Quotes about spoon (90 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”

Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter

"Ironic"
Jagged Little Pill (1995)

“On the moon we wore feathers in our hair, and rubies on our hands. On the moon we had gold spoons.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Father, bless me for I have sinned, I did an original sin… I poked a badger with a spoon.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Worship

Worship
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
Variant: The louder they talked of their honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Source: The Conduct of Life: A Philosophical Reading

“Everybody yelled at him, and laughed at him, and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now, because he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat first, and spoon vittles to top off on."”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Ch. 21

Waiting

“Unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Misquoted by [2012-04-18, Allahpundit, Obama: Unlike some people, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, Hot Air, http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/18/obama-unlike-some-people-i-wasnt-born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-my-mouth/, 2012-10-08], and publicized by Steve Doocy, Fox & Friends (), Fox News
President Obama actually said, in a campaign speech in Elyria, Ohio http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2012/04/18/president-obama-speaks-skills-american-workers on , "Somebody gave me an education. <span style="color:gray">I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.</span> Michelle wasn't. But somebody gave us a chance, just like these folks up here are looking for a chance."
2012-04-23
Steve Doocy's Silver Spoon Subtext Reporting
The Colbert Report
Comedy Central
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/413071/april-23-2012/steve-doocy-s-subtext-reporting
Misattributed

People

“Grown men, otherwise daring, capable and virile men of accomplishment frequently find themselves terrorized and terrified by ridiculous accusations of bias or impropriety cast by spoon-fed students, indignant sluts, disabled lesbians, bipolar transsexuals, illegal immigrants and the morbidly obese. In the space of a few hundred years, the noble morality of the sovereign has been exchanged for the ignoble morality of the squeaky wheel.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

pg 42
A More Complete Beast (2018)

Men

“High School is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

School

“Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Dilbert Blog, Sleepless in California, 2006-07-21, http://web.archive.org/20060814050102/dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/07/sleepless_in_ca.html, 2006-08-14 http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/07/sleepless_in_ca.html,

Life

“There is no spoon. I am completely spoonless over here.”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

“They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.”

Edward Lear The Owl and the Pussycat

St. 3.
Source: The Owl and the Pussycat (1871)

Light , Dance

“The good doctor put a spoon of tea into my honey." "You're drinking tea a honey badger made," Jim said. "What did you expect?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Drink , Tea

“He kisses like… like it could be his job.” Margot giggles and lifts the spoons off her eyes. “Like a male prostitute?”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Kiss

“Question your tea spoons.”

Georges Perec (1936–1982) French writer

Species of Spaces and Other Pieces

Question , Tea

“Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea: "One table-spoonful to be taken at bedtime.”

Beatrix Potter book The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Source: The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Tea

“And you, Kibbles, had better lay off me. One more growl and I swear I’m going to geld you with a spoon. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

“You know what I like about you? You have no sense. You sit here in my house, you can barely hold a spoon, and you're telling me 'no'. You'd pull on Death's whiskers if you could reach them.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Death , Sense , Housing

“If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.”

Lawrence Block (1938) American writer

Coffee

“Buttercup's mother hesitated, then put her stew spoon down. (This was after stew, but so is everything. When the first man first clambered from the slime and made his first home on land, what he had for supper that first night was stew.)”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Home , Night

“Women don't want all that. Women just want a partner who is considerate and attentive, who will spoon with them while reciting Keats, and feed them organic yogurt by candlelight on a seaside cliff at sunset.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Women

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.

Life , Coffee

“I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Baby

“I like my coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong… with a spoon in them.”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Glorious (1997)
Variant: I like my coffee like I like my women... in a plastic cup.
Source: Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill

Women , Coffee , Strong

“A wine shop was open and I went in for some coffee. It smelled of early morning, of swept dust, spoons in coffee-glasses and the wet circles left by wine glasses.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Coffee , Wine

“If I'm not supposed to be awake, why are you here?" I mumbled.
"To be the little spoon.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Fury's Kiss

“That’s Narmer with the spoon,” I guessed. “Angry because the other bloke stole his breakfast cereal?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“You have not been sticking your dirty fingers in my sauce,’’ Eve said, and pointed her wooden spoon
at him.
He quickly took the finger out of his mouth. ‘‘First off, they’re not dirty. I licked them first.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Feast of Fools

“You bought me some forks. And knives. And spoons. Because you love me!”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

Love

“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Secret , World , Forgetting , Happiness

“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others

Life , Coffee

“And Meredith and Bonnie, who's going to bend some spoons for us next. I'm going to throw you down a rope… that is, unless Bonnie can levitate you out.”

L.J. Smith book The Vampire Diaries: The Struggle

Source: The Struggle

“Oh, the testosterone. You could have cut it with a cafeteria spoon.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals

“Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as argue with a lover.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Source: The Drawing of the Three

Lovers , Drink

“This is the end of spoon-fed orthodoxy and infallible institutions, and the rise of messy mosaics of information that require—and reward—investigation.”

Chris Anderson book The Long Tail

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 11, p. 190

“A man that's fond precociously of stirring,
Must be a spoon.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

Morning Meditations (1839), St. 10.
1830s

“Therfore bihoveth hire a ful long spoon
That shal ete with a feend.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

The Squire's Tale, l. 594-95
The Canterbury Tales

“The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Review of Seybert’s Annals of the United States", published in The Edinburgh Review (1820)

Death , Youth , Horse

“Be, as you have been, my happiness;
Let me sleep beside you, each night, like a spoon.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Woman," lines 170-171
The Lost World (1965)

Sleep , Night , Happiness

“If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around, you could use the expression 'a mixed bag' to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often, it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon movie theater, for example, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all the man and woman-eating lions were running around loose.”

Daniel Handler book The Ersatz Elevator

Lemony Snicket
The Ersatz Elevator (2001)

Beauty , Way , Parting , Weather

“Newspapers chiefly exist to spooned the opinions of their readers back to them, much like an arse to mouth hosepipe.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

2013 Wipe
Weekly Wipe

“"One thing more, son. Do you believe in God?"
Slowly Frost put the spoon back into the bowl.
He asked: "You really want an answer?"
"I want an answer," said the man. "I want an honest one."
"The answer," said Frost, "is that I don't know. Not, certainly, in the kind of God that you are thinking of. Not the old white-whiskered, woodcut gentleman. But a supreme being — yes, I would believe in a God of that sort. Because it seems to me there must be some sort of force or power or will throughout the universe. The universe is too orderly for it to be otherwise. When you measure all this orderliness, from the mechanism of the atom at one end of the scale, out to the precision of the operation of the universe at the other end, it seems unbelievable that there is not a supervisory force of some kind, a benevolent ruling force to maintain that sort of order."”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967)

God , Thinking , Universe

“I think most journalists are pretty lazy, number one. A little lazy and also they're spoon-fed information, such as the weapons of mass destruction back in 2003…. you have these people who create a package of news, develop it as a story line, a scenario, and they find, as Mailer once said about the press, that they're like a donkey. You have to feed the donkey. The donkey every day has to eat. So [special interests] throw information at this damn animal that eats everything. Tin cans, garbage.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

Interview with Gay Talese, David Shankbone, Wikinews, October 27, 2007.

People , Thinking , Animals

“I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“My attitude is one of unswerving devotion to myself. I am single-minded in my pursuit of money, fame and power. I also collect spoons.”

Shaun Micallef (1962) Australian actor

Money

“I have trouble knowing what to do at parties. Prisoners tame mice, or make rings out of spoons: I analyze people’s handwriting…or else ask you to tell me what you read when you were a child. (People speak unusually well of the books of their childhood, don’t they? Or is this one more life-giving illusion?) I love to see a hard eye grow soft over Little Women… And, I’ve found, there’s no children’s book so bad that I mind your having liked it: about the tastes of dead children there is no disputing.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Speaking of Books”, p. 219
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Love , Life , Women , Children

“And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon,
Little boy blue and the man in the moon.
"When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when,
But we'll get together then.
You know we'll have a good time then."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Cat's in the Cradle
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Home , Boy , Cats , Time

