April 2009 Quotations

{{ NOTE: This is post #150 on this blog }}

"One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential for one man to make a film."
~~ Stanley Kubrick [1928-99]

"Gluttony is not a secret vice."
~~ Orson Welles [1915-85]

"Why is it that the study of religion attracts so many nitwits?"
~~ Morton Smith, professor at Columbia University

"I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay."
~~ Pres. Barack Obama, 23 February 2009

"Real hell is there in the office."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]

"Nothing in this life happens without a before and after."
~~ Doris R. Meredith

“We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. 'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.”
~~ author Philip Pullman

"This life's hard, man, but it's harder if you're stupid."
~~ George V. Higgins

"People try to alter my grumpy, curmudgeonly ways by telling me that 'You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar'. But why would I want to attract flies at all?"
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, nbut not against art."
~~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [1919-2008]

"I'm not overweight. I'm just nine inches too short."
~~ actress Shelley Winters [1920-2006]

"It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it."
~~ Roseanne Barr

"We rarely repent of having eaten too little."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"Character is the basis of happiness, and happiness is the reward of character."
~~ George Santayana [1853-1962]

"Life, of course, is without meaning, and if you find something that gives it meaning, you're very fortunate."
~~ Paul Bowles [1910-99]

"We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
~~ Jonathan Swift [1667-1745]

"Barack Obama was elected President because the governing philosophy of the last 30 years, arrant Reaganism, proved itself bankrupt."
~~ Joe Klein, Time Magazine columnist

"Stay alert: The Republicans and the fascists lost the election in 2008, but they did not surrender."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"The world is illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far as it goes, and [real] in those aspects of the reality which we are capable of comprehending. Our business is to wake up."
~~ Aldous Huxley [1894-1963]

"Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect."
~~ Thomas S. Monson

"You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. The height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery, the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. And this law is: the expansion of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others."
~~ Leonardo Da Vinci [1452-1519]

"The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970]

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62] (in the "Pensées")

"Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded."
~~ Paul Bowles [1910-99]

"For a genius to be a genius, he must have a selfless slave between himself and the world."
~~ writer Dawn Powell [1896-1965]

"The logic of business is coersion, monopoly and the destruction of the weak, not 'choice' or 'service' or universal affluence."
~~ Thomas C. Frank

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

"Where there is no vision, the people will perish." ~~ Proverbs 29:18

"In Hollywood, they'll forgive you if you're two-faced, but not if you're two-chinned."
~~ actress Colleen Dewhurst [1924-91]

"Always forgive your enemies. Just don't forget their names."
~~ David O. Selznick [1902-65]

"A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car."
~~ Kenneth Tynan

"When a child abruptly quadruples her family's income, some changes may be expected."
~~ Shirley Temple

"When I was young, I was terribly concerned with what people thought of me. But now I'm more concerned with what I think of them."
~~ Bette Davis [1908-89]

"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."
~~ Lucille Ball [1911-89]

"A gossip is someone who talks to you about others, a bore is someone who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is someone who talks to you about yourself."
~~ actress Lisa Kirk [1925-90]

"I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book."
~~ Groucho Marx [1890-1977]

"Beautiful young people are random acts of nature, but beautiful old people are deliberate works of art."
~~ actress Butterfly McQueen [1911-95]

"To survive [in Hollywood] you need the ambition of a Latin American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony."
~~ actress Billie Burke [1884-1970]

"A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts."
~~ Colette [1873-1954]

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. ... The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
~~ Ken Kesey [1935-2001] (in 1994)

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