“Living, just by itself - what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain.”

Source: The Sun Also Rises

"You Do"
Song lyrics, Magnolia: Music from the Motion Picture (1999)

Misquoted by Mitt Romney &quot; These Hands http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLZpMFbxyxU&quot; campaign ad () <br class="br">[2012-07-19, Romney video deceptively edits Obama speech to make it sound anti-business, Greg, Sargent, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-morning-plum-romney-video-deceptively-edits-obama-speech-to-make-it-sound-anti-business/2012/07/19/gJQAoRpavW_blog.html, 2012-10-08] <br class="br">The Web version of the ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lr49t4-2b8 uses a &lt;span style=&quot;color:grey&quot;&gt;longer misquote&lt;/span&gt;: &quot;If you&#x27;ve been successful, you didn&#x27;t get there on your own. You didn&#x27;t get there on your own. I&#x27;m always struck by people who think, &quot;well, it must be because I was just so smart.&quot; There are a lot of smart people out there. &quot;It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.&quot; Let me tell you something — if you&#x27;ve got a business, you didn&#x27;t build that. Somebody else made that happen. <br class="br">Splices two parts of a speech in Roanoke, Virginia on (see above). Full quote: <br class="br">&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn&#x27;t — look, &lt;span style=&quot;color:darkgrey&quot;&gt;if you&#x27;ve been successful, you didn&#x27;t get there on your own.&lt;/span&gt; &lt;span style=&quot;color:grey&quot;&gt;You didn&#x27;t get there on your own. I&#x27;m always struck by people who think, &quot;well, it must be because I was just so smart.&quot; There are a lot of smart people out there. &quot;It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.&quot; Let me tell you something —&lt;/span&gt; there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges; &lt;span style=&quot;color:darkgrey&quot;&gt;if you&#x27;ve got a business, you didn&#x27;t build that. Somebody else made that happen.&lt;/span&gt; The Internet didn&#x27;t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.&lt;/p&gt; <br class="br">Misattributed

Salon.com (29 August 2001)
Context: If you can't read and write you can't think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don't know how to read and write. You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.

Source: Istanbul: Memories and the City

Source: The Notebook

Clytemnestra to her daughter Electra, Act 1
The Flies (1943)