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QUIRKS
QUITTING
QUIZ SHOWS --- QUOTATIONS

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.
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QUIRKS

see: "DEFECTS"
see: "FAULTS"
see: "FLAWS"


Promptly at eight o'clock a patrician figure in his
thirties was shown to his regular table in the Palm
Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Tall and
slender, elegantly attired, he was the cynosure of
all eyes, though most diners, mindful of the
celebrated inventor's need for privacy, pretended
not to stare.

Eighteen clean linen napkins were stacked as usual
at his place. Nikola Tesla could no more have said
why he favored numbers divisible by three than why
he had a morbid fear of germs or, for that matter,
why he was beset by any of the multitude of other
strange obsessions that plagued his life.

Abstractedly he began to polish the already sparkling
silver and crystal, taking up and discarding one
square of linen after another until a small starched
mountain had risen on the serving table. Then, as
each dish arrived, he compulsively calculated its cubic
contents before lifting a bite to his lips. Otherwise
there could be no joy in eating.

--Margaret Cheney
_Tesla: Man Out of Time_ [1981],
"Modern Prometheus"

-

An old solicitor, whom I knew when I was a boy, told
me that as an articled clerk he was once invited to
dine with my grandfather. My grandfather carved the
beef, and then a servant handed him a dish of
potatoes baked in their skins. There are few things
better to eat than a potato in its skin, with plenty
of butter, pepper, and salt, but apparently my
grandfather did not think so.

He rose in his chair at the head of the table and
took the potatoes out of the dish one by one and
threw one at each picture on the walls. Then
without a word he sat down again and went on
with his dinner. I asked my friend what effect this
behavior had on the rest of the company. He told
me that no one took any notice.

--W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer,
_The Summing Up_ [1938], Chapter VI




QUITTING

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see "FAILURE" for related links


Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never,
never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty —
never give in, except to convictions of honor and
good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to
the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].
Speech at Harrow School [29 October 1941].

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Then quit. No use being a damn fool about
it.
--W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield]
(1880—1946) American vaudeville star and film actor.


^

Ira Gershwin (1896—1983) American lyricist.

Gershwin was a keen poken player, but very unlucky.
After a particularly disastrous evening, he announced
to his friends, 'I take an oath, I'll never pick up a card
again.' After a moment's pause, he added, 'Unless, of
course, I have guests who want to play . . . Or, unless
I am a guest in another man's house.' He paused again.
'Or whatever circumstances arise.'

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

^

The first thing men do when they have
renounced pleasure, through decency,
lassitude, or for the sake of health,
is to condemn it in others. Such conduct
denotes a kind of latent affection for
the very things they left off; they
would like no one to enjoy a pleasure
they can no longer indulge in; and thus
they show their feelings of jealousy.
--Jean de La Bruyθre (1645—1696)
French essayist and moralist.
"Of Mankind"

Defeat doesn't finish a man — quit does. A man
is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished
when he quits.
--Richard Nixon (1913—1994)
American Republican statesman, President [1969—1974].

... and so there ain't nothing more to write about,
and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd 'a' knowed
what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't 'a'
tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.

-

Don't quit when the night is darkest,
For it's just a while to dawn;
Don't quit when you've run the farthest,
For the race is almost won.

Don't quit when the hill is steepest,
For your goal is almost nigh;
Don't quit, for you're not a failure
Until you fail to try.

--Jill Wolf, "Don't Quit"

-

-----

desuetude [DES-wih-tood, -tyood], noun:
The cessation of use; discontinuance of
practice or custom; disuse.
Ex.: Probably only one in a hundred girls who give birth
clandestinely even knows that an edict of King Henry II,
now fallen into desuetude, once made their action
punishable by death.
--Nina Rattner Gelbart,
_The King's Midwife_



QUIZ SHOWS

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see "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for related links


A Marine captain named Richard McCutcheon became the first
contestant to go all the way (on the $64,000 Question.)
Bookies kept odds on whether or not he could get the right
answer. His field was cooking, not military history. With
an audience estimated at 55 million watching, on September
13, 1955, he became the first contestant to climb the the
television Mt. Everest. For $64,000 he was asked to name
the five dishes and two wines from the menu served by King
George VI of England for French president Albert Lebrun in
1939. He did: consomme quenelles, filet de truite saumonee,
petits pois a la francaises, sauce maltaise, and corbeille.
The wines were Chateau d'Yquem and Madera Sercial. The
nation was ecstatic - it had a winner..."

--David Halberstam (1934- )
American journalist and author. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
in 1964 for international reporting, _The Fifties_




QUOTATIONS

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see "KNOWLEDGE" for related links


One must be a wise reader to quote
wisely and well.
--[Amos] Bronson Alcott (1799—1888)
American philosopher, teacher, and reformer;
father of Louisa May Alcott.
_Table Talk_ [1877] "Quotation"

The surest way to make a monkey of a
man is to quote him.
--Robert Benchley (1889—1945)
American humorist and newspaper columnist.
_My Ten Years in a Quandary_ [1936]

Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously
the words of another. The words erroneously
repeated.
--Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914)
American newspaperman, wit, and satirist.
_The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906]
(Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.)

