 |
| Bartleby.com combines the best of both contemporary and classic quotations collections into a searchable database of over 86,000 entries, the largest of its kind ever compiled. |
| |
|
 |
| Quotations of the Day: February 2004 |
| |
|
|
| |
February 29, 2004
The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.
—David Mamet
February 28, 2004
I’m struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.
—Sir Stephen Spender
February 27, 2004
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
—John Steinbeck
February 26, 2004
The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, “That is all there was!” But twist them all together and you have something tremendous.
—Victor Hugo
February 25, 2004
There’s a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you’re dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they’re the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.
—Anthony Burgess
February 24, 2004
When the Devil quotes Scriptures, it’s not, really, to deceive, but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them.
—Paul Goodman
February 23, 2004
Perhaps America will one day go fascist democratically, by popular vote.
—William L. Shirer
February 22, 2004
I will be the gladdest thing / Under the sun! / I will touch a hundred flowers / And not pick one.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay
February 21, 2004
Women have learned the language of power, an add-on to their emotional fluency and a skill required for the financial survival of the family—but the cultural rewards for their twin efforts are slim indeed.
—Victoria Secunda
February 20, 2004
A woman’s dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
—Sophia Loren
February 19, 2004
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
—Thomas Jefferson
February 18, 2004
In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.
—Toni Morrison
February 17, 2004
Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved—commitment to a scenario.
—Jean Baudrillard
February 16, 2004
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.
—Eric Hoffer
February 15, 2004
I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
—Susan B. Anthony
February 14, 2004
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
—Thornton Wilder
February 13, 2004
Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness.
—Georges Simenon
February 12, 2004
If all would lead their lives in love like me, / Then bloody swords and armor should not be; / No drum nor trumpet peaceful sleeps should move, / Unless alarm came from the camp of love.
—Thomas Campion
February 11, 2004
Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
—Germaine Greer
February 10, 2004
This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold—by voice, by posted card, by letter or by press. Reason never has failed men. Only force and repression have made the wrecks in the world.
—William Allen White
February 9, 2004
We have tried to make it clear that the United States is not just an old cow that gives more milk the more it is kicked in the flanks.
—Dean Rusk
February 8, 2004
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts, the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.
—John Ruskin
February 7, 2004
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
—Oscar Wilde
February 6, 2004
Everyone has the same God; only people differ.
—Anton Chekhov
February 5, 2004
Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
—William Burroughs
February 4, 2004
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
—Thomas Gray
February 3, 2004
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
—Simone Weil
February 2, 2004
My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.
—James Joyce
February 1, 2004
Listen, Christ, / You did alright in your day, I reckon— / But that day’s gone now. / They ghosted you up a swell story, too, / Called it Bible— / But it’s dead now. / The popes and the preachers’ve / Made too much money from it.
—Langston Hughes
| |
|
|
