Dr. Mardy's Dictionary of Metaphorical Quotations] (2024)

Resentment used to be something that folks wanted to get rid of, now they water it and put it on a windowsill, like a favorite pot plant. /Edward St. Aubyn, in Double Blind (2021) * Anger is a normal emotion if it is expressed when felt. Then it is over with. If one keeps a lid on it, it develops into resentment or hate. Bernie Siegel, in Love, Medicine & Miracles (1986)Siegel continued: “Sooner or later, resentment and hate explode, destroying others, or they are held in, destroying oneself.” * To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it. Tacitus, in The Annals of Tacitus (1st. c. A.D.)QUOTE NOTE: This has become the most popular translation of what is known as one of the “difficult passages” of the great Roman historian. Previous translations of his admonition to ignore slanders and personal insults have been all over the map. One said: “Calumny falls to the ground when neglected; but we give a countenance to it by having any serious concern about it.” Another, in the concluding line, said: “Show that you are hurt and you give it the appearance of truth.” And still another: “When you resent a thing, you seem to recognize it.” Perhaps the most quaint, though, was this: “If you wax wroth, you seem to avow them to be true.” * Let this be one invariable rule of your conduct—never to show the least symptom of resentment, which you cannot, to a certain degree, gratify; but always to smile, where you cannot strike. Philip Dormer Stanhope Lord Chesterfield, in letter to his son (March 26, 1754) * Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. Corrie Ten Boom, in Jesus is Victor (1984) * More than anything else, resentment was the death of love. It killed slowly. Lisa Unger, a reflection of the character Merri Gleason, in Ink and Bone: A Novel (2016) * Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past. Rick Warren, in The Purpose Driven Life (2002)Warren continued: “Listen: those who hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it. You are only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it, and then let it go.” * Those who have hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment. Rick Warren, in What On Earth Am I Here For? (2004) * He was a man who grew fat on resentment as others did on happiness. Edith Wharton, the character Halo Tarrant, reflecting on her husband, in The Gods Arrive (1932) * A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment. John Wooden, quoted in Neville L. Johnson, The John Wooden Pyramid of success: The Authorized Biography (2000)===== RESEARCH =====(see also CURIOSITY and EXPERIMENT and KNOWLEDGE and LEARNING and SCIENCE and STUDY) * Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind. Marston Bates, quoted in Quote magazine (Nov. 5, 1967) * The research worker remains a student all his life. William Beveridge, in The Art of Scientific Investigation (1957) * Research is the search of people who don’t know what they want. G. K. Chesterton, in The G. K. Chesterton Calendar (1916) * Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and your instruments, but in the end your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work. Michael Crichton, the narrator quoting a favorite saying of the character Dr. Jeremy Stone, in The Andromeda Strain (1969) * In research the front line is almost always in a fog. Francis Crick, in What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988) * After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth. Helene Deutsch, in Preface to The Psychology of Women, Vol. 1 (1944) * When curiosity turns to serious matters, it’s called research. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, in Aphorisms (1880-93) * When a man after long years of searching chances upon a thought which discloses something of the beauty of this mysterious universe, he should not therefore be personally celebrated. He is already sufficiently paid by his experience of seeking and finding. Albert Einstein, quoted in The New York Times (Nov. 10, 1978) * As much research as you think you’re doing, you’re going to mess up, without a question. Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Lessons of Presidential Leadership,” Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org (June 28, 1996) * The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment. Celia Green, in The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)In her book, Green also wrote on the subject: “Research is a way of taking calculated risks to bring about incalculable consequences.” * Research has been defined as guerilla warfare on the unknown. Alan Gregg, in The Furtherance of Medical Research (1941)Gregg continued: “In the rigorous uncertainties of such campaigns the investigator must be prepared to swap horses in mid-stream and to discard some very dear items of accumulated baggage of belief or personal pride, whenever intellectual honesty calls for such sacrifices.” * The dead hand of research lies heavy on too many novels. Nancy Hale, “The Two-Way Imagination,” in Richard Thruelsen & John Kobler, Adventures of the Mind, Second Series (1961) * The subject matter of research is no longer nature in itself, but nature subjected to human questioning. Karl Heisenberg, quoted in Aldous Huxley, Literature and Science (1963) * Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. Zora Neale Hurston, in Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) * We find that in research a certain amount of intelligent ignorance is essential to progress; for, if you know too much, you won’t try the thing. Charles F. Kettering, quoted in T. A. Boyd, Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering (1957) * The most beautiful thing in the world is, precisely, the conjunction of learning and inspiration. Oh, the passion for research and the joy of discovery! Wanda Landowska, quoted in Denise Restout, Landowska on Music (1964) * I find people call it research nowadays if they ever have to look anything up in a book. Margaret Lane, in A Night at Sea (1964) * If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs. Peter B. Medawar, “The Act of Creation,” in New Statesman (London; June 19, 1964); later in The Art of the Soluble (1967) * If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research. Wilson Mizner, quoted in Alva Johnson, The Legendary Mizners (1953)In her Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses (1998), Isabel Allende came close to plagiarism when she wrote: “Copying one author is plagiarism; copying many is research.” * The gift for investigation appears at an early age: the demon of research speaks to men whilst they are still young. Charles Richet, in The Natural History of a Savant (1927) * All good research—whether for science or for a book—is a form of obsession. Mary Roach, in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008) * The joy of research must be found in doing, since every other harvest is uncertain. Theobald Smith, “Letter from Theobald Smith,” Journal of Bacteriology (Jan., 1934) * Research means going out into the unknown with the hope of finding something new to bring home. Albert Szent-Györgi, quoted in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (Autumn, 1974) * Blind alleys and garden paths leading nowhere are the principal hazards in research. Lewis Thomas, in Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (1983)Thomas introduced the observation by writing: “If a scientist is going to engage in research of any kind, he has to have it on his mind, from the outset, that he may be on to a dud. You can tell a world-class scientist from the run-of-the-mill investigator by the speed with which he recognizes that he is heading into a blind alley.” * The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. Thorstein Veblein, in The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View (1942)===== RESIGNATION [as in EMOTION] =====(see also ACCEPTANCE and DESPAIR and ENDURANCE and MISERY and SADNESS and QUITTING and RESIGNATION [as in JOB] and STOICISM and UNHAPPINESS) * What cannot be altered must be borne, not blamed. Thomas Fuller, M.D., in Gnomologia (1732) * What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. Henry David Thoreau, in Walden (1854)QUOTE NOTE: This is the conclusion to a thought that famously began this way: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”===== RESIGNATION [as in JOB] =====(see also BOSS and EMPLOYMENT and JOB and OFFICE and OCCUPATION and RESIGNATION [as in EMOTION] and WORK) * Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member. Groucho Marx, quoted in Arthur Sheekman, “Introduction,” The Groucho Letters (1967). Also an example of Oxymoronica.===== RESILIENCE =====(see also FLEXIBILITY and PLIABILITY and SURVIVAL & SURVIVORS) * Youth has the resilience to absorb disaster and weave it into the pattern of its life, no matter how anguishing the thorn that penetrates its flesh. Sholem Asch, the voice of the narrator, in East River (1946) * Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness. Naomi Wolf, “This Pampered Private School Elite Can Only Lead to US Decline,” in The Guardian (March 22, 2012) QUOTE NOTE: The point of Wolf’s article was that pampered private school students insulated from challenging real-world experiences are ill-equipped to cope with increasing competition from their international peers. She went on to write: “In my bad public education, we kids learned a lot from the few great teachers; but we learned, also, important life lessons from the irascible or irrational teachers' teaching; we learned from social conflicts in the schoolyard, from frustration with recalcitrant graders, from the race riots that erupted every fall, and even from the boredom of enforced assembly and other not-fun but serious expectations.”===== RESISTANCE & RESISTING =====(see also AGITATION and FREEDOM and LIBERTY and OPPRESSION and REBELLION and RESISTANCE TO CHANGE and REVOLUTION) * At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice. Maya Angelou, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) * I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” Susan B. Anthony, A June 18, 1873 remark in Federal Court after being tried for voting * Since the beginning of the Movement, lesbianism has been a kind of code word for female resistance. Ti-Grace Atkinson, “Lesbianism and Feminism,” in Amazon Odyssey (1974) * Life is the ensemble of functions that resist death. Marie François Bichat, in Recherhes Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort (1800) * Day by day they were learning to live in resistance to the enemy, and this is a greater thing than to die in resistance. Pearl S. Buck, in Dragon Seed (1942) * To the wrongs that need resistance,/To the right that needs assistance,/To the future in the distance,/We give ourselves. Carrie Chapman Catt, in 1911 speech at the Stockholm convention of the International Woman Suffrage Association * She leaned toward me the way people do when they want an idea to penetrate your resistance. As though the closer they get their own brain to your brain, the easier it will be for the idea to leap across. Mildred Davis, in They Buried a Man (1953) * Resistance to tyranny is man’s highest ideal. Emma Goldman, in Anarchism and Other Essays, (1917; 3rd ed.) * Resistance is the first step to change. Louise L. Hay, in The Power Is Within You (1991) * Resistance, whether to one’s appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character. Eric Hoffer, in The Ordeal of Change (1964) * One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas. Victor Hugo, in Histoire d’un Crime (1877) QUOTE NOTE: This is one of Hugo’s most famous observations, originally written in 1852, but first published in 1877. It is also commonly translated as: “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas.” ERROR ALERT: The observation is often mistakenly presented as: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” Nothing in Hugo's original words would suggest the phrase whose time has come, but shortly after WWI, liberal translations with that wording began to appear (as in this version from a June 8, 1919 issue of the Atlanta Constitution: “There is one idea stronger than armies, and that is an idea whose time has come”). During WWII, Mussolini’s propagandists appropriated the looser translation and presented it in the following way in a number of fascist publications: “There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” * What we resist persists. Sonia Johnson, in Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation (1987)ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, this observation is attributed to Carl J. Jung, but nothing like it has ever been found in his writings. * Survival is a form of resistance. Gerda Lerner, in Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (1972) * The line of least resistance is to most people the lifeline. Sophie Irene Loeb, in Epigrams of Eve (1913) * Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance. Agnes Repplier, “Conservative’s Consolations,” Points of Friction (1920) * There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice. Arundhati Roy, in speech accepting the 2004 Sydney Peace Prize * You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil. John Ruskin, in The Two Paths (1859) * We have come to a point where it is loyalty to resist, and treason to submit. Carl Schurz, in speech at Albany Hall, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (March 23, 1859)QUOTE NOTE: Schurz, the first German-American elected to the United States Senate (in 1868, from Missouri), offered this thought in response to the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which mandated that escaped slaves captured in Northern free states were to be returned to their Southern masters. Schurz occupies a footnote in history by presciently writing in an 1864 letter: “I will make a prophecy that may now sound peculiar. In fifty years Lincoln’s name will be inscribed close to Washington’s on this Republic’s roll of honor.” * Vanity first leads us into danger, and then renders us incapable of resistance. Sarah Scott, in The History of Cornelia (1750) * Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar,” in Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) The entry continued: “Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word.” * Resistance is the secret of joy! Alice Walker, in Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)QUOTE NOTE: In the book’s epigraph, Walker wrote: “There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.” * A soul, inspir’d by freedom's genial warmth/Expands, grows firm, and by resistance, strong. Mercy Otis Warren, “The Ladies of Castille,” in The Plays and Poems of Mercy Otis Warren (1790) * I can resist everything except temptation. Oscar Wilde, the character Lord Darlington speaking, in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) * Dying doesn’t cause suffering. Resistance to dying does. Terry Tempest Williams, in Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (1991) * The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. Woodrow Wilson, in address to the New York Press Club, New York City (September 9, 1912).===== RESISTANCE TO CHANGE =====(see also AGITATION and FREEDOM and LIBERTY and OPPRESSION and REBELLION and RESISTANCE TO CHANGE and REVOLUTION) * Every therapeutic cure, and still more, any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth, tears him from the cradle of his freedom of responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance. Alfred Adler, “The Neurotic Disposition” (originally written in 1912); reprinted in The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler (1956)QUOTE NOTE: People who are most stubbornly resistant to change, according to Adler, live their lives according a “life-lie” that has been concocted to safeguard their self-esteem and maintain the status quo. In his view, change was only possible after people confronted these fictions about themselves. * Consistency can be a trap, especially if it leads to being consistently wrong rather than to stopping, admitting your mistake, and changing course. Jane Fonda, in My Life So Far (2005) * People who appear to be resisting change may simply be the victim of bad habits. Habit, like gravity, never takes a day off. Paul Gibbons, in The Science of Successful Organizational Change (2015) * The hardest thing to believe when you’re young is that people wil fight to stay in a rut, but not to get out of it. Ellen Glasgow, in Barren Ground (1925) * There is no sin punished more implacably by nature than the sin of resistance to change. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in The Wave of the Future: A Confession of Faith (1940) Earlier in the book, Lindbergh had written: “Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”===== RESOLUTION =====(includes RESOLUTE and RESOLUTENESS; see also DEDICATION and DESIRE and DETERMINATION and DISCIPLINE and GOAL and INTENTION and NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION and PERSEVERANCE and PERSISTENCE and PURPOSE and [New Year's] RESOLUTIONS and RESOLVE and SELF-CONTROL and STRUGGLE and WILL) * Resolute, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) * The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him, can have no hope from them afterward. They will be dissipated, lost in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence. Maria Edgeworth, quoted in Orison Swett Marden, Pushing to the Front (1894) * Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. Benjamin Franklin, an example of the literary device known as chiasmus, in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791) * Whatever our problems are, dreams can provide novel ideas and sometimes magnificent resolutions. Patricia L. Garfield, in Creative Dreaming (1974) * He who is firm and resolute in will molds the world to himself. