WIST Quotations

McLaughlin, Mignon -- The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 7 (1963)

Dave — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:40:27 +0000

No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have half-thought of it ourselves.

Mignon McLaughlin (1913-1983) American journalist and author
The Neurotic’s Notebook, ch. 7 (1963)
(Source)

Blessington, Marguerite -- Desultory Thoughts and Reflections (1839)

Dave — Wed, 26 May 2021 20:34:16 +0000

BORES: People who talk of themselves, when you are thinking only of yourself.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849) Irish novelist [Lady Blessington, b. Margaret Power]
Desultory Thoughts and Reflections (1839)
(Source)

West, Rebecca -- The Thinking Reed, ch. 7 (1936)

Dave — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 14:51:44 +0000

These women were fatuous with a fatuity which had threatened her all her life, as it threatened all people of means, and which was of mournful significance for humanity in general, since it proved the emptiness of one of man’s most reasonable expectations. No more sensible form of government could be imagined than aristocracy. If certain able stocks in the community were able to amass enough wealth to give their descendants beautiful houses to grow up in, the widest opportunities of education, complete economic security, so that they need never be influenced by mercenary considerations, and easy access to any public form of work they chose to undertake — why, then, the community had a race of perfect governors ready made.

Only, as the Lauristons showed, the process worked out wholly different in practice. There came to these selected stocks a deadly, ungrateful complacence, which made them count these opportunities as their achievements, and belittle everybody else’s achievements unless they were similarly confused with opportunities; and which did worse than this, by abolishing all standards from their minds except what they themselves were and did.

Rebecca West (1892-1983) British author, journalist, literary critic, travel writer [pseud. for Cicily Isabel Fairfield]
The Thinking Reed, ch. 7 (1936)

Fuller, Thomas (1654) -- Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (compiler), # 1404 (1732)

Dave — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 01:37:25 +0000

Every Ass loves to hear himself bray.

Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (compiler), # 1404 (1732)
(Source)

Watterson, Bill -- Calvin and Hobbes (1993-04-14)

Dave — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:01:25 +0000

CALVIN: I’m at peace with the world. I’m completely serene.

HOBBES: Why is that?

CALVIN: I’ve discoved my purpose in life. I know why I was put here and why everything exists.

HOBBES: Oh, really?

CALVIN: Yes. I am here so everybody can do what I want.

HOBBES: It’s nice to have that cleared up.

CALVIN: Once everyone accepts it, they’ll be serene, too.

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1993-04-14)
(Source)