"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." — Churchill

Margo Jefferson writes on quote collectors and collections for the New York Times:

Unreliable or omniscient, I would be the narrator in control.

So I kept notebooks of quotations. Lots of people do. Reading them over lets you scan your own temperament. The words of writers you admire provide a trustworthy language for your desires and for how you'll feel when life ambushes them. They relieve you from being brave enough to say what feels unsayable. Notebooks like this are an informal history of your reading. If you forage through books instead of reading one at a time, the order of entries can look random. Rereading reveals -- or imposes -- a structure, a map of associations.

From the age of fourteen to seventeen, I was an avid quote collector. So, after reading Jefferson's article, I entered, folder by folder, the bowels of my hard drive, launched OS 9, and spent some time with a rarely visited, but very familiar, quote collection. Here, the quotes that I loved in my most formative years (and still love in what I hope to God are my least formative years):

Beauty

People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian Gray

California

Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
— Ross MacDonald

(Note to readers: my high school was near the California shore.)

Change

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
— Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics

Cynicism

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
—H. L. Menchen (1880- 1956)

Education

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

The test and the use of man’s education is that he finds pleasure in the excercise of his mind.
— Jacques Barzun, in Saturday Evening Post

“Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,” the Mock Turtle replied, “and then the different branches of Arithmetic— Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problem distasteful to me for an entire year.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mostly in need of freedom; without this it goes to ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
— Einstein, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”

You say I was an unschoolable boy at a bad school. But what is an unschoolable boy? I was greedy for knowledge, and interested in everything, and if school taught me nothing except that school is a prison and not a place of teaching, the conclusion is that pedagogy is not yet a science.
— Bernard Shaw, quoted in “Before the gates of excellence”

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
— G.M. Trevelyan, English Social History

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
—Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Education is an admirable thing, but it well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
— Oscar Wilde, Intentions

Egotism

The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
—Lucille S. Harper

Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me.
—Ambrose Bierce

Fear

Always do what you are afraid to do.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Goodness/Rightness

No good deed goes unpunished.
—Clare Boothe Luce

Always do right- this will gratity some and astonish the rest.
—Mark Twain

Hell

Hell is other people.
—Jean-Paul Sartre

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
—Robert Frost

Honesty

It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
—Tom Stoppard

Humility

Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
—Golda Meir to a visiting diplomat

Ignorance

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
— Sydney Harris

Life

Attention to health is life’s greatest hindrance.
— Plato

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
—Jean-Paul Sartre

Logic

Logic is in the eye of the logician.
—Gloria Steinem

Media

lmitation is the sincerest form of television.
—Fred Allen

Mediocrity

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

(Note: I wrote the last quote down when I was fifteen, after losing a creative writing contest.)

The average person thinks he isn't.
— Father Larry Lorenzoni

Mind

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost

Other

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. - Ashleigh Brilliant

In time of war the first casualty is truth.
- Boake Carter

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggie! " till you can find a rock.
- Wynn Catlin

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
—Winston Churchill

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
— Sigmund Freud

Never mistake motion for action.
—Ernest Hemingway

Few things are harder to put up with than a good example.
—Mark Twain

The gods too are fond of a joke.
—Aristotle

How can l lose to such an idiot?
— A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich

No Sane man will dance.
—Cicero

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
—Jean-Paul Sartre

If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
—Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
—Napoleon Bonaparte

Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
—Pablo Picasso

Assassins !
—Arturo Toscanini to his orchestra

The longer l live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)

Prejudice

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
—Albert Einstein

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
— H. L. Mencken

Self as Enemy

Yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.
—Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

He is his own worst enemy.
—Cicero of Julius Ceaser

Self-criticism

All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. It has all the invidiousness of self-priase, and all the reproach of falsehood.
— Samuel Johnson

Self-knowledge

He who knows others is learned
He who knows himself is wise.
—Lao-Tzu, Tao-te Ching

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
—Confucius

Silence

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
—Charles Caleb Colton

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
—Epictetus

The world would be a happier place if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
— Benedict De Spinoza, Ethics

Temptation

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
—Oscar Wilde, Portrait of Dorian Gray

Thought

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
—Bertrand Russell

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
—Henry Ford

Truth

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
— Andr Gide

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
— Niels Bohr

Words

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
—Abraham Lincoln

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
— Goethe

Writing

There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
— Flannery O'Connor

Why don't you write books people can read?
—Nora Joyce to her husband James

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
— T. S. Eliot

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
—Groucho Marx

l have read your book and much like it.
—Moses Hadas

Everywhere I go I'm asked if l think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
—Flannery O'Connor

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
—Paul Dirac

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody - who can write better.
—A. J. Liebling

Posted by nchicha at April 12, 2004 05:49 PM