… [T]here is no need for you to go a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power and as well as possible, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity. Strive, too, that in reading your story the melancholy may be moved to laughter, and the merry made merrier still; that the simple shall not be wearied, that the judicious shall admire the invention, that the grave shall not despise it, nor the wise fail to praise it. … [I]f you succeed in this you will have achieved no small success.”
— Miguel de Cervantes (from the Prologue to Don Quixote)
Tag: Quotables
Illustrative things said by people other than me. Think of them as pieces of congealed wonder and wisdom.
Some people use the word ‘God’ the way white supremacists use the word ‘patriot.'”
— me
This is a Print Shop
Crossroads of civilization. Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time. Armory of fearless truth against whispering rumor. Incessant trumpet of trade. From this place words may fly abroad not to perish as waves of sound, but fixed in time. Not corrupted by hurrying hand but verified in proof.
Friend, you stand on sacred ground: This is a print shop.”
— Beatrice Warde
The Talmud is tough because it assumes holistic knowledge of the whole Talmud, referencing texts and rulings that come much earlier or much later without stopping to really explain what the rabbis are talking about. The Talmud was not meant for beginners.”
— Dr. Sara Ronis
Blaming others is the suicide of [national] liberty.”
— R’ Jonathan Sacks, zt”l (from https://aish.com/302413231/)
Be not ashamed to learn truth from any source.”
— Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol (1021-1058)
IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein
THE AX EXISTED FOR 1.4 million years before anyone thought to put a handle on it.”
— James Williams
Pithyism #-30-
DO NOT MOCK THE DAMNED, for you yourself may be one of them someday. — Old reporter’s proverb
I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT ‘bizarre’ means anymore.”
— Anthony Bourdain
It used to freak me out that I’d never see the back of my own head. Now that I’ve accepted it, I can move on to the house of mirrors.”
— Barbatus the Elder
If you can take the song out and it doesn’t leave a hole, then the song’s not necessary.”
— Stephen Sondheim, a”h