John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet
Extract from 'Powers of Thirteen'(1983)
Poetry Quotes
Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 217.
John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet
Extract from 'Powers of Thirteen'(1983)
Poetry Quotes
Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain
Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 1 “Operation: Cooperation!” (p. 14)
“I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.”
Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy
Unidentified fragment 545 K (K = T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, 3 vols. (Leipzig 1880/8)), as translated in Menander: The Principal Fragments (1921) by Francis Greenleaf Allinson.
“We believe that failing to call a spade a spade is not scientific.”
Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli
Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 50
Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator
Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 158 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.
“These Macedonians," said he, "are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade.”
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
39 Philip
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders
Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises
Patanjali, in “The Little Red Book of Yoga Wisdom”, p. 135.
“Sometimes a person has to point fingers, disclose double standards, call a spade a spade.”
Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lynne Truss (1955) British writer
Source: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation