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“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.” — George Bernard Shaw
“Leave something to wish for, so as not to be miserable from very happiness.” — Baltasar Gracián
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“How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” — Albert Einstein
“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.” — Eugene Wigner
Misc
- Kurt Vonnegut managed the country’s first Saab dealership.
- Max Born is Olivia Newton-John’s grandfather.
- 19683 = 1 × (9 – 6)8 × 3
- Before the advent of European settlers, it’s believed that no Native American had blood type B.
- “Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.” — Edith Sitwell
The first recorded performance of Hamlet took place at sea, aboard the East India ship Red Dragon off the coast of Africa in 1607. Capt. William Keeling’s diary entry for Sept. 5 reads: “I sent the interpreter according to his desier abord the Hector whear he brooke fast and after came abord me wher we gave the tragedie of Hamlett.”
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“I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one western you’ve seen the lot, but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.” — Katharine Whitehorn
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“I find all books too long.” — Voltaire
“One always tends to overpraise a long book because one has got through it.” — E.M. Forster
“A big book is a big nuisance.” — Callimachus
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“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” — Robert Frost
Misc
- Scranton, Pa., was formerly called Skunk’s Misery.
- Sweet’n Low was named for a Tennyson poem.
- STRAIGHT-GRAINED has 15 letters and 2 syllables.
- The average 2-year-old is already half his adult height.
- “The exit is usually where the entrance was.” — Stanislaw Lec
If a reincarnated person has no memory of her past life, then in what sense is she the same person?
Misc
- There’s no “u” in solipsism.
- Wagner said the saxophone “sounds like the word Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge.”
- FDR was related by blood or marriage to 11 other presidents.
- 3909511 = 53 + 59 + 50 + 59 + 55 + 51 + 51
- “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the chicken.” — Ted Giannoulas, San Diego Chicken
(Thanks, Eric.)
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“Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.” — Will Durant, Life, Oct. 18, 1963
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“It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.” — Evelyn Waugh
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“The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.” — William Empson
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“The difference between a conviction and a prejudice is that you can explain a conviction without getting angry.” — Anonymous
Misc
- No point in Great Britain is more than 75 miles from the sea.
- MOONLIGHT = THIN GLOOM
- 2427 = 21 + 42 + 23 + 74
- Sweden had a Charles VII, but no Charleses I-VI.
- “If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?” — Stanislaw Lec
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“The average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.” — Thomas Edison
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“If some persons died, and others did not die, death would indeed be a terrible affliction.” — Jean de la Bruyère
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“I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of the gastric juices and prevents my sleeping at night.” — Sir George Sitwell
Misc
- Canada’s coastline is six times as long as Australia’s.
- Rudyard Kipling invented snow golf.
- ENUMERATION = MOUNTAINEER
- Can you see your eyes move in a mirror?
- 26364 = 263 × 6/4
- “I want death to find me planting my cabbages.” — Montaigne
Unquote
“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.” — John Ruskin
Misc
- Hastie Love was convicted of rape in Tennessee in 1968.
- Zebra stripes are white.
- 14641 = (1 + 4 + 6)4 × 1
- Spain’s national anthem has no words.
- LION + TIGER = LOITERING
- “Character is that which can do without success.” — Emerson
Backwards
“The whole scheme of things is turned wrong end to. Life should begin with age & its privileges and accumulations, & end with youth & its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages. As things are now, when in youth a dollar would bring a hundred pleasures, you can’t have it. When you are old, you get it & there is nothing worth buying with it then. It’s an epitome of life. The first half of it consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity.”
– Mark Twain, letter to Edward Dimmitt, July 19, 1901
