ADDENDUM: FAVORITE QUOTES AND EXCERPTS
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“They all that love not tobacco and boys are fools.” - Christopher Marlowe 1564 - 1593
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“None ever wished it longer than it is.” - Samuel Johnson on Dante’s “Paradise Lost” 1709 - 1784
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"I should like to try farming, Dad; if it won't cost you too much. It seems to be about the only sort of life that doesn't hurt anybody; except art, of course." - John Galsworthy "The Forsyte Saga" 1924
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“Honey, I forgot to duck.” - Jack Dempsey To his wife following the “long count” fight with Gene Tunney 1926
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Orlando has received a letter.
"When he had read it, which he did with deadly composure from start to finish, he rang for the footman; delivered the document to him at the end of a pair of tongs; bade him drop it in the filthiest heart of the foulest midden on the estate. Then, when the man was turning to go he stopped him, ‘Take the swiftest horse in the stable,’ he said, ‘ride for dear life to Harwich. There embark upon a ship which you will find bound for Norway. Buy for me from the King's own kennels, the finest elk hounds of the Royal strain, male and female. Bring them back without delay, For,’ he murmured, scarcely above his breath as he turned to his books, ‘... I have done with man.’
The footman, who was perfectly trained to his duties, bowed and disappeared. He fulfilled his task so efficiently that he was back that day three weeks, leading in his hand a leash of the finest elk hounds, one of whom, a female, gave birth that very night under the dinner-table to a litter of eight fine puppies. Orlando had them brought to his bed-chamber. ‘For,’ he said, patting the little brutes on the head, ‘... I have done with man.’”
- Virginia Woolf “Orlando” 1928
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“I coulda been a contender.” - Budd Schulberg 1941
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“The things you repent were delicious once.” - Andre Gide 1869 - 1965
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“If you want to ask for money, dress like you already have it.” - Malcolm X "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" 1963
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“After all, it’s better to destroy than to create what’s unessential.”
- Federico Fellini “8 ½” 1963
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“Let the tools do the work for you, Bill,” my father used to say. “Let the saw cut the wood.” - Robert C. Wolf 1966
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“I don’t know who discovered water, but it wasn’t fish.” - Marshall McLuhan 1911 - 1980
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“I don’t know about you old queens down there but this old queen needs a gin-and-tonic.” - Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother On Buckingham Palace phone to the kitchen staff 1900 - 2002
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Dale always told me, “Bill, the first thing to do is to get a thousand performances under your belt.”
- Dale Meador 1968
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“… So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.
“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
“The media have convinced us that what is right around us is unimportant. That’s why we’re lonely.
“The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be ‘out there’ and the person that appears to be ‘in here’ are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.
“You want to know how to paint the perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.”
- Robert M. Pirsig “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” 1974
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“Let the Wookie win.” Hans Solo “Star Wars” 1977 (Sent in by Bermuda Schwartz)
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“He believed there was no purpose to life beyond the furtherance of the species, and that you could either suffer your pointless existence, or enjoy it.” - Minette Walters “The Echo” 1997
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“ …And she tells me that the frantic nature of 50’s comedies created a whole generation of kids prone to quick laughs, quick gratification and violence.” - James Ellroy “Killer on the Road” 1986
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“… As for Clemen’s perfidy in ratting on his associate – pooh! We all know there is as much honor amongst thieves as honesty amongst politicians.”
“… Poor Walter, I would have wagered, suffered from uxoriousness. (Look it up, fevvin’s sake.)”
- Lawrence Sanders “McNally’s Gamble” 1997
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“… The pharmaceutical companies have been researching new diseases for which expensive medical technologies and drugs will be required. ‘The best diseases,’ said Crake, ‘would be those that cause lingering illnesses.’ …” - Margaret Atwood “Onyx and Crake” 2003
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On October 15, 2006, Bill Wolf wrote:
So, I'm sitting reading the front page of the newspaper about some Turkish author who won the Nobel prize for literature and thinking, hmmm ... I confess I must go to my bedside table and there I find "Snow" by, yes, Orham Pamuk, the book I'm currently reading. Golly! It's pretty good. That night I read:
"(In Berlin), Ka found out that his friend Ruhi was now working as a test subject in a study measuring the effectiveness of an advertising campaign for a new type of lamb pastrami pizza marketed to Turkish workers in the lowest income bracket."
(A newspaper editor is explaining,) “…All over the world – even in America –newspapers tailor the news to their readers’ desires. If your readers want nothing but lies from you, who in the world is going to sell papers that tell the truth? … And you know what? They even come to believe the lies we print. But that’s another matter.”
“Ah, the best thing America ever gave the world were these red Marlboros. I could smoke these Marlboros for the rest of my life.” - Orham Pamuk "Snow" 2004
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“I have to admit to something I don’t know whether I can actually say here: I absolutely hated those two skyscrapers at the World Trade Center. They were a typical kind of architecture that has no ideas behind it. Moreover, they disrupted the skyline of the city; they towered absurdly over the beautiful crystalline topography of Manhattan. They were two monuments to the cult of profit at any cost. Regardless of what they looked like, they had to have the greatest imaginable number of square meters of office space. “I was once on the top floor of one of those buildings for dinner, and I discovered that the entire edifice was constantly swaying slightly. I took it as a sign that something was not right and that something was going on here that was, in a sense, against nature. … “And here’s what I fear: that for reasons of prestige they will build something even higher on the same spot, something that will spoil New York even more.”
- Václav Havel 2005
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- Thabo Sephuma AIDS activist, South Africa 2006
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CONTINUING ...
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