User:Moonraker/Qu


 * Index


 * « La puissance ne consiste pas à frapper fort ou souvent, mais à frapper juste. »
 * Honoré de Balzac


 * « C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est une faute. »
 * Worse than a crime, a blunder.
 * Talleyrand

Lord Palmerston is reported to have said: "Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it."
 * from Schleswig-Holstein Question


 * "I sometimes feel like putting a message in a bottle and floating it down the Boyne : " I am alive. T. White. 1944. Is anybody else?""
 * T. H. White, ‎Letters to a Friend


 * "A rune for the very bored: when very bored say to yourself: 'It was during the next twenty minutes that there occurred one of those tiny incidents which revolutionizes the whole course of our life and alters the face of history. Truly we are the playthings of enormous fates.' "
 * Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus

Politics

 * "And in your muddy souls you can't see that the one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God's paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle - and not lose it."
 * G. K. Chesterton, from play Time's Abstract and Brief Chronicle


 * "I worked for the Devil and he was a bore and a mediocrity. Although the methods and goals of Novosti are devilishly evil, its daily routine is so boring that it does not produce outrage. It simply debilitates."
 * Yuri Bezmenov (as Tomas Schuman), World Thought Police (1986)


 * "Consider the fascinating perspective of the recently deceased Boris Berezovsky, once the most powerful of the Russian oligarchs and the puppet master behind President Boris Yeltsin during the late 1990s. After looting billions in national wealth and elevating Vladimir Putin to the presidency, he overreached himself and eventually went into exile. According to the New York Times, he had planned to transform Russia into a fake two-party state—one social-democratic and one neoconservative—in which heated public battles would be fought on divisive, symbolic issues, while behind the scenes both parties would actually be controlled by the same ruling elites. With the citizenry thus permanently divided and popular dissatisfaction safely channeled into meaningless dead-ends, Russia’s rulers could maintain unlimited wealth and power for themselves, with little threat to their reign. Given America’s (and Britain’s) history over the last couple of decades, perhaps we can guess where Berezovsky got his idea for such a clever political scheme."
 * Ron Unz, American Pravda Series


 * "Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources."
 * Abba Eban


 * "No doubts can exist in the herd; the bigger the crowd the better the truth – and the greater the catastrophe."
 * Carl Jung


 * "Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"


 * Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957


 * "The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, but they keep lying to us and we keep pretending to believe them."
 * Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs: a Memoir (2011)


 * "War is when your government tells you who your enemy is, revolution is when you figure it out yourself."
 * Makhno Boyce, Manifestations of Freedom


 * "We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert."
 * J. Robert Oppenheimer, Encouragement of Science (1950)


 * "To be conservative ... is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."


 * Michael Oakeshott, from "On Being Conservative" (1956)

Science

 * The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.
 * Freeman Dyson

Success

 * "It ain’t the things you don’t know what gets you in trouble. It’s the things you know that just ain’t so."
 * Will Rogers, attrib. to Mark Twain


 * "I was not a good doctor, my studies had been too rapid, my hospital training too short, but there is not the slightest doubt that I was a successful doctor. What is the secret of success? To inspire confidence. What is confidence? I do not know, I only know that it cannot be acquired by book reading, nor by the bedside of our patients. It is a magic gift granted by birth-right to one man and denied to another. The doctor who possesses this gift can almost raise the dead."


 * Axel Munthe


 * "All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called 'guessing what was at the other side of the hill'."


 * Duke of Wellington

Money

 * "The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell."
 * John Templeton


 * "I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol, and wild women. The other half I wasted."
 * W. C. Fields

Faërie

 * "The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords."
 * "Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.


 * J. R. R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories


 * "People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within."
 * Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind

Frasier (1993)

 * Dr Frasier Crane: What do you do when the romance goes out of a relationship?
 * Roz Doyle: I get dressed and go home.

https://www.quotes.net/mquote/734806
 * Frasier: Hello, Ethan. I'm listening.
 * Ethan: Hi, Dr. Crane.
 * Frasier: How old are you?
 * Ethan: I'm thirteen.
 * Frasier: Well, what can I do for you?
 * Ethan: Well, I'm having a lot of problems with the other kids at school. They're always beating me up.
 * Frasier: Why do you think that's so?
 * Ethan: Probably because I'm smart. I have a 160 IQ. I'm in the astronomy club and I hate sports.
 * Frasier: Well, you know, Ethan, the other children are just acting out of jealousy and immaturity, and I know it doesn't help much right now, but the day will come in the next few years when you will have the last laugh.
 * Ethan: ...That's it?
 * Frasier: Yes.
 * Ethan: Frankly, Dr. Crane, I find that advice patronizing, simplistic and, in all candor, uninspired. The real surprise here is that they pay you to dole out this balloon juice.
 * Frasier: Ethan, where are you calling from?
 * Ethan: Home.
 * Frasier: Well, if any of Ethan's classmates are listening, you know where he is, and he can't stay in there forever. Thank you for your call.

