WIST Quotations

Peters, Ellis -- The Heretic’s Apprentice, ch. 12 (1990)

Dave — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 18:59:22 +0000

Books have another value, to those who have fallen forever and wholly in love with them. There are those who would cheat for them, steal for them, lie for them, even if then they could never show or boast of their treasures to any other creature. Kill for them? It was not impossible.

Ellis Peters (1913-1995) English writer, translator [pseud. of Edith Mary Pargeter, who also wrote under the names John Redfern, Jolyon Carr, Peter Benedict]
The Heretic’s Apprentice, ch. 12 (1990)
(Source)

Jillette, Penn -- “Free Celebrity Nudes!” Penn’s Columns (15 Oct 1997)

Dave — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 20:58:35 +0000

That’s the beauty of the Web: You can roll around in a stranger’s obsession without having to smell his or her house. You can amscray whenever you want without being rude. The site gets its “hit” and you know more about our species’ diversity.

Penn Jillette (b. 1955) American stage magician, actor, musician, author
“Free Celebrity Nudes!” Penn’s Columns (15 Oct 1997)
(Source)

Wolfinger, Ray -- Comment (c. 1969)

Dave — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 00:02:20 +0000

The plural of anecdote is data.

Raymond Wolfinger (1931-2015) American political scientist and professor
Comment (c. 1969)
(Source)

Notes:

In a 2004 email to Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, Wolfinger wrote: "I said 'The plural of anecdote is data' some time in the 1969-70 academic year while teaching a graduate seminar at Stanford. The occasion was a student's dismissal of a simple factual statement -- by another student or me -- as a mere anecdote. The quotation was my rejoinder. Since then I have missed few opportunities to quote myself."
The first print appearance is in Roger C. Noll, "The Game of Health Care Regulation," in Richard S. Gordon, ed., Issues in Health Care Regulation (1980): "Most of the evidence is anecdotal. Nevertheless, in the words of a leading political scientist, Raymond Wolfinger, the plural of anecdote is data ...."

Lobel, Arnold -- The Fiction Magazine, Vol. 5 (1986)

Dave — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 23:47:59 +0000

Books to the ceiling, books to the sky.
My pile of books are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.

Arnold Lobel (1933-1987) American author, illustrator
The Fiction Magazine, Vol. 5 (1986)
(Source)

Lamb, Charles -- “The Two Races of Men,” Essays of Elia (1823)

Dave — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 17:12:12 +0000

Your borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) Welsh-English essayist
“The Two Races of Men,” Essays of Elia (1823)

Brust, Steven -- Orca [Vlad] (1996)

Dave — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 18:17:22 +0000

I collected my thoughts. Someday I hope to have them all.

Steven Brust (b. 1955) American writer, systems programmer
Orca [Vlad] (1996)

Davies, Robertson -- Tempest-Tost, ch. 6 (1951)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines — not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master’s call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.

Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher
Tempest-Tost, ch. 6 (1951)