Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/04/22/the_last_word.php
Friday, April 22, 2005
For centuries men have eaten the flesh of other creatures not only to nourish their own bodies but to give more strength to their weary spirits. A bull's heart, for example, might well bring bravery; oysters, it has been whispered, shed a new potency not only in the brain but in certain other less intellectual regions. And pigeons, those gentle flitting creatures, with the soft voices and their miraculous wings in flight, have always meant peace, and refreshment to sad humans.
— M. F. K. Fisher
All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them. Be flippant. Laugh at all their sacred shibboleths. Flippancy brings out the acid in their damned sweetness.
—Noel Coward
By economy and good management, by a sparing use of ready money, and by paying scarcely anybody, people can manage, for a time at least, to make a great show with very little means.
— William Makepeace Thackeray
If George W. Bush were to discover a cure for cancer, his critics would denounce him for having done it unilaterally, without adequate consultation, with a crude disregard for the sensibilities of others. He pursued his goal obstinately, they would say, without filtering his thoughts through the medical research establishment. And he didn't share his research with competing labs and thus caused resentment among other scientists who didn't have the resources or the bold—perhaps even somewhat reckless— instincts to pursue the task as he did. And he completely ignored the World Health Organization, showing his contempt for international institutions. Anyway, a cure for cancer is all fine and nice, but what about AIDS?
— Martin Peretz
It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
—William Faulkner
Tracking down and taking everything on [Hunter S.] Thompson's list became a kind of mission, a pharmacological scavenger hunt that preoccupied me through high school. At this point, I should add the customary disclaimer about how drugs are bad, a lie and a trap and a destroyer of lives. That's all true, but not in my case. For me, the whole experience was interesting and fun. I had a great time.
—Tucker Carlson
Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity.
—Antonin Scalia
There is a major but very difficult realization that needs to be reached about [Cary] Grant— difficult, that is, for many people who like to think they take the art of film seriously. As well as being a leading box office draw for some thirty years, the epitome of the man-about-town… the retired actor, still handsome executive of a perfume company— as well as all these things, he was the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema.
—David Thomson
Dull men travail, whilst noblemen drowse. Peasants sip ale, whilst kings carouse.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
—Sir Winston Churchill
The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.
—Plato
It is knowledge that influences and equalizes the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.
—Benjamin Disraeli
Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
—Leo Tolstoy
Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
—Niccolo Machiavelli