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in Tryon Edwards, A Dictionary of Thoughts (1891) * A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible. Thomas Hardy, the voice of the narrator, in Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) * It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion. W. R. Inge, “Patriotism,” in Outspoken Essays: First Series (1919)QUOTE NOTE: Inge was likely inspired by an observation from Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (3rd c. B.C.): “It takes two to make a quarrel.” * Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions. Dr. Samuel Johnson, in Prayers and Meditations (1785) * Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing. Abraham Lincoln, in letter to Isham Reavis (Nov. 5, 1855); reprinted in The Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln (1917; Gilbert A Tracy, ed.)QUOTE NOTE: A few weeks earlier, Reavis had written to Lincoln—then a practicing lawyer in Springfield, Illinois—seeking advice about becoming a lawyer. And earlier in his letter of reply to Reavis, Lincoln wrote: “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already.” * Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution. Theodore Roosevelt, “Character and Success,” in Outlook magazine (March 31, 1900); reprinted in The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900)Roosevelt continued: “The boy who is going to make a great man, or is going to count in any way in the after life, must make up his mind not merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.” The full article, still worth reading more than a century later, may be found at: Character and Success. * However many resolutions one makes, one’s pen, like water, always finds its own level, and one can’t write in any way other than one’s own. Vita Sackville-West, in a 1928 letter to Virginia Woolf, quoted in The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf (1985; Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska, eds.) * Good resolutions are like babies crying in church. They should be carried out immediately. Charles M. Sheldon, in The 13th Resolution (1928) * The object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions. Sydney Smith, “The Judge That Smites Contrary to the Law,” a March 28, 1824 sermon; reprinted in The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (1860) * Good resolutions are easy to make. So is lemon meringue. Both are almost impossible to keep. Kay Cleaver Strahan, in The Desert Moon Mystery (1928) * It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution. Anthony Trollope, a reflection of the narrator, in The Small House at Allington (1864) * Good resolutions…are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. Oscar Wilde, the character Lord Henry speaking, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)QUOTE NOTE: This is the way the quotation appears in many quotation anthologies (and often without the ellipsis), but it was originally part of a larger observation. After Dorian says to Lord Henry, “I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutions—that they are always made too late,” Lord Henry replies:“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the week. That is all that can be said for them. They are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”===== (New Year’s) RESOLUTIONS =====(see also DEDICATION and DETERMINATION and GOAL and RESOLUTION and and RESOLVE and [New] YEAR) * May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions! Joey Adams, quoted in a 1987 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined) * New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time. James Agate, in A Shorter Ego, Vol. 3 (1949) * Keep young. Many men talk about being born again. Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Henry Ward Beecher, “A Completed Year” sermon; reprinted in Plymouth Pulpit: A Weekly Publication of Sermons Preached by Henry Ward Beecher, Vol. 5 (1882) Beecher continued: “Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circ*mstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.” * Some people have a regular practice of making New Year resolutions—generally shattering them before January has hidden its cold head out of sight. Will Carleton, “Editorial Thoughts and Fancies”, in Every Where magazine (Dev. 1912–Jan. 1913)Carleton continued: “Resolves, in order to be of any use, should be made every day in the year, and if necessary every hour in the day.” * This year, for my New Year's resolution I joined a gym. Next year my resolution is to start going. Dava Krause from her stand-up comedy routine * I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me. Anaïs Nin, a diary entry (January 1927) * A new year is a clean slate, a chance to suck in your breath, decide all is not lost and give yourself another chance. Sarah Overstreet, “Take Some Time to Smell the Flowers,” The Galveston Daily News (Jan. 7, 1991) * Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one. Brad Paisley, in a Tweet (Dec. 31, 2009) * We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. Edith Lovejoy Pierce, quoted in Jean Beaven Abernethy, Meditations for Women (1947) * New Year’s Day. Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Mark Twain, in letter to the Virginia City [Nevada Territory] Territorial Enterprise (Jan. 1, 1863) Twain continued: “Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient short comings considerably shorter than ever…. New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.”===== RESOLVE =====(see also ADVERSITY and DEDICATION and DESIRE and DETERMINATION and DISCIPLINE and DISCOURAGEMENT and PERSEVERANCE and PERSISTENCE and PURPOSE and RESOLUTION and SELF-CONTROL and STRUGGLE and WILL)“Resolve to be merry though the ship were sinking.”Susannah Centlivre, The Artifice (1710)“Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”Helen Keller, in Harold Bolce, “Away From Ancient Altars,” Cosmopolitan Magazine (1910)“… our high resolves / Look down upon our slumbering acts.”L.E. Landon, “A History of the Lyre,” The Venetian Bracelet (1829) * There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,/Can circumvent or hinder or control/The firm resolve of a determined soul. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the opening lines of the poem “Will,”; in Maurine: And Other Poems (1888)===== RESPECT =====(includes SHOWING RESPECT; see also ADMIRATION and DIGNITY and DISRESPECT and ESTEEM and HONORS and PRESTIGE and RESPECTABILITY and REVERENCE and SELF-RESPECT) * There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self.Henri-Frédéric Amiel, a journal entry, quoted in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations From Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1893) * Disrespectful words cannot entirely be eaten, ever. Respect is a kind of Humpty Dumpty. All the king’s horses can’t put it all the way up again. Charlotte Armstrong, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Olivia Hudson, in The Dream Walker (1955) * If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the character Alyosha speaking, in The Insulted and Injured (1861) * The respect that is only bought by gold is not worth much. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “Our Greatest Want,” in Anglo-African Magazine (May, 1859) * The more thoughtful you are of others, the more thoughtful they will be of you. The more you respect them, the more you will win their respect. Dorothy Sarnoff, in Speech Can Change Your Life (1970) * Respect for each other is at the heart of maintaining balance in a family. If we cannot accept each other’s ways we risk losing each other entirely. Alexandra Stoddard, in Gracious Living in a New World (1996)===== RESPONSIBILITY =====(includes [Avoiding] RESPONSIBILITY and [Taking] RESPONSIBILITY; see also ACCOUNTABILITY and BLAME and CHARACTER and DUTY and IRRESPONSIBILITY) * Every therapeutic cure, and still more, any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth, tears him from the cradle of his freedom of responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance. Alfred Adler, “The Neurotic Disposition” (originally written in 1912), in The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler (1956)QUOTE NOTE: People who are most stubbornly resistant to change, according to Adler, live their lives according a “life-lie” that has been concocted to safeguard their self-esteem and maintain the status quo. In his view, change was only possible after people confronted these fictions about themselves. * I try to live what I consider a “poetic existence.” That means I take responsibility for the air I breathe and the space I take up. I try to be immediate, to be totally present for all my work. Maya Angelou, in Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers at Work (1983) * Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, or one’s neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) * People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know. Brooks Atkinson, in Once Around the Sun (1951) * Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in 1944 letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge; reprinted in Letters and Papers from Prison (1953; Eberhard Bethge, ed.)QUOTE NOTE: This famous sentiment from Bonhoeffer has also been translated this way: “It is not the thought but readiness to take responsibility that is the mainspring of action.” * The price of greatness is responsibility. Winston Churchill, in speech at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. (Sep. 6, 1943)QUOTE NOTE: Churchill was referring to America here. His belief resulted from America’s decision to enter WWII. He continued: “If the people of the United States had continued…absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilized world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.” * We can win the struggle to avoid responsibility for our personal lives, but if we do, what we lose is our lives. Jo Coudert, in Advice From a Failure (1965) * To give up responsibility for our lives is not healthy. Michael Crichton, “Heart Attack!” in Travels (1988) * I notice that when people have no sense of responsibility, you call them either criminals or geniuses. Margaret Deland, the character William King speaking, in The Awakening of Helena Richie (1906) * Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs. Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect,” in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) * If you can put the question, “Am I or am I not responsible for my acts” then you are responsible. Fyodor Dostoevsky, quoted in a 1982 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined) * Rank does not confer privileges; it entails responsibilities. Peter Drucker, describing the Japanese view of management, in Managing for the Future (1992) * It is not size or age or childishness that separates children from adults. It is “responsibility.” Jules Feiffer, in The Great Comic Book Heroes (1965) * Whatever the cost in personal relationships, we discover that our highest responsibility, finally, unavoidably is the stewardship of our potential—being all that we can be. Marilyn Ferguson, in The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980) * Responsiblity is the great developer of men. Mary Parker Follett, quoted in Henry C. Metcalf and L. Urwick, Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett (1941) * Power’s twin is responsibility. Willa Gibbs, from a character in The Twelfth Physician (1954) * Man’s responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases. André Gide, journal entry (Sep. 27, 1940), in Journals: 1939–1949 (Vol. 4; 1951) * Responsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity. Nadine Gordimer, in University of Michigan lecture (Oct. 12, 1984); reprinted in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (1985; S. M. McMurrin, ed.) * Perhaps we have been misguided into taking too much responsibility from our children, leaving them too little room for discovery. Helen Hayes, in A Gift of Joy (1965; with Lewis Funk) * Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader. Hermann Hesse, in Lektüre für Minuten [Reading for Minutes] (1971) * Responsibility is the price of freedom. Elbert Hubbard, in Hollyhocks and Goldenglow (1912)QUOTE NOTE: This is how the quotation is typically presented, but it was originally part of a larger thought: “To act in absolute freedom, and at the same time realize that responsibility is the price of freedom, is salvation.” Almost a half century later, the Greek classicist Edith Hamilton echoed the theme. Writing in The Echo of Greece (1957), she wrote: “Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.” * Responsibility has more salvation in it than religion can bestow. Alice Hubbard, in Woman’s Work: Being an Inquiry and an Assumption (1908) * Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them. Elbert Hubbard, “J. B. Runs Things,” in Queen of the Porch: And Other Droll Stories (1920) * Some shrugged their shoulders as if to shake off whatever chips of responsibility might have lodged there. Helen Hudson, in Meyer Meyer (1967) * Responsibilities develop us and enable us to grow in stature. If we are deprived of them our personality dwindles. Anne Huré, from a character in The Two Nuns (1962) * No matter how lofty you are in your department, the responsiblity for what your lowliest assistant is doing is yours. Bessie Rowland James, quoted in Adlai E. Stevenson, Adlai’s Almanac: The Wit and Wisdom of Stevenson of Illinois (1952) * Once you have discovered what is happening, you can’t pretend not to know, you can’t abdicate responsibility. Knowledge always brings responsibility. P. D. James, quoted by Molly Ivins in a Dallas Times Herald column (May 3, 1992); reprinted in Molly Ivins, Nothin’ But Good Times Ahead (1993) * Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. Erica Jong, in How To Save Your Own Life (1977)ERROR ALERT: This observation is presented in a multitude of mistaken ways on Internet sites and in published quotation anthologies.QUOTE NOTE: This ironic thought comes to protagonist Isadora Wing as she reflects on her reasons for staying in a marriage long after the love was gone. She began by thinking: “How wonderful to have someone to blame! How wonderful to live with one’s nemesis! You may be miserable, but you feel forever in the right. You may be fragmented, but you feel absolved of all the blame for it.” * For in a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, “holds office;” every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve. John F. Kennedy, in Profiles in Courage (1956) * Once you know something is wrong, you're responsible, whether you see it, or hear about it, and most particularly when you're a part of it. M. E. Kerr, grandfather Boyle speaking, in Gentlehands (1978) * Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I will be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds. Louis L’Amour, a reflection of narrator and protagonist Mathurin Kerbouchard, in The Walking Drum (1984)Kerbouchard introduced the thought by saying: “Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be.” * No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, in More Unkempt Thoughts (1964) * You cannot blame everything on the enemy. Ursula K. Le Guin, the voice of the narrator, from the short story “The New Atlantis” (1975); in The Compass Rose: Stories (1982) * I’ll clue you in on a secret: death is not the worst thing that could happen to you. I know we think that; we are the first society ever to think that. It’s not worse than dishonor; it’s not worse than losing your freedom; it’s not worse than losing a sense of personal responsibility. Bill Maher, in Be More Cynical (2000) * We are responsible for actions performed in response to circ*mstances for which we are not responsible. Allan Massie, a reflection of narrator Etienne de Balafré as he thinks about his father, in A Question of Loyalties (1989) * The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority. Stanley Milgram, in Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974)Milgram, a Yale psychologist who did pioneering research on obedience and submission to authority, introduced the thought by writing: “The most common adjustment of thought in the obedient subject is for him to see himself as not responsible for his own actions. He divests himself of responsibility…He sees himself not as a person acting in a morally accountable way but as the agent of external authority.” * If you want to let them steal your mind and organize you as if you were an infant I suppose that is your affair. All I say is that only lies and evil come from letting people off. Iris Murdoch, the character Dr. Honor Klein speaking, in A Severed Head (1961) * I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair. Anaïs Nin, a 1935 entry, in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 2 (1967) * By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom. M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Travelled (1978) * Nationalism appeals to our tribal instincts, to passion and to prejudice, and to our nostalgic desire to be relieved from the strain of individual responsibility which it attempts to replace by a collective or group responsibility. Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) * I despise irresponsible people. I don’t want to deal with them or help them in any way, An irresponsible person is a person who makes vague promises, then breaks his word, blames it on circ*mstances and expects other people to forgive it. Ayn Rand, in a 1949 letter to her niece, Connie Papurt; in Michael S. Berliner, Letters of Ayn Rand (1995)Rand continued: “A responsible person does not make a promise without thinking of all the consequences and being prepared to meet them * I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in “I Believe” radio broadcast for the USO and National War Fund (July 8, 1941) * We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.” Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes. Fred Rogers, in Revisiting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (2016; Kathy Merlock Jackson and Steven M. Emmanuel, eds.) * Curiously enough, it is often the people who refuse to assume any responsibility who are apt to be the sharpest critics of those who do. Eleanor Roosevelt, in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (1960) * Power brings with it responsibility. You cannot have power to work well without having so much power as to be able to work ill. Theodore Roosevelt, in speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Sep. 7, 1910) * To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Wind, Sand, and Stars (1939)Saint-Exupéry added: “It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one’s comrades. It is to feel, when setting one’s stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.” * There are all kinds of flights from responsibility. There is a flight into death, a flight into sickness, and finally a flight into stupidity. Arthur Schnitzler, in Book of Thoughts and Second Sayings (1927)Schnitzler added: “The last is the least dangerous and most comfortable, because even for clever people the way tends not to be as far removed as they might like to think it is.” * In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. Delmore Schwartz, title of short story, Partisan Review (Dec., 1937)QUOTE NOTE: Often regarded as one of Schwarz’s most influential short stories, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” was written over a July weekend in 1935 when the author was only twenty-one, and published two and a half years later in Partisan Review’s very first issue as a literary magazine (Vladimir Nabokov had read and recommended publication of the story). Schwartz borrowed the title from William Butler Yeats, who used “In dreams begin responsibility” as the epigraph for his 1914 volume of poems Responsibilities (Yeats said he got the line from “An old play,” but did not provide the title). The entire Partisan Review issue, including Schwarz’s short story, may be seen at Partisan Review * Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. George Bernard Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists: Liberty and Equality,” in Man and Superman (1903) * It is impossible to get the measure of what an individual can accomplish unless the responsibility is given him. Alfred P. Sloan, “Modern Ideas of the Big Business World,” in Work magazine (Oct., 1926) * Too many people in positions of responsibility act as if these are just positions of opportunity—for themselves. Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts,” in Townhall.com (May 1, 2007) * Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Solitude of Self,” an address to Judiciary Committee of the U. S. Congress (Jan. 18, 1892); reprinted in The Woman’s Column (1892)Stanton added: “Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty, the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family, and position.” * One part of the science of living is to learn just what our own responsibility is, and to let other people’s alone. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the character Mr. Bolton speaking, in My Wife and I (1871) * There comes a time when we aren’t allowed not to know. Judith Viorst, in Necessary Losses (1986) * Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. Booker T. Washington, in Up From Slavery: An Autobiography (1901) * Part of having a strong sense of self is to be accountable for one’s actions. No matter how much we explore motives or lack of motives, we are what we do. Janet Geringer Woititz, in Adult Children of Alcoholics (1983) * Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own (1929)===== REST =====(see also IDLENESS and LEISURE and REPOSE and RESTFULNESS and RESTLESSNESS and WORK) * We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and, when got, the repose is insupportable. Henry Brooks Adams, in The Education of Henry Adams (1907) QUOTE NOTE: Adams was almost certainly inspired by a similar Pascal observation, to be seen below. * One cannot rest except after steady practice. George Ade, “The Man Who Was Going to Retire,” in Forty Modern Fables (1901) * If you rest, you rust. Helen Hayes, in My Life in Three Acts (1990; with Katherine Hatch) * Too much rest itself becomes a pain. Homer, in the Odyssey (9th c. B.C.) * All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces. Blaise Pascal, in Pensées (1670) * Rest is the sauce of labor. Plutarch, “The Education of Children,” in Moralia (1st c. A.D.) * Rest is not a word of free peoples—/Rest is a monarchical word. Carl Sandburg, “Is There Any Easy Road to Freedom?” in Complete Poems (1950)===== RESTFULNESS =====(see also REST and RESTLESSNESS) * Restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active, life is alert. Robert Louis Stevenson, “Talk and Talkers” (1882), in Memories and Portraits (1887)===== RESTLESSNESS =====(see also IMPATIENCE and REST and RESTFULNESS and STILLNESS and WAITING) * A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. Charlotte Brontë, a reflection of narrator and protagonist William Crimsworth, in The Professor: A Tale (1846; pub. posthumously in 1857) * I’ve never known anyone yet who doesn’t suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around. Sue Grafton, “Long Gone,” in Marilyn Wallace, Sisters in Crime 4 (1991)Grafton went on to add: “We’re all eight years old again and anything is possible.” * I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness. Dodie Smith, in I Capture the Castle (1948)===== RETAIL =====(see also BUSINESS & BUSINESS PEOPLE and CUSTOMERS and ENTREPRENEURS and MARKETING and MERCHANTS and MONEY and PROFIT & LOSS and RETAIL/WHOLESALE METAPHORS and SALES & SELLING and WHOLESALE) * Whoever said “retail is detail” is absolutely 100 percent right. David Glass, quoted in Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made in America (1992; with John Huey)Glass preceded the thought by saying, “So many times we overcomplicate this business…. But if you simply think like a customer, you will do a better job of merchandise presentation and selection than any other way. It’s not always easy. To think like a customer, you have to think about details.”===== RETAIL/WHOLESALE METAPHORS =====(see also metaphors involving ANIMALS, BASEBALL, BATHING & BATHS, BIRTH, BOXING & PRIZEFIGHTING, CANCER, DANCING, DARKNESS, DEATH, DISEASE, FOOTBALL, FRUIT, GARDENING, HEART, JOURNEYS, LIGHT & LIGHTNESS, MOTHERS, NAUTICAL, PARTS OF SPEECH, PATHS, PLANTS, PUNCTUATION, ROAD, NAUTICAL, SUN & MOONS, VEGETABLES, and WEIGHTS & MEASURES) * The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)QUOTE NOTE: This is one of the earliest retail/wholesale metaphors I’ve found, and I think it holds up very well more than a century after it was first made. A retail business is concerned with individual customers, of course, and the God recognized by science, according to James, was a wholesaler, not a retailer. See also the GOD section. * Neville has a retail mind in a wholesale business. David Lloyd George, a 1935 remark about Neville Chamberlain, quoted in David Dilks, Neville Chamberlain (1984)===== RETALIATION =====(see also RETRIBUTION and REVENGE and VENGEANCE) * She was one of those women who used their charge accounts for retaliation. With each crisis in their deteriorating relationship, Grorley noted gloomily, Eunice’s wardrobe had improved. Hortense Calisher, the voice of the narrator, in “A Christmas Carillon,” in The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher (1953) * Ineluctably, the insults inflicted in one war call forth new wars of retaliation, which may be waged within months of the original conflict or generations later. Barbara Ehrenreich, in Blood Rites (1997) * Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation. Doris Kearns Goodwin, “The Secrets of America’s Great Presidents,” in Parade magazine (Sep. 14, 2008)===== RETIREMENT =====(see also AGE & AGING and CAREER and VOCATION and WORK) * Retirement is an artificial finish line. Mitch Anthony, quoted in D. Shannon & D. Drucker, The One Thing…You Need To Do (2005) * Retired is being tired twice, I’ve thought/First tired of working, then tired of not. Richard Armour, in Going Like Sixty: A Lighthearted Look at the Later Years (1974)ERROR ALERT: Scores of internet sites mistakenly present the phrase twice tired rather than the correct tired twice. * Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. Louis Armstrong, quoted in THE Observer (London; April 21, 1968) * It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys. Isaac Asimov, in “Farewell—Farewell,” Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (August, 1992)QUOTE NOTE: This appeared in Asimov’s final article, written just before his death at age 72 on April 6, 1992. After writing more than 500 books, Asimov had no desire to ever retire. From all indications, he achieved his ambition of dying in the harness, but even this master of science-fiction could not have foreseen the circ*mstances surrounding his own death. While the official cause of death was listed as heart and kidney failure, it wasn't until a decade later that his widow and other family members revealed that his heart and liver problems were the result of an HIV infection contracted from a blood transfusion during a 1988 triple bypass surgery. * Retirement: the world’s longest coffee break. Author Unknown * When I retired, I found I had not enough money and too much husband. Author Unknown, quoted in Helen Foster, It’s Hard to Look Graceful When You’re Dragging Your Feet (1983) * To retire is to die a little. Eddie Cantor, quoted in Billie Burke, With Powder on My Nose (1959)QUOTE NOTE: By adding a little to the saying to retire is to die, Cantor cleverly tweaks the popular remark and makes it even more memorable. The original saying, an anonymously authored observation that goes back to the early 1900s, has been attributed to many others, including Dean Acheson, Pablo Casals, and Kirk Douglas. * Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples. George Burns, quoted in Joey Adams, Roast of the Town (1986) * The worst of work nowadays is what happens to people when they cease to work. G. K. Chesterton, in The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (1936) * How tedious is retirement! You cannot imagine to yourself the monotony with which day comes after day. Agatha Christie, the protagonist Hercule Poirot speaking, in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) * Two weeks is about the ideal length of time to retire. Alex Comfort, in A Good Age (1976) * In retirement, I look for days off from my days off. Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 11th Selection (1993) * At retirement, switching from “I must” to “I want” leaves me puzzled and uneasy. Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 11th Selection (1993) * Retirement is a one-way trip to insignificance. Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 13th Selection (1994) * Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth. Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 14th Selection (1994) * I was born and bred an adventurer, with a great zest for change and excitement—and retirement is like prison. Diana Cooper, in a 1950 letter to Evelyn Waugh, quoted in The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper (1992; Artemis Cooper, ed.) * Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement reflects this ambivalence, and it may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Coming of Age (1970)A bit later, de Beauvoir added this thought on the subject: “Retirement revives the sorrow of parting, the feeling of abandonment, solitude and uselessness that is caused by the loss of some beloved person.” * People do not retire. They are retired by others—set aside, tucked away in some category so that the retired knows where to find them at any given moment. Duke Ellington, remark made at age 75, in “A Tribute to Duke Ellington, 1899-1974,” Ebony magazine (Sep. 1974) * Retirement kills more people than hard work ever did. Malcolm Forbes, in The Further Sayings of Chairman Malcolm (1986) * Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to. Harry Emerson Fosdick, quoted in James Nelson, Wisdom for Our Time (1961) * People who refuse to rest honorably on their laurels when they reach retirement age seem very admirable to me. Helen Hayes, in My Life in Three Acts (1990; with Katherine Hatch) * For those retired, with too much time and no world, a world must be found, and not necessarily one that is heavily populated. One can join a group or work alone; the essential…is that the work be difficult, concentrated, and that definite progress can be measured. Carolyn Heilbrun, in The Last Gift of Time (1998)Heilbrun continued: “If the undertaking is not to become but another daily habit, daily donned and discarded, it requires strong effort and the evidence of growing proficiency. There is, I suppose, nothing wrong with retired people taking a course here, a course there…but this defeats the purpose, which is, I believe, to maintain a carefully directed intensity.” * Retirement is the filthiest word in the language. Ernest Hemingway, quoted in A. E. Hotchner, Papa Hemingway (1966)Hemingway, who viewed retirement as a kind of dying, preceded the observation by saying: “The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is.” And he concluded it by saying: “Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do—and what you do that makes you what you are—is to back up into the grave.”ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, and even in many respected publications, this quotation is often mistakenly presented as: “Retirement is the ugliest word in the language.” I’ve also seen it appear with the wording the most loathsome word. * When you’ve been living in the sunshine all your life, you don’t want to move into the shade. Don Hewitt, on retirement, quoted in The New York Times (April 17, 2005)QUOTE NOTE: Hewitt, executive director of CBS’s 60 Minutes for 36 years (1968–2004), was explaining why he had delayed his retirement until 2004, when he was 81 years old. Similar sentiments have been offered by numerous other people in positions of power and influence. In his autobiography Present at the Creation (1969), for example, the U. S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson echoed the die a little theme when he described his departure from public life this way: “To leave positions of great responsibility and authority is to die a little, but the time comes when that must be faced.” * Retirement, I feel, means a new adventure in living—not a stopping. Marion Hilliard, in A Woman Doctor Looks at Love and Life (1957) * It is sensible to dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing at the last, he makes the spectators laugh. