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INNUENDO
INSANITY --- INSECTS
INSECURITY --- INSIGHT --- INSPIRATION

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INNUENDO

see: "COMMUNICATION" for related links


It's the good girls who keep diaries;
the bad girls never have the time.
--attributed to Tallulah Bankhead (1903—1968)
American actress.

The marvellous thing about a joke with a double
meaning is that it can only mean one thing.
--Ronnie Barker (1929—2005)
English television comedian, writer, and actor.
Quoted in "The Listener", vol. 99 [1978].

[To a lady cellist during a rehearsal:]
Madam, you have between your legs an instrument
capable of giving pleasure to thousands — and all
you can do is scratch it.
--Sir Thomas Beecham (1879—1961)
English conductor.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
--Sigmund Freud (1856—1939)
Austrian psychiatrist.
Quoted in _Law and Contemporary Problems_,
vol. 19 [1954]; pub. by Duke University. School of Law.

Anything worth doing well is worth doing slowly.
--attributed to Gypsy Rose Lee [Rose Louise Hovick] (1914—1970)
American striptease artist.

^^

Dorothy Parker (1893—1967)
American critic and humorist:

At a Halloween party she saw a group of people
standing around a tub of water and asked what
they were doing. When she was told they were
ducking for apples, she noted sadly, "There,
but for a typographical error, is the story
of my life."

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ [rev. ed. 2000]
edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard

^^

-

[Tira, played by Mae West, speaking:]
It's not the men in my life that
counts — it's the life in my men.
--Mae West (1893—1980)
American stage and film actress.
"I'm No Angel" [1933 film]


Is that a gun in your pocket, or
are you just glad to see me?
--Mae West (1893—1980)
American stage and film actress.
1936 comment to a LAPD officer assigned to escort her home.


[When told that a new male acquaintance was 6' 7:]
Let's forget about the six feet and talk about the seven inches.
--Mae West (1893—1980)
American stage and film actress.
Quoted in George Eells & Stanley Musgrove
_Mae West: A Biography_ [1982].

-

March isn't the only thing that's in
like a lion and out like a lamb.
--anon.

Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
--anon.
Line coined in the 1920s by Robert Benchley's
press agent and adopted by Mae West in "Every
Day's a Holiday" [1937 film].

March isn't the only thing that's in
like a lion and out like a lamb.
--anon.

There was a young thing from Madras
Who had a most beautiful ass.
It wasn't pink
As you might think
But it had long ears and ate grass.
--anon.



INSANITY

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see: "MADNESS"
see: "PARANOIA"
see: "PSYCHIATRY"
see: "THE MIND" for other related links


Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.
--Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914)
American newspaperman, wit, and satirist.
_The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906]
{Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_}.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and
over again, but expecting different results.
--Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944)
American writer.
_Sudden Death_, ch. 3 [1984]

The Cardinal is at his wit's end, it
is true that he had not far to go.
--Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (1788—1824)
English Romantic poet and satirist.
Letter to John Murray [22 July 1820].

[On planet Earth:]
The lunatic asylum of the solar system.
--Samuel Parkes Cadman (1864—1936)
American clergyman and author.
Speech in New York City [17 November 1935].

-

There is but an inch of difference between the
cushioned chamber and the padded cell.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.
_Charles Dickens: A Critical Study_ [1906]


Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.
_Orthodoxy_, ch. 2 "The Maniac" [1908]

-

[Harold Bissonette, played by W.C. Fields,
replying to a man who said, 'You're drunk.':]
Yeah, and you're crazy. I'll be sober tomorrow,
but you'll be crazy the rest of your life.
--"It's a Gift" [1934 film]
Screenplay by Jack Cunningham & W.C. Fields.

We must never let our poor neurotics drive us crazy.
--Sigmund Freud (1856—1939)
Austrian psychiatrist.
Letter to Carl Gustav Jung [31 December 1911].

Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid
moments when he was merely stupid.
--Heinrich Heine (1797—1856)
German poet.
Of Savoye, appointed ambassador to Frankfurt by Lamartine [1848].

