a client can be disastrous. Donghia rose to fame in 1966 when, as a little-known interior designer, he wowed New Yorkers with his design of the Opera Club at the Metropolitan Opera House. His trademark was the use of gray flannel in wallcoverings and furniture fabric. For more, see: 1979 People magazine profile of Donghia.
Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision,” in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (1979)
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts. George Bernard Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists,” in Man and Superman (1903)
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. Igor Stravinsky, “Contingencies,” in Themes and Episodes (1966)
Winkler, an alumnus of the school, inserted this line into his remarks to graduating students. I have verified with the college’s public relations office that the quotation is accurate, but I have no information about the context. It’s a powerful metaphor from an unexpected source, though, perfectly capturing how unwarranted assumptions about what another person is thinking or feeling can eat away at—and even ultimately destroy—the foundation on which a relationship is built.
ATHEISM & ATHEISTS
(see also AGNOSTICISM & AGNOSTICS and BELIEF and CHRISTIANITY and DOUBT and FAITH and HERESY & HERETICS and RELIGION and SKEPTICISM & SKEPTICS and THEOLOGY)
If you describe yourself as “Atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘Agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god—in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). Douglas Adams, in American Atheist Magazine (Winter 1998-99)
Adams added: “It's easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it's an opinion I hold seriously.”
Allen continued: “The average believer rarely examines his beliefs and, indeed, would not know how to subject them to proper critical analysis.”
The average atheist has usually arrived at his intellectual position through a tough-minded consideration of deep philosophical questions. Indeed, the typical atheist is more interested in religion than the average believer. Steve Allen, in Reflections (1994)
To you, I’m an atheist. To God, I’m the loyal opposition. Woody Allen, the character Sandy Bates replying to an accusation that he was an atheist, in the film Stardust Memories (1980)
I’m an Atheist. I don’t believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. Natalie Angier, “Confessions of a Lonely Atheist,” in The New York Times (Jan. 14, 2001)
Angier continued: “I don’t believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered.”
I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Isaac Asimov, in Free Inquiry magazine (Spring 1982)
Asimov continued: “Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”
Properly read, it [the Bible] is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. Isaac Asimov, on the Bible, quoted in Janet Jeppson Asimov, Notes for a Memoir: On Isaac Asimov, Life, and Writing (2006)
Asimov preceded the thought by writing: “If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen—you little know the effect of the Bible on me.”
A doctrinaire agnostic is different from someone who doesn’t know what they believe. A doctrinaire agnostic believes quite passionately that there are certain things that you cannot know, and therefore ought not to make pronouncements about. In other words, the only things you can call knowledge are things that can be scientifically tested. Margaret Atwood, a self-description, in Warren Allen Smith, Who’s Who in Hell (2000)
ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, this is mistakenly attributed to George Carlin
We’ve reached a truly remarkable situation: a grotesque mismatch between the American intelligentsia and the American electorate. A philosophical opinion about the nature of the universe which is held by the vast majority of top American scientists, and probably the majority of the intelligentsia generally, is so abhorrent to the American electorate that no candidate for popular election dare affirm it in public. Richard Dawkins, in “Militant Atheism,” a TED talk (February 2002)
In his talk, Dawkins continued:
“If I’m right, this means that high office in the greatest country in the world is barred to the very people best qualified to hold it—the intelligentsia—unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. To put it bluntly American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.”
In practice, all men are Atheists; they deny their faith by their acts. Ludwig Feuerbach, quoted in Ludwig Büchner, Force and Matter (1855; rev. & enlarged 1891)
[I call myself] an atheist. Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this. Richard Feynman, his response when asked whether he called himself an atheist or an agnostic; quoted in Denis Brian, The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995)
Hope is the atheist’s prayer. It does all the good that prayer does, with none of the nonsense. Peter Flom, “What Should Humanists Do in the Age of Trump?” in Pique [Newsletter of the Secular Humanist Society of New York] (February 2017)
Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Sydney J. Harris, “Atheists, Like Fundamentalists, are Dogmatic,” in Pieces of Eight (1982)
Harris was contrasting agnosticism with atheism. He continued: “Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason; because, though rational argument may take us to the edge of belief, we require a ‘leap of faith’ to jump the chasm.”
I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people. Katharine Hepburn, “Kate Talks Straight,” in Ladies’ Home Journal (Oct. 1, 1991)
I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Christopher Hitchens, in Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
Hitchens continued: “Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.”
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket or breaks my leg. Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-85)
You don’t have to be brave or a saint, a martyr, or even very smart to be an atheist. All you have to be able to say is “I don’t know.” Penn Jillette, in God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011)
American Atheists has always encouraged the public to read both the Old and New Testaments from cover to cover. Many people become atheists after reading the Bible. Ellen Johnson, quoted in Jack Huberman, The Quotable Atheist (2007)
Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It’s not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other. Wendy Kaminer, “Absolutisms on Parade,” in Free Inquiry (2001)
In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. H. P. Lovecraft, in letter to Robert E. Howard (Aug. 16, 1932)
Lovecraft preceded the thought by writing: “All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine.”
