“I go slap through a roomful of MSS., criticizing deuced conscientiously, with the result that I post back some years of MSS. to addresses, which I should imagine, must be private asylums.”
G.K. Chesterton writing to E.C. Bentley (the Clerihew guy) in 1895 describing his workday and the various tasks he undertakes for a publishing house, Redway, including clearing a backlog of manuscripts, quoted in Michael Coren Gilbert: The Man Who Was G.K. Chesterton
“Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.”
Emailed without attribution by a friend
“Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.”
“Rod St. Denis, Sudbury, Ont.” quoted as “Your morning smile” in Globe & Mail November 29, 2006
“‘My friends, I have no more against work than the next man,’ Bobby [O’Brien, who was totally lazy] would reply. ‘In fact, nothing fascinates me more than work. I can sit here and watch it all day, if you’ll only give me the chance.’”
“The Week of Sundays,” called just “this old tale”, in William Bennett The Book of Virtues [but it owes a lot, perhaps too much, to a similar line from Jerome K. Jerome]
“His [Cicero’s] incredible vanity appears more amiably here [in his letters] than in his orations, where he seems to be carrying his own statue with him wherever he goes…”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ
“The bungles, delays and disaster associated with space travel indicate that the people concerned with it may, indeed, be exercising creative incompetence. I emphasize ‘may’ because the test of real creative incompetence is that an observer cannot certainly tell whether the incompetence is deliberate or not.”
Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, The Peter Principle
“At a repast given in 63 [AD - he’s describing the increasingly high living as the Roman Republic fell apart] by a high priest, and attended incongruously by Vestal Virgins and Caesar, the hors d’oeuvres consisted of mussels, spondyles, fieldfares with asparagus, fattened fowls, oyster pastries, sea nettles, ribs of roe, purple shellfish, and songbirds. Then came the dinner – sows’ udders, boars head, fish, duck, teals, hares, fowl, pastries, and sweets.”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ [and I was going along salivating pretty happily until we got to the udders]
“SORRY ABOUT THE TRAFFIC / I HAVE TO GO TO WORK TO GET ON VIDEO CALLS”
Bumper sticker on car in front of me November 21, 2024