To quote copiously and well, requires taste,
judgement, and erudition, a feeling for the
beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and
a sense of the profound.
--Christian Nestell Bovee (1820—1904)
American writer.

Do you know, I pick up favourite quotations, and I store them
in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the
struggle of this turbulent existence.
--Robert Burns (1759—1796)
Scottish poet and songwriter.
Letter to Frances Anna Dunlop [6 December 1792].

One could take down a book from a shelf ten tines more
wise and witty than almost any man's conversation. Bacon
is wiser, Swift more humorous, than any person one is
likely to meet with; but they cannot chime in with the exact
frame of thought in which we happen to take them down
from our shelves. Therein lies the luxury of conversation:
and when a living speaker does not yield us that luxury,
he becomes only a book on two legs.
--Thomas Campbell (1777—1844)
Scottish poet.

Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like
those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the
best and ending by eating everything.
--Sιbastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort (1741—1794)
French playwright and conversationalist.
_Pensιes, maximes et anecdotes_ [1795]

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books
of quotations. Bartlett's 'Familiar Quotations' is an admirable
work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved
upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make
you anxious to read the authors and look for more.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].
_My Early Life_ [1930], ch. 9

There are gems of thought that
are ageless and eternal.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BC)
Roman orator and statesman.

Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though
it is better to know them thoroughly, than to know them
only here and there; yet it is a good work to give a little
to those who have neither the time nor means to get
more. Let every book-worm, when, in any fragrant
scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story,
an illustration that does his heart good, hasten to
give it.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834)
English poet, critic, and philosopher.

If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be
cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it
will be cried up as erudition.
--C.C. Colton (1780—1832)
English clergyman and writer.
_Lacon_ [1825], Volume 1, No. 546

I am but a gatherer, and a disposer of other men's
stuff. If the world like it not, so much the worse
for them.
--William Cowper (1731—1800)
English poet and hymnodist.

When found, make a note of.
--Charles Dickens (1812—1870)
English novelist.
(Of quotations)

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts
one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority
by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
--Marlene Dietrich [Marie Magdalene Von Losch]
(1901—1992) German-born film actress. Between
1943—1946 she made more than 500 appearances
before Allied troops.

One original thought is worth a
thousand mindless quotings.
--Diogenes (404—323 B.C.)
Greek Cynic philosopher.

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of
ages, may be preserved by quotation.
--Isaac D'Israeli (1766—1848)
English author and the father of Benjamin Disraeli.
In _Curiosities of Literature_, "Quotation" (1791-1834).

-

By necessity, by proclivity and by
delight, we all quote. In fact it is as
difficult to appropriate the thoughts
of others as it is to invent.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
"Quotation and Originality"
_Letters and Social Aims_ [1876]


Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this
question they begin to quote. I hate quotations. Tell me
what you know.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
Diary [May 1849].


Our best thoughts come from others.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.


Quotation confesses inferiority.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Letters and Social Aims_ [1876],
"Quotation and Originality"


We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as
by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, and find
a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well
recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals
say, 'the italics are ours.'
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
"Quotation and Originality"
_Letters and Social Aims_ [1876]


Next to the originator of a good sentence
is the first quoter of it.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Letters and Social Aims_ [1876],
"Quotation and Originality"

and see:

There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly
a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first
author of that thought.
--Pierre Bayle (1647—1706)
French philosopher.
_Dictionnaire Historique et Critique_ [1697—1702]

-

Quotation … A writer expresses himself in
words that have been used before because
they give his meaning better than he can
give it himself, or because they are beautiful
or witty, or because he expects them to touch
a cord of association in his reader, or because
he wishes to show that he is learned and well
read. Quotations due to the last motive are
invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader
detects it and is contemptuous; the
undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even
then is at the same time repelled, pretentious
quotations being the surest road to tedium.
--Henry W. Fowler (1858—1933)
English schoolmaster and lexicographer.
_A Dictionary of Modern English Usage_ [1926]

Quotations (such as have point and lack triteness) from
the great old authors are an act of reverence on the part
of the quoter, and a blessing to a public grown superficial
and external.
--Louise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920)
American poet and essayist.

A notebook I carry around with me wherever I
go. When it is full, I review it. Any quotation or
thought worth preserving is copied out.
--Eric Hoffer (1902—1983)
American longshoreman, philosopher,
and author who received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 1982.
_Working and Thinking on the Waterfront_ [1969]

It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead
counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and
artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure
from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are
likewise most instructive, because they are heard with
patience and with reverence.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.

