Category: Quotes

It was as true as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.

Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (1812–1870), British novelist. Mr. Barkis, in David Copperfield, ch. 21 (1849-1850).

This remark echoes Benjamin Franklin’s famous gloomy observation on the inevitability of taxes (Franklin on certainty).

All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn’t fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd; nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn’t fair.

Lyndon Baines Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973), U.S. president. LBJ and the American Dream, epilogue, p. 356, Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1971).

On writing his memoirs.

My art and profession is to live.

Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), French essayist. Essays, bk. 2, ch. 6 (1580-1588), trans. by John Florio (1603).

For proverbs are the pith, the proprieties, the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good.

John Florio
John Florio (c. 1553–1625), British author, translator. Second Frutes, preface (1591).

At its best New Wave/punk represents a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they’ll be creative about it, and do something good besides.

Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs (1948–1982), U.S. rock journalist. New Musical Express (London, December 24, 1977).

There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents … and only one for birthday presents, you know.

Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898), British author, mathematician, clergyman. Humpty Dumpty, Through the Looking-Glass, ch. VI, Macmillan (1872).

beasts
Got the buddha-nature
All but
Coyote

Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder (b. 1930), U.S. poet. Hunting (l. 26–29). . .

The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

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Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes (1900–1993), U.S. actor. On Reflection, ch. 14 (1968).

The worst constructed play is a Bach fugue when compared to life.

Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes (1900–1993), U.S. actor. On Reflection, ch. 14 (1968).

Bias, point of view, fury—are they … so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk … about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.

Catherine Drinker Bowen
Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973), U.S. biographer. Adventures of a Biographer, ch. 6 (1959).