“If God wants us to do a thing, He should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till He has done this before paying much attention to Him.” — Samuel Butler (from his notebook)
Quotations
Misc
- Ulysses Grant had a horse named Jeff Davis.
- PORTUGUESE MARINE CORPS is an anagram of SINGAPORE SUPREME COURT.
- 15613 = 1 + 56 – 13
- FOUR + SIX = TEN is the highest sum in English with no repeated letters.
- “It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” — William Blake
Unquote
“To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.” — Voltaire
Unquote
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”
— George Orwell, “The Sporting Spirit,” 1945
“[It is] to be utterly abjected of al noble men in likewise, footballe, wherein is nothinge but beastly furie and extreme violence whereof procedeth hurte and consequently rancour and malice do remaine with them that be wounded wherefore it is to be put in perpetuell silence.”
— Sir Thomas Elyot, The Governour, 1531
“For as concerning football playing, I protest unto you it may rather be called a freendly kinde of fight, then a play or recreation; A bloody and murthering practise, then a felowly sporte or pastime. … and hereof groweth envie, malice, rancour, cholor, hatred, displeasure, enmitie, and what not els: and sometimes fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murther, homicide, and great effusion of blood, as experience dayly teacheth.”
— Phillip Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, 1583
Misc
- In 1898 Sam Clemens signed a hotel register “S.L. Clemens. Profession: Mark Twain.”
- Jonathan Swift invented the name Vanessa.
- How many outs are in an inning of baseball? Six.
- Isaac Asimov’s collected papers fill 71 meters of shelf space at Boston University.
- “He is greatest who is most often in men’s good thoughts.” — Samuel Butler
After starring as the title character, Anne Shirley, in the 1934 film Anne of Green Gables, actress Dawn O’Day changed her stage name to Anne Shirley and used it for the rest of her career.
Unquote
“I’m not good-looking. … What I have got is I have character in my face. It’s taken an awful lot of late nights and drinking to put it there.” — Humphrey Bogart
“If a face like Ingrid Bergman’s looks at you as though you’re adorable, everybody does. You don’t have to act very much.” — Humphrey Bogart
“All I do to look evil is to let my beard grow for two days.” — Humphrey Bogart
Priorities
“Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors until it became so dark that he had to retire to the forest without stopping to pick a pawpaw for supper.” — Adriaan Kortlandt
The Natural Order
“When a lion eats a man, and a man eats an ox, why is the ox more made for the man, than the man for the lion?”
— Thomas Hobbes, Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, 1656
Unquote
“It is harder to make one’s name by means of a perfect work than to win praise for a second-rate one by means of the name one has already acquired.” — Jean de La Bruyère
Worldly Wise
Proverbs from around the world:
- A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner. (English)
- Impulse manages all things badly. (Latin)
- It is not the thief who is hanged, but the one who is caught stealing. (Czech)
- Never promise a poor man, and never owe a rich one. (Brazilian)
- A fool at forty is a fool indeed. (Ethiopian)
- Quarrelsome dogs come limping home. (Swedish)
- A canoe does not know who is king: when it turns over, everyone gets wet. (Malagasy)
- A thousand regrets do not pay one debt. (Turkish)
- Every road leads somewhere. (Filipino)
- He who steals a needle will steal an ox. (Korean)
- Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing. (French)
- The tongue is the neck’s worst enemy. (Egyptian)
- If work were good for you, the rich would leave none for the poor. (Haitian)
- Happiness is not a horse that can be harnessed. (Russian)
- Relatives are scorpions. (Tunisian)
- Silence does not make mistakes. (Hindi)