Epitaphs
Used no net Showed no fear Made a mis-step And wound up here
 * On a Tightrope Walker


 * James Alberry

He slept beneath the moon He basked beneath the sun He livd a life of going-to-do And left with nothing done


 * In Poole Churchyard, on a tall man named Day

As long as long can be So long so long was he How long, how long, dost say? As long as the longest Day


 * East Dalhousie,Nova Scotia

Here lies Ezekial Aikle Age 102 The Good Die Young


 * Ellen Shannon, Girard, Penn.

Who was fatally burned March 21, 1870 By the explosion of a lamp Filled with "R. E. Danforth's Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"


 * Samuel Brenton, Stockbridge, Mass.

Was suddenly killed at early dawn July 4th, 1842 By the explosion of a small canon Aged 15 years


 * Lincoln, Maine

He found a rope and picked it up And with it walked away It happened that to the other end A horse was hitched, they say They took the rope and tied it up Unto a hickory limb It happened that the other end Was somehow hitched to him


 * Sir John Strange

Here lies an honest lawyer And that is Strange


 * Ravlunda, Sweden

Here beneath rest the ashes of a man who was in the habit of always postponing everything till the day after. However, at last he improved and really died Jan. 31, 1972.


 * Julian Skaggs, West Virginia

I made an ash of myself


 * Messages to a wife

1890 The light of my life has gone out 1891 I have struck another match


 * Oxford, England

Here lies the body of Elred At least he will when he is dead But now at this time he's still alive 14th August '65


 * Untrustworthy

Here lies a man who while he lived Was happy as a linnet He always lied while on the earth And now he's lying in it


 * Moultrie, Georgia

Here lies the father of 29 He would have had more But he didn't have time


 * Belturbet, Ireland

Here lies the body Of John Round Lost at sea And never found


 * Hartford, Conn.

Those who cared for him while living Will know whose body is buried here To others it does not matter. September 1, 1882.


 * Aaron S. Burbank, Winsted, Conn.

Bury me not when I am dead Lay me not down in a dusty bed I could not bear the life down there With earthworms crawling through my hair


 * Harwichport

Sacred to the remains of Jonathan Thompson A pious Christian and Affectionate husband His disconsolate widow Continues to carry on His grocery business At the old stand on Main Street: Cheapest And best prices in town

Here lies in a horizontal position The outside case of George Routleigh, watchmaker, Whose abilities in that line were an honour To his profession. Integrity was the mainspring And prudence the regulator Of all the actions of his life. Humane, generous and liberal, His hand never stopped Till he had relieved distress. So nicely regulated were all his motions That he never went wrong, Except when set a-going By people Who did not know His key. Even then he was easily Set right. He had the art of disposing of his time So well, that his hours glided away In one continual round of pleasure and delight Till an unlucky minute put a period to His existence. He departed this life November 14, 1802 Aged 57, Wound up In hope of being taken in hand By his Maker And of being thoroughly cleaned and repaired and set a-going In the world to come.
 * A watchmaker's epitaph

Tongue twisters

 * «Un chasseur sachant chasser sait chasser sans son chien, et un chasseur sachant chasser sans son chien, ça se chasse aussi, sachez-le!»
 * «Diderot dinait du dos d'un dodo dindon.»
 * «Didon dîna dit-on de dix dos dodus de dix dodus dindons.»
 * «Les chaussettes de l’archiduchesse, sont-elles sèches ? Archi-sèches.»
 * «Cinq chiens chassent six chats.»
 * «Ces cerises sont si sûres qu’on ne sait pas si c’en sont.»
 * «Cinq gros rats grillent dans la grosse graisse grasse.»
 * «Je veux et j’exige du jasmin et des jonquilles.»
 * «Ces six saucissons secs sont si secs qu’on ne sait si c’en sont.»