Able Quotes - Page 35

• The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.

  Robert Benchley

  Eye, School, Men

  Life Magazine, April 14, 1921.

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• I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed -- or forced -- to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time.

  Orson Scott Card

  Children, Independent, Past

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• The woman is the man's glory, and she naturally delights in the praises which are assurances that she is fulfilling her function; and she gives herself to him who succeeds in convincing her that she, of all others, is best able to discharge it for him. A woman without this kind of "vanity" is a monster.

  Coventry Patmore

  Women, Vanity, Giving

  Coventry Patmore (2016). “The Rod, the Root and the Flower”, p.20, Lulu.com

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• Did men but know that there was a fixed limit to their woes, they would be able, in some measure, to defy the religious fictions and menaces of the poets; but now, since we must fear eternal punishment at death, there is no mode, no means, of resisting them.

  Lucretius

  Religious, Mean, Men

  Titus Lucretius Carus (1898). “Lucretius On the Nature of Things”, p.8

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• I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.

  Bertrand Russell

  Home, Mean, Thinking

  Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884-1914”, p.25, Psychology Press

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• The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Giving Up, Acceptance, People

  "New Outlook" Journal, April 1977.

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• If you attach no importance to weight problems, if not being able to wear new, trendy small-sized clothes does not cause you any regret, this book is not for you.

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Regret, Book, Clothes

  "You'll think I'm a Madman". Interview With John Colapinto, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2007.

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• Do you remember when you found out there was no Santa Claus? I was so upset I didn't think I'd be able to do the show.

  David Letterman

  Thinking, Upset, Santa

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• Fifteen years ago tomorrow I had open heart surgery, a quintuple bypass surgery. Thanks to all of my doctors. Because of them, in 15 years of life I've been able to experience, well, acid reflux, short-term memory loss, and erectile dysfunction. Thanks for all your work. It's great to be alive.

  David Letterman

  Memories, Heart, Loss

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• Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.

  Billy Wilder

  Writing, Actors, Execution

  "The New Hollywood : American Movies in the '70s". Book by Axel Madsen, 1975.

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• Robert Frost says in a piece of homely doggerel that he has hoped wisdom could be not only Attic but Laconic, Boeotian even - "at least not systematic"; but how systematically Frostian the worst of his later poems are! His good poems are the best refutation of, the most damning comment on, his bad: his Complete Poems have the air of being able to educate any faithful reader into tearing out a third of the pages, reading a third, and practically wearing out the rest.

  Randall Jarrell

  Reading, Air, Faithful

  "No Other Book: Selected Essays". Book by Randall Jarrell. Chapter: "To the Laodiceans", p. 21, 1999.

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• If my tone is mocking, the tone of someone accustomed to helplessness, this is natural: the poet is a condemned man for whom the State will not even buy breakfast and as someone said, "If you're going to hang me, you mustn't expect to be able to intimidate me into sparing your feelings during the execution."

  Randall Jarrell

  Men, Feelings, Tone

  "Poetry and the Age". Book by Randall Jarrell. Chapter: "The Obscurity of the Poet", p. 17, 1953.

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• There is a lot of difference between the man who is not able and his brother who is notable.

  Evan Esar

  Brother, Men, Differences

  Evan Esar (1978). “The Comic Encyclopedia: A Library of the Literature and History of Humor Containing Thousands of Gags, Sayings, and Stories”, Doubleday Books

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• We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.

  Richard Mitchell

  Justice, Would Be, Asking

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• A good song can only do good, and I am proud of the songs I have sung. I hope to be able to continue singing these songs for all who want to listen, Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Singing, Want

  Pete Seeger, Rob Rosenthal, Sam Rosenthal (2015). “Pete Seeger in His Own Words”, p.155, Routledge

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• I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

  Roger Ebert

  Wise, Long Ago, Editors

  Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010”, p.583, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?

  Roger Ebert

  Halfway There, Punishment, Ideas

  Roger Ebert (2009). “Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007”, p.516, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.

  Roger Ebert

  Depressing, Men, Numbers

  "Diagnosing 'Emily Rose'" by Roger Ebert, www.rogerebert.com. September 18, 2005.

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• There is no hell like that of a selfish heart, and there is no misfortune so great as that of not being able to make a sacrifice. These two thoughts come to me strongly this morning. It is something to have learned these truths so that we can never again doubt them.

  Julia Ward Howe

  Morning, Selfish, Heart

  Entry in the journal for August 22, 1875. "The Walk With God". Book by Julia Ward Howe, 1919.

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• I believe that we have to strive for a transition to a socialist society ... all the way to communism. I mean I think we should, uh, I think we should all study what the word means and I believe that if everyone knew what the word meant we would all be on our knees praying that we would, as soon as possible, be able to live under, uh, within a communist structure.

  Jane Fonda

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  "Freedom Hoax". The News and Courier, December 29, 1970.

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• In order to depict a man one must understand him, and to understand him one must be like him; in order to portray his psychological activities one must be able to reproduce them in oneself. To understand a man one must have his nature in oneself.

  Otto Weininger

  Men, Order, Psychological

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.105, Рипол Классик

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• As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the surest, most general, and most easily proved mark of a genius.

  Otto Weininger

  Past, Men, Remembrance

  Otto Weininger (1906). “Sex & Character”, p.114, Рипол Классик

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• We have had good and bad Presidents, and it is a consoling reflection that the American Nation possesses such elements of prosperity that the bad Presidents cannot destroy it, and have been able to do no more than slightly to retard the public's advancement.

  Henry Clay

  Reflection, President, Advancement

  Henry Clay (2015). “The Papers of Henry Clay: Candidate, Compromiser, Elder Statesman, January 1, 1844-June 29, 1852”, p.553, University Press of Kentucky

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• An ignorant man is always able to say yes or no immediately to any proposition. To a wise man, comparatively few things can be propounded which do not require a response with qualifications, with discriminations, with proportion.

  Horace Mann

  Wise, Wisdom, Men

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• Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  America, Track, Poetry

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2010). “We: Introduction by Will Self”, p.59, Random House

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