Identify Who Said or Wrote:

Quotations collected by Kenneth Lange

1. In truth, it is not knowledge, but learning, not possessing, but production, not being there, but traveling there, that provides the greatest pleasure. When I have completely understood something, then I turn away and move on into the dark; indeed, so curious is the insatiable man, that when he has completed one house, rather than living in it peacefully, he starts to build another.
2. Indeed, if the press were to hang a sign out like every other trade, it would have to read: "Here men are demoralized in the shortest possible time on the largest possible scale for the smallest possible price."
3. Of two boring congressmen: They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
4. Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact, we think it is infinite.
5. Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
6. She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
7. We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyze them.
8. It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes.
9. I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.
10. The question, of course, is how well this experiment has succeeded. My own point of view -- which, however, does not seem to be shared by most of the people who worked with the students -- is pessimistic. I don't think I did very well by the students. When I look at the way the majority of students handled the problems on the examination, I think the system is a failure. Of course, my friends point out to me that there one or two dozen students who -- very surprisingly -- understood almost everything in the lectures, and who were quite active in working with the material and worrying about the many fine points in an excited and interested way.
11. This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest .... It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.
12. The most important questions of life, are, for the most part, really only problems of probability.
13. He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts -- for support rather than illumination.
14. A snippet of conversation: " I thought the number of my taxicab was 1729. It seemed to me a rather dull number." To which R. replied. "No, H.! No, H.! It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
15. "But I can assure you," she added "that Lizzy does not lose much by not suiting his fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him! He walked here and he walked there, fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set downs. I quite detest the man."
16. Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
17. I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died.
18. The more it snows (Tiddley pom), The more it goes (Tiddley pom), The more it goes (Tiddley pom), on snowing, and nobody knows (Tiddley pom), How cold my toes (Tiddley pom), How cold my toes (Tiddley pom), are growing.
19. In the beauty of the lilies ...
20. I succeeded in gaining the foot of the cliff on the eastern extremity of the glacier, and there discovered the mouth of a narrow avalanche gully, through which I began to climb, intending to follow it as far as possible, and at least obtain some fine wild views for my pains.... After gaining a point about halfway to the top, I was suddenly brought to a dead stop, with arms outspread, unable to move hand or foot either up or down. My doom appeared fixed. I must fall. There would be a moment of bewilderment, and then a lifeless rumble down the one general precipice to the glacier below.
21. There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.
    The judge was an old man; so old, he seemed to have outlived time and change and death. His parrot-face and parrot voice were dry, like his old, heavily veined hands. His scarlet robe clashed harshly with the crimson of the roses. He had sat for three days in the stuffy court, but he showed no sign of fatigue.
22. 
    
    Sermon Handicap
    Runners and Betting
    Probable Starters.
    
    Rev. Leonard Starkie (Stapleton), scratch.
    Rev. Alexander Jones (Upper Bingley), receives three minutes.
    Rev. W. Dix (Little Clickton-in-the-Wold) receives five minutes.
    etc.
    Rev. James Bates (Gandle-by-the-Hill) receives fifteen minutes.
    Prices.-- 5-2, Tucker, Starkie; 3-1, Jones; 9-2, Dix, 6-1; Heppenstail, Dibble, Hough; 100-8, any other.
23. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
    I am haunted by waters.
24. Use the active voice. Put statements in positive form. Use definite, specific, concrete language. Omit needless words.
25. Either he's dead or my watch has stopped.
26. I don't want to live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
27. If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, then he isn't fit to live.
28. All the news that's fit to print.
29. When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby cleric who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room of dukes.
30. I've made a mistake. I'll have to live with this the rest of my life.
31. When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old manservant -- a combined gardener and cook -- had seen in at least ten years.
32. The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed for Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."
33. Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
34. I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and I believe, Dorothy, (taking her hand) you'll own that I have been pretty fond of an old wife.
35. When pygmies cast such long shadows, it must be very late in the day.

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