“Fail. ‘He failed to note the hour.’ That implies that he tried to note it, but did not succeed. Failure always carries the same sense of endeavor; when there has been no endeavor, that is no failure. A falling stone cannot fail to strike you, for it does not try; but a marksman firing at your may fail to hit you; and I always hope he always will.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, humor, literary oddities
“During a period when Benchley roomed with Charles MacArthur at the Shelton Hotel, MacArthur took a temporary job as a public relations counsel for a mausoleum in New Jersey. As his first promotional campaign, MacArthur convinced the firm that it should establish a ‘Poet’s Corner’ and change its name to Fairview Abbey. Next, he decided that the firm should at least try to obtain the bones of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and inter them in its new Corner. To show his sincere intentions he sent a letter to James Michael Curley, mayor of Boston, saying that Boston had forfeited its right to Longfellow’s bones on the ground that a Longfellow poem—lines from which read, ‘Life is real! Life is earnest!/And the grave is not the goal’—obviously proved that that poet did not wish to be buried in an ordinary grave, but rather in a crypt, or, best of all, in a Poet’s Corner—like the one at Fairview Abbey.’
When Curley sent back a sincere reply to the effect that some mistake must have been at the bottom of this action, and that, at any rate, Longfellow was born in Cambridge, under the present jurisdiction of Mayor Flynn, MacArthur got Benchley to team up with him. The two sat down and made out a series of messages to Curley, including such threats as: ‘THE COUNTRY DEMANDS THE BODY OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW; IF YOU VALUE YOUR JOB YOU WILL FORWARD IT TO ME IMMEDIATELY,’ and ‘COME CLEAN WITH THAT BODY’, and ‘ROLL DEM BONES.’ Curley made serious attempts at getting warrants for their arrests in New Jersey.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
[Loud comment about computer intelligence, made in an AT&T cafeteria:] “No, I’m not interested in developing a more powerful brain. All I’m after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.”
Alan Turing, Quoted in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence (1983)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Essential for Necessary. This solecism is common among the best writers in the country and England. ‘It is essential to go early’; ‘Irrigation is essential to the cultivation of arid lands’ and so forth. One thing is essential to another thing only if it is part of the essence of it—an important and indispensable part of it, determining its nature, the soul of it.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Connoisseur, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.
An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured upon his lips to revive him. ‘Pauillac, 1873,’ he murmured and died.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
“The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal other people’s words and phrases…is also invaluable.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Idea for Thought, Purpose, Expectation, etc. ‘I had no idea that it was so cold.’ ‘When he went abroad it was with no idea of remaining.'”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Discussing boorishness in public places, especially where ‘ermined’ or ‘sabled’ ladies make concentration somewhat difficult, Broun remarked, ‘I want some day to see a Broadway opening without benefit of footnotes. I’d rather not be told by the lady just ahead that a line is “delicious” or “so quaint.” I’d rather be surprised.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Coat for Coating. ‘A coat of paint, or varnish.’ If we coat something we produce a coating, not a coat.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
[Of computers:] “They are useless. They can only give you answers.”
Pablo Picasso, quoted in William Fifeld, In Search of Genius (1982)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged art/architecture/design, hispanic history, humor
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