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), in Epistles (1st c. B.C.)QUOTE NOTE: This was the translation favored by C. S. Lewis. The older—and still commonly cited—translation from Montaigne contained a reference to lists that has for many years been confusing to people: “Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest he fail in the lists and the spectators laugh.” * Retirement scares many because there are so few to blame if they don’t enjoy it. John O. Huston, in a personal communication to the compiler (Nov. 10, 2019) * Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn’t that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic? P. D. James, a reflection of the character Miss Blackett, in Original Sin (1994) * The love of retirement has, in all ages, adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius. Samuel Johnson, an April 10, 1750 remark, quoted in James Boswell’s Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1791) * Men and women approaching retirement age should be recycled for public service work, and their companies should foot the bill. We can no longer afford to scrap-pile people. Maggie Kuhn, “Gray Panthers versus Ageism,” in Ms. Magazine (July, 1973) * Have you ever been out for a late autumn walk in the closing part of the afternoon, and suddenly looked up to realize that the leaves have practically all gone? You hadn’t realized it. And you notice that the sun has set already, the day gone before you knew it—and with that a cold wind blows across the landscape. That’s retirement. Stephen Leaco*ck, “When Men Retire,” in Too Much College (1939)Leaco*ck began by writing, “As to this retirement business, let me give a word of advice.” He finished with these five words: “Have nothing to do with it.” * The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender. Vince Lombardi, quoted in Dave Klein, The Vince Lombardi Story (1971) * I really think that it’s better to retire…when you still have some snap left in your garters. Russell B. Long, quoted in Robert Hendrickson, American Talk: The Words and Ways of American Dialects (1986) * Retirement should be based on the tread, not the mileage. Allen Ludden, quoted in a 1972 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined) * Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time. Malcolm Muggeridge, “Twilight of Greatness,” in The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge (1966) * As in all successful ventures, the foundation of a good retirement is planning. Earl Nightingale, quoted in Ronald B. Garrison, Time Out: How to WIn in Retirement (1988) * For millions, the retirement dream is in reality an economic nightmare. For millions, growing old today means growing poor, being sick, living in substandard housing, and having to scrimp merely to subsist. Sylvia Porter, in Sylvia Porter’s Money Book (1975) * I prefer to leave standing up, like a well-mannered guest at a party. Leontyne Price, on her farewell performance, quoted in The New York Times (Dec. 32, 1984) * Whatever resources of good health, character and fortitude you bring to retirement, remember, also, to bring money. Jane Bryant Quinn, in Making the Most of Your Money (1991)Quinn preceded the thought by writing: “It’s daring and challenging to be young and poor, but never to be old and poor.” * The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. William Safire, “Never Retire,” in The New York Times (Jan. 24, 2005)Safire continued: “We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.” * My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can’t. Beverly Sills, quoted in Time magazine (July 18, 1983)QUOTE NOTE: Sills, who was 54 when she made the remark, retired from her singing career in 1980 to become General Manager of The New York City Opera. She later went on to serve as Chairman of the Board for both Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera. The Time profile reported that “She does not sing at all now, not even in the shower.” * The only thing wrong about retirement is that you don’t have a job. Wes Reynolds, a personal communication to the compiler (Nov. 1, 2015) * In retirement, the passage of time seems accelerated. Nothing warns us of its flight. It is a wave which never murmurs, because there is no obstacle to its flow. Anne Sophie Swetchine, in The Writings of Madame Swetchine (1869; Count de Falloux, ed.) * As to that leisure evening of life, I must say that I do not want it. I can conceive of no contentment of which toil is not to be the immediate parent. Francis Trollope, in a June 1876 letter to G. W. Rusden; quoted in The Letters of Anthony Trollope (1983; N. John Hall, ed.) * It was like walking down a red carpet and then turning to find the attendants rolling it up behind you. Anne Tyler, on retirement, in Digging to America (2007) * Retirement, we understand, is great if you are busy, rich, and healthy. But then, under those conditions, work is great too. Bill Vaughan, quoted in a 1972 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined) ===== RETRIBUTION =====(see also RETALIATION and REVENGE and VENGEANCE) * There is a law of retribution in all things, direct or indirect, visible or invisible. Miles Franklin (pen name of Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin), in Some Everyday Folk and Dawn (1909) * There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon, and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster…. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep. Meg Greenfield, “The Rope and the Rack,” in Newsweek (March 17, 1991)===== [No] RETURN =====(includes POINT OF NO RETURN) * Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached. Franz Kafka, notebook entry #5 (written 1917-18), in The Zürau Aphorisms (original published posthumously in 1931 by Kafka friend Max Brod under the title Reflections of Sin, Hope Suffering, and the True Way)QUOTE NOTE: This observation has also been commonly translated: “From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached” (this is the version Max Lerner featured in his 1959 book The Unfinished Country).===== REVELATION =====(includes [Divine] REVELATION; see also EPIPANY and INSIGHT and INSPIRATION and KNOWING and VISION) * Revelation is the marriage of knowing and feeling. Marya Mannes, in They (1968)===== REVENGE =====(includes VENGEANCE; see also ANGER and ANIMOSITY and ANTIPATHY and BITTERNESS and EMOTION and ENMITY and FEAR and HATE and HOSTILITY and LOVE & HATE and RAGE and RESENTMENT) * Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge,” in Essays (1625)A moment later in the essay, Bacon went on to write: “In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.” * This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well. Francis Bacon, “Of Revenge,” in Essays (1625)ERROR ALERT: Numerous internet sites mistakenly attribute this sentiment to John Milton, usually in the following phrasing: “He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.” This latter version has also long been attributed to Francis Bacon, but it appears to be a paraphrase of his original thought, written sometime after Bacon’s death by his publisher. For more, see this 2014 post by quotation sleuth Sue Brewton. * There is no passion of the human heart that promises so much, and pays so little, as revenge. Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw), in The Complete Works of Josh Billings (1873)Billings’ original phonetic version was as follows: “Thare iz no pashun ov the human heart that promises so much and pays so little az revenge.” * Revenge was a very wild kind of justice. Elizabeth Bowen, the voice of the narrator, in the short story “Making Arrangmenets,” in Ann Lee’s: Other Stories (1926) * It may be that vengeance is sweet, and that the gods forbade vengeance to men because they reserved for themselves so delicious and intoxicating a drink. But no one should drain the cup to the bottom. The dregs are often filthy-tasting. Winston Churchill, in The River War (1899) * Vengeance is a need, the most intense and profound of all, and…each man must satisfy it, if only in words. If we stifle that need, we expose ourselves to certain disturbances. More than one disorder—perhaps all disorders—derive from a vengeance too long postponed. E. M. Cioran, in The Trouble With Being Born (1973)Cioran continued: “We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage.” * A woman’s desire for revenge outlasts all her other emotions. Cyril Connolly in The Unquiet Grave (1945) * “Revenge,” I shrieked, groping to remember the affront.Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms (1984) * Revenge is sweet but not nourishing, Mason Cooley, in City Aphorisms, 4th Selection (1987) * I took Revenge, for I had suffered long,/And my small Right became enormous Wrong. Arthur Guiterman, in A Poet’s Proverbs (1924) * Revenge is always the pleasure of a paltry, feeble, tiny mind. Juvenal, in Satires (c. 100 A.D.) * The best revenge is not to be like your enemy. Marcus Aurelius, in Meditations (2nd c. A.D.) * Growing up is the best revenge. Judith Martin, in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior: Freshly Updated (2005) * Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you. Austin O’Malley, in Keystones of Thought (1914) * Living well is the best revenge. Proverb (English) * Revenge is a dish best served cold. Proverb (Modern)QUOTE NOTE: This is an updated version of a proverbial saying that first appeared in print in 1870: “Revenge is a dish that can be eaten cold.” Early versions of the sentiment almost always used some variation of eaten cold, but in modern usage that phrase has been almost completely displaced by served cold. * To crave revenge is to fall down before one’s enemy and eat dust at his feet. What worse can we let him do to us? Mary Renault, the character Dion speaking, in The Mask of Apollo (1966)Dion continued: “In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.” * Revenge is barren. Of itself it makes/The dreadful food it feeds on; its delight/Is murder—its satiety despair. Johann Friedrich von Schiller, the character Walter Furst speaking, in Wilhelm Tell (1804)===== REVERIE =====(see also ESCAPE & ESCAPISM and MEMORY and NOSTALGIA and PAST) * When ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie; our language has scarce a name for it. John Locke, “Of the Modes of Thinking,” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly present the observation as if it were worded: “Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.” It’s difficult to comprehend, but this mistake has been perpetuated for more than 250 years! It all began in 1755, when Dr. Samuel Johnson presented the erroneous version in the revery entry of his classic A Dictionary of the English Language. * Nostalgic reverie, like amorous fantasy, belongs in the category of escape. James Thurber, “Let Us Be Up and Doing,” the first of six articles on “The Time of Your Life,” written for the Associated Press (Aug, 21, 1961)===== REVIEWERS & REVIEWS =====(see also APPRAISAL and ASSESSMENT and CRITICS and CRITICISM and JUDGMENT and INTERPRETATION) * A bad review may spoil your breakfast but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch. Kingsley Amis, quoted in Giles Gordon, Aren’t We Due a Royalty Statement? (1993) * One cannot review a bad book without showing off. W. H. Auden, “Reading,” in The Dyer’s Hand (1962) * A bad review by a man I admire hurts terribly. Anthony Burgess, in Paris Review interview (Spring, 1973) * The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn’t deserve it, give it to him anyhow. John Ciardi, on reviewers and critics, from “The Reviewer’s Duty to Damn,” in Saturday Review (Feb. 16, 1957) * Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, biographers…if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn to critics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lecture I, in Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton (1811–1812)QUOTE NOTE: You should know that Coleridge originally wrote, “biographers, &c., if they could,” employing the then-popular shortening of the term and et cetera. His observation likely inspired Disraeli’s famous line that critics “are men who have failed in literature and art” (to be found in CRITICS). * Every good reviewer has a subject. He specializes in that subject on which he has not been able to write a book, and his aim is to see that no one else does. He stands behind the ticket-queue of fame, banging his rivals on the head as they bend low before the guichet. Cyril Connolly, in The Condemned Playground: Essays, !927–1944 (1946)QUOTE NOTE: The French word guichet (GEE-shay) refers to a ticket office or a counter at which one purchases tickets for admission. In Thomas Fleming’s 1985 New York Times article on the war between writers and reviewers (see the Fleming entry below), he paraphrased Connolly’s metaphor this way: “Once writers trembled before professional reviewers, those ogres whom the British critic Cyril Connolly described as standing at the ticket window of fame, banging authors on the head.” * Book reviews should persuade, inform, and, above all, entertain readers. And nothing is as entertaining as the well-turned barb. Bill Eichenberger, “Nasty Reviews,” in 1998 issue of The Columbus Dispatch (specific date undetermined); reprinted in The National Book Critics Circle Journal (Aug., 1998) * Whether written by fellow writers or professional reviewers, the all-out assault is what every writer dreads. I have heard it described in various ways—snide, dismissive, insulting. Let us call it, for the sake of hyperbole, the ground-zero review. In it, the writer is often urged to seek another line of work. Thomas Fleming, “The War Between Writers and Reviewers,” in The New York Times Sunday Book Review (Jan. 6, 1985)QUOTE NOTE: Earlier in the piece, Fleming—the author of fourteen novels at the time—wrote: “Actors yearn for the perfect director, athletes for the perfect coach, priests for the perfect pope, presidents for the perfect historian. Writers hunger for the perfect reviewer.” The full article may be seen at: Sunday Book Review. * Authors of some rhetorical sophistication know that a reviewer has an obligation that goes beyond deposing accurately and justly on the contents and value of the book in hand: he has an obligation to be interesting, which means, variously, funny, dramatic, significant, outraged, or winning. Paul Fussell, “Being Reviewed,” in The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Observations (1982)Fussell added: “The reviewer is writing an essay, and the book in question is only one element of his material. No editor wants to publish a dull review, no matter how just.” * I subscribe to the theory that a good review makes you feel good for seven minutes, and a bad review makes you feel miserable for seven years. Mary Gordon, quoted in Robin Finn, ”When Piety Meets Creativity, in Longhand”, The New York Times (March 9, 2007) * Adverse book reviews there have always been, and always should be, lest a tide of good intentions rise to drown us all in worthy sludge. Clive James, “The Good of a Bad Review,” in The New York Times (Sep. 7, 2003)QUOTE NOTE: James’s article was primarily focused on especially harsh or “killingly negative” reviews, in which the reviewer’s motivation is “not merely snide but outright murderous.” James went on to write: “Since a good book can certainly be injured by a bad review, especially if the critic is in a position of influence, the distinction between the snark and the legitimately destructive review is well worth having.” * A book review is a scene of judgment, with one body in the judge’s chair, the other in the defendant’s. Wayne Koestenbaum, “Why Bully Literature?” in Maurice Berger, ed., The Crisis of Criticism (1998) * Nature fits all her children with something to do,/He who would write and can’t write can surely review. James Russell Lowell, in A Fable for Critics (1848) * A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside there dwells a frail, hopeful butterfly of a spirit. Joyce Carol Oates, on critical reviews, in Paris Review interview (Fall-Winter 1978) * Book reviewing in America is a hybrid occupation. Part trade and part profession, part art and part craft, part literature and part journalism, it lies somewhere between the outskirts of the work and the fringes of the world of letters. Gail Pool, in Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (2007) * Receiving a bad review is like being spat on by a complete stranger in Times Square. Wilfrid Sheed, “The Good Word: The Politics of Reviewing,” in The New York Times Book Review (Feb. 7, 1971)Later in the article, Sheed wrote: “A novelist can probably only hurt himself by reviewing other novelists. He looks ugly stalking a lodge brother; and uglier still, fawning on one. Flattery is pathetically easy to spot, however sly you may think you're being about it.” * I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so. Sydney Smith, quoted in Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934) * A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients and having someone sit on it. Danielle Steel, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 21, 1982) * I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split. Kurt Vonnegut, “The Rocky Graziano of American Letters,” speech in honor of Irwin Shaw at the Players’ Club, New York City (Oct. 7, 1979); reprinted in Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (1981)ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites featuring the quotation omit the “or a play or a poem” portion of the first sentence.===== REVISING & REWRITING =====(see also AUTHORS and BOOKS and EDITORS & EDITING and WRITERS and WRITING) * I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. Truman Capote, on editing his work, quoted in Lawrence Grobel, Conversations with Capote (1985) * Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, Sir. Emily Dickinson, in letter to T. W. Higginson (July, 1862) * A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done. Peter F. Drucker, on magazine and newspaper editors, in Adventures of a Bystander (1978) Drucker preceded the observation by writing: “Good editors are not ‘permissive’; they do not let their colleagues do ‘their thing’; they make sure that everybody does the ‘paper’s thing’.” * The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat. Robert Heinlein, quoted in William Safire & Leonard Safir, Good Advice on Writing (1992) * The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, sh*t detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. Ernest Hemingway, in Paris Review interview (Spring, 1958) * In writing as in gardening, prune prune prune. Sollace Mitchell, in a personal communication to the compiler (May 28, 2023) * My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself. Joyce Carol Oates, in Paris Review interview (Fall-Winter 1978) * All writers know how hard it is to practice tough love on the children of our verbiage. Kick, the silly, labored metaphor out of the house. P. J. O’Rourke, “Computers Invite a Tangled Web of Complications,” The New York Times (Oct. 8, 2001)QUOTE NOTE: According to O’Rourke, it’s always difficult to edit one’s first drafts, but it’s even more difficult for those using a computer rather than typewriter. About that silly, labored metaphor mentioned above, he wrote: “But with a computer, that metaphor is back by dinner time, claiming a rightful place in the family of the final draft.” * If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” Arthur Quiller-Couch, in On the Art of Writing (1916) QUOTE NOTE: Quiller-Couch’s recommendation was likely inspired by a valuable piece of writing advice that Dr. Samuel Johnson said he received from his college tutor: “Read over your compositions and where ever (sic) you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), Stephen King echoed Quiller-Couch’s admonition: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” * Revise, revise, revise. I cannot stress this enough. Revision is when you do what you should have done the first time, but didn’t. Colson Whitehead, “How to Write,” in The New York Times (July 26, 2012)Whitehead added: “It’s like washing the dishes two days later instead of right after you finish eating.” * It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. Frank Yerby, in Harvey Breit, “Talk With Frank Yerby,” New York Times Book Review (May 13, 1951) Yerby added: “A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn’t advance the story.” * Fighting clutter is like fighting weeds—the writer is always slightly behind. New varieties sprout overnight, and by noon they are part of American speech. William Zinsser, in On Writing Well (2006; 30th Anniversary Edition)A little earlier in the book, Zinsser had written: “Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.”