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Quotations Weblog
Archives for the 'Quotations' Category
November 16th, 1997 by Laura Moncur in Quotations
Last week I attended my ten year high school reunion. After saying that I wouldn’t go,
I went. I had fully decided that when the invitation came, I would return the information
sheet, but, regretfully, not attend. But when the envelope arrived and the information
sheet was completed, I paid the fee to go. I knew instantly that there were people I
wanted to see, so I made a list of their names and awaited the day.
Although I was apprehensive about former enemies, I was not nearly as scared as a few
of my colleagues. Their feelings ranged from worrying about their physical safety to
the desire to show off their improved wealth, appearance, or fame. For them, the
evening was safer than they expected. Most of the bullies and bitches didn’t attend,
and the few that did, were strangely docile.
Almost all of the people I wished to see were there. I reproached myself for not
keeping in touch with these people, but I was very happy to have found them
again. We could start anew. I gathered addresses and made promises about lunches
and dinners.
Seeing the face of a dear friend after being separated for ten years is an odd
feeling. I wish I could describe the combination of regret and joy. Instead, I
can only recommend the following quotes.
Introduction and quote compilation by Laura S. Moncur, Staff Writer.
- “A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.”
- Unknown
“True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.”
Charles Caleb Colton
“Remember, the greatest gift is not found in a store nor under a tree, but in the hearts of true friends.”
Cindy Lew
“Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”
Richard Bach
“False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.”
Richard Burton
“I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.”
Pietro Aretino, letter to Giovanni Pollastra, July 7, 1537
“Old friends, we say, are best, when some sudden disillusionment shakes our faith in a new comrade.”
Gelett Burgess, “Old Friends and New,” 1916
“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.”
Robert Southey
For more information about High School Reunions and Friendship, try these links:
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Yahoo’s High School Reunion Pages – Find your high school reunion page (mine
wasn’t there, so this may be only helpful to a few). Most pages include forms to
enter your information, some merely contain e-mail addresses. You too can enjoy the
bliss of finding old friends.
The following books and tapes are available through Amazon.com:
The Friendship Quote Page – A huge collection of quotes regarding friendship, both positive and negative.
The Friendship Page – Links to pages related to friendship. Find an e-mail friend or just read some friendship poetry. You’ll be sick of the word friend by the time you finish with this page.
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October 26th, 1997 by Laura Moncur in Quotations
I love Halloween because it’s the one time of the year when I can put aside my normal
fears of life and choose to temporarily be scared of the things that go bump in the
night again. When did I stop being scared of vampires and start being scared of my
boss? Ok, I can answer that one, but it’s all Ann Rice’s fault. Until Lestat, I was
scared of vampires. But when did witches stop being instruments of terror and start
being a convenient name to call a co-worker? Ok, I can answer that one too, and
Elizabeth Montgomery has some explaining to do.
The following quotes are associated with the fears of adults (my fear of ghosts and
other spirit entities doesn’t count). At Halloween, I spend so much time creating
artificial fear, that I find myself forgetting about the real ones. To bring myself
back to the real stuff, here are some of my favorites.
Introduction and quote compilation by Laura S. Moncur, Staff Writer.
- “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.”
- Sir Francis Bacon, Essays [1625], “Of Death”
“There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.”
Cyril Connolly
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth– more than ruin, more even than death.”
Bertrand Russell
“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”
Eric Hoffer
“To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none.”
Sir Francis Bacon, Essays [1625], “Of Seditions and Troubles”
“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”
Louis E. Boone
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.”
Nelson Mandela
“I moved to New York City for my health. I’m paranoid and New York was the only place where my fears were justified.”
Anita Weiss
“A thousand fearful images and dire suggestions glance along the mind when it is moody and discontented with itself. Command them to stand and show themselves, and you presently assert the power of reason over imagination.”
Sir Walter Scott
“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.”
Titus Lucretius Carus [99-55 B.C.], De Rerum Natura, bk. III, l. 87
For more information about Halloween (you’ll have to explore fear on your own), try these links:
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April 14th, 1997 by Michael Moncur in Quotations
Apologies (again) for the long stretch of no new quotes. My “real job” demanded my attention. I’m much better
now.
On this tuesday, April 15th, those of us in the US will all heave a collective sigh as we send our tax forms and a significant portion
of our earthly posessions to the government. (Yes, some of you might have filed already. You probably even get
refunds. Stop gloating.)
In honor of this yearly event, I’ve selected a few quotes that deal with the subject of taxes (and a few that have to do with
money in general). I hope this adds a note of levity to what may otherwise be an unpleasant week. Enjoy them while my wife
and I frantically work to finish our 1040 form…
P. S. For extra credit, copy one or more of these quotes and enclose them with your tax return. I’m sure a few IRS employees
will get a good laugh out of it, after which they’ll be fired for having a sense of humor and forced to switch to a career in politics.
