Category: Quotables
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Oh, Libraries!
“Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.” – Saul Bellow, in “Him with His Foot in His Mouth”, from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) I once made an acquaintance with a man who had the most amazing library. It wasn’t the biggest library…
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Where’s the Epic Poems About the Moon Landing?
“Had the ancient Greeks rowed a trireme (boat) to the moon, you can bet there would be a 12-volume epic about that adventure.” – Christian Bök, in Maclean’s Poets, says Christian Bök, have spent too much time writing about their own mundane problems when amazing achievements of mankind have been happening all around them. And…
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My Favourite Lord of the Rings Quote
Continuing on my Lord of the Rings theme (or, to be honest, just barely remembering to post today), I have decided to share one of my favourite quotes from The Fellowship of the Ring: “For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colours!” I I looked then and saw that his robes,…
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Just Do Something
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.“ – The Fellowship of…
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What Would You Attempt to Do If You Knew You Could Not Fail?
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” – Launching a Leadership Revolution* The first time I read this quote it hit me hard, because the answer is – a lot more than what I’m doing now. I can’t count how many times the fear of terrible things happening to me…
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Why Worry if You Can’t Spell in English?
“Ghoti” – an alternate spelling of the word “fish,” usually attributed without evidence to George Bernard Shaw. Possibly thought up originally by William Ollier Jr. How on earth can “ghoti” be an alternate spelling of the word “fish?” Well, if: gh, is pronounced as /f/ as in tough /tʌf/; o, is pronounced as /ɪ/ as in women /ˈwɪmɪn/; and ti, is pronounced as /ʃ/ as…
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Are Writers Original? A Quote
The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. – François-René de Chateaubriand, Le génie du Christianisme (1802) People like to rag on Shakespeare for re-using the plots of other people for almost every play he wrote. They also like to claim J.K. Rowling stole all her good ideas from Tolkien (I…
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Writing Vs. Editing – and Oscar Wilde’s Commas
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” – Oscar Wilde** Editing can take forever. I can slave over one passage for hours, knowing it doesn’t say what I really want it to say yet, but without…
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No Such Thing as Creativity
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. – Ecclesiastes 1:9 According to this article in Slate, a wave of critics are asserting there never was any such thing as creativity, genius or innovation, and that everything new is merely…
Hmm... 