"He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities."
Robertson Davies Fifth Business
"so smooth that he made ice feel like sandpaper."
Description of a criminal by a senior Scotland Yard type in "The Missing Necklace" by Jacques Futrelle (in Alan K. Russell, ed., Rivals of Sherlock Holmes vol. 2).
“Now in the year 1066 the grandson of a Norse pirate was recognized as king of England. Why should we ever read fairy stories, when the truth of history is so much more interesting and entertaining?”
Hendrick Van Loon The Story of Mankind.
"Perhaps, like me, the reader is sufficiently antique to recall a time when genius was normally reserved for that rare soul who, in Dr. Johnson’s phrase, ‘can do readily what no one else can do at all’..."
A writer whose name I did not record in Chronicles magazine Jan. 1988
"it’s not as though I just fell off a turnip truck."
NBA great Bill Russell explaining that although he had not coached in 10 years he had not lost touch with the game because of various basketball-related activities; I did not record when or where I heard him say it
“We have radios which can bring to everybody the best in music and literature. What we hear instead is, to a large extent, trash at the pulp magazine level or advertising which is an insult to intelligence and taste. We have the most wonderful instruments and means man has ever had, but we do not stop and ask what they are for.”
Erich Fromm Man for Himself (written in 1947)
"A specialist is someone who does everything else worse."
"U.S. violinist Ruggiero Ricci" quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe & Mail Oct. 13, 2006.
"The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most commonly quotes is, 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.'"
G.K. Chesterton, “The Spirit of America,” in What I Saw in America, quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 7 #8 (July-August 2004)