“Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich: something for nothing.” — Shaw
Quotations
Practice
For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.
— Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows, 1970
Misc
- Julius Caesar thought that elk have no knees.
- Duke Ellington’s first piano teacher was named Marietta Clinkscales.
- Orizabus subaziro, a rhinoceros beetle, has a palindromic species name.
- POSSESSIONLESSNESSES has 9 S’s.
- “Books are companions even if you don’t open them.” — Disraeli
Misc
- Dante’s 1305 essay “De vulgari eloquentia” contains a 27-letter word, sovramagnificentissimamente, “supermagnificently.”
- Life Savers candies were invented by Hart Crane’s father.
(Colin Rose)
- RETROSUSCEPTION is an anagram of COUNTERRIPOSTES.
- “Of all the reciprocals of integers, the one that I best like is 1/0 for it is a titan amongst midgets.” — Sam Linial
Lord David Cecil called Samuel Johnson “an outstanding example of the charm that comes from an unexpected combination of qualities. In general, odd people are not sensible and sensible people are not odd. Johnson was both and often both at the same time.”
Unquote
“When I stop drinking tea and eating bread and butter I say, ‘I’ve had enough.’ But when I stop reading poems or novels I say, ‘No more of that, no more of that.'” — Chekhov
Unquote
“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.” — G.K. Chesterton
Misc
- After a rain, the Bolivian salt flat Salar de Uyuni becomes the world’s largest mirror.
- The letter J appears nowhere in the periodic table of the elements.
- 9(9 – 6) yields same result upside down: (9 – 6)6 = 729. (Erich Friedman)
- Rearrange the letters in SUPRARATIONAL and you get PRO-AUSTRALIAN.
- “A good book praises itself.” — German proverb
Misc
- Samuel Johnson said that sending a timid boy to a public school is “forcing an owl upon day.”
- Inscribed over the door of the library at Murcia, Spain: “Here the dead open the eyes of the living.”
- TRICE in Pig Latin is ICE TRAY.
- 35 × 1482 × 9760 = 3514829760 (Jean-Marc Falcoz)
- “Mauve is pink trying to be purple.” — Whistler
Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik Lake is a lake in Manitoba. Its name is Cree for “where the wild trout are caught by fishing with hooks.”
Muckanaghederdauhaulia, a townland in County Galway, means “pig-marsh between two sea inlets.”
Saaranpaskantamasaari, an island in northeastern Finland, means “an island shat by Saara.”
Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya is a hill in South Australia. Its name means “where the devil urinates.”
(Thanks, Colin.)
Unquote
“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before and wiser than the one that comes after it.” — George Orwell
Unquote
“Home is the only place where you can go out and in. There are places you can go into, and places you can go out of, but the one place, if you do but find it, where you may go out and in both, is home.” — George MacDonald