Larry Niven quote: “What’s the justification for ancestor worship? You know what happens to a man without modern geriatrics: as he ages his…”

“The Modern Man or Nervous Wreck is the highest of all mammals because anyone can see that he is. There are about 2,000,000,000 Modern Men, or too many. The Modern Man's highly developed brain has made him what he is and you know what he is.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

Footnote: It is because of his brain that he has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above.
The Modern Man
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“The Modern Man or Nervous Wreck is the highest of all mammals because anyone can see that he is. There are about 2,000,000,000 Modern Men, or too many. The Modern Man's highly developed brain has made him what he is and you know what he is. [Footnote: It is because of his brain that he has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above. ]”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Modern Man
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“Do you know what worship is? Everything belongs to the Lord, so what is there to offer to Him? But the Master used to tell us: 'Once a rich man went to visit his orchard. He saw the gardeners busy with their work. The caretaker approached him and presented him with a ripe papaya, saying: "Sir, I picked this ripe fruit for you yesterday. Please accept it." Now the owner knows that the garden, the trees, the fruit all belong to him; but won't he appreciate the love and thoughtfulness of the caretaker? Worship is like this.'”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

Source: God Lived with Them, p.436

“You could know a man not by what his friends said about him, but by how he treated his servants.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“You know, I'm not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man, like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together. And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

60 minutes interview. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/03/12/MN37VI8QI.DTL&type=printable
Husband's Presidential campaign (1992 – January 19, 1993)

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 5
Variant: Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.
Source: Texts & Pretexts: An Anthology With Commentaries
Context: The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.

“If you know what a man's doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he's doing keep behind him.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Innocence of Father Brown

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Blue Cross
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

“Have you heard this one, Psycho? How do a blonde's brain cells die? [… A] blonde's brain cells die alone.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Jacob Black to Rosalie Hale, p. 324
Twilight series, Breaking Dawn (2008)

“His appearance gives no clue to what his profession might be, and yet he doesn't look like a man without a profession either. Consider what he's like: He always knows what to do. He knows how to gaze into a woman's eyes. He can put his mind to any question at any time. He can box. He is gifted, strong-willed, open-minded, fearless, tenacious, dashing, circumspect — why quibble, suppose we grant him all those qualities — yet he has none of them! They have made him what he is, they have set his course for him, and yet they don't belong to him. When he is angry, something in him laughs. When he is sad, he is up to something. When something moves him, he turns against it. He'll always see a good side to every bad action. What he thinks of anything will always depend on some possible context — nothing is, to him, what it is: everything is subject to change, in flux, part of a whole, of an infinite number of wholes presumably adding up to a super-whole that, however, he knows nothing about. So every answer he gives is only a partial answer, every feeling an opinion, and he never cares what something is, only 'how' it is — some extraneous seasoning that somehow goes along with it, that's what interests him.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

“A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

"The Cage" (Star Trek first pilot), spoken by John Hoyt as "Dr. Philip Boyce" (0:06:18)
Cited in: Dubes 52, Surviving Katrina Before and After https://books.google.nl/books?id=wyySAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA35&dq=%22A+man+either+lives+life+as+it+happens+to+him,+meets+it+head-on+and+licks+it,+or+he+turns+his+back+on+it+and+starts+to+wither+away%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjsleOa8aHLAhUFIQ8KHdVnClIQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22A%20man%20either%20lives%20life%20as%20it%20happens%20to%20him%2C%20meets%20it%20head-on%20and%20licks%20it%2C%20or%20he%20turns%20his%20back%20on%20it%20and%20starts%20to%20wither%20away%22&f=false, 2014, p. 35

“What’s the justification for ancestor worship? You know what happens to a man without modern geriatrics: as he ages his brain cells start to die. Yet people tend to respect him, to listen to him.”

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