Quotations
John Dean
You are invited to vote for your favourite quote from the Top 10
provided at
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/favouritequote/?view=uk
I note some of our old (disputed) friends are there such as
It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph
-Edmund Burke
which, admittedly, they acknowledge as 'attributed, not found in his
writings'. Which makes me wonder if it's an appropriate entry.
and
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-Lord Acton, 1887
--
John Dean
Oxford
Bob Cunningham
None of my favorite quotations are there. Rudyard Kipling's
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing
theirs and blaming it on you.
reads like a botched attempt to quote one of my favorites
(author unknown):
If you can keep your head when all around you are
losing theirs, maybe you just don't understand the
situation.
If I were going to make up a list of ten best quotations, I
would be sure to include Churchill's
Short words are best and the old words when
short are best of all.
and, from an unknown source
Analog circuitry can only approximate the real
digital world.
John O'Flaherty
Definitely. Just look at Megawati Sukarnoputri.
--
john
Mark Barratt
> The new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is published.
> You are invited to vote for your favourite quote from the Top 10
> provided at
> http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/favouritequote/?view=uk
I don't like any of them all that much, except the one from Yeats -
possibly because (on the face of it) it's meaningless.
> I note some of our old (disputed) friends are there such as
>
> It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph
> -Edmund Burke
>
> which, admittedly, they acknowledge as 'attributed, not found in his
> writings'. Which makes me wonder if it's an appropriate entry.
Why not? It's a quotation from somebody, after all. You don't have to
know who said it first to decide whether it's your favourite.
The one from Robert Frost intrigues me a little:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by".
Does anyone know what he was talking about (my first impression is that
he's coming out of the closet)?
I would have expected something from Mark Twain, but maybe there's a
right-pondian bias here.
--
Regards,
Mark Barratt
Donna Richoux
> The one from Robert Frost intrigues me a little:
> "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by".
> Does anyone know what he was talking about (my first impression is that
> he's coming out of the closet)?
Is your question, what incident in his own life was he thinking about
when he wrote those lines?
(The poem, by the way, is at 4,400 websites, including:
http://search.able2know.com/About/3262.html )
--
Best - Donna Richoux
Mark Barratt
> Mark Barratt <mark.b...@enternet.hu> wrote:
>
>
>>The one from Robert Frost intrigues me a little:
>>"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by".
>>Does anyone know what he was talking about (my first impression is that
>>he's coming out of the closet)?
>
>
> Is your question, what incident in his own life was he thinking about
> when he wrote those lines?
Well, it was, yes, but...
> (The poem, by the way, is at 4,400 websites, including:
> http://search.able2know.com/About/3262.html )
Oh, it's a poem, and therefore need have no meaning. I withdraw my question.
--
Groetjes,
Mark Barratt
Maria Conlon
Did you see this? ===begin quote===
Bush "Axis Of Evil" Citation In Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations.
Reuters reports that despite his many malapropisms, President
George W. Bush "can hold his head up high in the new Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations published on Thursday." Bush makes "a
respectable first appearance in one of the world's most famous
reference books with his notorious 'Axis of Evil' speech about Iran,
Iraq and North Korea."
===end quote===
(Laura -- what was it we established? Axis of Mischief?)
Maria Conlon
Donna Richoux
Frost was being ironic at that point, anyway. In the first part of the
poem, he thinks about the choice of paths in the woods and decides it
really doesn't make any difference. Yet, in the concluding lines, he
gently mocks the way that people make a big drama out of these choices,
in hindsight:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence...
That's the way it makes sense to me, anyway. So, no, he was not telling
the world about some big choice he made once.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Matti Lamprhey
>
> (Laura -- what was it we established? Axis of Mischief?)
No -- I was Mischief. You two were Misbehavio[u]r. Yours is the more
Evil of the two, but that's females for you :-P
Matti
Michael J Hardy
> The one from Robert Frost intrigues me a little:
> "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I悠 took the one less travelled by".
> Does anyone know what he was talking about (my first impression is that
> he's coming out of the closet)?
Do they also quote Yogi Berra? He said "If you come to a
fork in the road, take it." -- Mike Hardy
John Dean
> John Dean wrote:
>> The new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is published.
>> You are invited to vote for your favourite quote from the Top 10
>> provided at
>>
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/favouritequote/?view=uk
>
> I don't like any of them all that much, except the one from Yeats -
> possibly because (on the face of it) it's meaningless.
>
>> I note some of our old (disputed) friends are there such as
>>
>> It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to
>> triumph -Edmund Burke
>>
>> which, admittedly, they acknowledge as 'attributed, not found in his
>> writings'. Which makes me wonder if it's an appropriate entry.
>
> Why not? It's a quotation from somebody, after all. You don't have to
> know who said it first to decide whether it's your favourite.
Well, everything's a quotation from *somebody*. If they're going to
include this one, why not put it under 'anon'?
But I'm not convinced it's right to describe something as a 'quotation'
if you have no idea who said it.
--
John Dean
Oxford
Martin Ambuhl
> John Dean wrote:
[...]
>> I note some of our old (disputed) friends are there such as
[...]
>> Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
>> -Lord Acton, 1887
> Definitely. Just look at Megawati Sukarnoputri.
That's an appropriate application of a line first used in criticism of
the doctrine of Papal infallibility.
R H Draney
That Woody Allen quote I posted recently fits the theme too:
"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let
us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
(In the interest of offering new content, I for one would have made Woody's
second period a semicolon and adjusted the capitalization accordingly)....r
Skitt
> That Woody Allen quote I posted recently fits the theme too:
>
> "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads.