An atheist doesn’t have to be someone who thinks he has a proof that there can't be a god. He only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. John McCarthy [American computer scientist], quoted in Jack Huberman, The Quotable Atheist (2007)
I don’t believe in an afterlife. I am an atheist. Darwin proved for me that there is birth and death and in-between evolution and that is all there is to it. John McCarthy [English entrepreneur], quoted in Charlie Berridge, Building a Billion: the Story of John McCarthy (2011)
A moment later, McCarthy added: “I don’t believe in God or some greater being than mortal man here on earth. In the end we’re just like the leaves on the trees. They start as little green shoots, grow into dense foliage, turn golden, and then drop off and fall to the ground. They are gathered up for the bonfire or rot to provide nourishment for the next generation. All the while the tree trunk grows stronger.”
At no time have I ever said that people should be stripped of their right to the insanity of belief in God. If they want to practice this kind of irrationality, that’s their business. It won’t get them anywhere; it certainly won’t make them happier or more compassionate human beings; but if they want to chew that particular cud. they’re welcome to it. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, in Playboy magazine interview (Oct. 1965)
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike him). George Orwell, on his father, in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933),
I’m an atheist. The good news about atheists is that we have no mandate to convert anyone. So you’ll never find me on your doorstep on a Saturday morning with a big smile, saying, “Just stopped by to tell you there is no word. I brought along this little blank book I was hoping you could take a look at.” Paula Poundstone, in There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say (2006)
I am an intransigent atheist, though not a militant one. This means that I am not fighting against religion—I am fighting for reason. Ayn Rand, from a 1963 letter, in Letters of Ayn Rand (1995; Michael S. Berliner, ed.)
Sometimes when I’m faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there’s a cook. Ronald Reagan, from a May 30, 1988 speech, in Speaking My Mind (1989)
In the first place, I’m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. J. D. Salinger, a reflection of protagonist Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye (1951; pub. in serial form 1945-46,
Caufield continued: “Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down.”
My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men into their own image, to be servants of their human interests. George Santayana, “On My Friendly Critics,” in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we’re dead we’re dead? John Updike, in Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (1989)
The study of anthropology…confirmed my atheism, which was the faith of my fathers anyway. Religions were exhibited and studied as the Rube Goldberg inventions I’d always thought they were. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in Paris Review interview (Spring 1977)
As you learn more and more about the universe, you find you can understand more and more without any reference to supernatural intervention, so you lose interest in that possibility. Most scientists I know don’t care enough about religion even to call themselves atheists. And that, I think, is one of the great things about science—that it has made it possible for people not to be religious. Steven Weinberg, quoted in Natalie Angier, “Confessions of a Lonely Atheist,” in The New York Times (Jan. 14, 2001)
ATTAINMENT
(see also ACCOMPLISHMENT see also ACHIEVEMENT and AMBITION and ASPIRATION)
Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment? Robert Louis Stevenson, the character Prince Florizel speaking, “The Adventure of the Hansom Cabs” (1878), in New Arabian Nights, Vol. I (1882)
ATTENTION
(see also CONCENTRATION and FOCUS and LISTENING)
Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the actor. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences. As Ortega y Gasset said: “Tell me to what you pay attention, and I will tell you who are.” W. H. Auden, quoted in A. Hecht, Melodies Unheard: Essays on the Mystery of Poetry (2003)
Buechner continued: “Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.”
A man is what he does with his attention. John Ciardi, quoted in Vince Clemente, “‘A Man is What He Does with His Attention’: A Conversation with John Ciardi,’ in Vince Clemente, John Ciardi: Measure of the Man (1987)
Ciardi continued: “Poetry—any of the arts—is for those with a willing attention and must not be diluted for those who haven’t formed an attention.”
Attention is focused mental engagement on a particular item of information. Items come into our awareness, we attend to a particular item, and then we decide whether to act. Thomas H. Davenport, in Thomas H. Davenport and J.C. Beck, The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business (2001)
The one serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable quality in every study and every pursuit is the quality of attention. Charles Dickens, in
speech at Birmingham and Midland Institute (Sep. 27, 1869)
Dickens continued: “My own invention or imagination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention.”
Johnson concluded the essay by writing: “What is read with delight is commonly retained, because pleasure always secures attention; but the books which are consulted by occasional necessity, and perused with impatience, seldom leave any traces on the mind.”
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself. Henry Miller, in Plexus (1953)
ERROR ALERT: Most internet sites mistakenly present the observation with magnified replaced by magnificent.
QUOTE NOTE: This observation has also been translated this way: “Attention is a tacit and continual compliment.” See the Thoreau ent