Tag Archives: literary oddities

George Bernard Shaw on Experience

Posted on January 3, 2025 | Leave a comment

“We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.”

George Bernard Shaw

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Oscar Wilde on Experience and Mistakes

Posted on December 6, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”

Oscar Wilde

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Rotten Reviews: The Tin Drum

Posted on December 6, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Bewildered by the torrent of fantastic incident, mystified by what Gunter Grass intends by it all, one feels like a zoologist who discovers some monstrous unrecorded mammal gobbling leaves. It may have beautiful horns, but what is it?”

New Statesman

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

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Nietzsche on Faith and Madness

Posted on October 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Ambition

Posted on October 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Ambition, n. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.”

Ambrose Bierce

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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Emerson on Post-Secondary Education

Posted on October 18, 2024 | Leave a comment

“We are shut up in schools and college education recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Anatole Broyard on Children and Expectations

Posted on September 13, 2024 | Leave a comment

“There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.”

Anatole Broyard

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Tolstoy on History

Posted on September 2, 2024 | Leave a comment

“History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.”

Leo Tolstoy

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Cyril Connolly on the Civilized and the Uncivilized

Posted on August 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

“The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this the uncivilized have never forgiven them.”

Cyril Connolly

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

Cyril Connolly

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Lord Salibury on Experts

Posted on August 23, 2024 | Leave a comment

“If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.”

Lord Salisbury

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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