===== REVOLUTION & REVOLUTIONARIES =====(includes REVOLT; see also DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE and DICTATORS & DICTATORSHIP and FREEDOM and LIBERTY and OPPRESSION and REBELLION and REFORM & REFORMERS and REPRESSION and RESISTANCE and REVOLUTIONARY WAR) * Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Hannah Arendt, “Thoughts on Politics and Revolution: A Commentary,” a 1970 interview with Adelbert Reif; reported in The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (2013)Arendt continued: “Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.” * It is well known that the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. Hannah Arendt, “Civil Disobedience,” in Crises of the Republic (1972) * Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions. Aristotle, in Politics (4th c. B.C.) * Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Author UnknownQUOTE NOTE: For nearly a century, this saying has become something of a catchphrase for revolutionaries everywhere. According to the Yale Book of Quotations, the saying “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees” appeared for the first time in a June 4, 1925 issue of the Appleton (Wisconsin) Post Crescent, where it was cited as a Mexican aphorism. Many people believe the saying originated with Emiliano Zapata 1879–1919), the Mexican revolutionary leader, but nothing even close to the saying has ever been found in his works.The first documented appearance of a person actually delivering the line occurred during the Spanish Civil War. In a radio broadcast on July 18, 1936, the Spanish rebel leader Dolores Ibarruri (1895-1989) said: “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” Versions of the saying have been attributed to many other people over the years, including one to Winston Churchill in U. S. Congressional testimony in 1951, but the original author remains unknown. * If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire. Francis Bacon, “Of Seditions and Troubles,” in Essays (1625) * All revolutions are treason until they are accomplished. Amelia E. Barr, in The Bow of Orange Ribbon (1886) * Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) * Revolutions are born of hope. Crane Brinton, in The Anatomy of a Revolution (1952) * A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, in a 1866 House of Commons speech on the Reform Bill * We must not forget that all great revolutions and reformations would look mean and meager if examined in detail as they occurred at the time. Lydia Maria Child, in letter to George W. Julian (April 8, 1865), in Letters of Lydia Maria Child (1882) * Rhetoric never won a revolution yet. Shirley Chisholm, in Unbought and Unbossed (1970) * All oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters. Henry Clay, in address to the U.S. House of Representatives (March 24, 1818) * Every revolution has had its honest men. They are soon disposed of afterwards. Agatha Christie, the character Boris speaking, in The Secret Adversary (1922)He preceded the thought by saying, “It is curious—but you cannot make a revolution without honest men.” * In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end. Alexis de Tocqueville, in Recollections (pub. posthumously, 1893)QUOTE NOTE: This work, though presented as a memoir, was largely based on a private journal kept during the Revolution of 1848. It was put together several decades after de Toqueville’s 1859 death by his widow and his close friend Gustave de Beaumont. The passage has also been commonly translated: “In a rebellion, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.” * All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. Havelock Ellis, in Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922) * Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “History,” in Essays: First Series (1841) * The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal. Erich Fromm, in Escape from Freedom (1941) * All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. John Kenneth Galbraith, in The Age of Uncertainty (1977)Galbraith continued: “The violence of revolutions is the violence of men charging into a vacuum.” * A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a remark in conversation (Jan. 24, 1824), in Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe (1836) * Revolution is the festival of the oppressed. Germaine Greer, in The Female Eunuch (1970)Greer introduced the remark by writing: “The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle.” * The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses. Alexander Hamilton, “Philo Camillus No. 3” in The Argus, or Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser (New York; Aug. 12, 1795) * Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong. Carolyn Heilbrun, in Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (1973) * It is not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people to revolt. Eric Hoffer, in The True Believer (1951) * We used to think that revolution is the cause of change. Actually, it is the other way around: revolution is a by-product of change. Change comes first, and it is the difficulties and irritations inherent in change that set the stage for revolution. Eric Hoffer, “The Madhouse of Change,” The Los Angeles Times (Nov. 6, 1967)Hoffer continued: “To say that revolution is the cause of change is like saying juvenile delinquency is the cause of the change from boyhood to manhood.” * The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced. Victor Hugo, the old revolutionary speaking, in Les Misérables (1862) * “When you talk of revolution,” Jamie said, “you never talk of the day after.” Storm Jameson, the character Jamie Denman speaking, in The Clash (1922) * A revolution requires of its leaders a record of unbroken infallibility; if they do not possess it, they are expected to invent it. Murray Kempton, in Part of Our Time: Some Ruins & Monuments of the Thirties (1955) * You cannot make a revolution in white gloves. Vladimir Lenin, a 1919 remark to Peter Kropotkin; quoted in Tamara Deutsche, Not by Politics Alone: The Other Lenin (1973) * A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. Mao Zedong, written in March, 1927; reprinted in Selected Works, Vol. 1 (1954)Mao continued: “A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” * The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal. Erich Fromm, in Escape From Freedom (1941) * A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets. Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), quoted in Edouard Guillon, Napoléon et la Suisse, 1803–1815 (1910) * No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions, especially in the arts, which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand. George Sand, in a “Notice” from the author, at the beginning of The Haunted Pool (1851; orig. pub. in France under the title La Mare au diable) * A successful revolution begins to develop a stake in the status quo. Arthur M. Schlesinger, in The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, 1941–1966 (1967)A bit earlier, Schlesinger offered this lovely example of chiasmus: “While revolutions at first may devour their children, in the end the children sometimes devour their revolution.” * Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder. George Bernard Shaw, in Preface to “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” Man and Superman (1903) * Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. Barbara W. Tuchman, in Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–1945 (1971)QUOTE NOTE: In her book, which won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, Tuchman described this as “history’s most melancholy tale.” * Revolutions have never succeeded unless the establishment does three-quarters of the work. Peter Ustinov, in Dear Me (1977) * The seed of revolution is repression. Woodrow Wilson, in address to the U.S. Congress (Dec. 2, 1919) * When people do not feel they have a place at the table, they turn it over. J. Peder Zane, on political revolutions, “Point of View: Dangerous Disdain,” in The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC; July 6, 2016)QUOTE NOTE: When experts and cultural elites disdain or demonize popular sentiment, they’re often shocked at what ultimately transpires, according to Zane. As examples, he cites the many pundits who predicted with great assurance that England would never leave the European Union or Donald Trump would never become the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.===== REWARD & REWARDS =====(see also BENEFIT and [Fringe] BENEFIT and COMPENSATION and CONSEQUENCE and PAYOFF and REWARDS & PUNSIHMENT and RISK and WAGES) * The rewards come to those who travel the second, undemanded mile. Bruce Barton, in The Man and the Book Nobody Knows (1959) * Risk always brings its own rewards: the exhilaration of breaking through, of getting to the other side; the relief of a conflict healed; the clarity when a paradox dissolves. Marilyn Ferguson, in The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980)Ferguson continued: “Whoever teaches us this is the agent of our liberation. Eventually we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.” * The man who knows it can’t be done counts the risk, not the reward. Elbert Hubbard, in The Fra magazine (March, 1910)Hubbard continued: “He shrinks before he thinks—quits before he hits—succumbs to fright before he makes his fight.” * Virtue is its own reward. Ovid, in Ex Ponto (1st c. A.D.)QUOTE NOTE: This appears to be the original source of one of history’s most famous proverbs===== RHODE ISLAND =====(see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA—SPECIFIC STATES)===== RHYME =====(see also POEM and POETRY and POETS and POETS—ON THEMSELVES and POETS—DESCRIBED BY OTHERS and SONNETS and VERSE) * As soon as war is declared it will be impossible to hold the poets back. Rhyme is still the most effective drum. Jean Giraudoux, the character Hecuba speaking, in Tiger at the Gates (1935)===== RHYTHM =====(see also DANCE and MOVEMENT and MUSIC & MUSICIANS and SOUND) * One should always act from one’s inner sense of rhythm. Rosamond Lehmann, in The Ballad and the Source (1945) * Rhythm might be described as, to the world of sound, what light is to the world of sight. Edith Sitwell, in Taken Care Of (1965)===== RICH & POOR =====(see ARISTOCRACY & ARISTOCRATS and CASH and CLASS and MILLIONAIRES & BILLIONAIRES and MONEY and POVERTY & THE POOR and RICH & RICHES and WEALTH) * It could be argued that the unrelenting compulsion of those who already have much to acquire even more has generated greater injustice, immorality and wretchedness than the cumulative effect of the struggles of the severely underprivileged to better their lot. Aung San Suu Kyi, in Freedom From Fear and Other Writings (1995)She preceded the thought by writing: “While it is undeniable that many have been driven to immorality and crime by the need to survive, it is equally evident that the possession of a significant surplus of material goods has never been a guarantee against covetousness, rapacity and the infinite variety of vice and pain which spring from such passions.” * Has it ever occurred to you, that the rich are at the mercy of the poor, not the poor at that of the rich? Who permits us to be rich if not the poor? Gertrude Atherton, in Los Cerritos (1890) * The rich and powerful want to believe in their right to be rich and powerful, so they justify it by saying they are inherently superior to the poor and lowly. Gwen Bristow, in Tomorrow Is Forever (1943) * For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity. Charlotte Brontë, the voice of the narrator, in Shirley (1849) * The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. Andrew Carnegie, the opening line of the essay “Wealth,” in North American Review (June, 1889) * The greatest and the most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least—the privilege of making them happy. Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820) * There are two kinds of people in the world: those who live poor on a lot and those who live rich on a little. Marcelene Cox, in a 1946 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal (specific issue undetermined) * The rich are never threatened by the poor—they do not notice them. Marie de France, in Medieval Fables of Marie de France (1981; Jeanette Beer, ed.) * The rich and the poor of this world are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other. Isak Dinesen, “A Consolatory Tale,” in Winter’s Tales (1942) * To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. W. E. B. Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) * The poor never estimate as a virtue the generosity of the rich. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, in Aphorisms (1880) * The poor man wishes to conceal his poverty, and the rich man his wealth: the former fears lest he be despised, the latter lest he be plundered. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, in Aphorisms (1880) * Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of ‘traditional values’ installed. Barbara Ehrenreich, “Introduction: Family Values,” in The Worst Years of Our Lives (1990)Ehrenreich explained: “The poor and the middle class were shaken down, and their loose change funneled blithely upwards to the already overfed.” * Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means—one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies. “They’ve got the money for it,” as the girl said of her mistress who had made herself ill with pickled salmon. George Eliot, “Janet’s Repentance,” in Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) * Rich men feel misfortunes that fly over poor men’s heads. Thomas Fuller, M.D., in Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (1732) * The Pleasures of the Rich are bought with the Tears of the Poor. Thomas Fuller, M.D., in Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (1732) * Without peace there can be no prosperity for any people, rich or poor. And yet, there can be no peace without erasing the harshness of the growing contrast between the rich and the poor. Indira Gandhi, in Indira Gandhi: Speeches and Writings (1975) * The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for errors; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes. Marguerite Gardiner (Lady Blessington), in Desultory Thoughts and Reflections (1839) * Don’t think to come over me with th’ old tale, that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don’t know, they ought to know. Elizabeth Gaskell, the character John Barton speaking, in Mary Barton (1848) * The world’s fat is badly divided. Martha Gellhorn, “Journey Through a Peaceful Land,” in The New Republic (June-August, 1947) * One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged. Richard Hofstadter, in The Age of Reform (1955) * Wouldn’t you think some sociologist would have done a comparative study by now to prove, as I have always suspected, that there is a higher proportion of Undeserving Rich than Undeserving Poor? Molly Ivins, “Reindeer Are Counted Better Than Homeless,” in Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Dec. 22, 1992) * One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. Molly Ivins, in her syndicated column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (April 26, 2000)Ivins continued: “The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn’t waste a lot of time thinking about the people who built their pyramids, either. OK, so it’s not that bad yet—but it’s getting that bad.” * It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing. Helen Keller, in Helen Keller’s Journal (1938)QUOTE NOTE: This quotation has been often cited in discussions of the rich and the poor, but it was originally offered in a very different context. Here the full original thought: “As it is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing, so it requires incessant labor to win champions among the seeing for the sightless.” * Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it. Fran Lebowitz, quoted in James Atlas, “What They Look Like to the Rest of Us,” in New York Times Magazine (Nov. 19, 1995) * To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there’s more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of welfare [recipients]. Norman Mailer, “Searching for Deliverance,” in Esquire magazine (Aug., 1996)ERROR ALERT: Almost all Internet sites mistakenly present the quotation as if it ended with the phrase “among the ranks of the disadvantaged.” * Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. Herman Melville, a reflection of the unnamed narrator, a poor farmer who has just returned from