He wrapped himself in quotations — as a beggar
would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
--Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
English writer and poet.
_Many Inventions_ [1893]

Anyone who in discusssion quotes authority uses
his memory rather than his intellect.
--Leonardo da Vinci (1452—1519)
Florentine painter, sculptor, musician, and scientist.

Though old the thought and oft expresst,
’tis his at last who says it best.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat.
"For An Autograph" [1868]

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
--W. Somerset Maugham (1874—1965)
English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer.

To be amused by what you read--that is
the great spring of happy quotations.
--C.E. Montague (1867—1928)
British writer.
_A Writer's Notes on His Trade_ [1936]

-

It could be said of me that in this book I have
only made up a bunch of other men's flowers,
and provided nothing of my own but the string
to bind them.
--Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533—1592)
French moralist and essayist.
_Essais_ (Essays) [1580] bk. 3, ch. 12


I do not speak the minds of others except
to speak my own mind better.
--Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533—1592)
French moralist and essayist.
_Essays_ [1580], bk. I ch. 26

-

A quotation, a chance word heard in an unexpected
quarter, puts me on the trail of the book destined
to achieve some intellectual advancement in me.
--George Augustus Moore (1852—1933)
Irish novelist. _Confessions of a Young Man_ [1888]

The teachings of elegant sayings should be
collected when one can. For the supreme gift
of words of wisdom, any price will be paid.
--Nagarjuna (c. 150—250 A.D.)
Indian philosopher.

I rarely ever quote; the reason is, I always think.
--Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (1737—1809)
English-American writer and political pamphleteer.
In Moncure Daniel Conway's _The Writings of
Thomas Paine_, Volume I [1904].

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations
beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn
things.
--Dorothy Parker (1893—1967)
American critic and humorist.
"The Little Hours" in _The Portable Dorothy Parker_ [1944]

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege
of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes
accurately, for the rather obvious reason that
he has read too widely.
--Hesketh Pearson (1887—1964)
English actor and biographer.
_Common Misquotations_ [1934]

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one,
no less wise, to balance it.
--George Santayana (1863—1952)
Spanish-born philosopher and critic.
_The Life of Reason_ [1905]

I always have a quotation for everything —
it saves original thinking.
--Dorothy L. Sayers (1893—1957)
English writer of detective fiction.
_Have His Carcase_ [1932]


The little honesty existing among authors is to be seen in the
outrageous way in which they misquote from the writings of
others. I find whole passages in my works wrongly quoted,
and it is only in my appendix, which is absolutely lucid, that
an exception is made. The misquotation is frequently due to
carelessness, the pen of such people has been used to write
down such trivial and banal phrases that it goes on writing
them out of force of habit. Sometimes the misquotation is
due to impertinence on the part of some one who wants to
improve upon my work; but a bad motive only too often
prompts the misquotation — it is then horrid baseness and
roguery, and, like a man who commits forgery, he loses
the character for being an honest man for ever.
--Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860)
German philosopher.
essay, _On Authorship and Style_

I shall never be ashamed to quote a
bad author if what he says is good.
--Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC—65 A.D.)
Roman philosopher and poet.
"On Tranquility of Mind"
_Moral Essays_ tr. John W. Basore [1928]

-

I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
--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 Kenneth L. Calkins' "As Someone Famous Probably
Once Said. . . . " article, _New York Times_ [7 January 1988].


The Devil can quote Shakespeare for
his own purposes.
--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.]

-

I quote a great deal in my talks. . . . I do like
to call upon my radiant cloud of witnesses to
back me up, saying the thing I would say, and
saying it so much more eloquently.
--Leonora Speyer (1872—1956)
American poet.
_The Saturday Review of Literature_ [1946]

That fellow has a mind of inverted commas.
--Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Pιrigord (1754—1838)
French statesman.
Said of a man who dealt in nothing but quotations,
attributed in _Punch_ [16 July 1853].

Colors fade, temples crumble, empires
fall, but wise words endure.
--Edward Thorndike (1874—1949)
American educator and psychologist.

'I must claim the quoter's privilege of giving only as much of the
text as will suit my purpose,' said Tan-Chun. 'If I told you how it
went on, I should end up by contradicting myself!'
--Ts'ao Chan [Pinyin Cao Zhan] (c.1715—1763)
Chinese author.
_Hung lou meng_ (Dream of the Red Chamber)

A striking expression, with the aid of a small amount
of truth, can surprise us into accepting a falsehood.
--Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715—1747)
French moralist and essayist.
_Reflections and Maxims_ [1746]

I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
--Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].
_New York Times Magazine_ [10 June 1956],
"Woodrow Wilson in His Own Words"

If I quote liberally, it is not to show off book learning,
which at my stage can only invite ridicule, but rather
to bathe in this kinship of strangers.
--Yi-Fu Tuan (1930— )
Chinese-American biographer, educator, and author.
_Who Am I?_ [1999 ]

Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
--Edward Young (1683—1765)
English poet.
"Love of Fame"

-

Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat
word for word what you shouldn't have said.
--author unknown.


end page



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