Monday

Random Quotes

Max Beerbohm's older brother, Herbert, was a funny guy. Once, when a man walked past him groaning under a grandfather clock he was carting on his back, Herbert said, "My good fellow, why not carry a watch?" (Joseph Epstein, Partial Payments).

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"[A] friend in power is a friend lost." The Education of Henry Adams

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"No man, however strong, can serve ten years as a schoolmaster, priest, or Senator and remain fit for anything else." The Education of Henry Adams

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"There can be no greater impropriety than questioning the quality of another person's religious faith." Joseph Epstein.

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"Never listen to a leftist who does not give away his fortune or does not live the exact lifestyle he wants others to follow." Nassim Taleb

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Waugh, a stickler for good style and grammar, on the prose of less-rigorous writer: "To see him fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee."

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"The modern injunction to 'be oneself' implies one's having a suitable self to be." Joseph Epstein

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"The greatest enemy of the church today is the state." Dorothy Day (1975)