a visit to his well-to-do neighbor, in the short story “Poor Man’s Pudding,” (1854) * The only incurable troubles of the rich are troubles that money can’t cure,/Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor. Ogden Nash, “The Terrible People,” in Verses from 1929 On (1959) * When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. Thomas Paine, in Letter to the Addressers of the Late Proclamation (1792). Also an example of double chiasmus. * Short of genius, a rich man cannot imagine poverty. Charles Péguy, “Socialism and the Modern World,” in Basic Verities (1943) * If the rich could hire others to die for them, the poor could make a nice living. Proverb (Yiddish) * The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his second inaugural address (Jan. 20, 1937) * It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocket-book often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a Brooklyn, New York speech (Nov. 1, 1940) * For those who have lived on the edge of poverty all their lives, the semblance of poverty affected by the affluent is both incomprehensible and insulting. Lillian Rubin, in Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working Class Family (1976) * The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man. George Bernard Shaw, “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” in Man and Superman (1903) * The difference between rich and poor…is that the poor do everything with their own hands and the rich hire hands to do things. Betty Smith, the character Francie speaking, in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) * Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days. Gloria Steinem, in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) * We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse. Anne Sophie Swetchine, in Count de Falloux, The Writings of Madame Swetchine (1869) * Nothing is so hard for those, who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want. Jonathan Swift, “A Preface to the Bishop of Sarum’s Introduction” (Dec. 8, 1713); reprinted in The Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift, Vol. IV (1939–74) * It is very much easier for a rich man to invest and grow richer than for the poor man to begin investing at all. And this is also true of nations. Barbara Ward, in The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (1962)Also in the book, Ward wrote: “The distinction between rich nations and poor nations is one of the great dominant political and international themes of our century.” * If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution. Rebecca West, in The Thinking Reed (1936) * There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” in Fortnightly Review (Feb., 1891) * The man possessed of a dollar, feels himself to be not merely one hundred cents richer, but also one hundred cents better, than the man who is penniless; so on through all the gradations of earthly possessions—the estimate of our own moral and political importance swelling always in a ratio exactly proportionate to the growth of our purse. Frances Wright, in Course of Popular Lectures (1829)===== RICHES & THE RICH =====(see ARISTOCRACY & ARISTOCRATS and CASH and CLASS and MILLIONAIRES & BILLIONAIRES and MONEY and POVERTY & THE POOR and THE RICH & THE POOR and UPPER CRUST and WEALTH) * It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The Bible—Mark 10:25 * Though the worship of riches is an old religion, there has never before been a danger that it might become the sole religion. And yet that is what is surely going to happen in the world. J. E. Buckrose, “The Sacred Million,” in What I have Gathered (1923) * There is nothing so characteristic of narrowness and littleness of soul as the love of riches. Marcus Tullius Cicero, in De Officiis (1st c. B.C.) * Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give. Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon (1820) * The Rich aren’t like us—they pay less taxes. Peter De Vries, quoted in The Washington Post (July 30, 1989) * Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve. Maureen Dowd, “Giant Puppet Show,” in The New York Times (Sep. 10, 1995) * The rich never want for kindred. Thomas Fuller, M.D., in Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (1732) * Riches rather enlarge than satisfy appetites. Thomas Fuller, M.D., in Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs (1732) * Riches are always over estimated [sic]; the enjoyment they give is more in the pursuit than the possession. Sarah Josepha Hale, the character Mrs. Lowe, giving advice to her daughter Margaret, “The Thanksgiving of the Heart,” in Traits of American Life (1835) * How often the rich like to play at being poor. A rather nasty game, I’ve always thought. Lillian Hellman, in Toys in the Attic (1960) * Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours its own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich upon the poor. Thomas Jefferson, in letter to Col. Edward Carrington (Jan. 16, 1787) * Wherever there is excessive wealth, there is also in the train of it excessive poverty; as, where the sun is brightest, the shade is deepest. Walter Savage Landor, “Aristoteles and Callisthenes,” Aristoteles speaking, in Imaginary Conversations (1824) * When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him “Whose?“ Don Marquis, quoted in Edward Anthony, O Rare Don Marquis (1962) * We may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to. Alexander Pope, in Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727) * To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and keep completely sober. Logan Pearsall Smith, in Afterthoughts (1931) * We may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to. Jonathan Swift, in Thoughts of Various Subjects (1711) * A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Henry David Thoreau, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” in Walden (1854) * That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest. Henry David Thoreau, journal entry (March 11, 1856); reprinted in Alex Ayres, The Quotable Thoreau (2013) * Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” in Fortnightly Review (Feb., 1891)Wilde was paraphrasing the message of Jesus in this passage. He preceded the thought by writing: “What Jesus meant was this. He said to man, ‘You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you would realize that, you would not want to be rich.’”===== RIDICULE =====(see also ABUSE and BULLYING and HUMILIATION and MOCKERY and NAME-CALLING and SHAME) * When an object is to be ridiculed, ’tis generally exaggerated. Abigail Adams, in letter to niece Elizabeth “Betsey” Cranch (July 18, 1786), in Letters of Mrs. Adams (4th edition, 1848; C. F. Adams, ed.) * Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth’s sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won. Louisa May Alcott, in letter to Lucy Stone (Aug. 31, 1885), The Portable Louisa May Alcott (2000; E. L. Keyser, ed.) * Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. Saul Alinsky, in Rules for Radicals (1971) * If you have never experienced life under a microscope, you need to understand that those who live a public life no longer are seen as real persons—human beings. Rather, they are objects to be examined, manipulated, ridiculed, and sometimes even hated. Rose Elizabeth Bird, in a 1996 newspaper column, recalled in her Washington Post obituary (Dec. 6, 1999) * Ridicule is the deadliest weapon of the age. H. P. Blavatsky, in Spiritual Scientist (1875) * I wonder why we are always sort of ashamed of our best parts and try to hide them. We don’t mind ridicule of our “sillinesses” but of our “sobers.” Emily Carr, in Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr (1966) * Ridicule is like a wolf: it only destroys those who fear it. Comtesse Diane, in Les Glanes de la Vie (1898) * There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling. George Eliot, the voice of the narrator, in Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) * In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right. Erica Jong, in Fear of Fifty (1994) * The fear of being laughed at makes cowards of us all. Mignon McLaughlin, in The Second Neurotic’s Notebook (1966) * The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous. Molière (pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), in the Preface to Tartuffe (1664)Molière introduced the thought by writing: “The finest passages of a serious moral treatise are all too often less effective than those of a satire and for the majority of people there is no better form of reproof than depicting their faults to them.” * Brutality is sometimes easier to endure than ridicule. Patricia Moyes, in Black Widower (1975) * Ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon. Dorothy Parker, a 1937 remark, quoted in John Keats, You Might As Well Live (1970) * Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left. Muriel Spark, in a 1971 speech to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (specific date undetermined) * Polls show that what women fear most from men is violence, and what men fear most from women is ridicule. Gloria Steinem, in My Life on the Road (2015) * Now, there are two ways to approach a subject that frightens you and makes you feel stupid: you can embrace it with humility and an open mind, or you can ridicule it mercilessly. Judith Stone, in Light Elements: Essays in Science from Gravity to Levity (1991) * Love can bear anything better than ridicule. Caitlin Thomas, in Leftover Life to Kill (1957)===== RIDICULOUS =====(see also ABSURD and FARCICAL and HUMOR and IDIOTS & IDIOCY and IMBECILES & IMBECILITY and LAUGHABLE and NONSENSE and PATHETIC and SILLY and SUBLIME) * It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous, that you realize just how much you love them! Agatha Christie, in An Autobiography (1977) * Love and enthusiasm are always ridiculous, when not reciprocated by their objects. Marguerite Gardiner (Lady Blessington), in Desultory Thoughts and Reflections (1839) * Thank goodness for people courageous enough to be ridiculous, if they must be, in order to balance their lives. Katharine Butler Hathaway, a journal entry, in The Journals and Letters of the Little Locksmith (1946) * In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme. Roy Hattersley, a Labour Party MP, quoted in the Evening Standard (London; May 9, 1989) * The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous. Molière (pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), in the Preface to Tartuffe (1664)Molière introduced the thought by writing: “The finest passages of a serious moral treatise are all too often less effective than those of a satire and for the majority of people there is no better form of reproof than depicting their faults to them.” * For the heart of humor is a sense of the ridiculous. To live out one’s life without this sense—a leavening of the most doleful situation; the blessing of the laugh that rises despite oneself, despite stress, sorrow, terror or adversity—to have it missing altogether from one’s makeup, is to suffer a tragic deprivation. Richard Raymond III, in Foreword to Comic Ballads: A Little Bundle of Lightheartedness (a 2019 in-process manuscript)Raymond continued: “Such a person is to be pitied, as we pity one who must make his breakfast of cold porridge, while others are enjoying bacon and eggs, hot biscuits and honey.”===== RIGHT & WRONG =====(see also RIGHT and WRONGDOING) * On the whole, we need not hesitate to assert, that in the long course of events, nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right. Nothing, that is inequitable, can be finally successful. Hannah More, in Hints Toward Forming the Character of a Young Princess (1837)ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, William E. Gladstone is mistakenly credited with saying “Nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right.” He never said anything of the sort. More is the legitimate author of the sentiment. ===== RIGHTS (as in HUMAN RIGHTS) =====(includes HUMAN RIGHTS; see also CONSITUTION and FREEDOM and JUSTICE and INJUSTICE and LAW and LIBERTY and [Animal] RIGHTS and [Bill of] RIGHTS and [Civil] RIGHTS and [Women’s] RIGHTS and TYRANNY) * The belief that if the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights, then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights, is the only patriotism. Jane Addams, in speech to the Union League Club, Chicago, Illinois (Feb. 23, 1903) * The real question is: who has the responsibility to uphold human rights? The answer to that is: everyone. Madeleine Albright, in Fascism: A Warning (2018) * The true republic: men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. Susan B. Anthony, in The Revolution (1868) * America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America. Jimmy Carter, in his Farewell Address to the nation ( Jan. 14, 1981) * After all, the true civilization is where every man gives to every other, every right that he claims for himself. Robert G. Ingersoll, in interview in The Washington Post (Nov. 14, 1880) * We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Thomas Jefferson, the second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776).QUOTE NOTE: These are among the most famous words ever written, originally appearing in a document drafted by America’s Founding Fathers to formally declare their grievances against the government of King George III and sever ties with England. The notion that happiness was an inalienable right of citizens—as opposed to a personal dream or goal to which people might aspire—was truly a revolutionary idea. Historians have pointed out that Jefferson might easily have written “Life, Liberty, and Property” (following some earlier phraseology from John Locke). Happily, though, he submitted a first-draft to other delegates and incorporated a number of suggestions, including one to change the wording to the pursuit of happiness. That immortal phrase made its first formal appearance in the historic 1776 document, but a prior—and less elegant—expression of the sentiment appeared less than a month earlier in The Virginia Declaration of Rights (adopted June 12, 1776). The opening paragraph of that document, written by George Mason, reads as follows (italics mine):“That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” * There are no such things as divine, immutable or inalienable rights. Rights are things we get when we are strong enough to make good our claim to them. Helen Keller, “Why Men Need Women Suffrage,” in New York Call (Oct. 17, 1915)Keller continued: “Men spent hundreds of years and did much hard fighting to get the rights they now call immutable and inalienable. Today women are demanding rights that tomorrow nobody will be foolhardy enough to question.” * There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. P. J. O’Rourke, “The Liberty Manifesto,” a speech delivered at the opening of The Cato Institute’s new Washington, DC headquarters (May 6, 1993) * When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. Thomas Paine, in Letter to the Addressers of the Late Proclamation (1792). Also an example of double chiasmus. * Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority. Ayn Rand, in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) * When I am asked, “What, in your view, is the worst human rights problem in the world today?” I reply: “Absolute poverty.” This is not the answer most journalists expect. It is neither sexy nor legalistic. But it is true. Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland), in OpenDemocracy interview (Dec. 9, 2003) * I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in “I Believe” radio broadcast for the USO and National War Fund (July 8, 1941) * The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right. William Safire, quoted in a 1987 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined)===== [Bill of] RIGHTS =====(see also CONSTITUTION and FREEDOM and JUSTICE and INJUSTICE and LAW and LIBERTY and [Animal] RIGHTS and [Civil] RIGHTS and [Women’s] RIGHTS and TYRANNY) * Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of Committee. F. Lee Bailey, quoted in Newsweek magazine (April 17, 1967) * What does the Negro want? His answer is very simple. He wants only what other Americans want. He wants [the] opportunity to make real what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights say, what the Four Freedoms establish. While he knows these ideals are open to no man completely, he wants only his equal chance to obtain them. Mary McLeod Bethune, “Certain Inalienable Rights,” in What the Negro Wants (1944) * It is my belief that there are “absolutes” in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be “absolutes.” Hugo L. Black, in remarks at meeting of the American Jewish Congress (April 14, 1962) * The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority. Frank I. Cobb, in LaFollette’s Magazine (Jan. 1920)Cobb went on to add about the Bill of Rights: “It is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people.” * The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. Robert H. Jackson, quoted in Edward Dumbauld, The Bill of Rights and What it Means Today (1957)Justice Jackson continued: “One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” * A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest in inferences. Thomas Jefferson, in letter to James Madison (Dec. 20, 1787) * All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert. Eleanor Roosevelt, in a 1940 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine (specific issue undetermined))===== RIOT =====(see also ORDER & DISORDER and UNREST and POVERTY and VIOLENCE) * A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)===== RISK & RISK-TAKING =====(see also BRAVERY and CAUTION and COURAGE and COWARDICE and DANGER and DARING and FEAR) * He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life. Muhammad Ali, in Walter Leavy, “Don’t Count Me Out,” Ebony magazine (March, 1985) * And the day came when the risk to remain closed in a bud became more painful that the risk it took to blossom. Elizabeth Appell (aka Lassie Benton), in a 1979 Spring Class Schedule for John F. Kennedy University (Orinda, CA)ERROR ALERT: Nearly all internet sites mistakenly attribute this quotation—or similarly-worded versions of it—to the celebrated diarist Anaïs Nin. For the fascinating backstory, go to Elizabeth Appell. * A risk-taking environment starts at the top of a corporation. If the CEO doesn’t have this spirit, chances are you won’t find it anywhere else in the organization. Mary Kay Ash, in The Mary Kay Way (2008) * Before you’ll change, something important must be at risk. Richard Bach, in Messiah’s Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul (2004) * By protecting people from risk, we destroy their self-esteem. We rob them of the opportunity to become strong, competent people. Judith M. Bardwick, in Danger in the Comfort Zone (1995)Bardwick introduced the thought by writing: “We know that productivity suffers when uncertainty is high. But we've failed to realize the equally destructive effects of too little anxiety.” * Hope is a risk that must be run. Georges Bernanos, “Why Freedom?” in The Last Essays of Georges Bernanos (1955) * I think we should follow a simple rule: if we can take the worst, take the risk. Joyce Brothers, in a 1988 interview in Good Housekeeping magazine (specific date undetermined)QUOTE NOTE: This came in response to the question: “What would you advise others about taking risks?” Dr. Brothers preceded the thought by saying, “First, accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can—and surely will at times—fail. Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love, can be terrifying too.” * Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. Warren Buffett, quoted in Robert G. Hagstrom, The Warren Buffett Way: Investment Strategies of the World’s Greatest Investor (1997) * The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live. Leo F. Buscaglia, in Living, Loving, and Learning (1982) * The world lies in the hands of those who have the courage to dream and who take the risk of living out their dreams—each according to his own talent. Paulo Coelho, in Life: Selected Quotations (2007) * To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory. Pierre Corneille, in Le Cid (1636) * If you risk nothing, then you risk everything. Geena Davis, quoted in Kevin Sessums, “Geena’s Sheen,” in Vanity Fair (Sep., 1992) * If being innovative is part of our basic genetic makeup, then what diminishes the innovative capacity of so many people? A partial answer is the benign neglect we invite into our lives. Instead of being alert and engaged, many people opt to be essentially absent because it’s easy, and mostly without immediate risk. Stephen A. Di Biase in 10 Keys To Unlock Your Innovative Self (2015) * If you are scared to go to the brink you are lost. John Foster Dulles, in interview with James Shepley, Life magazine (Jan. 16, 1956)QUOTE NOTE: This remark is the origin of the term brinksmanship, a term inspired by the title of Stephen Potter’s 1947 book Gamesmanship. In the interview, Secretary of State Dulles was describing the U.S policy of being willing to stand up against Communist aggression, even if it meant going to the brink of nuclear war. Dulles introduced the thought by saying, “You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war.” He went on to add: “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink you are lost.” * Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out just how far to go. T. S. Eliot, in Preface to Harry Crosby’s Transit of Venus: Poems (1931)ERROR ALERT: Almost all internet sites mistakenly present the observation as it if ended how far one can go or how far they can go. * However well organized the foundations of life may be, life must always be full of risks. Havelock Ellis, in On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue (1937) * You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. Louise Erdrich, the narrator and protagonist, Faye Travers, offering herself words of advice she wished she would have received from her mother, in The Painted Drum (2005)Travers preceded the thought by thinking: “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth.” * Risk always brings its own rewards: the exhilaration of breaking through, of getting to the other side; the relief of a conflict healed; the clarity when a paradox dissolves. Marilyn Ferguson, in The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980)Ferguson continued: “Whoever teaches us this is the agent of our liberation. Eventually we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.” * What is life but one long risk? Dorothy Canfield Fisher, the character Adrian Fort quoting his father, in The Deepening Stream (1930) * If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure—all your life. It’s as simple as that. John W. Gardner, in Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society (1964) * To a certain extent, a little blindness is necessary when you undertake a risk. Bill Gates, “Technology,” The Costco Connection (Nov., 1997); reprinted in Bill Gates Speaks (1998; Janet Lowe, ed.) * Business people need to understand the psychology of risk more than the mathematics of risk. Paul Gibbons, in The Science of Successful Organizational Change (2015) * Never risk your reputation on a single trial, because if it does not turn out well, the damage will be irreparable. Baltasar Gracián, in The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)QUOTE NOTE: Over the years, this observation has been translated in a variety of ways. A 1904 translation alluded to a throw of the dice: “Never stake your credit on a single cast; for if it miscarries the damage is irreparable.” A contemporary translation—and one which has recently become popular on internet sites—goes this way: “Never risk your reputation on a single shot, for if you miss the loss is irreparable.” * Innovation implies high risk, and with high risk comes failure, so you've got to be prepared for that, but if you don’t risk, then your business goes stale very quickly. Michael Grade, in Martin Lewis’s Reflections on Success (1997) * There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk “his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor” on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else. Robert A. Heinlein, a reflection of the character Jill Boardman, in Stranger in a Strange Land (1991 “Uncut” edition of the 1961 book) * The man who knows it can’t be done counts the risk, not the reward. Elbert Hubbard, in The Fra magazine (March, 1910)Hubbard continued: “He shrinks before he thinks—quits before he hits—succumbs to fright before he makes his fight.” * It’s a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing—nothing. Zora Neale Hurston, the character Amram, playing off the risk losing everything saying, in Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) * It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. [italics in original] William James, “Is Life Worth Living?” in The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897) * And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. Erica Jong, the character Hans speaking, in How to Save Your Own Life (1977)QUOTE NOTE: These are the concluding words of a widely-quoted passage that began this way: “Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it…. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.” * It’s better to be boldly decisive and risk being wrong than to agonize at length and be right too late. Marilyn Moats Kennedy, “The Case Against Performance Appraisals,” in Across the Board (Jan., 1999) * Far more is at risk when we do what we really want to do rather than something less. I don’t think we’ll ever fully appreciate the role of not daring to risk a shattered dream in limiting people to second-choice careers and third-choice lives. Ralph Keyes, in The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear (1995)Keyes preceded the thought by writing: “Aspiring only to second-place goals is a first-rate way to hedge our bets. Among the least appreciated reasons for doing superficial, second-rate work of any kind is the comfort of knowing that it’s not our best that’s on the line.” * During the first period of a man’s life the greater danger is: not to take the risk. When once the risk has been really taken then the greatest danger is to risk too much. Søren Kierkegaard, diary entry (May, 1850); reprinted in The Soul of Kierkegaard: Selections from His Journal (1959; Alexander Dru, ed.) * In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving. Sheldon Kopp, in If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients (1972) * Yes, risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking. Jim McMahon, quoted in a 1995 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined) * If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity? André Malraux, quoted in a 1955 issue of Time magazine (specific date undetermined) * Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Rollo May, in The Courage to Create (1975) * Leadership is the willingness to put oneself at risk. John C. Maxwell, in Leadership Gold: Lessons I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Leading (2008)In his book, Maxwell also wrote on the subject: “It is in moments of risk that the greatest leaders are often born.” * Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything. Thomas Merton, in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961) * No noble thing can be done without risk. Michel de Montaigne, in Essays (1580–88) * Second chances are scarier than first chances, because the second time you know how much you’re risking. Nora Roberts, the character Lila xxx speaking, in The Collector (2014) * No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause. Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Elbert Hubbard, Elbert Hubbard’s Scrap Book (1923) * All inquiries carry with them some element of risk. Carl Sagan, in Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (1979) * To save all we must risk all. Johann Friedrich von Schiller, the title character speaking, in Fiesco: or, the Genoese Conspiracy (1783) * A brave man risks his life but not his conscience. Johann Friedrich von Schiller, the character Governor Gordon speaking, in Wallenstein’s Death (1799) * Children may need challenges and high-risk conditions in order to develop the self-generated immunity to trauma that characterizes survivors. To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist. Gail Sheehy, in Spirit of Survival (1986) * When you play it too safe, you’re taking the biggest risk of your life. Barbara Sher, in I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What it Was (1994) * One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh without either honor or observation. Sir Walter Scott, the Countess speaking to the philosopher Agelastes, in Tales of My Landlord, 4th Series (1832) * Everything is sweetened by risk. Alexander Smith, “Of Death and the Fear of Dying,” in Dreamthorp (1863) * A lot of people approach risk as if it’s the enemy, when it is really fortune’s accomplice. A risk you take may seem ridiculous to other people, but risk isn’t random or rash when it’s a necessity. Sting (Gordon Sumner), “Take a Risk—And Never Look Back,” in The Daily Telegraph (London; June 17, 2001)QUOTE NOTE: In the article, Sting nicely contrasted thrill-seeking with risk-taking, provided thoughtful revelations about his past, and concluded with these words of advice: “Risk is sitting on your shoulder, my friend. Nothing in your life is beyond redemption. Dive into that cold water. All bets are off.” The full article may be seen at ”Take a Risk” * Our whole way of life today is dedicated to the removal of risk. Cradle to grave we are supported, insulated, and isolated from the risks of life—and if we fall, our government stands ready with bandaids of every size. Shirley Temple Black, quoted in Rodney G. Minott, The Sinking of the Lollipop (1968) * He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being. Paul Tillich, in 1955 sermon at Riverside Church, reported in Presbyterian Life (1955, vol. 8; specific date undetermined) * Risk is the willingness to fail. Kathleen Turner, in Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles (2008; with Gloria Feldt)Turner preceded the thought by writing: “A full and meaningful life must involve some risks or there can be no growth. Risk to me means going to the point at which you may not be able to do what you have set out to do, or at which you might seriously fall short of what your vision is.” * Apathy is a risk-aversion strategy. Joost Van Loon, in Risk and Technological Culture (2002) * Do you really think…that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one’s life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not—there is no weakness in that. Oscar Wilde, the character Sir Robert Chiltern speaking, in An Ideal Husband (1895) * What you risk reveals what you value. Jeannette Winterson, the unnamed narrator reflecting on Louise and the pair’s complicated relationship, in Written on the Body (1992) * I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it. Jeanette Winterson, in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011)===== RIVALRY & RIVALS =====(see also COMPETITION and JEALOUSY) * The most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized cooperation. Charles Horton Cooley, in Human Nature and the Social Order (1902)===== RIVERS & STREAMS =====(see also RIVERS [Specific Rivers]) * A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself—for it is from the soil, both from its depth and from its surface, that a river has its beginning. Laura Gilpin, in Introduction to The Rio Grande (1949) * A river is more than an amenity; it is a treasure. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in “New Jersey v. New York et. al.,” a 1931 U. S. Supreme Court decision * I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. Langston Hughes, in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1921)===== RIVERS [Specific Rivers] ===== * I have seen the Mississippi. That is muddy water. I have seen the Saint Lawrence. That is clear water. But the Thames is liquid history. John Burns, quoted in London's The Daily Mail (Jan. 25, 1943)===== RIVER METAPHORS =====(see also RIVERS & STREAMS)(see also metaphors involving ANIMALS, BASEBALL, BATHING & BATHS, BIRTH, BOXING & PRIZEFIGHTING, CANCER, DANCING, DARKNESS, DEATH, DISEASE, FOOTBALL, FRUIT, GARDENING, HEART, JOURNEYS, LIGHT & LIGHTNESS, MOTHERS, PARTS OF SPEECH, PATHS, PLANTS, PUNCTUATION, REFUGE, RETAIL/WHOLESALE, ROAD, NAUTICAL, SUN & MOONS, VEGETABLES, and WEIGHTS & MEASURES) * Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river. Cyril Connolly, in The Unquiet Grave (1944) ERROR ALERT: This quotation is often mistakenly presented: “The river of truth is always splitting up into arms which reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream.” The problem appears to have originated in 1989, when Webster’s New World Best Book of Aphorisms presented the faulty version. * I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river/Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed, and intractable. T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages,” in Four Quartets (1941) * Power may justly be compar’d to a great River, while kept within its due bounds, is both beautiful and useful; but when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed, it bears down all before it, and brings destruction and desolation whenever it comes. Alexander Hamilton, in remarks to the court in the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger. * I looked at my life, and it was also a river. Hermann Hesse, a reflection of the title character, in Siddhartha (1922)===== ROCK & ROLL =====(see also BLUES and CLASSICAL MUSIC and COUNTRY MUSIC and FOLK MUSIC and JAZZ and MUSIC & MUSICIANS and MUSIC GENRES—N. E. C. and RAGTIME and RAP MUSIC and RHYTHYM & BLUES) * If you’re looking for youth, you’re looking for longevity, just take a dose of rock ’n’ roll. Hank Ballard, in a 1966 radio interview; quoted in his Associated Press obituary (March 4, 2003)Ballard, who wrote “The Twist” in 1958 and released it in early 1959 as a B-Side (to “Teardrops on Your Letter”) continued: “It keeps you going, just like the caffeine in your coffee. Rock ’n’ Roll is good for the soul, for the well-being, for the psyche, for your everything.” * What the music says may be serious, but as a medium it should not be questioned, analyzed, or taken so seriously. I think it should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. David Bowie, on rock & roll, in interview Rolling Stone (April 1, 1971) * Rock is like a battery that must always go back to blues to get recharged. Eric Clapton, quoted in Myles Palmer, Small Talk, Big Names: 40 Years of Rock Quotes (1993) * I am the architect of rock and roll! I am the originator! Little Richard (Richard Wayne Penniman), remark at Grammy Awards ceremony (March 2, 1988); in The New York Times (May 3, 1988)QUOTE NOTE: Little Richard made the remark in his role as a cameo presenter at the awards ceremony (just prior to announcing Jody Watley as