Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Quotes: Small Town (2)


Small town       105         "In her innocence she had not known that the whole town could discuss even her garments, her body; she felt that she was being dragged naked down Main Street." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town       110         "She reverted to her resolution to change the town—awaken it, prod it, 'reform' it; what if they were wolves instead of lambs? They’d eat her all the sooner if she was meek…fight or be eaten…easier to change the town completely than to conciliate it." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town       115         "Miles Bjornstam, half Yank and half Swede: Usually known as ‘that damn lazy big-mouthed calamity-howler that ain’t satisfied with the way we run things.’ " Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town       121        "She read Kipling, with a great deal of emphasis: There’s a REGIMENT a-COMING down the GRAND Trunk ROAD…tapped his foot to the rhythm, he looked normal and reassured; but when he complimented her, ‘that was fine; I don’t know but what you can elocute just as good as Ella Stowbody,’ she banged the book and suggested that they were not too late for the nine o’clock show at the movies." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town     135         "And as for a lecture hall—haven’t we got the churches?" Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Quotes: Small Town (1)


Small town       219         "This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny; people’s speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed; every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution." Cather, My Ántonia

Small town       219         "The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark." Cather, My Ántonia

Small town       95           Vida Sherwin to Carol:" I wonder if you understand that in a secluded community like this every newcomer is on test?" Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town       100         "She had tripped into the meadow to teach the lambs a pretty educational dance and found that the lambs were wolves." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Small town       100        " Reform the town? All she wanted was to be tolerated...could not look directly at people...flushed and winced before citizens who a week ago had been amusing objects of study, and in their good-morning she heard a cruel sniggering." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Quote: Sleep.


 Sleep  10           "...immoderate sleep is rust to the soul." Thomas Overbury, “A Fair and Happy Milkmaid.” 1615. Gross, ed. Essays.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Quotes: Slang.


 Slang  282         "The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang." Chesterton. 1901. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Quotes: Slander


Slander              202        " Do you want to injure someone’s reputation? Don’t speak ill of him, speak too well." Andre Siegfried. 1943. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Quote: Skydiving


Skydiving          289         …the [skydiving] feat of Rod Pack, who not long ago jumped from an airplane without a parachute, was handed one by a companion in mid-air, put it on, opened it, and landed safely. Toffler, Future Shock.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Quotes: Sincerity


Sincerity            219         "How hollow and insincere it sounds when someone says, ‘I am determined to be perfectly straightforward with you’; the thing needs no prologue; it will declare itself." Marcus Aurelius. 2nd century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Sincerity            223         "Sincerity has to do with the connection between our words and thoughts, and not between belief and actions." Hazlitt. 1828. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Sincerity            318        " A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal." Oscar Wilde, “ ‘The True Critic’.” 1891. Gross, ed. Essays.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Quotes: Sin (3)


Sin    253         "Where there is no knowledge there is no sin." German. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Sin    335         "And he [Walt Whitman] was a gay old pagan who never called a sin a sin when it was a pleasure." Gross, ed. Essays.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Quotes: Sin (2)


Sin      1057       "What is the Unpardonable sin? asked the lime-burner…the sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims…unshrinkingly, I accept the retribution." Hawthorne: “Ethan Brand: A Chapter from an Abortive Romance”

Sin      1064       "…he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study." Hawthorne: “Ethan Brand: A Chapter from an Abortive Romance”

Sin      1065      " Oh, Mother Earth…who art no more my mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall never be resolved; oh, mankind, whose brotherhood I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet!" Hawthorne: “Ethan Brand: A Chapter from an Abortive Romance”

Sin      176         "How can we tell when a sin we have committed has been pardoned? By the fact that we no longer commit that sin." Rabbi Bunam of Pzysha. c. 1800. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Sin    183         "The search of an investigator for the unpardonable sin—he at last finds it in his own heart and practice." Hawthorne. 1841-52. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Quotes: Sin (1)


 Sin      544         "…the policy of our ancestors to search out even the most secret sins, and expose them to shame, without fear or favor, in the broadest light of the noonday sun." Hawthorne: “Endicott and the Red Cross”

Sin      1055      " …a man who, on his own confession, had committed the only crime for which Heaven could afford no mercy." Hawthorne: “Ethan Brand: A Chapter from an Abortive Romance”

Sin      1056       "…the man and the fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt, which could neither be atoned for,--nor forgiven." Hawthorne: “Ethan Brand: A Chapter from an Abortive Romance”

Sin      1056       "…dreadful task of extending man’s possible guilt beyond the scope of Heaven’s  infinite mercy."Hawthorne: “Ethan Brand: A Chapter from an Abortive Romance”

Sin      1056       " 'Man!' sternly replied Ethan Brand, What need have I of the devil?…I have left him behind me on my track; it is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself." Hawthorne: “Ethan Brand: A Chapter from an Abortive Romance”

Monday, June 14, 2010

Qu0te: Silence.


 Silence               210         "Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn." George Bernard Shaw. 1921. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Quote: Shame.


 Shame               76          "If you want people to envy you your sorrow or your shame, look as if you were proud of it; if you have enough of the actor in you, rest assured, you will become the hero of the day." Leo Shestov. 1905. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Quotes: Shakespeare


Shakespeare     338         Crawford on Shakespeare: But [with] Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how…part of an Englishman’s constitution…thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere…no man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately. Austen, Mansfield Park.

Shakespeare     338         Edmund on Shakespeare: His celebrated passages are quoted by everybody; they are in half the books we open, and we all talk Shakespeare, use his similes and describe with his descriptions…to know him in bits and scraps, is common enough; to know him pretty thoroughly, is, perhaps, not uncommon; but to read him well aloud, is no everyday talent. Austen, Mansfield Park.