They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
(Remark after being incarcerated in Bedlam for five years.)
Nathaniel Lee
Category: Quote of the Day
Aphorisms, proverbs, wise sayings and other witty, pithy stuff
16JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
The stately ship is seen no more,
The fragile skiff attains the shore;
And while the great and wise decay,
And all their trophies pass away,
Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme,
Still floats above the wrecks of Time.
William Edward Hartpole Lecky
15JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
THE OWL AND THE PUSSY-CAT.
I.
THE Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!”
II.
Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?”
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III.
“Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dinèd on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
Edward Lear
14JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The [atomic] bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.
Admiral William D. Leahy comment on the U.S. Atomic Bomb Project, to President Harry S. Truman in 1945
13JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
The Atomic Age began at exactly 5.30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 15, 1945, on a stretch of semi-desert land about 50 airline miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico. And just at that instance there rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one. … At first it was a giant column that soon took the shape of a supramundane mushroom.
William L. Laurence on the first atomic explosion in New Mexico, 16 Jul 1945, New York Times (26 Sep 1945).
12JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
Cold on Canadian hills or Minden’s plain,
Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain;
Bent o’er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years,—
The child of misery, baptized in tears.
John Langhorne
11JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees the mud, and one the stars.
Frederick Langbridge
10JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.
Charles Lamb
09JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
Charles Lamb
08JUN2023 – Quote of the Day
The Old Familiar Faces
I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her –
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man;
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seem’d a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father’s dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces –
How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed –
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Charles Lamb