Recommended quotes
page 48

Anna Funder photo
Anna Funder photo
John Waters photo

“My idea of an interesting person is someone who is quite proud of their seemingly abnormal life and turns their disadvantage into a career.”

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

Source: Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste

Eric Hoffer photo

“If anybody asks me what I have accomplished, I will say all I have accomplished is that I have written a few good sentences.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Manuscript note, quoted at The Eric Hoffer Award official site http://www.hofferaward.com/

Robert Burns photo

“Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!”

Robert Burns To a Mouse

To a Mouse, st. 1 (1785)
Context: Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!

John Muir photo

“The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

attributed to Muir by Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 331
1910s

John Muir photo

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Once again, this is far from Muir's style of writing. The quote does not come up in any search of John Muir's Journals or his published texts on the John Muir Exhibit website. It is most commonly put on t-shirts - never in any scholarly source.
Misattributed

Saddam Hussein photo

“I call on you not to hate, because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Saddam Hussein Farewell Letter http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16368242/ (MSNBC online) <br class="br">Statement in a farewell letter written to the Iraqi people, written Nov. 5, 2006, released Dec. 27, 2006.

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Richard of Chichester photo

“[When he saw animals being conveyed to his kitchen] Poor little innocent creatures, if you were reasoning beings and could speak, how you would curse us! For we are the cause of your death, and what have you done to deserve it?”

Richard of Chichester (1197–1253) Bishop of Chichester, Saint

Quoted in Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, vol. II: April, May, June, Burns & Oates, 1956, p. 24.

Roger Scruton photo
Roger Scruton photo

“The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Avant-garde and Kitsch" (p. 85)
Modern Culture (2000)

Rudyard Kipling photo

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Richard Bach photo

“The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain photo

“It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Anonymous American proverb; since 1998 this has often been attributed to Mark Twain on the internet, but no contemporary evidence of him ever using it has been located. <br class="br">Variants: <br class="br">It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that matters. <br class="br">&quot;Stub Ends of Thoughts&quot; by Arthur G. Lewis, a collection of sayings, in Book of the Royal Blue Vol. 14, No. 7 (April 1911), cited as the earliest known occurrence in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, edited by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro, p. 232 <br class="br">It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins. <br class="br">Anonymous quote in the evening edition of the East Oregonian (20 April 1911) <br class="br">What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it&#x27;s the size of the fight in the dog. <br class="br">Dwight D. Eisenhower, declaring his particular variant on the proverbial assertion in Remarks at Republican National Committee Breakfast (31 January 1958) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=11229 <br class="br">Misattributed