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Going straight into the quotes file

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Presumably a few of you have noticed the random quote block towards the bottom of the sidebar? I’ve been having a bit of fun with that. Via fillyjonk:

Speaking of stages, I think there are stages of perception:

1. When all you know or notice is yourself;
2. When you think everything that you have felt applies to others as well;
3. When you realize that others can go through the same thing as you but not feel the same way as you did;
4. When you can put yourself in other’s positions and understand what they feel.

Everyone knows Stage 1 is obnoxious, but people stuck in Stage 2 can almost be more so, because they think they know something about you.

Carolyn Hax, Washington Post advice columnist

So, open quotes thread. What are a few of your favourites? They don’t have to be serious stuff – funny stuff is good.

Addendum: The skit below is too long to go into a quotes file, but it’s a masterpiece. From the Long Johns (Fortune and Bird) first broadcast on the South Bank Show in October last year (via TonyD on LP), explaining the subprime mortgages market crisis:

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Categories: arts & entertainment, ethics & philosophy, history, language, Life, Sociology

3 replies

  1. Ricky Buchanan
    2008-01-26 • 7:34 PM

    One that seems rather appropriate for here:

    None of the following is shameful or deserves apology (so long as they are not performed in sight or sound of those who would be pained), in spite of our suicidal attempts to convince ourselves otherwise:
    • To possess a rectum, a urethra and a bladder and all that pertain thereto. • To cry. • To find anything or anyone of any gender, age or species sexually attractive. • To find anything or anyone of any gender, age or species sexually unattractive. • To insert things in one’s mouth, anus or vagina for the purpose of pleasure. • To masturbate as often as one wishes. Or not. • To swear. • To be filled with sexual desires that involve objects, articles or parts of the body irrelevant to procreation. • To fart. • To be sexually unattractive. • To love. • To ingest legal or illegal drugs. • To smell of oneself and one’s juices. • To pick one’s nose.
    The following things really do merit sincere apology and outright contrition:
    • Failing to imagine what it is like to be someone else. • Pissing [one’s] life away. • Dishonesty with self and others. • Neglecting to pick up the phone or write letters. • Not connecting made or processed objects with their provenance. • Judging without facts. • Using influence over others for [one’s] own ends. • Causing pain.

    From Moab is My Washpot: An Autobiography, by Stephen Fry, Random House, 1999.

  2. tigtog
    2008-01-27 • 11:32 AM

    Like that Stephen Fry, Ricky.
    Another video worth watching: Flight of the Conchords, A Kiss Is Not A Contract.
    https://www.youtube.com/embed/9iSlPoQm2XY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

  3. TimT
    2008-01-30 • 8:05 AM

    Woman to Dorothy Parker: “I’m sorry, Dorothy. I’m not coming to your party. I can’t bear fools.”
    Dorothy Parker to Woman: “That’s strange. Your mother could.”
    Groucho Marx: “Outside, a dog is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read.”
    Groucho, again: “One day, I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How it got in my pyjamas, I’ll never know.”
    Alexander Pope: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan
    The proper study of mankind is man.”
    Pope, again, on Queen Anna: “Hear thou, great Anna! Whom three great realms obey
    Doth sometimes council take, and sometimes tea.”
    Jonathan Swift, in a mock obituary poem: “And that’s the reason, somee folks think,
    He left behind so great a stink.”
    S J Perelman: “I’ve got Brights Disease, and he’s got mine.”
    I LOVE quotes!
    TimT’s last blog post..Monday night question

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