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never
allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would
go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
--Herodotus (484—c.425 BC)
Greek author of the first great narrative
history produced in the ancient world.
_The Histories of Herodotus_ bk. II, ch. 173

Mad as a March hare.
--John Heywood (1497—1580)
English playwright.
_Dialogue of Proverbs_ [1546]

Insanity is often the logic of
an accurate mind overtaxed.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894)
American physician, poet, and essayist.
_The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_ [1858]

There is a thin line between genius
and insanity. I have erased this line.
--Oscar Levant (1906—1972)
American pianist and actor.
Quoted in Cleveland Amory _Celebrity Register_, p. 369 [1959].

Insanity is hereditary — you get it from your children.
--Sam Levenson (1911—1980)
American humorist.
In "Diner's Club Magazine" [November 1963].

^

Marie Edmé Patrice Maurice Macmahon,
Comte de (1808—1893) French general
and statesman; president [1873-1879]

Visiting a field hospital one day, the marshall
addressed a few words to a soldier who lay
ill with a tropical fever. 'Yes, that's a nasty
disease you've got there. You either die of
it, or go crazy. I've been through it myself.'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

Man is quite insane. He would not know how to
create a mite, and he creates gods by the dozens.
--Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533—1592)
French moralist and essayist.
_Essais_, bk. 3, ch. 2 [1580]

-

Insanity is something rare in individuals — but
in groups, parties, and nations, it is the rule.
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844—1900)
German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture.
_Beyond Good and Evil_ [1885-1886], pt. 4 "Maxims and Interludes"


[Referring to ... I-Pods?:]
Those who were seen dancing were thought to
be insane by those who did not hear the music.
--attributed to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844—1900)
German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture.

-

One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown
is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If I were
a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient
who considered his work important.
--Bertrand Russell (1872—1970)
British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate.
_The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1914—1944_ [1968], v. II, ch. 5

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than
wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends
from the insanities.
--Sir Walter Scott (1771—1832)
Scottish novelist and poet.
Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the August, 1871
meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The longer I live the more I am inclined to the
belief that this sphere is used by other planets
as a lunatic asylum.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner
of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.]
Quoted in _The Birth Control Review_ [December 1919].

Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and
I stood by him when he was drunk, and
now we stand by each other.
--William Tecumseh Sherman (1820—1891)
American Union general.
In William F. G. Shanks _Personal Recollections
of Distinguished Generals_, p. 36 [1866].

If you talk to God, you are praying; if God
talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
--Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
American psychiatrist.
_The Second Sin_ "Schizophrenia" [1973]

-

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_Christian Science_, bk. I, ch. 5 [1907]


Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will
explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles;
it will make clear and simple many things which are
involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and
obscurities now.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
_Christian Science_, bk. I, ch. v [1907]

-

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To
be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
--John Updike (1932—2009)
American novelist and short-story writer.
In "Christian Science Monitor" [5 March 1979].

The main difference between men and women
is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
--Dame Rebecca West [Cecily Isabel Fairfiield] (1892—1983)
British-Irish journalist, novelist, and critic.
Attributed in Abby Adams _An Uncommon Scold_, p. 159 [1989].

---

A man took his car to a garage to have the tires
rotated. He had left and driven a few blocks when
one of his wheels fell off. The garageman had
forgotten to put the nuts back on after remounting
it. He had recovered the wheel and was considering
the situation when somebody shouted "Hey!" from a
second-story window just above him. He looked,
and saw that the building was an insane asylum.
The inmate shouted "Take one nut off each of the
other three wheels". The driver raised his eyebrows
and shouted back "Thanks!". Then, wanting to be
nice, he added "Say, you're not so crazy after all".
To which, of course, the inmate replied,

"Sure, I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid."

-----

bedlam (noun) ['bed-lêm]
A mental hospital; a state of total social chaos,
a wild uproar involving people or animals.
Etymology: One of the most renowned of the original institutions for
the mentally ill was St. Mary of Bethlehem, better known as Bedlam
(from Bedlem), located outside London. Mental patients were first
accepted in 1403 and by 1547 it was totally devoted to the care of
the insane. Bedlam was so famous, its name became the term referring
to any asylum. As in the United States, British mental patients were
placed on public display every Sunday for the curious to view.

boanthropy
A type of insanity in which a man thinks he is an ox.



