Quotes about well
page 41

Theodore Dalrymple photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Albert Kesselring photo

“A soldier's first duty is to obey, otherwise you might as well do away with soldiering.”

Albert Kesselring (1885–1960) German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II

To Leon Goldensohn, February 4, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 322.

Camille Paglia photo
Paul Simon photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Preta, I’m not going to discuss promiscuity with anyone. I don't run that risk because my children are well educated and they don't live in a promiscuous environment such as is, unfortunately, yours.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Responding to the singer Preta Gil after asked about what he would do if his son fell in love with a black woman on 28 March 2011 https://extra.globo.com/famosos/deputado-jair-bolsonaro-fala-da-promiscuidade-de-preta-gil-declara-que-seria-incapaz-de-amar-um-filho-homossexual-em-entrevista-1980933.html in an interview to the program CQC on Band. Brazil presidential candidate Bolsonaro's most controversial quotes https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazil-presidential-candidate-bolsonaros-most-controversial-quotes-012652084.html. Yahoo!, 29 September 2018.

Anton Chekhov photo

“It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

A Journey to Sakhalin (1891)

Evelyn Waugh photo

“No.3 Commando was very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow, so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion.
So Col. Durnford-Slater DSO said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree?. Yes, sir, 75lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir.
And when Col. D Slater DSO had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir.
Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. DS DSO said you will see that tree fall flat at just the angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.
So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it ½ acre of soil and the whole young plantation.
And the subaltern said Sir, I made a mistake, it should have been 7½ not 75. Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.
So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotions in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.
This is quite true.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Letter to his wife (31 May 1942)

KT Tunstall photo

“Well my heart knows me better than i know myself
So I'm gonna let it do all the talking.”

KT Tunstall (1975) Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Black Horse and the Cherry Tree".
Eye to the Telescope (2004)

François Bernier photo
Glyn Daniel photo
William D. Nordhaus photo

“We have to be grown-ups, I think [when discussing the payment of funds today to prevent climate harm which may be decades in the future]. There are lots of things we do where the investments come way, way in the future. Educating 4-year-olds... that's an investment that goes way into the future as well.”

William D. Nordhaus (1941) American economist

"Economist Says Best Climate Fix A Tough Sell, But Worth It." http://www.npr.org/2014/02/11/271537401/economist-says-best-climate-fix-a-tough-sell-but-worth-it National Public Radio. February 11, 2014.

Alexander Blok photo
Mo Yan photo
Charles Boarman photo

“My dear Father, Charley wrote you in his letter to his Aunt Laura thanking you for your kindness in sending us a nice Christmas present. You must not think because I have not written you myself before this that I appreciated your kindness less. I have been so troubled with pains and weakness in my arm and hand as to be almost useless at times. I think it was nursing so much when the children were sick. I was so relieved when Anna's note to Charly arrived yesterday telling Frankie was better. It would have been dreadful for Mother to have gone out west at this miserable season of the year. I was wretchedly uneasy. I do hope poor Franky will get along nicely now. It will make him much more careful about exposing himself having had this severe attack. Charley received the enclosed letters Anna sent from Sister Eliza and Toad[? ]. I was very glad to get them. It is quite refreshing to read Sister Eliza's letters. They are so cheerful and happy. I had a letter from her on Friday. This Custom House investigating committee is attracting a great deal of attention and time here. It holds its sessions at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Mr. Broome was up on Tuesday evening until ten o'clock but was not called upon. It is very slow. He has been for three weeks passed preparing the statement for those summoned from the Public Stores. Mr. Broome sends Laura a paper to look at—The Fisk tragedy. What is Nora doing with herself this winter. She might write to me sometimes. Give much love to Mother. Ask her for her receipt for getting fat. I would like to gain some myself. It is so much nicer to grow fleshy as you advance in life than to shrivel and dry up. The children are all well and growing very fast. Lloyd has to study very hard this year. His studies are quite difficult. I suppose Charley Harris is working hard too. Mr. Broome sent you a paper with the Navy Register in this week. I received your papers and often Richard calls and gets them. I must close. Mr. Broome and children join me in love to you, Mother, Laura, Anna, Nora, Charly & all.
With much love,
Your devoted child, Mary Jane
I enclose Nancy letter which was written some time ago.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Mary Jane Boarman in a Sunday letter to her father (January 21, 1872)
The people mentioned in Mary Jane's letter were her children Lloyd, Charley, and Nancy; her husband, William Henry Broome; her sisters Eliza, Anna, Laura, and Nora; her brother Frankie; and her nephew frontier physician Dr. Charles "Charley" Harris, son of her sister Susan.
John Broome and Rebecca Lloyd: Their Descendants and Related Families, 18th to 21st Centuries (2009)

