Thursday 21 November 2019

Quotations for today

SHARE
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. 
John Steinbeck


We like someone because. We love someone although. 
Henry de Montherlant


Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious. 
Paul Valéry

There is only one way to be prepared for death: to be sated. In the soul, in the heart, in the spirit, in the flesh. To the brim. 
Henry de Montherlant


'The trouble with prejudice is, there’s usually a reason for it,’ but she now knew better than to say this to Guy.
Harriet Pringle in Olivia Manning's Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy



There's Conservatives an' they want to make things better by keepin' 'em jus' like what they are now. An' there's Lib'rals an' they want to make things better by alterin' them jus' a bit, but not so's anyone'd notice, an' there's communists an' they want to make things better by killin' everyone but themselves.
Henry explaining political parties to the Outlaws, in Richmal Crompton's William, Prime Minister

2 comments:

  1. And this has probably been a thread throughout the US history of at least the last 100 years. Everything from the progressivism of Woodrow Wilson, the New Dealers after World War II setting up the global institutions from which they'd run the planet from Washington DC. And there was sort of a sense that the US was at scale and should always operate on an even bigger scale and should be leading this sort of world revolution, not always a libertarian one. I was reminded of the joke, why is the United States the only country in the world where revolution is impossible? Answer, because it's the only country that doesn't have an American Embassy [laughter].

    Peter Thiel
    2019 Wriston Lecture: The End Of The Computer Age
    https://www.manhattan-institute.org/events/2019-wriston-lecture-end-computer-age-thiel

    Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them in a great measure, the Laws depend. The Law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.

    Edmund Burke

    ''Their Europeanism is nothing but imperialism with an inferiority complex.''

    Denis Healey, quoted in Observer (London, October 7, 1962). Referring to the Conservative Party.

    ‘Holland isn’t a country, it’s a business at best.’

    The narrator of Serotonin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Finally, ‘climate change’ has revealed its true, heaven-sent purpose: Coldplay are so worried about it that they have decided not to tour their new album.

    The pantywaist band’s chief-bedwetter, singer Chris Martin has said that he doesn’t want to take their show on the road till he can be sure it’s carbon neutral.

    Every cloud has a silver lining. It has certainly made me look on Extinction Rebellion in a much more favourable light now I realise that their facile, scientifically illiterate, eco-fascist scaremongering has had the beneficial effect of creating an environment where Coldplay no longer feel able to perform.

    JAMES DELINGPOLE

    ReplyDelete