INSECTS

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see: "NATURE" for related links


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A Flea who felt phlebotomous
Assailed a Hippopotamus;
The Hippo, he
Sat on the Flea,
And, goodness gracious! what a muss!
--Arthur Guiterman (1871—1943)
American poet.
"The Phlebotomous Flea"


I saw a Melancholy Wasp
Upon a Purple Clover Knosp,
Who wept, 'The Poets do me Wrong,
Excluding me from Noble Song—
Though Pure am I and Wholly Crimeless—
Because, they say, my Name is Rhymeless!
Oh, had I but been born a Bee,
With Heaps of Words to Rhyme with me,
I should not want for Panegyrics
In Sonnets, Epics, Odes and Lyrics!
Will no one free me from the Curse
That bars my Race from Lofty Verse?'
'My Friend, that Little Thing I'll care for
At once,' said I— and that is wherefore
So tenderly I set that Wasp
Upon a Purple Clover Knosp.
--Arthur Guiterman (1871—1943)
American poet.
"Kindness to Insects"

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From the fact that there are 400,000 species of
beatles on this planet, but only 8,000 species
of mammals, he [Haldane] concluded that the
Creator, if He exists, has a special preference
for beatles.
--J.B.S. Haldane (1892—1964)
Scottish mathematical biologist.
Report of lecture [7 April 1951], quoted in "Journal
of the British Interplanetary Society" [July 1951].

-

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
--anon.

-----

apterous (adj.)
Lacking wings: describes an insect that has no wings.



Click picture to ZOOM
INSECURITY

see: "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for related links


A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle,
firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a
helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person,
that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness
and other signs of insecurity.
--Jimmy Carter (b. 1924)
American Democratic statesman, President [1977-1981].
Speech in New York City [14 October 1976].

With the possible exception of worry, insecurity is the most contagious
of fears. We catch it from each other in a backhanded way. For instance,
one person may compensate for her feelings of insecurity by putting others
down. She doesn’t become any more secure by so doing, but those whom
she puts down certainly feel less secure. As sensitive as she may be to
criticism or slights, she is utterly insensitive to how her own words or
actions may be hurtful. This drives others away, which adds to her own
insecurity by isolating her from the kinds of personal connections that
might help her overcome it. Insecurity is rooted in isolation, an isolation
we more often create than inherit. Either we drive people away or we run
from them.
--Forrest Church (1948—2009)
American theologian and author.
_Freedom from Fear: Finding the Courage to Act, Love, and Be_ [2004]

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealously in
anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
--Robert Heinlein (1907—1988)
American science-fiction writer.
_Time Enough for Love_ [1973]

Jealousy is not a barometer by which depth of
love can be read. It merely records the degree
of the lover's insecurity.
--Margaret Mead (1901—1978)
American anthropologist.
"Jealousy: Primitive and Civilised"

We crucify ourselves between two thieves:
regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.
--Fulton Oursler (1893—1952)
American writer and editor.
Attributed in "Liguorian", vol. 54 [1966].

My father told me not long before he died [that] the threshold
of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. He said
the words 'son of a bitch' are only an insult to a man who isn't
quite sure of his mother.
--John Steinbeck (1902—1968)
American novelist.
_The Winter of Our Discontent_ [1961]



INSIGHT

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see: "INTUITION"
see: "KNOWING (SOMEONE)"
see: "PERCEPTIONS"
see: "UNDERSTANDING"


You must look into people as well as at them.
--Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (1694—1773)
British writer and politician.
Letter to his son [4 October 1746].

The man with insight enough to admit his
limitations comes nearest to perfection.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
German poet, novelist, and playwright.
"The Principles of Natural Science", as quoted in
Emil Ludwig (ed.) _The Practical Wisdom of Goethe_ [1933].

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have
insight into much and power over nothing.
--Herodotus (484—c.425 BC)
Greek author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world.
Attributed in Connie Robertson
_The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations_, p. 168 [1998].

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894)
American physician, poet, and essayist.
_The Professor at the Breakfast Table_, ch. 10 [1860]

We love to see through others, but
we dislike being seen through.
--François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.
_Maxims_ [1665] #632

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,
The foresight to know where you are going,
And the insight to know when you have gone too far.
--most often attributed to Charles M. Meyers or an "Irish toast".