Toby Keith photo
Sam Rayburn photo

“Well, Lyndon, you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”

Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) lawmaker from Bonham, Texas

To Lyndon Johnson, regarding Johnson's attendance at his first Cabinet meeting (under Kennedy); reported in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1972), Introduction.

Randolph Bourne photo

“Every little school boy is trained to recite the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation. It is taken as axiomatic that under them the new nation was falling into anarchy and was only saved by the wisdom and energy of the Convention. … The nation had to be strong to repel invasion, strong to pay to the last loved copper penny the debts of the propertied and the provident ones, strong to keep the unpropertied and improvident from ever using the government to secure their own prosperity at the expense of moneyed capital. … No one suggests that the anxiety of the leaders of the heretofore unquestioned ruling classes desired the revision of the Articles and labored so weightily over a new instrument not because the nation was failing under the Articles, but because it was succeeding only too well. Without intervention from the leaders, reconstruction threatened in time to turn the new nation into an agrarian and proletarian democracy. … All we know is that at a time when the current of political progress was in the direction of agrarian and proletarian democracy, a force hostile to it gripped the nation and imposed upon it a powerful form against which it was never to succeed in doing more than blindly struggle. The liberating virus of the Revolution was definitely expunged, and henceforth if it worked at all it had to work against the State, in opposition to the armed and respectable power of the nation.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

¶13. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 33–34.
"The State" (1918), II

Edward German photo

“I should like to shake Eric Coates but I won't. When I meet him he says, "I just love every note you have written." and I believe he does--but--as you say--well!”

Edward German (1862–1936) English musician and composer

German's exasperation with the perception of fellow composer Coates imitating his own style, in a letter to his sister Rachel (4 January, 1925)

Hannah Gadsby photo

“My mother doesn't like sex. She doesn't like the word, she doesn't like act, and I'm not entirely sure she's too impressed with the results. Ah well, you get out what you put in.”

Hannah Gadsby (1978) Australian comedian

Youtube: 'So You Think You're Funny' winner at the Press launch of the Gilded Balloon's programme for the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ORUdvdGC8Q&feature=PlayList&p=95BEE1BC92B7F8BB&index=0&playnext=1

Fausto Cercignani photo

“If you talk to the shadows,
at least you know them well
and the words, all of them,
unfold themselves with ease
on muddled walls and streets,
when dusk comes on.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Adagio (2004)
Examples of self-translation (c. 2004)

Glenn Beck photo
Maimónides photo
Francis Escudero photo

“Like billions of Catholics around the world, I greet Pope Francis’ election with a great measure of hope and optimism because it signals a fresh start. For many Catholics, this beacon of hope and optimism could very well rekindle a faith scarred by scandals and controversies.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Zambo Times http://www.zambotimes.com/archives/news/62673-Binay,-senatorial-bets-join-Catholic-faithful-in-welcoming-election-of-Pope-Francis.html
2013, Mid-Term Campaign Trail

Hillary Clinton photo
Gordon Moore photo

“I had no idea this was going to be an accurate prediction, but amazingly enough instead of 10 [years] doubling, we got nine over the 10 years, but still followed pretty well along the curve.”

Gordon Moore (1929) American businessman, co-founder of Intel and author of the eponym law

[Computer History Museum Presents: The 40th Anniversary of Moore's Law with Gordon Moore and Carver Mead, Computer History Museum, 2005-09-15, http://www.computerhistory.org/about/press_relations/releases/20050915_moore/, 2006-11-06] (quoting an unidentified Intel press release)

Thomas Jefferson photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“It is less dangerous to treat most men badly than to treat them too well.”

