“I know it’s an awful temptation, the hankerin’ to show off your learnin’. I’ve felt it myself, but I always resist it. I know the awful consequences. p. 53”

— George Washington Plunkitt

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 12, Dangers of the Dress Suit in Politics

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I know it’s an awful temptation, the hankerin’ to show off your learnin’. I’ve felt it myself, but I always resist it. …" by George Washington Plunkitt?

George Washington Plunkitt 67

New York State Senator 1842–1924

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 2 (p. 13).

“This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

“I still felt like I might hurl, and I thought about how awful that would be in midair.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“How could you think of such awful things?" liberal critics always ask. "How else could I possibly amuse myself?”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

I always wonder.
Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)

“"Sometimes it comes down to a choice. Between saving one person and saving the whole world. I've seen it happen, and I'm selfish enough to want the person who loves me to choose me. But Nephilim will always choose the world. I look at Alec and I feel like Lucifer in Paradise Lost. "Abashed the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is." He meant it in the classic sense. 'Awful' as in inspiring awe. And awe is well and good, but it's poison to love. Love has to be between equals."”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Magnus Bane, to Luke Garroway, about Alec Lightwood, pg. 428
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)

“It's a feeling of awe — of scientific awe — which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "But Is It Art?", p. 261
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)
Context: I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world. It's difficult to describe because it's an emotion. It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run "behind the scenes" by the same organization, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside; a realization that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is. It's a feeling of awe — of scientific awe — which I felt could be communicated through a drawing to someone who had also had this emotion. It could remind him, for a moment, of this feeling about the glories of the universe.