It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. … Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Being Idle”
All that we refrain from and all that we do, let us not do or refrain from merely because it seems to the multitude somehow honorable or base, but because it is forbidden by reason and the god within us.
Julian (AD 331-363), Emperor of Rome (355-363)
Oration VI, “To the Uneducated Cynics” (AD 362)
Quoted in T. Page and W. Rouse (eds.), The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. II [tr. W. Wright]. Sometimes attributed to Marcus Aurelius.
SALLY: It’s a scientific fact that if you say “naked” three or more times, to any man, he has to cross his legs.
Steven Moffat (b. 1961) Scottish television writer, producer
Coupling, Ep. 2.8 “Naked” (22 Oct 2001)
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
“…like captured fireflies” (1955)
Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
Maya Angelou (b. 1928) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
Quoted USA Today (5 Mar 1988)
The idea is like the seed corn; it grows imperceptibly in secret. When I have invented or discovered the beginning of a song …, I shut up the book and go for a walk or take up something else; I think no more of it for perhaps half a year. Nothing is lost, though. When I come back to it again, it has unconsciously taken a new shape, and is ready for me to begin working at it.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) German composer and pianist
(Attributed)
Quoted in A. Storr, Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and other Phenomena of the Human Mind, ch. 12 (1988)
Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
If you can keep your head when about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Introduction (1957)
We often stand in need of hearing what we know full well.
Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English writer and poet
Imaginary Conversations, “Lord Bacon and Richard Hooker” (1824-53)
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Carry On, Jeeves (1925)
Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1900-1965) American politician
Laws are never as effective as habits.
Speech, New York City (28 Aug 1952)
If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war.
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) American military leader and author
Letter to Gen. Henry W. Halleck (4 Sep 1864)
True consistency, that of the prudent and the wise, is to act in conformity with circumstance.
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850) American Vice President, politician, statesman
Speech, Senate (16 Mar 1848)
Spare me through Your mercy, do not punish me through Your justice.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) British monk, theologian, archbishop, saint.
Proslogion
I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. It’s better to be rich.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) American expatriate author, feminist
(Attributed)
They are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; a studied madness.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On Actors and Acting,” “The Round Table” column, The Examiner (5 Jan 1817)
The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“Holding on to Romanticism,” The Illustrated London News (2 May 1931)
Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.
Joseph R. Alsop, Jr. (1910-1989) American journalist
In The Observer (30 Nov 1952)
He that can have patience can have what he will.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher
Poor Richard’s Almanack (1736)
Full text.
Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
The Adventures of Sally (1922)
The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1900-1965) American politician
Speech, Opposing the McCarran Internal Security Act (1950)
There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
(Attributed)
[I change my mind] in accordance with the circumstances and not, like you people, because of a weak character.
Leotychidas (c. 545–469 BC) Spartan king [Leotychides, Latychidas]
In Plutarch, “Sayings of the Spartans: Leotychidas,” Plutarch on Sparta [tr. R. Talbert (1988)]
I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.
Werner Heisenberg (1905-1976) German physicist
(Attributed)
Quoted in The New York Times Book Review (8 Mar 1992)
All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
“The Individual and the Race,” Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922)
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves (1895-1985) English poet, novelist, critic
In The Observer (6 Dec 1964)
People seldom speak ill of themselves, but when they have a good chance of being contradicted.
Fulke Greville (1554-1628) 1st Baron Brooke; Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections (1756)
While opinions were arguable, convictions needed shooting to be cured.
T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British officer, diplomat, linguist, memoirist, writer [Thomas Edward Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia"]
Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, ch. 33 (1926)
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Maya Angelou (b. 1928) American poet, memoirist, activist [b. Marguerite Ann Johnson]
(Attributed)
It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.
Fred McFeely Rogers (1928-2003) American educator, minister, songwriter, television host (a.k.a. "Mister Rogers")
Commencement Address, Middlebury College (May 2001)
Full text.
Love is like quicksilver in the hand, Sylvie. Leave the fingers open and it stays in the palm; clutch it, and it darts away.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American writer
“Advice to the Little Peyton Girl,” Modern Story (Oct 1935)
Full text.
Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Letters from Earth (1939)
There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
The Task of Social Hygiene, ch. 10 (1913)
Whatever tears one may shed, in the end one always blows one’s nose.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
(Attributed)
Quoted in Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, bk. 3 (1958, tr. 1959).
John Leland (1754-1841) American Baptist minister, civil libertarian
Truth disdains the aid of law for its defense — it will stand upon its own merits.
Right of Conscience Inalienable
When you can laugh at yourself, there is enlightenment.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (1905-1971) Japanese Buddhist scholar
“Sitting Like a Frog,” Not Always So [ed. E. Brown] (2002)
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
Nelson Algren (1909–1981) American writer [b. Nelson Ahlgren Abraham]
(Attributed)
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-British poet, critic, playwright [Thomas Stearns Eliot]
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
“The Rock” (1934)
Even as a tree has a single trunk but many branches and leaves, there is one religion —- human religion -— but any number of faiths.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [b. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi]
Young India (Bulletin) (2 Oct 1930)
Some versions omit "-- human religion --". Full text.
We are all of us more or less the slaves of opinion.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“On Court-Influence” (3-10 Jan 1818) Political Essays (1819)
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones who look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline of good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the Big One comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of The Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies too. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
American Gods, ch. 13 [Sam] (2001)
Books have the same enemies as poeple: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
[Les livres ont les mêmes ennemis comme les gens : le feu, l'humidité, les animaux, le temps, et leur propre contenu.]
Paul Valéry (1871-1945) French poet, critic
Œuvres II, “Moralités” (1941)
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.
Werner Heisenberg (1905-1976) German physicist
Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)
Whenever I meet Ukridge’s Aunt Julia I have the same curious illusion of having just committed some particularly unsavoury crime and — what is more — of having done it with swollen hands, enlarged feet, and trousers bagging at the knee on a morning when I had omitted to shave.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
Ukridge (1924)
Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.
Václav Havel (b. 1936) Czech playwright, essayist, dissident, politician
New Year’s Address to the Nation, Prague (1 Jan 1990)
Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman and reformer
Letter from the Birmingham Jail (16 Apr 1963)
Full text
Capitalism survived its crisis and went on to great successes. But the capitalism that survived and succeeded was not the capitalism of 1929.
Herb Stein (1916-1999) American economist
The Triumph of the Adaptive Society (1989)
We cannot remain consistent with the world save by growing inconsistent with our past selves.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
The Dance of Life, Preface (1923)
If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle (18 Apr 1971)
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The Blithedale Romance, ch. 2 (1852)
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Review of A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays by Herbert Read, Poetry Quarterly (Winter 1945)
