“She didn't ask me to the christening, so I'm not going to the wedding.”
George Orwell "The Art of Donald McGill"
Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)
“She didn't ask me to the christening, so I'm not going to the wedding.”
George Orwell "The Art of Donald McGill"
“It is neither right nor safe to go against my conscience.”
True genius without heart is a thing of nought - for not great understanding alone, not intelligence alone, nor both together, make genius. Love! Love! Love! that is the soul of genius. - Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, entry in Mozart's souvenir album (1787-04-11) from Mozart: A Life by Maynard Solomon [Harper-Collins, 1966, ISBN 0-060-92692-9], p. 312.
Misattributed
Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 2
Context: Ought I to say that the form of change is fixity, or more precisely, that change is an endless search for fixity? A nostalgia for inertia: indolence and its frozen paradises. Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary. It is transition. But the moment I say transition, the spell is broken. Transition is not wisdom, but a simple going toward… Transition vanishes: only thus is it transition.
“Difficult and easy-going, pleasant and churlish, you are at the same time: I can neither live with you nor without you.”
Difficilis facilis iucundus acerbus es idem:
Nec possum tecum vivere nec sine te.
Difficilis facilis iucundus acerbus es idem:
Nec possum tecum vivere nec sine te.
XII, 46
Variant translation: Difficult or easy, pleasant or bitter, you are the same you: I cannot live with you—or without you.
Compare: "Thus I can neither live with you nor without you", Ovid, Amores, Book III, xib, 39
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)
Essay in North Star (November 1858); as quoted in Faces at the Bottom of the Well : The Permanence of Racism (1992) by Derrick Bell, p. 40
1850s
Context: We deem it a settled point that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with that of the white people of this country. … We are here, and here we are likely to be. To imagine that we shall ever be eradicated is absurd and ridiculous. We can be remodified, changed, assimilated, but never extinguished. We repeat, therefore, that we are here; and that this is our country; and the question for the philosophers and statesmen of the land ought to be, What principles should dictate the policy of the action toward us? We shall neither die out, nor be driven out; but shall go with this people, either as a testimony against them, or as an evidence in their favor throughout their generations.
“Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own…”
“The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.”
As quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon : A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984) by Jonathon Green
Variant translation: The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.
As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 281