“Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on a ukulele: the instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where one question grew before.”
“Evolution of the Scientific Point of View” (1908)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Article. A good and useful word, but used without meaning by shopkeepers; as, ‘A good article of vinegar,’ for a good vinegar.”
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
“All of Those Words, in denominations of from three to five letters, are present.”
Library Journal
“The novelist who doesn’t like meanings writes an allegory; the allegory means that men should not mean but be. Ods bodkins. The reviewer looks at the evidence and wonders if he should damn the author and praise the book, or praise the author and damn the book. And is it possible, somehow or other to praise or damn, both? He isn’t sure.”
Reed Whittemore, New Republic
“At times Henderson is too greyly overcast with thought to be more than a dun Quixote.”
Time
“There is no effort toward decency—many of the conversations that come back to Herzog are foul-mouthed, and his own sexual actions and reminiscences are unrestrained.
America
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Ring once referred to his prep-school-aged sons as his ‘four grandsons,’ explaining to a puzzled acquaintance that they cost him ‘Four grand a year.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Cabinet, n. The principal persons charged with the mismanagement of a government, the charge being commonly well founded.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“Mrs. Parker taught for a time at Los Angeles State College, where she found the students very ‘narrow.’ When reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, for example, the students felt the book was too dirty. ‘But then Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize,’ Mrs. Parker recalled. ‘After that they behaved as if they had given it to him.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
“Demagogue, n. A political opponent.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“As elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“President Coolidge’s inimitable deadpan personality became a cherished target for the Round Tablers’ wit. After his first meeting with Coolidge, Lardner reported to the group that he had told the president a humorous anecdote, adding, ‘He laughed until you could hear a pin drop.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
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