Il n'est pas si dangereux de faire du mal à la plupart des hommes que de leur faire trop de bien.
Maxim 238.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

“We are so accustomed to hear arithmetic spoken of as one of the three fundamental ingredients in all schemes of instruction, that it seems like inquiring too curiously to ask why this should be. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic—these three are assumed to be of co-ordinate rank. Are they indeed co-ordinate, and if so on what grounds?
In this modern “trivium” the art of reading is put first. Well, there is no doubt as to its right to the foremost place. For reading is the instrument of all our acquisition. It is indispensable. There is not an hour in our lives in which it does not make a great difference to us whether we can read or not. And the art of Writing, too; that is the instrument of all communication, and it becomes, in one form or other, useful to us every day. But Counting—doing sums,—how often in life does this accomplishment come into exercise? Beyond the simplest additions, and the power to check the items of a bill, the arithmetical knowledge required of any well-informed person in private life is very limited. For all practical purposes, whatever I may have learned at school of fractions, or proportion, or decimals, is, unless I happen to be in business, far less available to me in life than a knowledge, say, of history of my own country, or the elementary truths of physics. The truth is, that regarded as practical arts, reading, writing, and arithmetic have no right to be classed together as co-ordinate elements of education; for the last of these is considerably less useful to the average man or woman not only than the other two, but than 267 many others that might be named. But reading, writing, and such mathematical or logical exercise as may be gained in connection with the manifestation of numbers, have a right to constitute the primary elements of instruction. And I believe that arithmetic, if it deserves the high place that it conventionally holds in our educational system, deserves it mainly on the ground that it is to be treated as a logical exercise. It is the only branch of mathematics which has found its way into primary and early education; other departments of pure science being reserved for what is called higher or university instruction. But all the arguments in favor of teaching algebra and trigonometry to advanced students, apply equally to the teaching of the principles or theory of arithmetic to schoolboys. It is calculated to do for them exactly the same kind of service, to educate one side of their minds, to bring into play one set of faculties which cannot be so severely or properly exercised in any other department of learning. In short, relatively to the needs of a beginner, Arithmetic, as a science, is just as valuable—it is certainly quite as intelligible—as the higher mathematics to a university student.”

Joshua Girling Fitch (1824–1903) British educationalist

Source: Lectures on Teaching, (1906), pp. 267-268.

Marshall McLuhan photo

“One of the things that happens at the speed of light is that people lose their goals in life. So what takes the place of goals and objectives? Well, role-playing is coming in very fast.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Interview between Californian Governor Jerry Brown and Marshall McLuhan, 1977
1970s

Harriet Beecher Stowe photo

“Yes, well I noticed that in your last issues' interviews with those Eastern teachers ["From light to Light," Jan. 1995], emptiness was mentioned a lot. I find that a wrong word. Because in God realisation and being one with God the Most High, the unspeakable one, there's no sense whatsoever of ever having done anything yourself. It is all done for you. It's by grace. And so it's not being empty, it's being emptied. There's a different emphasis or a different connotation to that.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Response to the question "You write, "Enlightenment is to be emptied (not empty) of feelings and thus at one with the purest sensation of divine being." What's the distinction here between being "emptied" and being "empty" of feelings?"
Love is not a feeling ~ The Interview (1995)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Peter Beckford photo
Josh Billings photo

“As in a game ov cards, so in the game ov life, we must play what is dealt tew us, and the glory consists, not so mutch in winning, as in playing a poor hand well.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things https://archive.org/details/joshbillingsoni00billgoog (1868), Chapter XXIV: "Perkussion Caps", p. 89; republished in The Complete Works of Josh Billings http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36556 (1876), Chapter 141: "Ods and Ens", p. 248. Often paraphrased as "Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well."

