WIST Quotations

Billings, Josh -- Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1876-02 (1876 ed.)

Dave — Thu, 21 May 2026 18:20:17 +0000

Kats are very humble, espeshily just after they hav committed sum nu kind ov deviltry.

[Cats are very humble, especially just after they have committed some new kind of deviltry.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax, 1876-02 (1876 ed.)
(Source)

Lewis, C.S. -- The Screwtape Letters, Preface to the 1961 edition (1961)

Dave — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 16:13:13 +0000

I like bats much better than bureaucrats. I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Screwtape Letters, Preface to the 1961 edition (1961)
(Source)

Shakespeare, William -- Tempest, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 246ff (1.2.246-253) (1611)

Dave — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 16:22:03 +0000

ARIEL:Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and played
Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners
Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,
Then all afire with me. The King’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair up-staring — then like reeds, not hair —
Was the first man that leaped; cried “Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.”

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Tempest, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 246ff (1.2.246-253) (1611)
(Source)

Ariel telling Prospero of the effects of the conjured tempest, and Ariel's tricks, on the crew of the ship.

Pratchett, Terry -- Good Omens, 6. “Saturday” (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]

Dave — Thu, 22 May 2014 12:06:36 +0000

So computers are tools of the Devil? thought Newt. He had no problem believing it. Computers had to be the tools of somebody, and all he knew for certain was that it definitely wasn’t him.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens, 6. “Saturday” (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]
(Source)