Tails Quotes - Page 23

• The search for truth can be compared to a cat chasing her tail: frantic in her pursuit, her quarry nevetheless eludes her; despite the fact that all the world can see it's right there, it remains just beyond her reach. It cannot be possessed because, paradoxically, it is already part of her.

  Gina Barreca

  Cat, Humor, Facts

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• Despatch is taking time by the ears; hurry is taking it by the end of the tail.

  Josh Billings

  Ears, Ends, Take Time

  Josh Billings (1874). “Josh Billings' Wit and Humor”, p.152

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• Without the heroic, man has no meaning; without the economic, he has no sense. Economic man is most likely to be economic woman - a good wife, pulling the coat tails of her heroic husband, checking his extravagances of speech and action with words of caution and good sense. But without the heroic coat tails to pull, life for both of them would be dull and savorless indeed.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Husband, Men, Wife

  "The Skills of the Economist". Book by Kenneth Ewart Boulding, p. 183, 1958.

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• To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom andso forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen--this is the same as lying to the holy spirit.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, People, Hypocrisy

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• If the World War [I] demonstrated anything it was that government ownership is fraught with the gravest dangers and usually leads to disaster. Take Britain. The two problems which have caused the greatest trouble since the war ended have been transportation and coal. The government seized both industries when the war broke out. It got them into such a hopeless mess that it does not know how to turn [In] coal; the government now realizes, it took hold of the tail of a wild animal and is afraid to let go.

  B. C. Forbes

  Letting Go, War, Animal

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• But one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I'm aware of designers wagging their tails in my face.

  Jonathan Ive

  Faces, Designer, Products

  "Sir Jonathan Ive: Knighted for services to ideas and innovation". Interview with Mark Prigg, www.independent.co.uk. March 13, 2012.

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• Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.

  Joseph Campbell

  Circles, Generations, Looks

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• A great pinot chases its own tail. You drink it and you just keep finding new tastes that go with it. My dream was to make a world-class pinot and learn more about other wines as well.

  Kurt Russell

  Dream, Wine, Class

  "How Kurt Russell turned into a 'pinot poodle'". www.foxnews.com. March 20, 2015.

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• Most people would say 'the deets', but I say 'the tails'. Just another example of innovation.

  Aziz Ansari

  People, Innovation, Example

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• Many dogs can understand almost every word humans say, while humans seldom learn to recognize more than half a dozen barks, if that. And barks are only a small part of the dog language. A wagging tail can mean so many things. Humans know that it means a dog is pleased, but not what a dog is saying about his pleasedness.

  Dodie Smith

  Dog, Mean, Half

  Dodie Smith (1989). “101 Dalmatians”, p.37, Penguin

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• I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped.

  Jim Thompson

  Mind, Teeth, Female

  Jim Thompson (1964). “Pop. 1280”, Vintage

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• My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses–the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions–which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Mirrors, Flying, Black

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.414, Vintage

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• With flowing tail and flying mane,
  Wide nostrils never stretched by pain,
  Mouth bloodless to bit or rein,
  And feet that iron never shod,
  And flanks unscar'd by spur or rod,
  A thousand horses - the wild - the free -
  Like waves that follow o'er the sea,
  Came thickly thundering on.

  Lord Byron

  Horse, Pain, Sea

  Lord Byron, “Mazeppa”

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• Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.

  Sam Harris

  Dog, Atheist, Moving

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• The only man who really needs a tail coat is a man with a hole in his trousers.

  John Taylor

  Men, Needs, Coats

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• His friends he loved. His direst earthly foe - Cats-I believe he did but feign to hate. My hand will miss the insinuated nose, Mine eyes the tail that wagged contempt at Fate.

  William Watson

  Dog, Hate, Believe

  William Watson, “Epigrams”

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• The qualities all in a bee that we meet, In an epigram never should fail; The body should always be little and sweet, And a sting should be felt in its tail.

  Edward Young

  Sweet, Quality, Body

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• For God’s sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Men, Machines, Sitting

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton, Keith Sagar (2002). “The Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.99, Cambridge University Press

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• Foaly twitched his tail contentedly. Genius. No point in being humble about it.

  Eoin Colfer

  Humble, Genius, No Point

  Eoin Colfer (2002). “Artemis fowl: the Arctic incident”

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• What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.

  Albert Brooks

  Jobs, Nice, Taken

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• A man can't turn tail and run just because a little personal risk is involved. What did Shakespeare say? "Cowards die a thousand deaths, the brave man... only 500"?

  Meredith Willson

  Running, Men, Brave

  "Fictional character: Harold Hill". "The Music Man", www.imdb.com. 1962.

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• Do you have any idea how hard it is to tail an eighty year-old woman Its hard. Really hard. Really...slow. -Grabrielle

  Ally Carter

  Years, Ideas, Old Woman

  Ally Carter (2011). “Uncommon Criminals”, p.49, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The so-called sexual revolution is not, as advertised, a liberation of sexual behavior but rather its reversal. In former days, even under Victoria, sexual intercourse was the natural end and culmination of heterosexual relations. Now one begins with genital overtures instead of a handshake, then waits to see what will turn up (e.g., might become friends later). Like dogs greeting each other nose to tail and tail to nose.

  Walker Percy

  Dog, Waiting, Noses

  Walker Percy (2013). “The Last Gentleman and The Second Coming: In One Volume”, p.356, Open Road Media

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• Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much.

  Mohnish Pabrai

  Winning, Loses

  Mohnish Pabrai (2011). “The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns”, p.28, John Wiley & Sons

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• The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Dog, Ties, Humour

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