PewDiePie photo

“Secondly, the student is trained to accept historical mis-statements on the authority of the book. If education is a pre- paration for adult life, he learns first to accept without question, and later to make his own contribution to the creation of historical fallacies, and still later to perpetuate what he has learnt. In this way, ignorant authors are leading innocent students to hysterical conclusions. The process of the writers' mind provides excellent material for a manual on logical fallacies. Thirdly, the student is told nothing about the relationship between evidence and truth. The truth is what the book ordains and the teacher repeats. No source is cited. No proof is offered. No argument is presented. The authors play a dangerous game of winks and nods and faints and gestures with evidence. The art is taught well through precept and example. The student grows into a young man eager to deal in assumptions but inapt in handling inquiries. Those who become historians produce narratives patterned on the textbooks on which they were brought up. Fourthly, the student is compelled to face a galling situation in his later years when he comes to realize that what he had learnt at school and college was not the truth. Imagine a graduate of one of our best colleges at the start of his studies in history in a university in Europe. Every lecture he attends and every book he reads drive him mad with exasperation, anger and frustration. He makes several grim discoveries. Most of the "facts", interpretations and theories on which he had been fostered in Pakistan now turn out to have been a fata morgana, an extravaganza of fantasies and reveries, myths and visions, whims and utopias, chimeras and fantasies.”

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

The Murder of History, critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan, 1993

Miles Davis photo

“He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

In [A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America, Craig Hansen, Werner, University of Michigan Press, 2006, 9780472031474, 53] as: he can be the Duke Ellington of our times.
And in [Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis, Musicians in Their Own Words Series, Paul Maher, Michael K. Dorr, Chicago Review Press, 2009, 9781556527067, 262] as: Do you know who Prince kinda reminds me of, particularly as a piano player? Duke! Yeah, he's the Duke Ellington of the eighties to my way of thinking.
On Prince
2000s

Fred Astaire photo
Nigella Lawson photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
John Derbyshire photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“All is ephemeral — fame and the famous as well.”

Πᾶν ἐφήμερον, καὶ τὸ μνημονεῦον καὶ τὸ μνημονευόμενον.
IV, 35
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV

Fred Rogers photo

“Well, what is essential about you? And who are those who have helped you become the person that you are? Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person and often many who have believed in him or her. We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Commencement Address at Dartmouth College June 9th, 2002 http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2002/june/060902c.html and Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm

Hilaire Belloc photo
Joan Slonczewski photo

“Of all the well-meant emotions pity is the cruelest to share.”

Part 3, “When the Sea Swallows” - Chapter 3 (p. 128)
A Door into Ocean (1986)

Alfred de Zayas photo
Poul Anderson photo
Chris Cornell photo
William Hazlitt photo
James Frazer photo
Karl Kraus photo

“Hate must make a person productive; otherwise one might as well love.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Willem Maris photo
Poul Anderson photo

“I think most human misery is due to well-meaning fanatics like him.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Time Patrol (p. 42)
Time Patrol

Vernon L. Smith photo
John Ralston Saul photo

“Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all the others knew they were giving rights to vulgarity. But in so doing—in addition to caring for man’s well-being—they were providing rights for themselves.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 289.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

David Bowie photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Arthur F. Burns photo
O. Henry photo
KatieJane Garside photo
Mukesh Ambani photo

“I have turned into a big nature fan as well…. I can afford it more today. These childhood influences have shaped me into what I am today.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Always invest in businesses of the future and in talent

Mike Patton photo
Ward Churchill photo
Zooey Deschanel photo
John Heywood photo

“And ones their hastie heate a littell controlde,
Than perceiue they well, hotte love soone colde.
And whan hasty witlesse mirth is mated weele,
Good to be mery and wise, they thinke and feele.”

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

Proverbs (1546)
Variant: And ones their hastie heate a littell controlde,
Than perceiue they well, hotte love soone colde.
And whan hasty witlesse mirth is mated weele,
Good to be mery and wise, they thinke and feele.

Muhammad bin Qasim photo
George William Curtis photo

“A few years after the Constitution was adopted Alexander Hamilton said to Josiah Quincy that he thought the Union might endure for thirty years. He feared the centrifugal force of the system. The danger, he said, would proceed from the States, not from the national government. But Hamilton seems not to have considered that the vital necessity which had always united the colonies from the first New England league against the Indians, and which, in his own time, forced the people of the country from the sands of a confederacy to the rock of union, would become stronger every year and inevitably develop and confirm a nation. Whatever the intention of the fathers in 1787 might have been, whether a league or confederacy or treaty, the conclusion of the children in 1860 might have been predicted. Plant a homogeneous people along the coast of a virgin continent. Let them gradually overspread it to the farther sea, speaking the same language, virtually of the same religious faith, inter- marrying, and cherishing common heroic traditions. Suppose them sweeping from end to end of their vast domain without passports, the physical perils of their increasing extent constantly modified by science, steam, and the telegraph, making Maine and Oregon neighbors, their trade enormous, their prosperity a miracle, their commonwealth of unsurpassed importance in the world, and you may theorize as you will, but you have supposed an imperial nation, which may indeed be a power of evil as well as of good, but which can no more recede into its original elements and local sources than its own Mississippi, pouring broad and resistless into the Gulf, can turn backward to the petty forest springs and rills whence it flows. 'No, no', murmurs the mighty river, 'when you can take the blue out of the sky, when you can steal heat from fire, when you can strip splendor from the morning, then, and not before, may you reclaim your separate drops in me.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

'Yes, yes, my river,' answers the Union, 'you speak for me. I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America'.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Jack Johnson (musician) photo
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“[W]hether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I'm well aware of, but that's just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history -- empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves.”

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

Vogue interview (November 21, 2009) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-comeback-clinton-rival-cabinet/story?id=9145125&page=2
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

Roberto Clemente photo

“I would have to say myself, but it would not look good for me to say it. I just have confidence I am the best because I believe in myself. If I had to pick another player, it would be Hank Aaron. He does everything so well.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "The Scoreboard" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DsQbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=pU8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=5159%2C3057259&dq=roberto-clemente-recently-asked-best-hank-aaron-everything by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Tuesday, December 26, 1967), p. 40
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1967</big>

“To grow or not to grow is neither a well-defined nor a relevant question until the location, sense, and subject of growing and the growth process itself are defined”

Mihajlo D. Mesarovic (1928) Serbian academic

Cited in: John Cunningham Wood (1993) Thorstein Veblen: Critical Assessments. p. 408
Mankind at the Turning Point, (1974)

Kent Hovind photo

“If the Lord has you saved, you're saved, ok? You can't get out of God's hand. Then this 300 degree below zero ice meteor came flying through the solar system. Some of it broke apart. It made craters on Mercury and craters on the Moon. Four of the planets today still have rings around them. And the rings around these planets are made of rock and ice. Very interesting. Now Walt Brown thinks some of the craters on the Moon were formed when the fountains of the deep broke open and rocks went flying up out of Earth's gravitational pull, drifted around for a while, and clobbered into the Moon. He may be right on that. I don't know but it's interesting. He thinks the comets came from Earth, and water on Mars came from Earth, when the fountains of the deep broke upon. You could read about it for yourself if you would like. The super cold snow would land mostly around the north and south poles because super cold ice is not only affected by the magnetic field, it is easily statically charged. […] As this ice meteor came flying towards the earth it broke apart, pieces would settle in around the poles mostly, causing the earth to wobble for a few hundred years. Or maybe even a few thousand years. The canopy of water overhead collapsed, then it rained 40 days, the water underneath the bottom, under the crust came shooting to the surface, and the water kept going up for 150 days. And everybody drowned. It probably took six or eight months to kill everybody during that flood. We all get the idea, "Well it rained and everybody died first day."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

No, it took a long time for people to die. People would be running and fighting for higher ground. As that got more and more rare as the water keeps coming up, and up, and up, for 150 days, the water increased. By the way, they are still discovering chunks of ice flying around in space.
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Edward Carpenter photo
Ernest Gellner photo

“Well, you've got to point out a pony.”

