WIST Quotations

Gladwell, Malcolm -- Outliers: The Story of Success, Part 1, ch. 5, sec. 10 (2008)

Dave — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 22:00:16 +0000

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.

Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) Anglo-Canadian journalist, author, public speaker
Outliers: The Story of Success, Part 1, ch. 5, sec. 10 (2008)
(Source)

Serling, Rod -- “Rod Serling: The Facts of Life,” interview by Linda Brevelle (4 Mar 1975)

Dave — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 17:41:44 +0000

I don’t enjoy any of the process of writing. I enjoy it when it goes on if it zings and it has great warmth and import and it’s successful. Yeah, that’s when I enjoy it. But during the desperate, tough time of creating it, there’s not much I enjoy about it. It tires me and lays me out, which is sort of the way I feel now. Tired.

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, narrator
“Rod Serling: The Facts of Life,” interview by Linda Brevelle (4 Mar 1975)
(Source)

The interview was held less than four months before his death from cancer.

Macaulay, Rose -- “Some Problems of a Woman’s Life,” Good Housekeeping (Aug 1923)

Dave — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 18:23:08 +0000

A tradition has now for long been established that cooking and cleaning are woman’s work. As these occupations are among the most tiresome which humanity has to endure, this tradition is very unfortunate for women. But there it is; and the problem is how to get what is needful done as rapidly as possible, so that one can go and do something else, more lucrative, interesting, or amusing.
The general rule is that there must be something to eat at stated intervals, and the house or the flat must be about as clean as the houses and flats of one’s acquaintances. It sounds simple, but actually to secure both these results will often be found to take the entire time. All the time that there is. And that is so tragically little. None left over for reading, writing, walking, sitting in woods, playing games, making love, merely existing without effort. And ever at your back you hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near … and so the grave yawns, and at the end you will be able to say, not “I have warmed both hands before the fire of life,” but “I have kept house.”
The only solution of this problem which I can suggest — and I almost hesitate to do in these pages — is, Do not keep house. Let the house, or flat, go unkept. Let it go to the devil, and see what happens when it has gone there. At the worst, a house unkempt cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Rose Macaulay (1881-1958) English writer
“Some Problems of a Woman’s Life,” Good Housekeeping (Aug 1923)
(Source)

Boreham, Frank W. -- The Drums of Dawn, “The Tower of Babel” (1933)

Dave — Tue, 13 Jul 2021 14:29:00 +0000

We make religion a drudgery, a grind, a slavery when it should be a revelry, a festival, an everlasting song.

Frank W. Boreham (1871-1959) Anglo-Australian preacher
The Drums of Dawn, “The Tower of Babel” (1933)
(Source)

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. -- Hocus Pocus (1990)

Dave — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:45:53 +0000

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007) American novelist, journalist
Hocus Pocus (1990)
(Source)

Johnson, Samuel -- Essay (1754-03-02), The Adventurer, No. 138

Dave — Fri, 09 May 2014 14:31:22 +0000

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1754-03-02), The Adventurer, No. 138
(Source)

Johnson, Samuel -- A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Dave — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:52:01 +0000

LEXICOGRAPHER. n. s. A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
(Source)

Shakespeare, William -- Henry IV, Part 1, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 211ff (1.2.211-212) (1597)

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

HAL: If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work,
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry IV, Part 1, Act 1, sc. 2, l. 211ff (1.2.211-212) (1597)
(Source)