WIST

Twain, Mark -- Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 12 (1894)

Dave — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:37:42 +0000

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery fo fear — not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 12 (1894)

Slim, William Joseph -- Unofficial History, ch. 6 (1959)

Dave — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:36:56 +0000

In battle nothing is ever as good or bad as the first reports of excited men would have it.

William Joseph "Bill" Slim, Viscount Slim (1891-1970) British military commander and politician
Unofficial History, ch. 6 (1959)

Johnson, Lyndon -- Speech before Congress (27 Nov 1963)

Dave — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:36:19 +0000

All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) US President (1963-69)
Speech before Congress (27 Nov 1963)

Five days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Jackson, Robert H. -- Speech, Second Annual Conference of United States Attorneys (1 Apr 1940)

Dave — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:35:35 +0000

The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which mark a gentleman. And those who need to be told would not understand it anyway. A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.

Justice Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954) US Supreme Court Justice
Speech, Second Annual Conference of United States Attorneys (1 Apr 1940)

Bibesco, Elizabeth -- Haven (1951)

Dave — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:34:33 +0000

What we buy belongs to us only when the price is forgotten.

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1945) Rumanian-English writer
Haven (1951)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo -- “Quotations and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Dave — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:04:37 +0000

We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist and poet
“Quotations and Originality,” Letters and Social Aims (1876)

Gaiman, Neil -- Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)

Dave — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:04:02 +0000

I think the most important thing I learned from Stephen King I learned as a teenager, reading King’s book of essays on horror and on writing, Danse Macabre. In there he points out that if you just write a page a day, just 300 words, at the end of a year you’d have a novel. It was immensely reassuring – suddenly something huge and impossible became strangely easy. As an adult, it’s how I’ve written books I haven’t had the time to write, like my children’s novel Coraline.

Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)

Contributor's note to an interview with Stephen King for the Sunday Times Magazine. Full text.

~Other -- Pickett’s Postulate

Dave — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:02:47 +0000

The person who snores the loudest will fall asleep first.

Other Authors and Sources
Pickett’s Postulate

In John Peers, 1,001 Logical Laws (1979)

Martin, Steve -- L.A.Story (1991)

Dave — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:02:06 +0000

HARRIS: I’ve been thinking about myself and I think I can become the kind of person that’s worth you staying for. First of all, I’m a man who can cry. Now it’s true, it’s usually when I’ve hurt myself, but it’s a start.

Steve Martin (b. 1945) American comedian
L.A.Story (1991)

James, William -- “What Makes a Life Significant?” Lecture, Harvard (1900)

Dave — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:00:59 +0000

Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill’s existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anesthesia as regards Jill’s magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill’s palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he also is afflicted with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack’s way of taking it — so importantly — is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! Where would any of us be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“What Makes a Life Significant?” Lecture, Harvard (1900)

Keller, Helen -- “The Dreams That Come True,” Personality (Dec 1927)

Dave — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:21:27 +0000

[P]eople marvel when I tell them that I am happy. They imagine that my limitations weigh heavily upon my spirit, and chain me to the rock of despair. Yet, it seems to me, happiness has very little to do with the senses. If we make up our minds that this is a drab and purposeless universe, it will be that, and nothing else. On the other hand, if we believe that the earth is ours, and that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy upon the hills and gladness in the fields because the Artist in our souls glorifies creation. Surely, it gives dignity to life to believe that we are born into this world for noble ends, and that we have a higher destiny than can be accomplished within the narrow limits of this physical life.

Helen Keller (1880-1968) American author and lecturer
“The Dreams That Come True,” Personality (Dec 1927)

Sometimes abridged as: "Many people marvel when I tell them I am happy. They imagine that my limitations weigh heavily upon my spirit. Yet, it seemst o me that happiness has very little to do with the senses. If we make up our minds that this is a drab and purposeless universe, it will be that. On the other hand, if we believe that the world is ouirs, that the sun and moon hang in the sky for our delight, there will be joy."

Full text.

Eliot, George -- Romola, 2.3 (1863)

Dave — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:19:54 +0000

Tioto was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls tha we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character.

George Eliot (1819-1880) English novelist [pseud. of Mary Ann Evans]
Romola, 2.3 (1863)

Schweitzer, Albert -- “The Conception of the Kingdom of God in the Transformation of Eschatology” (1951)

Dave — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:19:19 +0000

To enable it to do its work naturally, every new idea must be in some way embedded in what is old.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Alsatian theologian, philosopher, physician, philanthropist
“The Conception of the Kingdom of God in the Transformation of Eschatology” (1951)

Bias of Priene -- In Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230) [tr. Yonge]

Dave — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:18:33 +0000

Great strength of body is the gift of nature;
But to be able to advise whate’er
Is most expedient for one’s country’s good,
Is the peculiar work of sense and wisdom.
Most men are wicked.

Bias of Priene (fl. c. 650) Greek philosopher
In Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230) [tr. Yonge]

Roosevelt, Theodore -- Speech, Jamestown Exposition (26 Apr 1907)

Dave — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:17:45 +0000

The corner-stone of the Republic lies in our treating each man on his worth as a man, paying no heed to his creed, his birthplace, or his occupation, asking not whether he is rich or poor, whether he labors with head or hand; asking only whether he acts decently and honorably in the various relations of his life, whether he behaves well to his family, to his neighbors, to the State. We base our regard for each man on the essentials and not the accidents. We judge him not by his professions, but by his deeds; by his conduct, not by what he has acquired of this world’s goods. Other republics have fallen, because the citizens gradually grew to consider the interests of a class before the interests of the whole; for when such was the case it mattered little whether it was the poor who plundered the rich or the rich who exploited the poor; in either event the end of the republic was at hand.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Jamestown Exposition (26 Apr 1907)