“On hearing that Time editor Henry Luce objected to a profile of himself published in The New Yorker—on the grounds that not one nice thing was said about him in the whole piece—Ross told him, ‘That’s what you get for trying to be a baby tycoon.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
“You can’t learn too soon that the the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Compendium (noun): A resume of written work, text, or area of inquiry; brief but comprehensive summary; collection or inventory. Adjective: compendious; Adverb: compendiously; Noun: compendiousness.
‘We—whoever “we” are—might define the compulsion as a pleasurable urge to express through verbal imagery a compendium of certain inexplicably correlated vagaries observed by him in mental patients, on an off, since his first hear at Chose.’ Vladimir Nabokov, Ada”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Thomas Henry Huxley, “Biogenesis and Abiogenesis” (1870)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, readings/research, science literacy
“Morality is a disease which progresses in three stages: virtue—boredom—syphilis.”
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, philosophy/religion
“Insignificant for Trivial, or Small. Insignificant means not signifying anything, and should be used only in contrast, expressed or implied, with something that is important for what it implies. The bear’s tail may be insignificant to a naturalist tracing the animal’s descent from an earlier species, but to the rest of us, not concerned with the matter, it is merely small.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“University: A place in which a civilization’s knowledge is divided up into exclusive territories.
The principal occupation of the academic community is to invent dialects sufficiently hermetic to prevent knowledge from passing between territories. By maintaining a constant flow of written material among the specialists of each group they are able to assert the acceptable technique of communication intended to prevent communications. This in turn establishes a standard which allows them to dismiss those who seek to communicate through generally accessible language as dilettantes, deformers, or popularizers.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
“American Language: A term that presents American English as a national language, sometimes as an aggressive declaration of independence from the standard language of England: ‘This occasional tolerance for things American was never extended to the American language’ (H.L. Mencken, The American Language, 4th edition, 1936); ‘George Bush is hardly known for his rhetorical gifts. But his speech at last summer’s Republican Convention has already left its mark on the American language’ (Laurence Zuckerman, ‘Read My Cliché,’ Time, 16 Jan. 1989).”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“The author can’t win, ever, by Fiedler’s standard of judgement. Only the critic can win…there is more in American fiction, much more, than Fiedler has been able to find.”
Malcolm Cowley, New York Times Book Review
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, united states history
“Collateral Descendant. There can be none: a ‘collateral descendant‘ is not a descendant.
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, humor, literary oddities
 | A Measurement Conver… on An Elegantly Simple Cooking Co… |
| A Measurement Conver… on The Weekly Text, October 25, 2… |
 | markstextterminal on Cree |
 | panzer046a139293db on Cree |
| markstextterminal on Cree |
Mark's Text Terminal 
You must be logged in to post a comment.