December Quotations

"Exaggerate the essential; leave the obvious vague."
~~ Vincent Van Gogh [1853-90]

"It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered."
~~ Aeschylus [c. 525 - c. 456 B.C.E.]

"Life is all about how you handle Plan B"
~~ gag t-shirt

"Even true things shouted from loudspeakers start to sound like lies."
~~ Leonardo Sciascia [1921-89]

"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]

"Idiots are everywhere. Many have degrees."
~~ Terry Black

"Dare to be indifferent"
~~ gag t-shirt

"Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost."
~~ Thomas Fuller [1608-61]

"One ceases to be a child when one realizes that telling one's troubles does not make it any better."
~~ Cesare Pavese [1908-50]

"Life is one long process of getting tired."
~~ Samuel Butler [1835-1902]

"There is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing."
~~ Anthony Powell [1905-2000]

“The most important thing in acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
~~ George Burns [1896-1996]

"I listen to Beethoven every week, and to Bach twice a week, but to Mozart every day."
~~ Igor Stravinsky [1882-1971]

"[The Jesuits] appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation."
~~ Thomas Macaulay [1800-1859]

"The primary reward for human toil is not what you get by it, but what you become by it."
~~ John Ruskin [1819-1900]

"Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"
~~ Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]

"The more serious the face, the more beautiful the smile."
~~ François-René de Chateaubriand [1768-1848]

"To die of love is overdoing it."
~~ French proverb

"A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough."
~~ quoted by Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"If you marry, you will regret it; if you don't marry, you will also regret it."
~~ Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]

"Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things."
~~ Russian proverb

"Possibilities are like the wings of birds; they allow man to soar and to climb to the heavens. And facts are like the atmosphere against which those wings must beat, and without which the soaring bird will surely plummet back to earth."
~~ Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849-1936]

"McCarthyism has not disappeared from the American scene."
~~ André Schiffrin (2008)

"Only people destroy beauty."
~~ Michael Collins

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."
~~ George W. Bush (C.N.N. interview 16 December 2008 AFTER the meltdown-recession-depression)

"All that you have is your story."
~~ voiceover narration of the movie "Australia" [2008]

"The wise man never has to lie."
~~ Jesuit maxim

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.”
~~ Flannery O'Connor [1925-64]

"The pen is mightier than the sword."
~~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton [1803-73] (in stageplay "Richelieu", 1839)

"Endeleya mbele!"
~~ Kimani

"The gods do not deduct from man's allotted span the hours spent fishing."
~~ Old Saying

"The world is run by C students."
~~ basketball announcer Al McGuire [1928-2001]

"The color of truth is gray."
~~ André Gide [1869-1951]

"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack."
~~ Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]

"Three things make up a nation: its land, its people, and its laws."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]

"Two things are wanted by a true man, danger and play – therefore, he seeks woman as the most dangerous play."
~~ Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900]

"It ain't bragging if you can back it up."
~~ baseball player Dizzy Dean [1910-74]

"An artist must learn ... that he or she works for the work itself, not for approval."
~~ Erica Jong

"Never take stupidity too much in earnest."
~~ a 'Chinese proverb' invented by Jacques Maritain [1882-1973]

"Lying about the future produces history."
~~ Umberto Eco

"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account."
~~ Walter Lippmann [1889-1974]

"[Writing] is like driving a car at night. You never see farther than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
~~ E.L. Doctorow

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}