Quotes of Note...or Not

Once I had a book that was jes' the opening sentences of the greatest novels. Doan know why, but that book was a favorite fer a long time. Fer one thang, "It was a dark and stormy night" and its cousins was nowhere ter be found.

Shortly thereafter, ole Aunty Belle would go ter the bookstore and read at random the first lines of books on shelves. Once a Martin Amis novel had me laughing uncontrollably over only his first three paragraphs, written as only the Brits can write--black humor about post-modernism.

Then I got mah hands on a book of famous flubs...then quotable quotes some of which I thought was jes' ordinaryly trite. They was, but they was still worth quotin' as they was "truisms."

Below some utterly randon quotes of note (or not) fer this juncture in mah journey. I hopes you finds somethin' in 'em--lemme know which is yore favorite.




"I won't suck it in if you won't suck it in...are you sucking it in?" (Greeting on a birthday card)


"Against my arm upon his back I feel the beating of my son's heart"
(Andre Bubus III: House of Sand and Fog)


"We must admit that man has been living with himself for many thousands of years without discovering completely what he is." (Richard Weaver:Visions of Order)


"Talleyrand said that two things are essential in life:to give good dinners and to keep on fair terms with women." (MFK Fisher:The Art of Eating)


Once caught, the human male is studied by the huntress as thoroughly as if he were a diamond." (MFK Fisher:The Art of Eating)



"Oddly, when deconstructionists required appendectomies or bypass surgery or even a root canal job, they never deconstructed medical or dental *truth* but went along with whatever their board-certified, profit oriented surgeons proclaimed was the last word." (Tom Wolfe: Hooking Up)


"If it is a only a symbol, to hell with it" (Flannery O'Connor at a dinner party)



"You could smell them coming, it was said, even before you heard the thunder of t heir hooves. But by then, it was too late." (Peter Hopkirk:THe Great Game)



"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." (Constitution of the United States)


"Let us note that if we adopt Plato's doctrine that art should represent only that which is good because all else created distempers in society, a large portion of waht the world has received as art would have to be banned." (Richard Weaver: Visions of Order)

"The reason why poets adore ruins and why--to almost everyone--its ruin can make a hideous modern building seem beautiful, may be that the destruction celebrates the triumph of the useless over the useful." (Stephen Spender:THe Making of a Poem)


"Visualize Whirled peas" (Bumpersticker)


"What verbs have at their base is an attitude toward, or a recognition of, existences in the mind that verbalizes. In verbs lies our clue to how the mind sees being itself" (Marion Montgomery: Virtue and Modern Shadows of Turning)


"A Man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart but he don't want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there." (Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian)


"Oh bother." (Pooh Bear)


"I argue against the cancer of multiculturalism on the very basis that it is designed to divide us. It is designed to erase our very history as Americans." (Tammy Bruce: The New Ameriican Revolution)


"Weaponize is my new favorite verb. The pen is mightier than the sword--until you weaponize your ballpoint pen to fight a man with a scimitar" (PJ O'Rourke:Peace Kills)

"When warm May first wooes the young flowers to open and receive her breath, then begin the cares and responsibilities of wedded life." (McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader)

"In the evening we will sit right here on this front porch and count the stars."
(Arnold Lobel"The Adventures of Frog and Toad)