- “The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.”
- John Maynard Keynes
“OUT-OF-DOORS, n. That part of one’s environment upon which no government has been able to collect taxes.”
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.”
Herman Wouk
“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.”
Will Rogers
“If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that
don’t get wet you can keep.”
Will Rogers
“Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
P. J. O’Rourke
“Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you’ll be surprised at how little you have.”
Ernest Haskins
“What we should have fought for was representation without taxation.”
Sam Levenson, You Don’t Have to Be in `Who’s Who’ to Know What’s What
“A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.”
Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)
“The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax.”
Thomas Robert Dewar (1864-1930)
“I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.”
e e cummings
“Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got
in wages.”
H. L. Mencken
More about Taxes…
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February 10th, 1997 by Michael Moncur in Quotations
I apologize for the lack of a new Quotes of the Week last week; I was out of town, and the Staff of Talented Editors were
unavailable for help. I’ll try not to let this happen again…
On February 14th, much of the world celebrates St. Valentine’s Day. This holiday centers around the concept
of love. This makes it second only to Boxing Day as the holiday least understood by most of the world. It’s hard
to talk much about love without lapsing into song, poetry, or convulsions, depending on your current experience
with it.
I’ve compiled a few of my favorite quotations about love for this week’s edition of Quotes of the Week. As those of
you familiar with my collection have already guessed, most of my favorite quotes are, well, a bit negative. Realizing
this, I’ve tried to mix in a few positive voices about love here and there. If you think I’m mocking Valentine’s Day by including
some of these quotes, you’re probably one of those people who are in a happy relationship and are on the verge of lapsing
into song yourself, and I doubt this page will do anything to calm you down.
On a more serious note, some of you out there are shy. You’re dreading Valentine’s Day because you’ll have a chance–
almost an obligation–to let that certain someone know how you feel, and it’s not easy. Believe me, I’ve been there. Take my
advice: do it. I let quite a few Valentine’s Days (and other holidays) go by without making my feelings known, and all I got for
my trouble was a bad case of bitterness (how do you think those quotes got into my collection?) Things may not work out, but
there’s no worse regret than the feeling that you could have had a chance, but didn’t even try.
And for those of you who are married, or in a relationship, don’t let the day go by unnoticed. Okay, lecture’s over. We now continue
with our regularly scheduled quotes.
P.S. For those who are wondering, yes, I finally tried. We’ve been happily married for 7 years. Unfortunately, this has done
nothing to cure my skepticism…
“Men and women, women and men. It will never work.”
Erica Jong
“Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.”
Lynda Barry
“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.”
Jean Anouilh
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Nietzsche, “On Reading and Writing”
“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”
Peter Ustinov
“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.”
Dorothy Parker
“Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired. “
Robert Frost
“Love is not blind – it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.”
Rabbi Julius Gordon
“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
H. L. Mencken
“Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
Iris Murdoch
…and, to end on a happy note:
- “Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night,
the ice weasels come.”
- Matt Groening
More about Valentine’s Day…
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January 27th, 1997 by Michael Moncur in Quotations, TV
Since there aren’t any big holidays this week (anyone got any good Groundhog Day quotes?) I thought
it would be interesting to focus on television, which was first demonstrated publicly by John L. Baird on
January 27, 1926. (Who invented it? That’s a very long story.)
Few of us can claim not to watch any television, and it certainly impacts our lives – whether by keeping us constantly
informed of news events, allowing us to be entertained by people across the world, or simply providing a convenient
way to waste time. (And of course, without the cathode-ray tube at the heart of the television screen, computers
would still be in their infancy.)
All that’s well and good, but I’m not much of a TV addict, and chances are you’re not either–or you’d be watching
it right now. As such, I’ve assembled a collection of quotations about television, most by people who weren’t exactly
big fans of it themselves. If you are a TV addict, you may want to go see what’s on rather than reading. You have
been warned.
One more thing: after you’ve read through these quotes, re-read them, and substitute “The Internet” for “Television”. You’ll
be surprised how many of them still ring true…
- “Television is democracy at its ugliest.”
- Paddy Chayefsky
- “Television is the first truly democratic culture — the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what
the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.”
- Clive Barnes
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“I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half
hour looking at my face on their television screens.”
- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
- “Television – a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well-done.”
- Ernie Kovacs
- “It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at
the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”
- T. S. Eliot
- “Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn’t have in your home.”
- David Frost
- “Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.”
- Ann Landers
- “All television is children’s television.”
- Richard P. Adler
- “Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.”
- Alfred Hitchcock
- “Television has raised writing to a new low.”
- Samuel Goldwyn
- “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
More about television:
- See old TV’s – and old TV programs – at the MZTV Television Museum.
- For more television-related links than you know what to do with, refer to Yahoo’s Television category.
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