“I had manufactured artificial goals as a means of motivating myself, using my longing for money, cars, and other material possessions to create a false sense of purpose. They had worked on me like spoonfuls of sugar- a jolt of energy that soon faded, leaving behind the pangs of a deeper hunger. I had cut myself off from the transcendent hope of religion, and now a vast and frightening expanse of uncertainty lay before me.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Pages 116-117
2000s, (2008)

Money , Hunger , Religion , Hope

“You don't rely on a great army of people to spoon-feed you. Today's classical-music world is very self-defeating. I love the fact that all these corporations are falling apart. They're sinking millions into acts and getting it wrong. And I know why - it's not about the music, or the audiences. So in many ways this is a very encouraging time.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Independent, 23/06/2003
On Classical Music

Love , People , World , Music

“Every man was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 73.

“I do believe that encyclopedias are dead as dodos in the old fashioned way. Let me just go back, because earlier around I was interviewed and I said: The book will always be with us. Books - we used to read in scrolls and then they got invented the codex which is basically the form of the book. It has not been improved on. It's like scissors, like a spoon, and like a hammer. It's technology that's perfect in itself and will remain very good. But: What about the content inside of it? Now, there are books that you read for information. And there what you want to do is how to get the information. And it is infinitely more efficient, of higher quality, to use digital sources rather than the published sources for references. So dictionaries and encyclopedias are not going to be done in this very ponderous way of having old books that by the time they come out the information in them is obsolete. Second, you have to search in all of these and open the pages and then you go to an index and come back whereas you can type to search in. […] But if you want to hold in your hand a slim volume, nicely bound, of the love sonnets of Shakespeare or historical romans, that's a different story. There is the book as artifact, there is the joy in holding the book. And there is an efficiency in the book that you can carry with you in different ways. But I think that the encyclopedias and the dictionaries really are providing a service. And that service can be provided so much more efficiently online that they are bound to change. And if they don't change themselves and go online themselves … I mean, the old providers, like Britannica, will go online, will provide it, and will try to, in fact, compete with the model that Wikipedia pioneered.”

Ismail Serageldin (1944) egyptian academic

Wikimania 2008 press conference 0'33 (August 2008).

Love , Books , Way , Search

“I used to think I could understand everything and express everything. Or almost everything. I remember when I was writing my book about the war in Afghanistan, Zinky Boys, I went to Afghanistan and they showed me some of the foreign weapons that had been captured from the Afghan fighters. I was amazed at how perfect their forms were, how perfectly a human thought had been expressed. There was an officer standing next to me and he said, "If someone were to step on this Italian mine that you say is so pretty it looks like a Christmas decoration, there would be nothing left of them but a bucket of meat. You'd have to scrape them off the ground with a spoon." When I sat down to write this, it was the first time I thought, "Is this something I should say?" I had been raised on great Russian literature, I thought you could go very very far, and so I wrote about that meat. But the Zone—it's a separate world, a world within the rest of the world—and it's more powerful than anything literature has to say.”

Svetlana Alexievich book Voices from Chernobyl

Source: Voices from Chernobyl (2005), pp. 239–240

War , Books , World , Boy

“But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

July 14, 1763, p. 123
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

Thinking , Housing

“Doing the commodity business with China is like drinking coffee. We enjoyed three spoons of sugar per cup for a long time. Suddenly, when that’s cut to one and a half spoons, we feel bitter — because it used to be so sweet.”

Sukanto Tanoto (1949) Indonesian businessman

Interview, New York Times, Dec 1, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/business/international/indonesia-economy-interest-rates.html?_r=0
2015

Feeling , Coffee , Drink , Business

“A Horse, a Bucket and a Spoon.”