> One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to
> total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose
> correctly."
>
> (In the interest of offering new content, I for one would have made
> Woody's second period a semicolon and adjusted the capitalization
> accordingly)....r
Another choice (mine) would be to turn that second period into a comma and
to delete the following comma. With capitalization adjusted, of course.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/
rzed
news:2qbre4F...@uni-berlin.de:
Why not this? Turn the first period into a colon, the second into a
semicolon, the third into a hemisemi-- no, wait, forget the third.
With capitalization adjusted.
--
rzed
Jerry Friedman
> Mark Barratt <mark.b...@enternet.hu> wrote:
>
> > Donna Richoux wrote:
> >
> > > Mark Barratt <mark.b...@enternet.hu> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>The one from Robert Frost intrigues me a little:
> > >>"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less
travelled by".
> > >>Does anyone know what he was talking about (my first impression
is that
> > >>he's coming out of the closet)?
> > >
> > >
> > > Is your question, what incident in his own life was he thinking
about
> > > when he wrote those lines?
> >
> > Well, it was, yes, but...
> >
> > > (The poem, by the way, is at 4,400 websites, including:
> > > http://search.able2know.com/About/3262.html )
> >
> > Oh, it's a poem, and therefore need have no meaning. I withdraw my
question.
This is Frost, not Charles Simic. Incidentally, Frost first gained
popularity in England, but I gather reading this poem is not considered
as essential to an education in England as it is in the U.S.
> Frost was being ironic at that point, anyway. In the first part of
the
> poem, he thinks about the choice of paths in the woods and decides it
> really doesn't make any difference. Yet, in the concluding lines, he
> gently mocks the way that people make a big drama out of these
choices,
> in hindsight:
>
> I shall be telling this with a sigh
> Somewhere ages and ages hence...
>
> That's the way it makes sense to me, anyway. So, no, he was not
telling
> the world about some big choice he made once.
Indeed, according to John Frederick Nims in _The Harper Anthology of
Poetry_, Frost wrote it to tease his friend Edward Thomas (who
remembered Adlestrop), since after their botanizing walks Thomas would
always find some fault with the route they had decided on.
Millions of readers have found more significance, or at least more
resonance, than that, though.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
> John Dean wrote:
> > The new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is published.
> > You are invited to vote for your favourite quote from the Top 10
> > provided at
> >
http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/favouritequote/?view=uk
They missed, "Quand je regarde mon derrière, je vois qu'il est divisé
en deux parties." --Winston Churchill looking at his past, in a speech
in Paris.
> I don't like any of them all that much, except the one from Yeats -
> possibly because (on the face of it) it's meaningless.
...
It's also from a poem--one of the twee-est poems still making it into
anthologies, if you want to know my opinion. I could have come up with
ten better quotations just from Yeats. For instance, [REDACTED, as RF
would say].
--
Jerry Friedman
Jess Askin
"John Dean" <john...@frag.lineone.net> wrote in message
news:chpc00$523$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
> The new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is published.
> You are invited to vote for your favourite quote from the Top 10
> provided at
> http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/favouritequote/?view=uk
These are our only choices? Even the ones they have are botched -- the
Kipling isn't even a full sentence, and both it and the Frost are terminated
(by periods) prematurely.
My favorite is still
It is good to be merry and wise,
It is good to be honest and true,
It is best to be off with the old love,
Before you are on with the new.
Or maybe
Eat when you are hungry,
Drink when you are dry,
Rest when you are sleepy,
But don't stop breathing or you'll die.
R H Draney
I guess I'm just an old prosemicolonialist at heart....r
Nell
My favorite "quotation" from good old Anonymous is: Write a wise
saying and your name will live forever
Nell
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
Josh Billings
Nell
Tell me not in mournful numbers
The price you paid for two cucumbers.
And from Odgen Nash:
I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
I notice a certain negativity to my quotations (the first came out of
a poetry anthology and I don't recall if an author was named).
My father's favorite poet was John Greenleaf Whittier and my mother's
was Dorothy Parker. Talk about contrast.
I like both but also have a fondness for parodies.
Mike Lyle
"Jess Askin" <spam...@dontbother.com> wrote in message
news:chqrtb$j8$1...@news.netins.net...
>
> "John Dean" <john...@frag.lineone.net> wrote in message
> news:chpc00$523$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk...
> > The new Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is published.
> > You are invited to vote for your favourite quote from the Top 10
> > provided at
> > http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations/favouritequote/?view=uk
>
> Eat when you are hungry,
> Drink when you are dry,
> Rest when you are sleepy,
> But don't stop breathing or you'll die.
Not my candidate, but the wielders of scythes used to say "Wet before you're
dry, and whet before you're dull".
Mike.
Bob Cunningham
[...]
> Eat when you are hungry,
> Drink when you are dry,
> Rest when you are sleepy,
> But don't stop breathing or you'll die.
The way I heard it was
I eat when I'm hungry.
I drink when I'm dry,
And if whiskey don't kill me
I'll live till I die.
Jitze Couperus
>
>I guess I'm just an old prosemicolonialist at heart....r
>
you mean you are in favor of gunboat diplomacy (as in
semi-colonialism) - or you study fungi in your prose (as in
prose-micology)
All a question of mishy-phenation
Jitze
John Holmes
And some of us Vegemite and Marmite fans were "Axis of Evil Spreads".
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus those of alt.usage.english
at tpg dot com dot au