winner of the Best New Artist award). He began by saying, “I have never received nothing, and I’ve been singing for years.” He immediately received a standing ovation from the appreciative crowd. In clarifying comments to reporters after the ceremony, he said about never receiving a Grammy, “I am not bitter, but I would like to have one to look at.” * The Blues Had a Baby and the World Called it Rock and Roll. Brownie McGhee, title of song, written in 1960, first recorded in 1975QUOTE NOTE: The saying is often attributed to Muddy Waters, but McGhee is the original author. In 1977, Waters recorded his slightly-altered version of the song (“The Blues Had a Baby and they Named It Rock & Roll”) on his Hard Again album. * Something touched me deep inside/The day the music died. Don Mclean, on the death of Buddy Holly in 1959, in his 1972 song “American Pie” * Rock and roll is the hamburger that ate the world. Peter York, in Style Wars (1980)ERROR ALERT: Many internet quotation sites mistakenly attribute this quotation to Peter Tork of The Monkees. Peter York is a British author, management consultant, newspaper columnist, and television personality. * Music for the neck downwards. Keith Richards, describing rock & roll, quoted in Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock (1979)===== ROMANCE & ROMANTICS =====(see also AFFECTION and COURTING & COURTSHIP and FLIRTING and LOVE and LOVERS and MALE-FEMALE DYNAMICS and MEN & WOMEN and MARRIAGE) * In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the other really likes. Elizabeth Ashley, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 14, 1982) * Romance is thinking about the other person when you are supposed to be thinking of something else. Roy Blount, Jr., quoted in Robert Byrne, The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said (2012) * The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule. Anita Brookner, the protagonist Rachel Kennedy, reflecting on relationship dynamics, in A Friend from England (1987) * I used to think that romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme foolishness. I no longer thought that. There’s nothing foolish in loving anyone. Thinking you’ll be loved in return is what’s foolish. Rita Mae Brown, a reflection of the protagonist, Nickel Smith, in Bingo (1988) * I have always been suspicious of romantic love. It looks too much like a narcissism shared by two. Rita Mae Brown, the protagonist Mary Frazier Armstrong speaking, in Venus Envy (1993) * Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love. Isaac D’Israeli, “Romances,” in Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (1791)ERROR ALERT: All over the internet, this observation is mistakenly attributed to D’Israeli’s son, Benjamin Disraeli. * Romance dies hard, because its very nature is to want to live. Andre Dubus, “Of Robin Hood and Womanhood,” in Broken Vessels: Essays (1994) * And what’s romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it's always daisy-time. D. H. Lawrence, in Studies in Classic American Literature (1924) * The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality. Marya Mannes, in Out of My Time (1971) * Romances in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination than to inform the judgment. Samuel Richardson, in A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments (1755); originally in Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded (1740) * Love is a reality which is born in the fairy region of romance. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, “Maxims for Seasoning Conversation,” in Édouard Colmache, Revelations of the Life of Prince Talleyrand (1850) * When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry speaking to the title character, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)QUOTE NOTE: In A Woman of No Importance (1893), the same words were spoken by Lord Illingworth. * The very essence of romance is uncertainty. Oscar Wilde, the character Algernon speaking, in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)===== ROOTS =====(see also ANCESTORS & ANCESTRY and BREEDING and FAMILY and GENEALOGY and HEREDITY and HEREDITY & ENVIRONMENT and HOME) * Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Alex Haley, title of 1976 novelQUOTE NOTE: Roots as a metaphor for ancestry goes back centuries, but Haley gave the term new life and enlarged meaning in his autobiographical novel about Kunta Kinte—a Gambian adolescent who was kidnapped and forced into American slavery in the mid-1700s—and his American descendants. * To move freely you must be deeply rooted. Bella Lewitzky, quoted in Barbara Isenberg, State of the Arts: California Artists Talk about Their Work (2000). * The child who is uprooted begins to recognize that what he builds within himself is what will endure, what will withstand shattering experiences. Anaïs Nin, quoted in Jody Hay, “Out of the Labyrinth: An Interview,” East West Journal (1974) * There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years from the small acorn of passion to a great rooted tree. Surviving all vicissitudes, and rich with its manifold branches, every leaf holding its own significance. Vita Sackville-West, in No Signposts in the Sea (1961) * To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. Simone Weil, in The Need for Roots (1952)In the book, Weil also wrote: “Whoever is uprooted himself uproots others. Whoever is rooted himself doesn't uproot others.”===== ROUTINE =====(see also DISCIPLINE and HABIT and ORGANIZATION and SCHEDULE and TIME MANAGEMENT) * Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition. W. H. Auden, in “The Life to That-There-Poet” (1958)QUOTE NOTE: Auden believed that a strict routine was one of the secrets to his success as a poet. He once wrote: “A modern stoic…knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.” * Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: routine. Honoré de Balzac, in The Physiology of Marriage (1829) * The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration (perhaps more). And it is available to everyone. Twyla Tharp, in The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (2003)Tharp continued: “If creativity is a habit, then the best creativity is the result of good work habits. They are the nuts and bolts of dreaming.” * Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork. Alfred North Whitehead, “Foresight,” in Adventures of Ideas (1933)Whitehead went on to write: “It is the beginning of wisdom to understand that social life is founded upon routine. Unless society is permeated, through and through, with routine, civilization vanishes.”===== RUDENESS =====(see also BREEDING and CIVILITY and COURTESY and ETIQUETTE and GRACE & GRACIOUSNESS and HOSPITALITY and MANNERS and POLITENESS and PROTOCOL and SENSITIVITY and TACT) * A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. Dave Barry, in Dave Barry Turns Fifty (1998) * You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners. Rita Mae Brown, in Starting From Scratch (1988). Also an example of Oxymoronica. * It is little consolation, and no compensation, to the person who is hurt that the offender pleads he did not mean to say or do any thing rude. A rude thing is a rude thing—the intention is nothing—all we are to judge of is the fact. Maria Edgeworth, the title character's mother speaking, in Harrington: A Tale (1833) * A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. Robert A. Heinlein, the boss of protagonist Friday Jones speaking, in Friday (1982) * Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength. Eric Hoffer, in The Passionate State of Mind (1955) * There cannot be a greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse. John Locke, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)Locke continued: “For if there be not impertinent folly in answering a man before we know what he will say, yet it is a plain declaration that we are weary to hear him talk any longer, and have a disesteem of what he says.” * Ideological differences are no excuse for rudeness. Judith Martin, in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Freshly Updated (2005)===== RUGBY =====(see also ATHLETES & ATHLETICISM and BASEBALL and BASKETBALL and BOXING and FISHING and FOOTBALL and GOLF and HOCKEY and LACROSSE and MOUNTAINEERING & ROCK-CLIMBING and POOL & BILLIARDS and RUNNING & JOGGING and SAILING & YACHTING and SOCCER and SPORT and SPORTS—MISC. TYPES and SWIMMING & DIVING and TENNIS and TRACK & FIELD and WALKING and WRESTLING) * Rugby league is war without the frills. Author Unknown * Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen. Soccer is a gentlemen’s game played by beasts. Football is a beastly game played by beasts. Henry Blaha, a 1972 remark, quoted in David Pickering, Cassell's Sports Quotations (2000) * The tactical difference between Association Football and Rugby with its varieties seems to be that in the former the ball is the missile, in the latter men are the missiles. Alfred E. Crawley, in The Book of the Ball (1913) * Wrestling and boxing is like Ping-Pong and rugby. There’s no connection. Mickey Rourke, in MTV News interview (Sep. 11, 2008)QUOTE NOTE: In discussing his preparation for the role of Randy “The Ram” Robinson in the film The Wrestler (2008) Rourke said: “I knew 10 days into making this movie that this would be the best movie I ever made, and I knew after three days that it would be the hardest movie I ever made.” He went on to explain about wrestlers: “These guys get really hurt. You’ve got guys who are 265 [pounds] throwing you across the ring. They take several years to learn how to land. I landed like a lump of sh*t. Every bone in my body vibrated.” For the entire interview, go to: Rourke MTV News Interview. * I prefer rugby to soccer. I enjoy the violence in rugby, except when they start biting each other's ears off. Elizabeth Taylor, a 1972 remark, quoted in David Pickering, Cassell's Sports Quotations (2000) * Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that…each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow-man which, if done elsewhere, would result in fourteen days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench. P. G. Wodehouse, in Very Good Jeeves (1930)===== RUIN =====(see also DEFEAT and DESTRUCTION and DOWNFALL and FAILURE and LOSS) * No man was ever ruined from without; the final ruin comes from within, when you turn hopeless and lose courage. Amelia E. Barr, in All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography (1913) * All men that are ruined are ruined on the side of their natural propensities. Edmund Burke, in Two Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory (9th ed.; 1796)===== RULERS =====(see also DICTATORS and KINGS & QUEENS and LEADERS and MONARCHS and PRESIDENTS & PRIME MINISTERS) * The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him. Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince (1532)===== RULES =====(see also RULES & REGULATIONS) * Exceptions are not always the proof of the old rule; they can also be the harbinger of a new one. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, in Aphorisms (1880) * There’s no rule so wise but what it’s a pity for somebody or other. George Eliot, in Adam Bede (1859) * When the rules say you can’t play, change the rules. Susan B. Evans, in Susan B. Evans and Joan P. Avis, The Women Who Broke All the Rules (1999) * There are no exceptions to the rule that everybody likes to be an exception to the rule. Malcolm Forbes, in 1992 issue of Forbes magazine * Nature provides exceptions to every rule. Margaret Fuller, in Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845) * It is better to give children a rule to break than to give them no rules at all. Tipper Gore, quoted in a 1999 issue of Reader’s Digest (specific issue undetermined) * If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. Katharine Hepburn, quoted in Ronald Warren Deutsch, Inspirational Hollywood (1997) * Rules are like flagpoles in a slalom race: you observe their presence religiously, skirt around them as closely as possible, and never let them cut your speed. Katherine Neville, in A Calculated Risk (1992) * Any rules that are made for everybody hurt somebody, sometimes. Kathleen Thompson Norris, in Little Ships (1925) * To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. George Polya, in How to Solve It (1945) * General rules will bear hard on particular cases. Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1856) * There is all the difference in the world between departure from recognized rules by one who has learned to obey them, and neglect of them through want of training or want of skill or want of understanding. Before you can be eccentric you must know where the circle is. Ellen Terry, in The Story of My Life (1902) * Rules are absolutely necessary restrictions…we are lost if we trust to our impulses. What are our bodies but concrete rules? Miss Thackeray, in Old Kensington, Vol. 1 (1873) * We like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here. Brenda Ueland, in Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings (1993)===== RUMOR =====(see also [Gossip] COLUMNIST and GOSSIP and NEWS and PUBLICITY and SCANDAL) * Trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell. Shana Alexander, in Visitor (1992) * Rumor and gossip, like sound itself, appear to travel by wave-effect, sheer preposterosity being no barrier. Shana Alexander, in Talking Woman (1976) * Rumor is untraceable, incalculable, and infectious. Margot Asquith, in More or Less About Myself (1934) * Rumor has winged feet like Mercury. Henry Ward Beecher, quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, Edge-Tools of Speech (1896) * There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort. Eleanor Robson Belmont, in The Fabric of Memory (1957) * Rumor is a vagrant without a home, and lives upon what it can pick up. Josh Billings (pen name of Henry Wheeler Shaw), quoted in Maturin Murray Ballou, Edge-Tools of Speech (1896) * She was always in good rumor. Marcelene Cox, in a 1942 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal (specific issue undetermined) * The ball of rumor and criticism, once it starts rolling, is difficult to stop. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in The Flower and the Nettle (1976) * One has to live in Washington to know what a city of rumors it is. Eleanor Roosevelt, in My Day, Vol. 1 (1989) * Rumor is a pipe/Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures. William Shakespeare, the character Rumour speaking, in Induction to Henry IV, Part II (1597)QUOTE NOTE: The word pipe here refers to a musical instrument, like a horn or wind instrument.===== RUNNING & RUNNERS =====(includes JOGGING; see also ATHLETES & ATHLETICISM and COMPETITION and EXERCISE and FITNESS and HEALTH and SPORT and TRACK & FIELD and WALKING) * Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life. Haruki Murakami, in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir (2008)Murakami preceded the thought by writing: “Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that.” * There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. George A. Sheehan, in Running to Win (1991)Sheehan continued: “Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.” * Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it. Oprah Winfrey, quoted in a 1994 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal (specific issue unidentified)===== RUSSIA & THE RUSSIANS =====(see also AMERICA & AMERICANS and ENGLAND & THE ENGLISH and other nations & their citizens, including CANADA and CHINA and GERMANY and ISRAEL and ITALY and JAPAN; see also COMMUNISM and SOVIET UNION—USSR and TOTALITARIANISM) * Russian Communism is the illegitimate child of Karl Marx and Catherine the Great. Clement Atlee, in speech at Aarhus University (April 11, 1956) * The whole of Russia is our orchard. Anton Chekhov, the character Trofimov speaking, in The Cherry Orchard (1904) * I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Winston Churchill, in a BBC radio broadcast (Oct. 1, 1939)QUOTE NOTE: Churchill went on to add that “Perhaps there is a key” to understanding what the Russians under Stalin might do during WWII. That key, he suggested, was “Russian national interest.” * Don’t you ever forget what’s divine in the Russian soul—and that’s resignation. Joseph Conrad, the character Victor Haldin speaking, in Under Western Eyes (1911) * The Russians train; they do not dare educate. Max Lerner, “Four Fallacies of Our Schools,” in The Unfinished Country (1959) * The so-called new Russian man is characterized by his complete exhaustion. You may find yourself wondering if he has the strength to enjoy his new-found freedom. Ryszard Kapuscinski, quoted in The Independent on Sunday (London; Oct. 27, 1991)Kapuscinski, a prominent Polish journalist commenting on the collapse of the Soviet Union, added: “He is like a long-distance runner who, on reaching the finishing line, is incapable even of raising his hands in a gesture of victory.” * Ideas in modern Russia are machine-cut blocks coming in solid colors; the nuance is outlawed, the interval walled up, the curve grossly stepped. Vladimir Nabokov, “Commentary,” in Pale Fire (1962) * Russia’s a little bit like a critically ill patient. You have to get up every day and take the pulse and hope that nothing catastrophic happened the night before. Condoleeza Rice, quoted in Sian Griffiths, Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Forty Women Whose Ideas Shape the Modern World (1996) ===== RUTS =====(see also ROUTINE) * Keep out of Ruts; a Rut is something which,/If traveled in too much, becomes a Ditch. Arthur Guiterman, in A Poet’s Proverbs (1924)