Some people become so expert at reading
between the lines they don't read the lines.
--Margaret Millar [née Sturm] (1915—1994)
Canadian-born mystery writer.
_The Soft Talkers_ [1957]

Often you get the best insights by considering
extremes — by thinking of the opposite of that
with which you are directly concerned.
--C. Wright Mills (1916—1962)
American sociologist.
_The Sociological Imagination_, p. 213 [1959]

Good men can more easily see through
bad men than the latter can the former.
--Jean Paul Richter (1763—1825)
German novelist.
_Hesperus_, IV [1794]

Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies
will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life —
save only this — that if you work hard and intelligently
you should be able to detect *when a man is talking
rot,* and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole,
purpose of education.
--John Alexander Smith (1863—1939)
English philosopher.
In Harold Macmillan "Oxford Remembered" _The Times_ [18 October 1975].

The only people who remain misunderstood are those
who either do not know what they want or are not
worth understanding.
--Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818—1883)
Russian novelist, poet, and playwright.
_Rudin_ [1856]

-----

acumen (noun) ['æ-kyu-mên, ê-'kyu-mên]
Sharpness of perception, keenness of mind,
precise insightfulness.

perspicacity [pur-spuh-KAS-uh-tee], noun:
Clearness of understanding or insight; penetration, discernment.

purblind [PUR-blynd], adjective:
1. Having greatly reduced vision.
2. Lacking in insight or discernment.



Click picture to ZOOM
INSPIRATION

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see: "ENTHUSIASM"
see: "INFLUENCE"
see: "MOTIVATION"
see: "TEACHERS"
see: "SUCCESS" for other related links


Which of the powers, love or music, is able to lift man to the
sublimest heights? It is a great question, but it seems to me
that one might answer it thus: love cannot express the idea
of music, while music may give an idea of love. But why
separate them? They are the two wings of the soul.
--Louis Hector Berlioz (1803—1869)
French composer.
_Memoires_ [1870]

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile,
a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the
smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to
turn a life around.
--Leo [Felice Leonardo] Buscaglia (1925—1998)
American professor and author of inspirational books.
_Born For Love: Reflections on Loving_ [1992]

There’s something about music that’s healing. There’ve
been many times that I don’t feel good at all, but once
I hit the stage, something transforms. I don’t know why,
I don’t know how, but it just does. Unless you’re just
about dead, music’ll do something for you.
--Ray Charles (1930—2004)
American pianist and soul singer.
Interview in _The Los Angeles Times_ [1996].

I have now for more than a year, I believe, ceased
to write in my journal, in which I formerly wrote
almost daily. I see few intellectual persons, and
even those to no purpose, and sometimes believe
that I have no new thoughts, and that my life is
quite at an end. But the magnet that lies in my
drawer, for years, may believe it has no magnetism,
and, on touching it with steel, it knows the old
virtue; and, this morning, came by a man with
knowledge and interests like mine, in his head,
and suddenly I had thoughts again.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Journal_ [April 1859]

Yet there is one thing the world with all its rottenness
cannot take from us, and that is the deep and abiding
joy and consolation perpetuate in great music. Here
the spirit may find home and relief when all else fails.
--Eric Fenby (1906—1997)
British musician, musicologist, and author.
_Delius as I Knew Him_ [1936]

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832)
German poet, novelist, and playwright.
Attributed in Samuel Bent _Short Sayings of Great Men_ [1882].

I could never tell where inspiration begins and impulse leaves off.
I suppose the answer is in the outcome. If your hunch proves a
good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of
yielding to thoughtless impulse.
--Beryl Markham (1902—1986)
British-born Kenyan aviator.
_West with the Night_ [1942]

-

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be
it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Savor the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will
not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've
faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of
yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much
possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You
are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as
effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed
your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle
Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people
who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes
you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed
in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they
wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-
olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when
they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children,
maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the
funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do,
don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chances. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or
of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument
you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for
good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past
and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you
hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle,
because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew
you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you
soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians
will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll
fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable,
politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it
will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

--Mary Schmich
American newspaper columnist.
"Wear Sunscreen" _Chicago Tribune_ [1 July 1997]

-

-----

afflatus (noun) [ê-'fley-tês]
A strong creative impulse from a muse or higher
power, divine or supernatural inspiration.


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