“You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a ‘realist,’ he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.” — Sydney Harris
“When a stupid man is doing something that he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” — George Bernard Shaw
“A man doesn’t learn to understand anything unless he loves it.” — Goethe
“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” — Samuel Johnson
“We soon forget what we have not deeply thought about.” — Proust
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” — Roy Amara, president of the Institute for the Future, 1978
(“A modern maxim says: People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years.” — J.C.R. Licklider, Libraries of the Future, 1965)
“Have you noticed … there is never any third act in a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there. They are the work of poor dramatists.” — Max Beerbohm
“To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to men, not to other dogs.” — Karl Kraus
“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” — Emerson
“Pins have been the means of saving many lives, through people not swallowing them.” — Theo Johnson, Personal Recollections of the Zoo, 1891
“Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It’s their way of falling.” — André Gide, Journals
(Thanks, Macari.)
“My favorite poem is the one that starts ‘Thirty days hath September’ because it actually tells you something.” — Groucho