Testimony is like an arrow shot from a longbow; the force of it depends on the strength of the hand that draws it.
Argument is like an arrow from a crossbow, which has equal force though shot by a child.
— Robert Boyle, paraphrased by Samuel Johnson
Quotations
Remark
“You could compile the worst book in the world entirely out of selected passages from the best writers in the world.” — G.K. Chesterton
Unquote
“Is not every garden a botanical garden?” — Samuel Johnson
Unquote
“The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.” — J.M. Barrie
Unquote
“Many a long dispute among divines may be thus abridged: It is so; it is not so; it is so; it is not so.” — Ben Franklin
Worldly Wise
Proverbs from around the world:
- If two people tell you you are blind, shut one eye. (Georgia)
- Those who have free seats at a play hiss first. (China)
- It is in sugar that you see the dead ant. (Malaysia)
- Seven days is the length of a guest’s life. (Myanmar)
- Silence is a fence round wisdom. (Germany)
- Good things sell themselves; bad things have to be advertised. (Ethiopia)
- Where there is most mind there is least money. (Latin)
- Better a free meal of acorns than a honey feast on trust. (Wales)
- Only an owl knows the worth of an owl. (India)
- Good luck is the guardian of the stupid. (Sweden)
- At birth we cry — at death we see why. (Bulgaria)
- Errands are small on a spring day. (Iceland)
- The nail suffers as much as the hole. (Netherlands)
- The higher the castle the nearer to the lightning. (Russia)
- There never was a five-pound note but there was a ten-pound road for it. (Scotland)
- A contented mind is a continual feast. (England)
(From David Crystal, As They Say in Zanzibar, 2006.)
Misc
Salman Rushdie suggested that if Robert Ludlum had written Hamlet it would be called The Elsinore Vacillation.
Larry Rosenbaum observed that a gigolo is a million million billion piccolos.
The Greek god of theatrical criticism was named Pan.
Most pygmy hippos in American zoos are descended from William Johnson Hippopotamus, a pet given to Calvin Coolidge.
BISOPROLOL FUMARATE is an anagram of SUPER MARIO FOOTBALL.
Illinois considers Pluto a planet.
“It is as if children know instinctively that anything wholly solemn, without a smile behind it, is only half alive.” — Iona and Peter Opie, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, 1959
Unquote
“The man who publishes a book without an index ought to be damned 10 miles beyond hell, where the Devil himself cannot get for stinging nettles.” — John Baynes (1758-1787)
Unquote
“A lawyer must first get on, then get honor, then get honest.” — Anonymous, quoted in The Book of Insults and Irreverent Quotations
Misc
- Queen Victoria and her future husband, Albert, were born with the help of the same midwife.
- Ulysses Grant and Harry Truman had the same meaningless middle initial.
- SLICES OF BREAD is an anagram of DESCRIBES LOAF. (Dean Mayer)
- France’s longest land border is with Brazil (via French Guiana).
- “A creed is an ossified metaphor.” — Elbert Hubbard
(Thanks, Tony.)