“Wheat, n. A cereal from which a tolerably good whisky can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread. The French are said to eat more bread per capita than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.”
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 Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, science literacy
“I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.”
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
“Mr. Whitman’s attitude seems monstrous. It is monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste…Our hearts are often touched through a compromise with the artistic sense but never in direct violation of it.”
“Incapable of true poetical originality, Whitman had the cleverness to invent a literary trick, and the shrewdness to stick to it.”
Peter Bayne, Contemporary Review, 1875
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged lgbtq history, literary oddities, poetry
“If you want to read 200 pages of Edward Abbey’s self-flattery buy this…smug, graceless book.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
“’Big wars, says the Herald Tribune, in our nomination for the year’s Half-Truth Prize, ‘are very costly to the losers.’”
Franklin Pierce Adams
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
“Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“A film (1963) based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George about the threat of global nuclear destruction. The film was directed by Stanley Kubrick and starred Peter Sellers in three roles, including that of Dr. Strangelove himself (a crippled ex-Nazi scientist) and that of the US president who finds himself helpless to stop events spiralling out of control.
‘Gentleman, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!’
Such was the success of the film that in subsequent years any hawkish Cold War warrior was liable to be labelled as a ‘Dr. Strangelove.'”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“…if this writing up of a new faith is intended for a message, then it is only a paltry one, with its feathers, its bowls of human blood and its rhetoric.”
The Spectator
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Abuse, n. [1.] The goal of debate. Abuse of power is the exercise of authority in a manner unpleasant to ourselves. [2.] Unanswerable wit.”
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
[The manuscript dismissed below is The Silence of History by James T. Farrell]
“Although these manuscripts are physically a mess, they are also lousy.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
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