
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 15, Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science, p. 278
Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 57
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 15, Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science, p. 278
“No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)
Source: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings
Context: I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
“Men are like steel — when they lose their temper, they lose their worth.”
Though often attributed to Norris, this seems to have appeared as an anonymous proverb at least as early as 1961, in an edition of The Physical Educator
Misattributed
Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,
Letter to Abd al-Rahman bin Nu'aym, also quoted in History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 101
Variant: Tragedy and adversary are the stones we sharpen our swords against so we can fight new battles.
Source: Infinity
Herbert N. Casson cited in: Forbes magazine (1950) The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life. p. 236
1950s and later