Radio From Hell (April 5, 2007)

John Steinbeck photo

“It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Letter to Elizabeth Otis, once he had begun The Grapes of Wrath (1 June 1938)

“I wish I understood myself
more clearly or less well.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

The Orchards of Syon II.17-18.
Poetry

Vytautas Juozapaitis photo

“Most noteworthy was Vytautas Juozapaitis in the title role. He nailed the role with his well projected baritone.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

"Don Giovanni showcases singers", The Desert Sun (November, 2004) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Dylan Moran photo

“Then this song came on—I will never forget it—it was called "The Funk Soul Brother." And I will always remember that because it was also all of the lyrics… and, er, it was that school of songwriting, you know, very easy on the words in case they get wasted, I don't know what— there's a shortage, and… it sounded like a million fire engines chasing ten million ambulances through a war zone and was played at a volume that made the empty chair beside me bleed. And it went, erm, "Funk soul brother… right about now… yeah… it's the, it's the funk soul brother… check it out. It's, er, well… it's the funk soul brother, essentially. He's, er, he's coming. He's coming at you. It's the… well… it's the funk soul brother." And after a while, I began to penetrate the meaning of this song, you know? I gathered that somebody was about to arrive, and everybody else was terribly excited—maybe he was bringing cake, or something, they didn't say—but the thing was, you see, he wasn't there yet. Ha ha, that was the hook! And I'm not saying it's a bad song, you know, or anything like that. All I'm saying is that if you get, I don't know, a broom, say, and dip it in some brake fluid, put the other end up my arse, stick me on a trampoline in a moving lift, and I would write a better song on the walls. That's all I'm saying.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On The Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim
Monster (2004)

André Maurois photo
Catherine the Great photo
Phil Brooks photo

“So all you people here, despite evidence to the contrary, still choose to support a man that for all intents and purposes can't even support himself? OK, OK, so if you're a Jeff Hardy fan, if you're wearing a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, if you're wearing one of his diabolical little handsleeves, God forbid if you have your face painted, I want to see you stand up right now. I want to hear you make some noise! Go ahead, if you love and support Jeff Hardy, let the world know! (Crowd cheers, stands up.) Cameraman, cameraman get a good shot, get a real good shot at all these people. The truth is ladies and gentlemen, I don't blame you. I don't blame anybody here for supporting Jeff Hardy. The people I blame, are their parents. Or let's be realistic here, I said parents, what I should have said was parent. Because it's obviously a single parent situation, just like the way Jeff Hardy grew up. See you people are so concerned with the relationship with your children failing, just like your marriage did, that you acquiesce to their every whim and their every desire. I hate to tell you, this doesn't make you a good parent, Philadelphia, it makes you an enabler. (Crowd boos. Starts chanting for Hardy.) And the fact that you even let your children look up to a guy like Jeff Hardy, just shows that you really don't care what happens to them to begin with. It's a sad situation. So I don't blame anybody here or sitting at home watching this, that supports Jeff Hardy if they're under 17, because they're young and they're, well, they're impressionable. The real problem lies with the parents, it's the parents who don't make a conscious effort to sit their children down and teach them the proper way to live! (Crowd boos.) You see it starts with a Jeff Hardy t-shirt, next thing you know they're smoking a pack of cigarettes, after that, they're drinking a bottle of beer. Right after that they move on to shots of Jack Daniels, which is a gateway drug for marijuana…(Crowd pops for marijuana.) And the fact that you people sit here and cheer that goes to show that I'm telling the truth! How about some old fashioned street drugs? And before you know it they're digging through Mom's purse because they're addicted, they're addicted to prescription medication. (Crowd cheers, Punk mouths,"That's not cool!" to fans.) All of this can be stopped before it's too late! Parents, all you have to do is talk to your children. Sit them down and show them the way, tell them the words that can save their lives, show them that sometimes it's what you don't do that makes you who you are! For weeks, for weeks I've been saying to people like you, just say no. But today I think we should just say yes. Yes to the future of a straight edge, drug free America! Just say yes to the winner of tonight's match, just say yes, to the World Heavyweight Champion! Thank you!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

At Night of Champions 2009
Friday Night SmackDown