“I saw them go: one horse was blind,
The tails of both hung down behind,
Their shoes were on their feet.”
Rejected Addresses, "The Baby's Début", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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James Smith 3
English writer 1775–1839Related quotes
“Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
This is the way of the Monkey-kind!”
Road-Song of the Bandar-Log.
The Jungle Book (1894)
“I couldn't do them if I didn't know horses lived behind them.”
When asked by his wife how he could draw so many bricks (in a series of drawings of horse stables). Quoted at The Keeping Gallery http://www.thekeepinggallery.co.uk
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1752) : For Want of a Nail the Shoe is lost; for want of a Shoe, the Horse is Lost; for want of a Horse the Rider is lost. ; also Poor Richard's Almanack (1758) : For Want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe, the Horse was Lost; and for want of a Horse the Rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the Enemy, all for want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Dit zijn de schoenen van oude Yde, een vrijgezel. Veertig jaar lang heeft hij ze gedragen. Van onder en van boven, van binnen en van buiten heeft hij ze opgelapt. Ik mocht ze van hem hebben, hij een liter brandewijn, ik de schoenen. Ze beschermden zijn voeten veertig jaar lang. Gingen ze stuk, hij lapte ze op en trok ze weer aan. Hij had wel nieuwe kunnen kopen, want hij trok al van Drees, maar hij was met zijn schoenen getrouwd.
Source: Jopie Huisman', 1981, p. 37
“And then I saw a man in terrible suffering, hung by one leg, head downward, to a high tree.”
Card XII : The Hanged Man http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/sot/sot23.htm
The Symbolism of the Tarot (1913)
Context: And then I saw a man in terrible suffering, hung by one leg, head downward, to a high tree. And I heard the voice: —
"Look! This is a man who saw Truth. Suffering awaits the man on earth, who finds the way to eternity and to the understanding of the Endless.
"He is still a man, but he already knows much of what is inaccessible even to Gods. And the incommensurableness of the small and the great in his soul constitutes his pain and his golgotha.
"In his own soul appears the gallows on which he hangs in suffering, feeling that he is indeed inverted.
"He chose this way himself.
"For this he went over a long road from trial to trial, from initiation to initiation, through failures and falls.
"And now he has found Truth and knows himself.
"He knows that it is he who stands before an altar with magic symbols, and reaches from earth to heaven; that he also walks on a dusty road under a scorching sun to a precipice where a crocodile awaits him; that he dwells with his mate in paradise under the shadow of a blessing genius; that he is chained to a black cube under the shadow of deceit; that he stands as a victor for a moment in an illusionary chariot drawn by sphinxes; and that with a lantern in bright sunshine, he seeks for Truth in a desert.
"Now he has found Her."
“My brain is hung like a horse!”
PvP, Tuesday, April 06, 2004 http://www.pvponline.com/comic/2004/04/06/tue-apr-06/
PvP (1998)
Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)
Context: Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again — all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and — I don't know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense.