Terry Jones (1942–2020) Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director and author

Graham Chapman A Liar's Autobiography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1980) p. 152.
Jones' suggested title for the show that was eventually named Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Horse

“So it was that the Catherines poured water and spooned gruel, while the Clares prayed for the intercession of the saints. The Catherines changed sheets. The Clares practiced mortification of the flesh. The Catherines employed antibiotics. The Clares made a public display of a kneecap of their patron saint.
It was soon widely know to which hospital one went to get well, and to which one went to die.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 9, “The Plague Kitchen” (p. 141)

Water , Change

“The first article in the foregoing quotation brings to my recollection the extraordinary performances of a professed fire-eater, whose name was Powel, well known in different parts of the kingdom about forty years ago. Among other wonderful feats, I saw him do the following: He ate the burning coals from the fire; he put a large bunch of matches lighted into his mouth, and blew the smoke of the sulphur through his nostrils; he carried a red-hot heater round the room in his teeth; and broiled a piece of beef-steak upon his tongue. To perform this, he lighted a piece of charcoal, which he put into his mouth beneath his tongue, the beef was laid upon the top; and one of the spectators blew upon the charcoal, to prevent the heat decreasing, till the meat was sufficiently broiled. By way of conclusion, he made a composition of pitch, brimstone, and other compustibles, to which he added several pieces of lead; the whole was melted in an iron ladle, and then set on fire; this he called his soup; and, taking it out of the ladle with a spoon of the same metal, he ate it in its state of liquefaction, and blazing furiously, without appearing to sustain the least injury.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 237
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Way , Light , Appearance , Parting

“Sometimes for us in Canada it seems as though the United States and the United Kingdom were cup and saucer, and Canada the spoon, for we are in and out of both with the greatest freedom, and we are given most recognition when we are most a nuisance.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Freedom

“I have seen Christians in Communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold--and praying with fervor for the Communists. This is humanly inexplicable! It is the love of Christ, which was poured out in our hearts.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Source: Tortured For Christ (1967), p. 55.

Love , Suffering , Water , Heart

“Their joy needs another woe's to cushion it,
Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results
Of ice cream with spoons for catapults,
And inform the assembly with tears and glares
That everyone's presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men,
Someday I hope to love you again,
But not till after the party's over,
So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Children's Party

Love , Women , Men , Hope

“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry), Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, (March 1948) pp. 68-70
1940s

People , Truth , Fraud , Help

“Why to bring revolution? They are also human beings. Why don’t we treat ourselves as human beings? I speak Hindi and you speak your native language, but we are all human beings. Why do you treat them as foreigners? They also want to adapt to our tradition- some are visiting temples, they become vegetarians, some have given up spoons and eat using their hands, they try to become Sadhus. Why do you want to treat them as foreigners, they are human beings! If we get influenced by their tradition, it’s okay. If they get influenced by our tradition, it’s okay. Younger generation who try to emulate them will eventually come back to their native tradition!”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

On Western Culture and the so-called Revolution.
Melodies of Brindavan: Pandit Hariprasad Chourasia

“If that's a euphemism - an egg and spoon race, - I'm probably gold medal class.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Radio One Interview, July 5th 2007

“Norman saw on English oak.
On English neck a Norman yoke;
Norman spoon to English dish,
And England ruled as Normans wish;
Blithe world in England never will be more,
Till England's rid of all the four.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe (1819), Ch. 27, Proverb recited by Wamba to De Bracy and Front-de-Boeuf.

World

“I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train…”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Opening Chapter
Naked Lunch (1959)

Feeling , Training

“Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Political Georgics (June 29, 1831)

“The thing that nobody really said about Rebecca Adlington is that she looks pretty weird. She looks like someone who's looking at themselves in the back of a spoon.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Mock the Week

“In spring I stopped eating the bodies of living things. Nonetheless, the other day I ate several slices of tuna sashimi as a form of magic to “undertake” my “communication” with “society.” I also stirred a cup of chawanmushi with a spoon. If the fish, while being eaten, had stood behind me and watched, what would he have thought? “I gave up my only life and this person is eating my body as if it were something distasteful.” “He’s eating me in anger.” “He’s eating me out of desperation.” “He’s thinking of me and, while quietly savoring my fat with his tongue, praying, ‘Fish, you will come with me as my companion some day, won’t you?’” “Damn! He’s eating my body!” Well, different fish would have had different thoughts. … Suppose I were the fish, and suppose that not only I were being eaten but my father were being eaten, my mother were being eaten, and my sister were also being eaten. And suppose I were behind the people eating us, watching. “Oh, look, that man has torn apart my sibling with chopsticks. Talking to the person next to him, he swallowed her, thinking nothing of it. Just a few minutes ago her body was lying there, cold. Now she must be disintegrating in a pitch-dark place under the influence of mysterious enzymes. Our entire family have given up our precious lives that we value, we’ve sacrificed them, but we haven’t won a thimbleful of pity from these people.””

Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933) Japanese poet and author of children's literature

I must have been once a fish that was eaten.
Letter to Hosaka (May 1918); as quoted in Miyazawa Kenji: Selections, edited by Hiroaki Sato (University of California Press, 2007), pp. 12 https://books.google.it/books?id=D7IwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA12-13.

Life , People , Family , Spring

“Fifty years ago the legal injustice imposed upon women was appalling. Wives, widows and mothers seemed to have been hunted out by the law on purpose to see in how many ways they could be wronged and made helpless. A wife by her marriage lost all right to any personal property she might have. The income of her land went to her husband, so that she was made absolutely penniless. If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. If a woman wrote a book the copyright of the same belonged to her husband and not to her. The law counted out in many states how many cups and saucers, spoons and knives and chairs a widow might have when her husband died. I have seen many a widow who took the cups she had bought before she was married and bought them again after her husband died, so as to have them legally. The law gave no right to a married woman to any legal existence at all. Her legal existence was suspended during marriage. She could neither sue nor be sued. If she had a child born alive the law gave her husband the use of all her real estate as long as he should live, and called it by the pleasant name of "the estate by courtesy."”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

When the husband died the law gave the widow the use of one-third of the real estate belonging to him, and it was called the "widow's encumbrance."
The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women , Marriage , Books , Law

“Start with a shovel, wind up with a spoon”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Rolling Stone Magazine interview, March 1970 http://crosstowntorrents.org/archive/index.php/t-1112.html

“Central Europe has several recognizably common architectural features that make some towns in Galicia look remarkably like towns in Transylvania and Slovakia; shared musicians—Liszt, Chopin, Mahler, Dvořák, Smetana, Bartók, Kodály; shared writers, such as Musil, Gombrowicz, Koestler, Brod, Mickiewicz, Kafka, Roth, Zweig, Faludy; and some peculiar shared traditions, such as the tiny coffee spoon and the oversweet desserts with whipping cream.”

Anna Porter

[Anne Porter, The Ghosts of Europe: Journeys through Central Europe's Troubled Past and Uncertain Future, http://books.google.com/books?id=8iPa2Q1HtP8C&pg=PA19, 23 September 2010, Douglas & McIntyre, 978-1-55365-637-1, 19]

Coffee

“Hee must have a long spoone, shall eat with the devill.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 5.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“You could grind a dog's head and a shoe together into a paste and spoon-feed it to me, and I'd probably think it was chicken liver pate, provided I kept my eyes closed, and provided you plucked all the dog hair out beforehand, and provided you'd managed to find a pestle and mortar big enough to mash it all up in, and provided - look, it wouldn't be worth it. I'm just saying I can't taste anything. There's no need to get carried away. What's the matter with you? You're an idiot.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

On his lack of tastebuds due to a bad cold.
[Screen Burn, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,2193905,00.html, The Guardian, 20 October 2007, 2008-07-30]
Guardian columns, Screen Burn

Dogs , Shoe , Thinking , Past

“Inka dinka doo, a dinka dee,
A dinka doo.
Oh, what a tune for crooning.
Inka dinka doo, a dinka dee
A dinka doo.
It's got the whole world spooning.”

Jimmy Durante (1893–1980) American jazz singer, pianist, comedian and actor

"Inka Dinka Doo" (1933) written with Fred Ryan and Harry Donnelly.

