QI Quotations

JumpingJack · 370. Mon Oct 20, 2003 5:33 am

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN (1857-1929)

JumpingJack · 371. Mon Oct 20, 2003 5:39 am

Morning Flashy,

Sorry, didn't see you and your Grandad interpolate yourselves there.

Jx

JumpingJack · 372. Mon Oct 20, 2003 5:41 am

Rich people would not enjoy their little meannesses if they knew how much their friends enjoy them.

LP SMITH

JumpingJack · 373. Mon Oct 20, 2003 5:45 am

The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless, a passion for gambling is common, though a passion for keeping roulette tables is unknown.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

JumpingJack · 375. Mon Oct 20, 2003 6:09 am

Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

JumpingJack · 381. Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:09 am

A girl of fifteen generally has a greater number of secrets than an old man, and a woman of thirty more arcana than a Head of State.

MANUEL ORTEGA Y GASSET

JumpingJack · 382. Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:12 am

Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history etc.

SCHOPENHAUER

JumpingJack · 383. Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:19 am

I've never known a person to live to 110 or more, and then die, to be remarkable for anything else.

JOSH BILLINGS

Flash · 384. Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:29 am

That last one's a bit like saying "I've never known anyone who's been to the moon who was also famous for something else".

JumpingJack · 385. Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:36 am

In a way I suppose it is, yes, but on the other hand it's also quite perceptive.

My Granny, who (as I'm sure you know) lived to 108.5, was absolutely the loveliest person but led a life of astonishing uneventfulness.

One can hardly say that of people who've been to the moon, not only because they are rare, but because of the extraordinary amount of effort they must have put in to get in to get there.

Jenny · 387. Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:40 am

"Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul."

- Henry David Thoreau

Jenny · 395. Mon Oct 20, 2003 1:53 pm

Actually, regarding the above - it may well be spiritually true, but that doesn't mean it isn't rather nice to have a few superfluities in one's life.

Meanwhile, I came across three quotations this morning that were new to me:

I dwell in Possibility

- Emily Dickinson

(I think this one is rather sad, don't you? In some ways possibility is a good thing to have - makes you look forward and have hope. But if that's the only place there is to dwell, what does that say about the quality of your present life?)

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

(I like that one - very true.)

If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average

- Leonard Levinson

(Who he? But it made me laugh.)

I am now about to send myself zooming downmarket in everybody's estimation by telling you where I came across these nuggets - friends, it was in the current issue of 'Oprah' magazine, which I was reading, I hasten to add, purely because I was sitting in the hairdresser's waiting for a colour to snuggle into the grey bits of my hair. Yeah, yeah, I know, excuses, excuses...

Frederick The Monk · 527. Wed Oct 22, 2003 8:54 am

"Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.) "

Dorothy Parker - The Flaw in Paganism

JumpingJack · 529. Wed Oct 22, 2003 9:21 am

I've just read a whole book called "The Sayings of Dorothy Parker". Amusing though she could undoubtedly be, nearly every one of her bon mots suffers from grievous overuse, making them sound stale and cliched.

The above is one I haven't come across before and here are three more I just found on the net.

I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
DOROTHY PARKER

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
DOROTHY PARKER

Work is the province of cattle.
DOROTHY PARKER

Flash · 537. Wed Oct 22, 2003 11:14 am

Of course Cole Porter satirises the tendency to quote Dorothy Parker indiscriminately: