WIST Quotations

Barzun, Jacques -- Essay (1989), “Look It Up! Check It Out!” The Culture We Deserve

Dave — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:40:54 +0000

To say this is also to say that the age of ready reference is one in which knowledge inevitably declines into information. The master of so much packaged stuff has less need to grasp context or meaning than his forbears: he can always look it up. His active memory is otherwise engaged anyway, full of the arbitrary names, initials, and code figures essential to carrying on daily life. He can be vague about the rest: he can always check it out.

Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
Essay (1989), “Look It Up! Check It Out!” The Culture We Deserve
(Source)

An earlier version of this essay was published in The American Scholar (1986, Autumn).

Barzun, Jacques -- Lecture (1987-07-17), “Of What Use the Classics Today?” St. John’s College

Dave — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 21:08:04 +0000

The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is largely pluralistic, as ours has become. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find familiar ground and, as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and good will. One is not addressing an alien, blank as a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself.

Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
Lecture (1987-07-17), “Of What Use the Classics Today?” St. John’s College
(Source)

Collected in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991).

Maggio, Rosalie -- Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language, “Writing Guidelines / Introduction” (2014)

Dave — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 00:53:04 +0000

Language both reflects and shapes society. Culture shapes language and then language shapes culture. Little wonder that the words we use to talk to each other, and about each other, are the most important words in our language: they tell us who I am, they tell us who you are, they tell us who “they” are.

Rosalie Maggio (1944-2021) American writer
Unspinning the Spin: The Women’s Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language, “Writing Guidelines / Introduction” (2014)
(Source)

The first sentence (and much of the groundwork for the overall work) is included in her The Bias-Free Word Finder: A Dictionary of Non-Discriminatory Language, Introduction (1992).

The source link is to the web page that the WMC set up for the book.

Child, Julia -- The Way to Cook, Foreword (1989)

Dave — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 16:54:08 +0000

A reference or teaching book is only as good as its index.

Julia Child (1912-2004) American chef and writer
The Way to Cook, Foreword (1989)
(Source)

Skeat, Walter William -- Notes and Queries, 6th Series, vol. 9 (1884-06-21)

Dave — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 20:06:21 +0000

I protest, for about the hundredth time, against the slipshod method of quoting a mere author’s name, without any indication of the work of that author in which the alleged quotation may be found. Let us have accurate quotations and exact references, wherever such are to be found. […] A quotation without a reference is like a geological specimen of unknown locality.

Walter William Skeat (1835-1912) British philologist and cleric
Notes and Queries, 6th Series, vol. 9 (1884-06-21)
(Source)

Van den Berg, Laura -- Find Me, ch. 12 (2015)

Dave — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 20:11:15 +0000

If you have no way to mark the hours, no variance in the days, time will open its mouth and swallow you.

Laura van den Berg (b. 1983) American writer
Find Me, ch. 12 (2015)
(Source)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo -- Journal (1855-06)

Dave — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 12:29:26 +0000

A Scholar is a man with this inconvenience, that when you ask him his opinion on any matter, he must go home and look up his manuscripts to know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1855-06)
(Source)

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

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 19:00:00 +0000

Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest or private addition so rare and insignificant, — and this commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing, — that, in a large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

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