World

“Transparency strengthens democracy only when it gives citizens information they can use. It is not just about politicians telling us what they want us to know. For it to mean anything, it must empower citizens and provide answers to the questions they ask, not merely spoon feed them meagre information rations.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

Democracy , Question

“It is by self-reliance, humanly speaking, by the independence which has been the motive and impelling force of our race, that the Scots have thriven in India and in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and even in England, where at different times they were banned. As things are we in Scotland do not take much or even ask much from the State, but the State invites us every day to lean upon it. I seem hear the wheedling and alluring whisper, "Sound you may be; we bid you be a cripple. Do you see? Be blind. Do you hear? Be deaf. Do you walk? Be not venturesome; here is a crutch for one arm. When you get accustomed to it you will soon want another, the sooner the better." The strongest man, if encouraged, may soon accustom himself to the methods of an invalid; he may train himself to totter or to be fed with a spoon. The ancient sculptors represent Hercules leaning on his club; our modern Hercules would have his club elongated and duplicated and resting under his arms. (Laughter.) The lesson of our Scottish teaching was "Level up"; the cry of modern civilization is "Level down; let the Government have a finger in every pie," probing, propping, disturbing. ("Hear, hear," and laughter.) Every day the area for initiative is being narrowed, every day the standing ground for self-reliance is being undermined, every day the public infringes, with the best intentions, no doubt, on the individual. The nation is being taken into custody by the State. Perhaps the current cannot now be stemmed; agitation or protest may be alike unavailing; the world rolls on, it may be part of its destiny, a necessary phase in its long evolution, a stage in its blind, toilsome progress to an invisible goal. I neither affirm nor deny. All in the long run is doubtless for the best; but, speaking as a Scotsman to Scotsmen, I plead for our historical character, for the maintenance of those sterling national qualities which have meant so much to Scotland in the past.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Cheers.
Speech to Glasgow University (12 June 1908), reported in The Times (13 June 1908), p. 12.

World , Motivation , Laughter , Time

“Repealing drug laws would remove the risks involved with producing and distributing drugs, bringing 'street prices' crashing down (it's estimated that a 'spoon' of heroin would cost about a quarter in the free market), thereby eradicating any incentive that criminals might have to compete with legitimate businesses, and greatly reducing — if not eliminating altogether — any economic reason to 'push' drugs on children.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs".

Children , Law , Business

“Uri Geller may have psychic powers by means of which he can bend spoons; if so, he appears to be doing it the hard way.”

James Randi (1928) Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic

An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/Geller,%20Uri.html by James Randi

Way , Appearance

“Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

Richard M. Sherman (1928) American songwriter

From Mary Poppins, 1964

Help

“I suggest Australians rush to their kitchens and check that their spoons aren't bent after that performance.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Following a "death stare" and rebuke by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Julie Bishop, in Question Time, c. February 2011
"PM labels Opposition's carbon tax rollback plan as 'reckless'" http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3151130.htm, in PM (ABC), 26 February 2011

“First of all I was like, ‘I’m the most hated celebrity?’ More than, like, Chris Brown? What did I do? All I can do is be my authentic self, but I think there are things about me that make people draw conclusions. For example, there is the perception that I grew up very wealthy and that I was given, you know, that I was sort of raised with a silver spoon in my mouth, which inspires a lot of resentment. He [my father] said, ‘You are completely on your own. So he never gave me anything. I never had any supplementation, he never helped me with my rent, I never had a trust fund. So the idea that I am spoiled or that I didn’t work for what I have, that’s just not accurate. But I can see how somebody might have that perception.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

Hate , People , Idea , Thinking

“Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Context: Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

“I was digging with a fork out of the kitchen drawer, sewing tictacs, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. After a bit I got bored and just started burying cheap spoons to baffle the archaeologists of the future. [On gardening]”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Dandelion Mind (2010)

Hell , Future

“For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, "Tell me all about it — what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?" and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.

Books , Teachers

“This edge," said Giacomo Paradisi, touching the steel with the handle of a spoon, "will cut through any material in the world. Look.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the spoon's handle fell to the table, cut clean off.
"The other edge," the old man went on, "is more subtle still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether. Try it now. Do as I say — you are the bearer. You have to know. No one can teach you but me, and I have not much time left. Stand up and listen."
Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

World