Anything but Quotidian: Quotes, phrases, and one poem
“We’ve died on the fields of the everyday’ – an echo of Mayakovsky’s suicide note of 1930 (‘The boat of love ran aground on the everyday’).” Daniil Kharms LRB
‘What we know is that, in an unclichéd way, nobody knows anything.’ Philip Roth (Human Stain) This is a version of what Socrates said – All I know is that I know nothing.
In God we trust, all others bring data. (Bill Demming, from ESL)
‘The Ka‘bah is a cube because the world is a sphere’ – Islamica Magazine
Cracked pistachio green walls.. (Urvashi Butalia – describing her uncle’s house in Lahore in the story, Ranamama)
No stone unthrown, Encyclopedic viciousness (Joe Queenan accuses Kitty Kelley of those sins in his review of Kelley’s book on Nancy Reagan)
Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies? (Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing)
About as original as a Xerox machine (Hindustan Times)
John Stuart Mill to John Stewart; James Madison to Madison Avenue (James Fishkin, on progress of American Democracy)
“We seem to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.” (Sir John Seeley on Britain’s conquests)
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing poorly. (D.K. Chesterton)
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics. (George Bernard Shaw)
…the primary risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease is age. (NY Times, Wikipedia)
A motto for life?
“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson