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Quotes about things beginning with B
Baby
An alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end
and no responsibility at the other.
Elizabeth I. Adamson
Bits of star-dust blow from the hand of God. Lucky
the woman who knows the pangs of birth for she has
held a star. Larry Barretto
A mother's anchor. She cannot swing far from her
moorings. Henry Ward Beecher
A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or
condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of
the sympathies and antipathies it excites in
others, itself without sentiment or emotion.
Ambrose Bierce
It is all gut and squall. Charles Brown
A bald head and a pair of lungs. Eugene Field
An angel whose wings decrease as his legs
increase. French Proverb
A little rivet in the bonds of matrimony.
Arthur Gordon
Frequently can be classified as home accidents.
Max Gralnick
Unwritten history!
Unfathomed mystery! Josiah G. Holland
A thing on mother's milk and kisses fed. Homer
Lumps of flesh. Samuel Johnson
A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel.
Frederick Locker-Lampson
Something that gets you down in the daytime and up
at night. Kate M. Owney
Coiled within the dark womb he sits, the image of
an ape; a caricature and a prophecy of the man that
is to be. W. Winwood Reade
God's opinion that the world should go on.
Carl Sandburg
A well-spring of pleasure. Martin F. Tupper
An inestimable blessing and bother.
Mark Twain
Mom and Pop art. Patricia J. Warner
Today a premature baby is one that's born before
its parents are married. Earl Wilson
Someone just the size of a hug. Anon.
A perfect example of minority rule. Anon.
A disturber of the peace. Anon.
See also Birth, Child, Children.
Bachelor
A man whom women are still sampling.
Ambrose Bierce
A coward. Eugene E. Brussell
A sly old fish, too cunning for the hook.
George Crabbe
The only good husbands... they're too considerate
to get married. Finley Peter Dunne
God created them for the consolation of widows and
the hope of maids. J. De Finod
An incompleted animal. He resembles the odd half of
a pair of scissors. Benjamin Franklin
One who flees unpleasantness wherever it is found.
Warren Goldberg
The unsettled, thoughtless condition.
Samuel Johnson
A man who is foot-loose and fiance free.
F. G. Kernan
A man who has never weakened during a weekend.
G. L. Knapp
A man who thinks a weekend is something you rest up
in. Kenneth Kraft
An average male over twenty-one whom no average
female ever has made a serious attempt to marry.
Henry Louis Mencken
One who thinks that the only thoroughly justified
marriage was the one that produced him.
Harlan Miller
All reformers. George Moore
One who thinks one can live as cheaply as two.
Eleanor Ridley
(One who) gets tangled up with a lot of women in
order to avoid getting tied up to one.
Helen Rowland
(One) who thinks he is a thing of beauty and a boy
forever. Helen Rowland
A man in winter without a fur cap.
Russian Proverb
Half a man. Sanskrit Proverb
A man who shirks responsibilities and duties.
George Bernard Shaw
A man who hopes all his courting plans go through
without a hitch. Albert Spong
Who travels alone, without lover or friend,
But hurries from nothing, to nought at the end.
Ella W. Wilcox
A permanent public temptation. Oscar Wilde
A man who never makes the same mistake once.
Ed Wynn
A man who never Mrs. anybody. Anon.
One who knows the precise psychological moment when
to nod his head?no. Anon.
One who is foot-loose and fiance e free. Anon.
One who has never told his wife a lie. Anon.
One who savours the chase but does not eat the
game. Anon.
A man who has died before his education began.
Anon.
One who is nice to women all his life. Anon.
A man with no ties except those that need pressing.
Anon.
A souvenir of some woman who found a better one at
the last moment. Anon.
A man who lives at his ease. Anon.
A man who tries to avoid the major issue.
Anon.
One who can have a girl on his knees without having
her on his hands. Anon.
A man who would not take yes for an answer.
Anon.
One who lives in a laundromat, eats in restaurants
and wears socks with holes. Anon.
See also Celibacy, Husband, Marriage.
Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750)
I have always kept one end in view, namely... to
conduct a well-regulated church music to the honour
of God. Johann Sebastian Bach
I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally
industrious will succeed... equally well.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Too much counterpoint?and what is worse, Protestant
counterpoint. Thomas Beecham
The immortal god of harmony.
Ludwig van Beethoven
There is always something left to discover in him.
Pablo Casals
A sublime sewing-machine. Colette
Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian.
Roger Fry
It is as though eternal harmony were conversing
with itself... in God's bosom shortly before He
created the world. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He has said all there is to say. Charles Gounod
He wrote music that has a positive D-Major feeling
about life. Adapted from Elmer Iseler
He is characteristic of our era in that his music
is equally balanced between mathematics and
emotion... technical precision and deep feeling.
Yehudi Menuhin
He taught how to find originality within an
established discipline; actually?how to live.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The underlying personality of the man is known
only in the most shadowy way.
Time Magazine, Dec., 1968.
He considered himself not an artist, but an
artisan, no more elevated in stature than a
cabinet- maker with his tools and wood.
Time Magazine, Dec., 1968.
He is a phenomenon of our time. Rosalyn Turek
Bach opens a vista to the universe. After
experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to
life after all. Helmut Walcha
The greatest of preachers. Charles M. Widor
Bacon, Francis (1561-1626)
He had the sound, distinct, comprehensive knowledge
of Aristotle, with all the beautiful lights,
graces and embellishments of Cicero.
Joseph Addison
In Bacon see the culminating prime
Of British intellect and British crime.
Ambrose Bierce
His hearers could not cough or look aside from him
without loss... The fear of every man that heard
him was lest he should make an end. Ben Jonson
He seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the
greatest men, and most worthy of admiration.
Ben Jonson
The art which Bacon taught was the art of inventing
arts. The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men
was a knowledge of the mutual relations of all
departments of knowledge. Thomas B. Macaulay
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.
Alexander Pope
Bacon always seems to write with his ermine on.
Alexander Smith
That great secretary of Nature. Izaak Walton
Bad
The result of speaking and acting without
foreseeing the results of words and deeds.
Franz Kafka
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he
speaks of a good woman. Henry Louis Mencken
All that proceeds from weakness.
Friedrich W. Nietzsche
A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence,
and a bad woman is the sort of woman a man never
gets tired of. Oscar Wilde
See also Evil, Hell, Immorality, Wickedness.
Ballad
The gypsy-children of song, born under green
hedgerows in the leafy lanes and bypaths of
literature,?in the... summertime.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(They) show the complexion of the time.
John Selden
See also Poetry, Song.
Ballot
The rightful and peaceful successors of bullets.
Abraham Lincoln
A paper representative of the bayonet, the billy,
and the bullet... a laborsaving device for
ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to
the inevitable. Benjamin R. Tucker
It is no less the arbitrament of force than is the
decree of the most absolute of despots backed by
the most powerful of armies.
Benjamin R. Tucker
See also Democracy, Majority, Voting.
Bandit
See Criminal.
Bank
A power... greater than the people themselves,
consisting of many and various and powerful
interests combined in one mass, held together by
the cohesive power of the vast mass.
John C. Calhoun
A place where they lend you an umbrella in fair
weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Robert Frost
Bread box. Frank Tyger
See also Finance, Parents.
Banker
Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer.
Ogden Nash
A fellow who hands you his umbrella when the sun is
shining and wants it back the minute it begins to
rain. Mark Twain
One who lends money to the already affluent.
Anon.
A man who believes in interest, not principles.
Anon.
A pawnbroker nicely dressed. Anon.
Baptism
Being by nature born in sin, and the children of
wrath, we are hereby made the children of grace.
Book of Common Prayer.
A sign of initiation, by which we are admitted into
the society of the Church, in order that, being
incorporated into Christ, we may be numbered among
the children of God. John Calvin
God's Wardrobe; in Baptism we put on Christ; there
we are invested, appareled in Christ.
John Donne
The strength of baptism, that's within;
It saves the soul by drowning sin.
Robert Herrick
A living, saving water on account of the Word of
God which is in it. Martin Luther
The vehicle to heaven, the public agent of the
Kingdom, the gift of adoption. Saint Basil
It is ransom to captives and remission of sins...
the death of sin and the soul's regeneration... a
garment of light and a holy seal that can never be
dissolved. Saint Cyril
In Baptism the Holy Spirit, which in the beginning
of creation "moved upon the face of the waters,"
renews its hidden action on water as a primordial
and representative element of the material world.
Vladimir Soloviev
The virtue of cleansing an infant of an enormous
sin expiated by the Son of God, and committed
thousands of years before the parents of the child
dreamed of making him. Voltaire
Barbarism
Not taking others into account... the tendency to
disassociation. Warren Goldberg
The absence of standards to which appeal can be
made... the annulment of all norms.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
See also Civilization, Masses, Savage.
Bard
See Poet.
Bargain
Anything a customer thinks a store is losing money
on. Kin Hubbard
Something you have to find use for, once you've
bought it. Franklin Jones
Something you can't use at a price you can't
resist. Franklin Jones
A transaction in which each participant thinks he
has cheated the other. Anon.
Something that still costs money. Anon.
Baseball
Almost the only place in life where a sacrifice is
really appreciated. Mark Beltaire
The greatest conversation piece ever invented in
America. Bruce Catton
A game which consists of tapping a ball with a
piece of wood, then running like a lunatic.
H. J. Dutiel
An island of surety in a changing world.
William Veek
Bashfulness
An ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
Aristotle
A tough husk in which a delicate organization is
protected from premature ripening.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Oftener the effect of pride than of modesty.
Lord Halifax
Frequently a result of having too high an opinion
of our own importance.
Adapted from Samuel Johnson
The protective fluid within which our personalities
are able to develop into natural shapes.
Harold Nicolson
A maid's best dress. Welsh Proverb
See also Modesty.
Bastard
One who inherits his mother's name.
Max Gralnick
The son of no one, or rather the son of all.
Legal Maxim
Those born of sinful intercourse and not counted as
legal children. Legal Maxim
The end product of unplanned parenthood.
Caskie Stennett
There are no illegitimate children?only
illegitimate parents. Leon R. Yankwich
Battle
A method of untying with the teeth a political knot
that would not yield to the tongue.
Ambrose Bierce
Iron and blood. Otto von Bismarck
Misunderstanding. Thomas Carlyle
Mechanism; men now even die, and kill one another,
in an artificial manner. Thomas Carlyle
Six or seven thousand of the human species less
than there were a month ago, and seems to me to be
all. Lord Chesterfield
(Something) insupportably tedious and revolting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The caprice of chance. William Godwin
The result of a moment, of a thought; the hostile
forces advance with various combinations, they
attack each other and fight for a certain time, the
critical moment arrives, a mental flash decides,
and the least reserve accomplishes the object.
Napoleon 1
See also Army, War.
Battlefield
(Activity that) doesn't determine what is right.
Only who is left. Peter Bowman
On fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead. Theodore O'Hara
At once the playroom of all the gods and the
dancehall of all the furies. Jean Paul Richter
They there may dig each other's graves,
And call the sad work glory.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A place of settlement of disputes... gradually
yielding to arbitral courts of justice.
William Howard Taft
See also Army, General, Soldier, War.
Beard
The hair that is commonly cut off by those who
justly execrate the absurd Chinese custom of
shaving the head. Ambrose Bierce
That ornamental excrement which groweth beneath the
chin. Thomas Fuller
The glory of a face. Talmud: Sabbath, 52a.
A thing worn with gift ties. Anon.
To confront in defiance. Anon.
Man's ability to overcome social obstacles.
Anon.
See also Hair.
Beauty
A gift of God. Aristotle
Size as well as symmetry. Aristotle
Whatever is in any way beautiful has its source of
beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise
forms no part of it. Marcus Aurelius
The divine force which permeates the world.
Israel Baal Shem Tob
Summer fruits which are easy to corrupt and cannot
last. Francis Bacon
God's trademark in creation.
Henry Ward Beecher
A fading flower. Bible: Isaiah, XXVIII, 1.
Vanity. Bible: Proverbs, XXXI, 30.
The power by which a woman charms a lover and
terrifies a husband. Ambrose Bierce
A rainbow?full of promise but shortlived.
Josh Billings
The distilled essence of love?love which suffers
and aspires. John E. Boodin
The best of all we know. Robert Bridges
When purely physical, the sole characteristic of a
person that belongs to time.
Eugene E. Brussell
That which remains lovely in vulgar surroundings.
Eugene E. Brussell
An air of robustness and strength is... prejudicial
to beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of
fragility, is almost essential to it.
Edmund Burke
Two kinds of beauty?loveliness and dignity...
regard loveliness as the quality of woman, dignity
that of man. Cicero
Beauty is not caused. It is. Emily Dickinson
Zest is the secret of all beauty.
Christian Dior
All heiresses. John Dryden
That which is simple; which has no superfluous
parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands
related to all things; which is the mean of many
extremes. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The virtue of the body. Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is all beauty but the trace
Of my heart shining in my face? Edmond Fleg
The most beautiful subjects? The simplest and the
least clad. Anatole France
Silent eloquence. French Proverb
A good letter of introduction. German Proverb
Eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Kahlil Gibran
Holiness visible, holiness seen, heard, touched,
holiness tasted. Eric Gill
A manifestation of secret natural laws, which
otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
Johann W. Goethe
Merely the spiritual making itself known
sensuously. Georg W. Hegel
The index of a larger fact than wisdom.
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Margaret W. Hungerford
That which apart from concepts is represented as
the object of a universal satisfaction... the
symbol of the morally Good. Immanuel Kant
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. John Keats
God's handwriting. Charles Kingsley
An immense predilection, a perfect conviction of
the desirability of a certain thing.
Wyndham Lewis
That... which is worthy. Isaac Linetzki
Something wonderful and strange that the artist
fashions out of the chaos of the world in the
torment of his soul. William Somerset Maugham
The first present Nature gives to women, and the
first it takes away. George Mere
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour. Thomas Nashe
She is a visitor who leaves behind
The gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.
Robert Nathan
Simply a word; it is not even a concept. In his
view of the beautiful, man postulates himself as
the standard of perfection. A species has no
alternative to saying yea to itself in this way.
Friedrich W. Nietzsche
The joy of the eternal youthfulness of the creative
mind... it is the sharing of the gladness of the
creative discovery of a reawakened life in the
universe that constitutes the love of art to us.
Kakuzo Okakura
A harmonious relation between something in our
nature and the quality of the object which delights
us. Blaise Pascal
Sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own
high right. Donald C. Peattie
An ephemoral thing, wasting away almost before it
comes to its prime. Philo
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
Alexander Pope
A point of arrival. Auguste R. Rodin
Continual possession of God. Saint Gregory
A pledge of the possible conformity between the
soul and nature, and consequently a ground of
faith in the supremacy of the good.
George Santayana
What is beautiful is good, and who is good will
soon be beautiful. Sappho
Beauty is a vain doubtful good;
A shining glass that fadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies when first it `gins to bud;
A brittle glass that's broken presently.
William Shakespeare
If the motion which objects we see communicate to
our nerves be conducive to health, the objects
causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary
motion be excited, they are styled ugly.
Baruch Spinoza
A finer utility whose end we do not see.
Henry David Thoreau
Being... divested of every ornament which was not
fitted to endure. Henry David Thoreau
(Something) altogether in the eye of the beholder.
Lew Wallace
Real beauty ends where an intellectual expression
begins. Oscar Wilde
A form of genius?is higher than genius, as it needs
no explanation. Oscar Wilde
The only thing time cannot harm... What is
beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession
for all eternity. Oscar Wilde
The only beautiful things are the things that do
not concern us. Oscar Wilde
The beauty of the world has two edges, one of
laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart
asunder. Virginia Woolf
The outward form that dies on earth. Anon.
See also Art, Cosmetics, Face, Health, Nature,
Painting, Poetry, Truth, Woman.
Bed
Where we laugh, cry, are born in, and die.
Adapted from Isaac de Benserade
A great luxury, disposing to an universal
relaxation, and inducing beyond anything else that
species called sleep. Edmund Burke
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
Thomas Hood
The best medicine. Italian Proverb
The happiest part of a man's life.
Samuel Johnson
The bed encompasses our whole life, for we were
born in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.
Guy de Maupassant
A place of luxury to me. I would not exchange it
for all the thrones in the world. Napoleon 1
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light.
Philip Sidney
The place where marriages are decided. Anon.
For lovers, a place for bringing together or
drifting apart. Anon.
For lovers, a bridge toward something better.
Anon.
The grave of lost illusions. Anon.
See also Dream, Dreamer, Snoring.
Bee
Small among flying things, but her fruit has the
chiefest sweetness.
Apocrypha: Ecclesiastes, XI, 3.
Nature's confectioner. John Cleveland
The debouchee of dews! Emily Dickinson
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
William Shakespeare
The bee... does the whole business of life at once,
and at the same time feeds, and works, and diverts
itself. Jonathan Swift
A sweet thing that stings. Anon.
Beer
That which drowns all care. Robert Herrick
Life itself. Oxfordshire Proverb
A drink... for all constitutions, but especially
for the cholerick and melancholick most wholesome.
Tobias Venner
See also Drinking.
Beethoven, Ludwig Van (1770-1827)
I shall hear in heaven. Ludwig van Beethoven
I have not a single friend, I must live alone. But
well I know that God is nearer to me than to other
artists; I associate with Him without fear; I have
always recognized and understood Him and have no
fear for my music?it can meet no evil fate.
Ludwig van Beethoven
I have avoided almost all social gatherings because
it is impossible for me to say to people: "I am
deaf." Ludwig van Beethoven
I know that I am an artist.
Ludwig van Beethoven
I don't want to know anything about... (the) system
of ethics. Power is the morality of men who stand
out from the rest, and it is also mine.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Never show to men the contempt they deserve, one
never knows to what use one may want to put them.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Tell me nothing of rest. I know of none but sleep,
and woe is me that I must give up more time to it
than usual. Ludwig van Beethoven
I will take Fate by the throat; it shall not wholly
overcome me. Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven can write music, thank God?but he can
do nothing else on earth. Ludwig van Beethoven
I feel as if I had written scarcely a few notes.
Ludwig van Beethoven
A more self-contained, energetic, sincere artist I
never saw. I can understand right well how singular
must be his attitude towards the world.
Johann W. Goethe
An utterly untamed personality, not altogether in
the wrong in holding the world... detestable, but
who does not make it any the more enjoyable either
for himself or for others by his attitude.
Johann W. Goethe
Beethoven is not beautiful. He is dramatic,
powerful, a maker of storms... but his speech is
the speech of a self-centered egotist.
James G. Huneker
The father of all the modern melomaniacs, who,
looking into their own souls, write what they see
therein?misery, corruption, slighting, selfishness,
and ugliness. James G. Huneker
Again and again he lifts us to a height from which
we revaluate not only all music but all life, all
emotion, and all thought. Ernest Newman
Beethoven's music is music about music.
Friedrich W. Nietzsche
Beethoven's attitude towards life... (is) to be
found in his realization of the heroism of
achievement... to realize suffering as one of the
great structural lines of human life.
John W. Sullivan
He was impervious to criticism; his manners were
atrocious; he ignored conventions; he was
permanently subject to no social passions, not even
sexual love. John W. Sullivan
(He was) primarily concerned to express his
personal vision of life... Beethoven the man and
Beethoven the composer are not two unconnected
entities. John W. Sullivan
We know, from... his music, that Beethoven was a
man who experienced all that we can experience, who
suffered all that we can suffer. If, in the end, he
seems to reach a state "above the battle" we also
know no man ever knew more bitterly what the battle
is. John W. Sullivan
This small... pock-marked, unkempt German
provincial. Anon.
Beggar
The happy folk. Pierre J. Beranger
One who has relied on the assistance of his
friends. Ambrose Bierce
Vermin that infest the rich. French Proverb
A robber who has lost his nerve?a bandit with a
streak of yellow in his ego. Elbert Hubbard
The only free man in the universe.
Charles Lamb
The true king. Gotthold E. Lessing
Someone who breeds while rich men feed.
Adapted from John Ray
See also Poor, Poverty.
Beginning
Half the whole. Aristotle
(Something that) bears witness to the end, and the
end will at long last bear witness to the
beginning. Leon Baeck
A quarter of the journey. Henry G. Bohn
Something that is always difficult.
German Proverb
Half way to winning. Heinrich Heine
The hardest step. James Howell
The most important part of the work. Plato
When things are always at their best. Anon.
Behavior
The sum of behavior is to retain a man's own
dignity, without intruding upon the liberty of
others. Francis Bacon
A man's ethical behavior should be based
effectually on sympathy, education and social ties
and needs; no religion basis is necessary.
Albert Einstein
The finest of the fine arts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar to few;
Friend to One; enemy to none.
Benjamin Franklin
A mirror, in which everyone shows his image.
Johann W. Goethe
No truer index to intelligence. Ibn Gabirol
What a man does, not what he feels, thinks, or
believes. Benjamin C. Leeming
The theory of manners practically applied.
Madame Necker
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Henry David Thoreau
See also Conduct, Deeds, Manners.
Being
A torrent, in and out of which all bodies pass,
coalescing and cooperating with the whole, as the
various parts in us do with one another.
Marcus Aurelius
For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.
Bible: Acts, XVII, 28.
The nature of things in themselves. A thing "is"
whatever it gives us least trouble to think it is.
There is no other "is" than this.
Samuel Butler 2
Perfection of power to be. John Dewey
All things come from being, and being comes from
non-being. Lao-tzu
See also Existence, Life, Living, Man, Reality.
Belief
What a man had rather were true.
Francis Bacon
Mere self-defense to hold that behind...
non-rational forces, and above them, guiding them
by slow degrees... stands that supreme Reason.
Arthur James Balfour
Life itself. Thomas Carlyle
Childish foolishness. Morris R. Cohen
The natural possession of beings possessing minds.
Martin D'Arcy
The most complete of all distinctions between man
and the lower animals. Charles Darwin
What makes men stronger. Jerry Dashkin
Consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul;
unbelief, in denying them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
True belief transcends itself; it is belief in
something?in a truth which is not determined by
faith, but which... determines faith.
Erich Frank
Truths being in and out of favour. Robert Frost
A matter of living what you know to be correct.
Max Gralnick
Consists not in the nature and order of our ideas,
but in the manner of their conception, and in their
feeling to the mind... something felt by the
mind, which distinguishes the ideas of the judgment
from the fictions of the imagination.
David Hume
Often extremely irrational attempts to justify our
instincts. Thomas Henry Huxley
Security and guidance. Koran
Your own assent to yourself, and the constant voice
of your own reason. Blaise Pascal
Thought at rest. Charles S. Peirce
The demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in
the symphony of our intellectual life.
Charles S. Peirce
A calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish
to avoid. Charles S. Peirce
The essence... is the establishment of a habit.
Charles S. Peirce
Faith is belief, and belief has... an aspect of
firmness, persistence, and subjective certainty.
Ralph Barton Perry
A matter of taste. George Bernard Shaw
A passion, or an involuntary operation of the mind,
and like other passions, its intensity is precisely
proportionate to the degrees of excitement.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Religious belief is a total assertion which has for
its subject the whole world order. J. L. Stocks
Whatever thoughts any human soul is seeking to live
by. William Temple
See also Certainty, Conviction, Dogma, Faith,
Religion, Truth.
Believer
A songless bird in a cage. Robert G. Ingersoll
One in whom persuasion and belief
Had ripened into faith, and faith become
A passionate intuition. William Wordsworth
Believing
Not... what a man is made to believe but... what he
must believe. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Whatever one likes to see one likes to believe.
German Proverb
What takes place in us when we believe is a
phenomenon of intimate and superhuman light.
Jean B. Lacordaire
Not a matter of creed. What a man believes may be
ascertained, not from his creed, but from the
assumption on which he habitually acts.
George Bernard Shaw
See also Belief, Creed, Faith, Truth.
Bells
The publicity of God. In France people say, "God is
advertising Himself." R. L. Bruckberger
Music's laughter. Thomas Hood
The music bordering nearest heaven.
Charles Lamb
The best of preachers.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The voice of the church.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I call the living. I mourn the dead; I break the
lightning. Johann C. Schiller
I mourn death, I disperse the lightning, I announce
the Sabbath, I rouse the lazy, I scatter the winds,
I appease the blood-thirsty. Anon.
Benevolence
To love all men. Confucius
To act from pure benevolence is not possible for
finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with
vanity, interest, or some other motive.
Samuel Johnson
One of the distinguishing characteristics of man.
It is the path of duty. Mencius
A natural instinct of human mind; when A sees B in
distress, his conscience always urges him to
entreat C to help him. Sydney Smith
See also Charity, Generosity, Giving,
Philanthropy.
Best-Seller
The affinity between the mediocrity of the au-
thor's ideas and those of the public.
Nicolas Chamfort
All these long-gone-with-the-winded novels.
David McCord
The gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.
Logan P. Smith
A book of momentary interest. Anon.
Usually lots of reading but not much writing.
Anon.
See also Book, Fiction.
Bible
The classical book of the noble ethical sentiment.
Felix Adler
It furnished good Christians an armor for their
warfare, a guide for their conduct, a solace in
their sorrows, food for their souls.
Gaius G. Atkins
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament,
adversity is the blessing of the New.
Francis Bacon
One wisdom which is perfect. Roger Bacon
Not man's word about God, but God's word about man.
Karl Barth
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto
my path. Bible: Psalms, CXIX, 105.
A respectable book, but I should hardly call it one
whose philosophy is of the soundest. All truth,
especially historic truth, requires cool...
investigation, for which the Jews do not appear to
have ever been famous. George Borrow
God's book because it is in a unique and universal
sense Man's book. It is the record of and the
vehicle for transmitting a great human experience,
an experience of God, of human need, and of God's
response to that need. Richard Brook
The immortal epic of a people's confused,
faltering, but indomitable struggle after a nobler
life in a happier world. Lewis Browne
A work too hard for the teeth of time, and cannot
perish but in the general flames, when all things
shall confess their ashes. Thomas Browne
The school of the Holy Spirit. John Calvin
That divine Hebrew Book,?the word partly of the man
Moses, an outlaw tending his... herds, four
thousand years ago, in the wilderness of Sinai.
Thomas Carlyle
God's wisdom. William Ellery Channing
The religion of Protestants.
William Chillingworth
The unchangeable word of God to which man must bend
himself, and not something which he can bend to
his own personal ideas. Jean Danielou
The ascent towards discovery.
Henry Daniel-Rops
A collection of different legends, mutually
contradictory and written at different times and
full of historical errors, issued by churches as a
"holy" book.
Dictionary of Foreign Words, Soviet Government,
1951.
A window in this prison-world, through which we may
look into eternity. Timothy Dwight
(A book that has) implanted itself in the
table-talk and household life of every man and
woman in the European and American nations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
An old Cremona; it has been played upon by the
devotion of thousands of years until every word
and particle is public and tunable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A history of the growth of the idea of God.
St. John Ervine
A book that sweats people into unity.
Adapted from Leon Feuchtwanger
The epic of the world... all life's fever is there,
its hopes and joys, its suffering and sin and
sorrow. James Frazer
The two-edged sword of God's word.
Thomas Fuller
That great medicine chest of humanity.
Heinrich Heine
The portable fatherland. Heinrich Heine
A plain old book, modest as nature itself... a book
of an unpretending work-day appearance, like the
sun that warms or the bread that nourishes us.
Heinrich Heine
(A book of) shallows where a lamb could wade and
depths where an elephant would drown.
Matthew Henry
The book of books, the storehouse and magazine of
life and comfort. George Herbert
The Magna Charta of the poor and the oppressed.
Thomas Henry Huxley
(The instigator) of revolt against the worst forms
of clerical and political despotism.
Thomas Henry Huxley
The Iliad of religion. Joseph Joubert
God's Word in that it is a memory of a past
revelation of God and an expectation of future
revelation. Adolph Keller
One mighty representative of the whole spiritual
life of humanity. Helen Keller
The best gift God has given to man... But for it
we could not know right from wrong.
Abraham Lincoln
Christ is the master; the Scriptures are only the
servant. Martin Luther
A book which, if everything else in our language
should perish, would alone suffice to show the
whole extent of its beauty and power.
Thomas B. Macaulay
The Bible leads us to Jesus, the inexhaustible, the
every unfolding Revelation of God.
George Macdonald
The Old Testament is tribal in its provinciality;
its god is a local god, and its village police and
sanitary regulations are erected into eternal laws.
John Macy
A chronicle of crises in the life of men and
nations. Judah Magnes
The history of a deliverer; of God proclaiming
himself as man's deliverer from the state into
which he is ever ready to sink.
Frederick D. Maurice
What Dryden said about Chaucer applies to
infinitely greater degree to the Bible: "Here is
God's plenty." Robert J. McCracken
The revelation of God... the supreme revelation of
man. William Lyon Phelps
Bread that comes down from heaven.
Pope Benedict 15
A hymn to Justice. Pierre J. Proudhon
The great book of consolation for humanity.
Ernest Renan
The bone and sinew of nations with the will to
live. Romain Rolland
A parable of man's advance to the family, to the
tribe, to a nation with a national ideal, to a
nation with a universal ideal. Franz Rosenzweig
A most perfect rule for human life.
Saint Benedict
Literature, not dogma. George Santayana
Our patent of nobility. Solomon Schechter
The mystery of mysteries! Walter Scott
An open town in time of war, which serves
indifferently the occasions of both parties.
Jonathan Swift
God experienced in all the length and breadth and
height and depth of His revelation and
communication to man. E. I. Watkin
(A book which) teaches man his own individual
responsibility... dignity, and... equality with his
fellow-man. Daniel Webster
A book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book
of morals, and a book of religion, of special
revelation from God. Daniel Webster
Fear is the denomination of the Old Testament;
belief is the denomination of the New.
Benjamin Whichcote
The people's book of revelation, revelation of
themselves not alone, but revelation of life and of
peace. Woodrow Wilson
The highest ethical note ever yet sounded... by
man. Israel Zangwill
See also Christians, Christianity, Churches,
Commandments, Deism, God, Holiness, Jews, Judaism,
Religion, Ten Commandments, Theist.
Bibliomania
Collecting an enormous heap of books without
intelligent curiosity. Isaac D'Israeli
Desire to have many books, and never use them.
Henry Peacham
See also Book, Library, Reading.
Bigamist
A man who marries a beautiful girl and a good cook.
Chicago Herald-American
Someone who makes the same mistake twice.
Jimmy Lyons
A lion-tamer working in two cages simultaneously.
Anon.
Bigamy
A mistake in taste. Ambrose Bierce
Respectability carried to criminal lengths.
Constantine Fitz-Gibbon
Having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Oscar Wilde
When two rites make a wrong. Anon.
Taking one two many. Anon.
Bigot
One... obstinately and zealously attached to an
opinion that you do not entertain.
Ambrose Bierce
One who is frequently wrong, but with confidence.
Eugene E. Brussell
People who have no convictions at all.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
He who will not reason. William Drummond
A person who slams his mind in your face.
Paul H. Gilbert
A blind man with sight. Max Gralnick
Anyone attached to an opinion you do not entertain.
Edward Higgins
A person who, under an atheist king, would be an
atheist. Jean de La Bruyere
A man who converts the main issue in piety into a
side issue, and a side issue into the main issue.
Mendel of Kotzk
See also Anti-Semitism, Prejudice.
Bigotry
To take up half on trust, and half to try.
John Dryden
(When) objects fall into categories... and wear
little sure channels in the brain.
David Grayson
Chronic dogmatism. Horace Greeley
The disease of ignorance, of morbid minds.
Thomas Jefferson
A form of egoism, and to condemn egosim
intolerantly is to share it. George Santayana
Dark convictions. Logan P. Smith
A darkness in the understanding. John Woolman
Biography
Dramatic constructions. Katherine Anthony
One of the new terrors. John Arbuthnot
(Something that) should be written by an acute
enemy. Arthur J. Balfour
The literary tribute that a little man pays to a
big one. Ambrose Bierce
The only true history. Thomas Carlyle
A heroic poem. Thomas Carlyle
The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The confession of the man himself to somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Material (that) is not to be had and if it were it
could not be used. Sigmund Freud
An interpretive, selective, and analytic, not a
creative art. Claude M. Fuess
Like big game hunting... one of the recognized
forms of sport, and it is as unfair as only sport
can be. Philip Guedalla
A region bounded on the north by history, on the
south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on
the west by tedium. Philip Guedalla
Nobody can write the life of a man, but those who
have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse
with him. Samuel Johnson
Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative
writing, that which is most eagerly read and most
easily applied to the purpose of life.
Samuel Johnson
Should be a man's conversation, not his deeds.
George Moore
The history of the lives of individual men as a
branch of literature.
Oxford English Dictionary.
A living voice. Samuel Smiles
See also Autobiography, Historian.
Birds
Dame nature's minstrels. Gavin Douglas
Only a song machine. George Macdonald
The merry minstrels of the morn.
James Thomson
A voice, a mystery. William Wordsworth
Birth
I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother
conceive me. Bible: Psalms, L, 5.
The first and direct of all disasters.
Ambrose Bierce
The sudden opening of a window through which you
look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has
happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for
the possibility of everything.
William M. Dixon
Wherever a child is born... there the angel's choir
chant anew the sweet tidings of glory and peace and
good will. Hyman Enelow
The first of all dangers to life, as well as the
prototype of all the later ones we fear; and this
experience has left its mark behind it on that
expression of emotion which we call anxiety.
Sigmund Freud
The first experience of anxiety. Sigmund Freud
The beginning of death. Thomas Fuller
The coffin is the cradle's brother.
German Proverb
The glory of God. Jewish Proverb
We begin to die at birth; the end flows from the
beginning. Marcus Manilius
A sleep and a forgetting. William Wordsworth
See also Baby.
Birth Control
A mine disaster... think of all the people lost
inside you. Richard Brautigan
The idea that people should be in one respect
completely and utterly uncontrolled, so long as
they evade everything in that function that is
positive and creative. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The avoidance of pregnancy... within the bounds of
reason and morality. John A. Goodwine
Turning marital relations into a form of annual
inventory. Sydney J. Harris
The use of unnatural means for the avoidance of
conception.
Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops, 1920.
Complete abstinence from intercourse.
Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops, 1930.
It means attacking the primary purpose of the
marriage act in the very manner of performing it.
Donald F. Miller
An act of will whose purpose is to prevent
fertilization. Otto A. Piper
Sin against nature... a deed which is shameful and
intrinsically vicious... an offense against the law
of God and nature. Pope Pius 11
A grave sin. Pope Pius 12
The one sin for which the penalty is national
death, race death; a sin for which there is no
atonement. Theodore Roosevelt
The most revolutionary invention of the nineteenth
century. George Bernard Shaw
Premature murder. Tertullian
Copulation without population. Anon.
The formula by which one plus one equals zero.
Anon.
Anti-littering. Anon.
See also Abortion.
Birthday
A big event in everybody's life. It should be a
holiday?with pay. Michael Darling
The funeral of the former year. Alexander Pope
Feathers in the broad wing of time.
Jean Paul Richter
Bishop
The power and authority of a bishop ... consist
... in inspecting the manners of the people and
clergy, and punishing them in order to reforma-
tion, by ecclesiastical censures.
William Blackstone
Bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the
place of the Apostles, as shepherds of the Church,
and he who hears them, hears Christ.
Constitution of the Church, Second Vatican
Council,
1964.
The individual Bishops... exercise their pastoral
government over the portion of the People of God
committed to their care, and not over the churches
nor over the universal Church.
Constitution of the Church, Second Vatican Council,
1964.
Only a surpliced merchant. Through his lawn I can
see the bright buttons of the shopman's coat.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In their corporate capacity the bishops... have the
right to articles of faith. But individually, their
sole duty is to dispense with the observation of
those articles. Charles de Montesquieu
An ecclesiastical sheriff. Chief Justice North
The politician of churches. Maxwell Pont
Every steward sent by the master to govern his
house... wherefore the bishop should be regarded as
the Lord Himself. Saint Ignatius
All are successors of the Apostles.
Saint Jerome
The most solemn and terrible duty of a bishop is
the entertainment of the clergy. Sydney Smith
The steward of God. Anon.
The president of a firm dealing in spiritual life,
whose days are spent auditing books and hiring and
firing the personnel. Anon.
See also Catholicism, Priests.
Black
See Negro, Slave, Slavery.
Blasphemy
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain. Bible: Exodus, XX, 7.
Denying the being or providence of God,
contumelious reproaches of our Saviour Christ,
profane scoffing at the Holy Scripture, or exposing
it to contempt or ridicule. William Blackstone
Injustice. Robert G. Ingersoll
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw
Blessing
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel
of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners,
nor sitteth in the seat of the scournful.
Bible: Psalms, I, 1.
The dead which die in the Lord.
Bible: Revelation, XIV, 13.
Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask
no other blessedness. Thomas Carlyle
God Himself. Meister Eckhart
Long life, riches, serenity, the love of virtue,
and the attainment of ambition. The Hung-Fan
The fruits of labor, toil, self-denial, and study.
William G. Sumner
Every misery I miss. Izaak Walton
Good when He gives, nor less when He denies, mere
blessings in disguise. Anon.
See also Salvation.
Blonde
A brunette with a top secret. Dan Bennett
An abbreviation of "peroxide of hydrogen."
Jimmy Lyons
The cross between a brunette and a drugstore.
Anon.
Blood
The blood is the life.
Bible: Deuteronomy, XII, 23.
An inheritance. Miguel de Cervantes
A very special kind of sap. Johann W. Goethe
That fragile scarlet tree we carry within us.
Osbert Sitwell
Blue
Trueness. Ben Jonson
Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,
Married to green. John Keats
Not merely a color; it is a mystery.
Israll B. Najara
True love. Scottish Proverb
Bluestocking
A misfortune to a woman. Mary W. Montagu
When we think... ill of a woman, and wish to
blacken her character, we merely call her a
bluestocking. Edgar Allan Poe
A scourge to her husband, her children, her
friends, her servants, and the whole world.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Blushing
A sign of guilt or ill-breeding.
William Congreve
Only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of
two contradictories. George Eliot
Virtue's color. English Proverb
Notice to be careful. Edgar W. Howe
(Means) already guilty; true innocence is ashamed
of nothing. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Badges of imperfection. Saints have no shame.
William Wycherley
See also Bashfulness.
Boaster
A boaster and a liar are first cousins.
German Proverb
An ass. William Shakespeare
A person with whom it is no sooner done than said.
Anon.
Someone invited for dinner who proves that the
night has a thousand I's. Anon.
See also Egotist.
Boasting
See Exaggeration, Lying.
Body
A system of tubes and glands... a bundle of pipes
and strainers, fitted to one another after so
wonderful a manner as to make a proper engine for
the soul to work with. Joseph Addison
A bar of soap. It gradually wears down from
repeated use. Ritchie Allen
Am I what I seem, more flesh and blood,
A branching channel, with a mazy flood...
I call it mine, not me. John Arbuthnot
A healthy body is a guest-chamber for the soul; a
sick body is a prison. Francis Bacon
The temple of the Holy Ghost.
Bible: Corinthians, VI, 19.
A portion of soul discern'd by the five senses, the
chief inlets of soul in this age. William Blake
The workhouse of the soul. Henry G. Bohn
A pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stewpan,
the whole fixed upon stilts. Samuel Butler 1
A hodge-podge of sagging livers, sinking gall
bladders, drooping stomachs, compressed intes-
tines, and squashed pelvic organs.
John Button 2
An envelope. Alexis Carrel
The... form entrusted to you by Heaven and Earth...
a blended harmony. Chuang-tzu
This house of clay not built with hands.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The tenement of clay. John Dryden
A community made up of its innumerable cells or
inhabitants. Thomas Alva Edison
The magazine of inventions, the patent office,
where are the models from which every hint is
taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only
extensions of its limbs and senses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A thing of shreds and patches, borrowed un equally
from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the
start. Ralph Waldo Emerson
A pipe through which we tap all the succors and
virtues of the material world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Only a prison. Mohandas K. Gandhi
The harp of your soul. Kahlil Gibran
A marvelous machine... a chemical laboratory, a
power-house. Every movement, voluntary or in-
voluntary, full of secrets and marvels!
Theodor Herzl
The instrument of the spirit. Samson R. Hirsch
Nothing by objectified will. Thomas Landry
A worthy dwelling for the soul, God's portion from
on high. Israel Lipkin
The urn of the soul. Lucretius
A machine which winds its own springs.
Julien O. Mettrie
A bundle of aches, Longing for rest.
Edna S. Millay
An internal world. Jonathan Miller
A fetid drop. Mishna: Abot, III, 1.
The body is made for the soul to express it.
Jean Mouroux
A morsel for death. Guru Nanak
A vessel which He wrought, and into which He
infused His workmanship and skill. Guru Nanak
An affliction of the soul... a burden, a necessity,
a strong chain, and a tormenting punishment.
Palladas
The tomb of the soul. Plato
The temple of the Holy Spirit, and is the means
whereby alone the soul can establish relations with
the universe. Harry Roberts
A tabernacle in which the transmissible human
spirit is carried for a while, a shell for the
immortal seed that dwells in it and has created it.
George Santayana
Not a home but an inn?and that only briefly.
Seneca
The unwilling sport of circumstance and passion.
Adapted from Percy Bysshe Shelley
A human body is composed of a large number of
different entities, and each of them is itself a
composite. Baruch Spinoza
A cell state in which every cell is a citizen.
Rudolf Virchow
The best picture of the human soul.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
This heaven-labour'd form, erect, divine.
Edward Young
A little city. Anon.
See also Corpse, Flesh.
Bohemia
A bunch of amateurs teaching amateurs to be
amateurs. Charles Coburn
A good place in which to camp, but a very poor
place in which to settle down. Elbert Hubbard
(A place) not on the map because it is not a
money-order office. Elbert Hubbard
People who sit on the floor and drink black coffee
when all the time there are chairs and cream in the
room. Beatrice Lillie
A place of artistic-minded pretenders. Anon.
Bohemian
A person open to the suspicion of irregular and
immoral living. Ralph Waldo Emerson
A person conventionally unconventional.
George Bernard Shaw
An educated hoss-thief. Artemus Ward
A person who works to live but does not live to
work. Heathcote Williams
Bonaparte, Napoleon
See Napoleon 1.
Book
The legacies that... genius leaves to mankind, to
be delivered down from generation to generation, as
presents to those that are yet unborn.
Joseph Addison
That is a good book which is opened with
expectation and closed with profit.
Amos Bronson Alcott
A blast from the lungs made visible to the eyes.
Hervey Allen
Most books, indeed, are records less
Of fulness than of emptiness.
William Allingham
A garden carried in the pocket.
Arabian Proverb
Ships which pass through the vast sea of time.
Francis Bacon
A garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a
company by the way, a counsellor, a multitude of
counsellors. Henry Ward Beecher
The windows through which the soul looks out.
Henry Ward Beecher
The compasses and telescopes and sextants and
charts which other men have prepared to help us
navigate the dangerous seas of human life.
Jesse L. Bennett
A malevolent literary device for cramping the
growth of a language and making it hard and
inelastic. Ambrose Bierce
Something to be read, not kept under glass or in a
safe. John Mason Brown
Masters who instruct us without rods... without
hard words and anger... they conceal nothing.
Richard de Bury
The true university. Thomas Carlyle
All that mankind has done, thought, gained or
been... they are the chosen possession of men.
Thomas Carlyle
Friends that never fail me. Thomas Carlyle
The blessed chloroform of the mind.
Robert Chambers
The voices of the distant and the dead, and make us
heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
William Ellery Channing
Leisure for me; they are never engaged. Cicero
A guide in youth and an entertainment for age.
Jeremy Collier
Feeders for brothels. Anthony Comstock
They give new views to life, and teach us how to
live. Adapted from George Crabbe
Accumulated wisdom. George W. Curtis
The most remarkable creation of man; nothing else
that he builds ever lasts... Monuments fall...
civilizations grow old and die out... but in the
world of books are volumes that live on, still as
young and fresh as the day they were written?still
telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries
dead. Clarence Day
The curse of the human race. Nine-tenths... are
nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation
of that nonsense. Benjamin Disraeli
The quietest and most constant of friends; they are
the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and
the most patient of teachers. Charles W. Eliot
The best thing, well used; abused, among the worst.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The scholar's idle times. When he can read God
directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in
other men's transcripts of their reading.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A work of magic whence escape all the images to
trouble the souls and anger the hearts of men.
Anatole France
Sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable.
Oliver Goldsmith
The most complicated and mightiest of all the
miracles created by man on his path to the
happiness and power of the future. Maxim Gorky
My masters and companions. Joseph Hall
A screen to keep us from a knowledge of things.
William Hazlitt
An inanimate thing, yet it talks...
It gives, and does not take. Moses Ibn Ezra
Books constitute capital. A... book lasts as long
as a house... It is not, then, an article of mere
consumption but... of capital, and often in the
case of professional men, setting out in life, it
is their only capital. Thomas Jefferson
The most effective weapon against intolerance and
ignorance. Lyndon Baines Johnson
A way to lose yourself in other men's minds.
Books think for you. Adapted from Charles Lamb
What they make a movie out of for television.
Leonard L. Levinson
A mirror: if an ass peers into it, you can't expect
an apostle to look out. Georg C. Lichtenberg
Sepulchers of thought.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The very heart and core of ages past.
Amy Lowell
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
Amy Lowell
Two sorts of books: those that no one reads and
those that no one ought to read.
Henry Louis Mencken
The precious life-blood of a master spirit,
imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life
beyond life. John Milton
A book ought to be like a man or a woman, with some
individual character in it, though eccentric, yet
its own; with some blood in its veins and
speculation in its eyes and a way and will of its
own. John Mitchel
Style and structure are the essence... great ideas
are hogwash. Vladimir Nabokov
They only teach us to talk about things we know
nothing about. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Windows that frame the wide and luminous view.
Adapted from Frances C. Sayers
A finer world within the world.
Alexander Smith
Books extend our narrow present back into a
limitless past. They show us the mistakes of the
men before us and share with us recipes for human
success. T. V. Smith
Funny little portable pieces of thought.
Susan Sontag
A mighty bloodless substitute for life.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The treasured wealth of the world, the fit inher-
itance of generations and nations.
Henry David Thoreau
The good book is always a book of travel; it is
about a life's journey. Henry M. Tomlinson
Life's best business: vocation to these has more
emolument coming in than all the other busy terms
of life. Richard Whitlock
For company the best friends, in doubts
counsellors... time's perspective... the busy man's
best recreation, the opiate of idle weariness...
the seedplot of immortality. Richard Whitlock
The Meccas of the mind. George E. Woodberry
The world carried in the hand. Anon.
See also Author, Bibliomania, Fiction, Literature,
Novel, Printing, Reader, Style, Writing.
Bore
A Bromide. Gelett Burgess
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Ambrose Bierce
A harmless creature, or of that class of irrational
bipeds who hurt only themselves.
Maria Edgeworth
A fellow who opens his mouth and puts his feats in
it. Henry Ford
A man who deprives you of solitude without
providing you with company. Gian Gravina
A person who has flat feats. Joseph Harrington
The last one to find himself out.
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1
All men... except when we want them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1
A man like a spider, spinning conversation inces-
santly out of his bowels.
Adapted from Samuel Johnson
A person not only dull, but the cause of dullness
in others. Adapted from Samuel Johnson
A man who spends so much time talking about himself
that you can't talk about yourself.
Melville Landon
(One) who has a fixed idea to impart, and the fixed
ideas of the few are the boredom of the many.
Edward V. Lucas
Everyone... to someone. Llewellyn Miller
A fellow talking who can change the subject back to
his topic... faster than you can change it back to
yours. Laurence J. Peter
The kind of man who, when you ask him how he is,
tells you. Channing Pollock
A man in love with another woman.
Mary P. Poole
A man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
Bertram L. Taylor
To tell everything. Voltaire
The coming of age of seriousness. Oscar Wilde
A man who is never unintentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde
A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour
vocabulary. Walter Winchell
A person one cannot endure indefinitely. Anon.
One who lights up a room when he leaves. Anon.
One who thinks he is always at his best. Anon.
One whom even the grave yawns for. Anon.
One who keeps his conversation hohumming.
Anon.
One whose shortcoming is long a-staying. Anon.
See also Philistine.
Boredom
The desire of activity without the fit means of
gratifying the desire. George Bancroft
The world's second worst crime... the first is
being a bore. Cecil Beaton
What happens when we lose contact with the
universe. John Ciardi
A feeling of isolation, of alienation from
corporate society. Jerry Dashkin
The tedium of life. Aurus Gellius
The curse of those who achieve security.
Max Gralnick
The consciousness of a barren, meaningless
existence. Eric Hoffer
The essential nature of monogamy.
Elbert Hubbard
Uniformity of manners and thoughts.
Joseph Jacobs
Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly to him
whose whole employment is to watch its flight.
Samuel Johnson
Uniformity. Lamotte-Houdar
Something that exists only among those who attach
importance to the mind. Giacomo Leopardi
The fixed ideas of the few. Edward V. Lucas
Rent for living in this world. William Manville
The yawn of a new day. Hal Murray
Complete repose, without passion, occupation,
amusement, care. Blaise Pascal
A vital problem for the moralist, since at least
half the sins of mankind are caused by fear of it.
Bertrand A. Russell
An emptiness filled with insistence. Leo Stein
Sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own
skins, for life. Tennessee Williams
See also Monotony.
Boss
The question "Who ought to be boss?" is like asking
"Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?"
Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.
Henry Ford
(One who) exists to make sensible exceptions to
general rules. Elting E. Morison
The one who watches the clock during the coffee
break. Hupp Trevis
One who does not care for "yes" men. He also
appreciates men who can say "no" when he does.
Anon.
A man who can look at both sides: his side and the
wrong side. Anon.
The man at the office who is early when you are
late and late when you are early. Anon.
See also Executive, Leader.
Boston
The town of the cries and the groans, where the
Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks and the Lowells
won't speak to the Cohns.
Adapted from Franklin P. Adams
The home of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells
talk to the Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to
God. Adapted from John C. Bossidy
A hole. Robert Browning
The heart of the world.
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1
The thinking center of the continent, and therefore
of the planet. Oliver Wendell Holmes 1
A moral and intellectual nursery always busy
applying first principles and trifles.
George Santayana
A state of mind. Mark Twain
A museum piece. Frank Lloyd Wright
The wheel within Massachusetts. Boston therefore is
often called the "hub of the world," since it has
been the source and fountain of the ideas that have
reared and made America. F. B. Zinckle
Bostonian
The East wind made flesh. Thomas G. Appleton
A comfortable man with dividends.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond
mere talent to any other set upon the continent of
North America. They are decidedly the most servile
imitators of the English it is possible to
conceive. Edgar Allan Poe
If you hear an owl hoot: "To whom" instead of "To
who" you can make up your mind he was born and
educated in Boston. Anon.
Your grave Bostonian, stately of pace, with
second-hand English writ in his face. Anon.
Botany
The art of insulting flowers in Greek and Latin.
Alphonse Karr
Bourgeoisie
See Middle Class, Philistine.
Boy
A magical creature?you can lock him out of your
workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart.
Allan Beck
The appetite of a horse, the digestion of a sword
swallower... the curiosity of a cat, the lungs of a
dictator... the shyness of a violet, the audacity
of a steel trap, the enthusiasm of a firecracker,
and when he makes something he has five thumbs on
each hand. Allan Beck
Someone who wants to grow up fast and be a
fireman and eat candy for a living.
Eugene E. Brussell
Hurry on its way to doing nothing. John Ciardi
At best, but pretty buds unblown, whose scent and
hues are rather guessed at than known.
Adapted from William Cowper
Someone more troublesome than a dozen girls.
English Proverb
One who has a wolf in his stomach.
German Proverb
A young boy is a theory; an old man is a fact.
Edward Howe
Capital fellows in their own way, among their
mates; but they are unwholesome companions for
grown people. Charles Lamb
Nature's raw material. Hector H. Munro
Of all the wild beasts, the most difficult to
manage. Plato
A noise with dirt on it. Anon.
A cross between a god and a goat. Anon.
An appetite with a skin pulled over it. Anon.
See also Child, Youth.
Boyhood
A summer sun. Edgar Allan Poe
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned in schools.
John Greenleaf Whittier
The time when we crowd years in one brief moon.
Adapted from John Greenleaf Whittier
The sweetest roamer. George E. Woodberry
See also Childhood, Youth.
Brahms, Johannes (1833-1897)
When I feel the urge to compose, I begin by
appealing directly to my Maker.
Johannes Brahms
I once told Wagner himself that I was the best
Wagnerian of our time. Johannes Brahms
A landscape torn by mists and clouds, in which I
can see ruins of old churches, as well as of Greek
temples?that is Brahms. Evard Grieg
For the drawing room he is not graceful enough, for
the concert hall not fiery enough, for the city not
cultured enough. Anton Rubinstein
I believe Johannes to be the true Apostle, who will
also write Revelations. Robert Schumann
(His music) is a verbosity which outfaces its
commonplaceness by dint of sheer magnitude.
George Bernard Shaw
I have played over the music of that scoundrel
Brahms. What a giftless bastard!
Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky
He seemed to lack liveliness, so that in our
meetings he was often scarcely noticed.
Richard Wagner
He can't exult! Hugo Wolf
Brain
An apparatus with which we think that we think.
Ambrose Bierce
The greatest natural resource. Karl Brandt
(Something that) starts working the moment you get
up in the morning, and does not stop until you get
into the office. Robert Frost
Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The angel of
life winds them up once for all, then closes the
case, and gives the key into the hands of the angel
of the resurrection. Oliver Wendell Holmes 1
The knapsack of intelligence. Elbert Hubbard
A commodity... used to fertilize ideas.
Elbert Hubbard
Only one condition out of many on which intellec-
tual manifestations depend.
Thomas Henry Huxley
An appendage of the genital glands. Carl Jung
Three kinds of brains: one understands of itself,
another can be taught to understand, and the third
can neither understand of itself or be taught to
understand. Niccolo Machiavelli
The citadel of the senses. Pliny 1
A most unusual instrument of elegant and as yet
unknown capacity. Stuart L. Seaton
A part of the body that begins to operate at birth
but stops when its owner gets up to make a speech.
Anon.
The greatest underdeveloped territory. Anon.
A part of the human mechanism that starts to
function at birth and stops when its owner gets up
to make an impromptu speech. Anon.
What people are forced to use who don't have
college degrees. Anon.
Nature's way of keeping house. Anon.
See also Head, Intelligence, Mind, Thinking,
Understanding.
Bravery
Fear sneering at itself. Maxwell Bodenheim
A cheap and vulgar quality, of which the brightest
instances are frequently found in the lowest
savages. Paul Chatfield
An accident of circumstances. Michael Dee
Falling but not yielding. Latin Proverb
(Physical bravery is) an animal instinct; moral
bravery is a much higher and truer courage.
Wendell Phillips
To look into the mirror of your own soul to see
written there the disfigurements caused by your own
misbehavior. Fulton J. Sheen
The condition you find yourself in after a few
drinks. Anon.
See also Courage, Gallantry, Heroism.
Bread
The staff of life. English Saying
What the rich occasionally give to the poor as a
substitute for cake.
Adapted from Elbert Hubbard
Bread for myself is a material question; bread for
my neighbor is a spiritual question.
Jacques Maritain
See also Food, Stomach.
Breeding (Manners)
The best security against other people's ill
manners. Lord Chesterfield
Surface Christianity. Oliver Wendell Holmes 2
The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they
behave in a quarrel. George Bernard Shaw
An expedient to make fools and wise men equals.
Richard Steele
Concealing how much we think of ourselves and how
little we think of the other person.
Mark Twain
See also Gentleman, Manners, Well-Bred.
Brevity
Not only the soul of wit, but the soul of making
oneself agreeable, and of getting on with people,
and... of everything that makes life worth having.
Samuel Butler 1
The soul of drinking, as of wit. Charles Lamb
To say at once whatever is to be said.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
The soul of lingerie. Dorothy Parker
Almost a condition of being inspired.
George Santayana
The soul of wit. William Shakespeare
The next best thing to silence. Anon.
Words that cover more ground than they occupy.
Anon.
See also Epigram, Talk.
Bride
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind
her. Ambrose Bierce
A goddess who descends into commonality. Anon.
See also Honeymoon, Niagara Falls, Wedding.
Bridge (Cards)
Being miserable together. Don Herold
An unfriendly game of cards. Anon.
The triumph of mind over chatter. Anon.
The most shin-bruising game in America. Anon.
A war surrounded by politicians. Anon.
Britain
See England.
British Empire
Our policy now can only be to sustain the fragments
of what was once a glorious empire on which the sun
used never to set and on which now it seldom rises.
Lord Beaverbrook
A domain created in a moment of world
absent-mindedness. Eamon de Valera
See also England, Englishmen.
Briton
See Englishmen.
Broadmindedness
The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
George Saintsbury
High-mindedness flattened out by experience.
Anon.
Broadway
The longest street with the shortest memory.
Maurice Barrymore
A street of ham and aches. Hyman Gardner
America's hardened artery. Mark Kelly
A place where people spend money they haven't
earned to buy things they don't need to impress
people they don't like. Walter Winchell
See also Theater.
Brotherhood
An injustice righted here, an opportunity extended
there. Kingsley Amis
The right hands of fellowship.
Bible: Galantians, II, 9.
Finally, be ye all of one mind.
Bible: Peter, III, 8.
Brotherhood is religion! William Blake
Not an ideal, but a divine reality... a spiritual
and not a psychic reality. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
When two say to one another with all that they are,
"It is Thou." Martin Buber
Owing to your brethren all that it is in your power
to give. Adapted from John Calvin
While there is a lower class I am it. While there
is a criminal class I am of it. While there is a
soul in prison I am not free. Eugene V. Debs
All for one and one for all. Alexandre Dumas
To live vividly together. Max Eastman
Helping yourself by helping others.
Adapted from Elbert Hubbard
(To) live, think, and suffer with the men of your
time, as one of them. Henry de Lubac
The crest and crowning of all good.
Edwin Markham
A destiny which makes us brothers.
Edwin Markham
When man to man shall be a friend and brother.
Adapted from Gerald Massey
Mutually mindful of each other, of one heart and
one mind. Saint Cyprian
To love God by loving man.
Adapted from Saint Francis de Sales
A feeling of fellowship that should be, but isn't.
Anon.
See also Bible, Christ, Christianity, Christians,
Fellowship, Friendship, God, Religion.
Brutality
See Cruelty.
Bryan, William Jennings (1860-1925)
The boy orator of the Platte. W. J. Connell
The Platte?six inches deep and six miles wide at
the mouth. Joseph B. Foraker
A somewhat greasy bald-headed man with his mouth
open. Henry Louis Mencken
A personally honest and... attractive man, a real
orator and a born demagogue, who has every crank,
fool, and putative criminal in the country behind
him. Theodore Roosevelt
He was in himself the average man... he did not
merely resemble that average man, he was that
average man. Charles W. Thompson
A progressive who never progressed?mentally.
Charles W. Thompson
Buddhism
Their belief... that Providence sends down always
an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At
bottom some belief in a kind of pope!... that there
is a Greatest Man; that he is discoverable... that
we ought to treat him with an obe- dience which
knows no bounds. Thomas Carlyle
The word used for religion in Buddhism is
brahma-cariya which may be translated as "the
ideal life"?any way of life which anyone may
consider to be the ideal as a consequence of his
holding a certain set of beliefs about the nature
and destiny of man in the universe.
G. P. Malalasekera and K. N. Jayatilleke
The... doctrine that real riches consists not in
the abundance of goods but in the paucity of wants.
Alfred Marshall
Buddhism... may be accepted as a preface to the
Gospel... and as the most convincing argument
withal that truth to be clearly known waits upon
Revelation. Paul E. Moore
The product of long centuries of philosophical
speculation... The things necessary... are a very
mild climate, customs of great gentleness and
liberality, and no militarism.
Friedrich W. Nietzsche
An emphasis on personality which finds its climax
in Christianity. D. E. Trueblood
Budgeting
A system of additions and subtractions more honored
in breach than in observance.
Eugene E. Brussell
Telling your money where to go instead of wondering
where it went. C. E. Hoover
A mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.
A. A. Latimer
A reflection of values in the language of dollars
and sense. Samuel S. Markowitz
The art of doing that well with one dollar which
any bungler can do with two after a fashion.
Arthur Wellington
A method of worrying before you spend instead of
afterwards. Anon.
A system of going into debt systematically.
Anon.
An in-debt activity. Anon.
See also Economy.
Bureaucracy
A giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Honore de Balzac
A continuing congregation of people who must act
more or less as one. John Kenneth Galbraith
The antithesis of democracy. Jo Grimond
The cancer-cell of the nation. E. S. Haynes
The anonymous "they," the enigmatic "they" who are
in charge. Who is "they"? I don't know. Nobody
knows. Not even "they" know. Joseph Heller
Parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson
More machinery of government than is necessary.
Thomas Jefferson
The nearest thing to immortality in this world.
Hugh S. Johnson
The biggest eater and the biggest loafer that ever
oppressed the sons of man. David Lubin
The rule of no one... the modern form of despotism.
Mary McCarthy
The work of government has been in the hands of
governors by profession; which is the essence and
meaning of bureaucracy. John Stuart Mill
See also Government, Washington, D.C.
Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
He was a scientific statesman; and therefore a
seer. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He'd talk to you in such a manner, that, when you
parted, you would say, this is an extraordinary
man. Samuel Johnson
An out-and-out vulgar bourgeois. Karl Marx
He rose like a rocket, he fell like a stick.
Thomas Paine
Business
Profit. Charles F. Abbott
The art of extracting money from another man's
pocket without resorting to violence.
Max Amsterdam
The place set apart where men may deceive each
other. Anacharsis
(Something) more agreeable than pleasure; it
interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of
man more continuously, and more deeply.
Walter Bagehot
Swindling. August Bebel
Gambling. Ambrose Bierce
Boldness... is the first, second, and third thing.
Henry G. Bohn
A battle where everything goes, where the only
gospel is "get ahead," and never spare friends or
foes. Adapted from Berton Braley
(An activity) which should know neither love nor
hate. Samuel Butler 2
The business of America is business.
Calvin Coolidge
To make money in an honorable manner.
Peter Cooper
Marketing and innovation. Peter Drucker
Business? That's very simple?it's other people's
money. Alexandre Dumas
All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of
probabilities, and not on certainties.
Charles W. Eliot
A great art involving the selling of wind.
Baltasar Gracian
The pursuit of gain... in which men can serve the
needs of others whom they do not know.
F. A. Hayek
Punctuality is the soul of business.
Thomas C. Haliburton
A combination of war and sport. Emile Herzog
Business is war. Japanese Saying
Consists in persuading crowds. Gerald S. Lee
The aim... is service, for profit, at a risk.
Benjamin C. Leeming
A superior economic tool by which to provide those
things that constitute the physical basis of
living. David E. Lilienthal
The material foundation of a society which can
further the highest values known to men.
David E. Lilienthal
A continual dealing with the future... a continual
calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.
Henry R. Luce
The playthings of our elders. Saint Augustine
The Jungle. Upton Sinclair
The judicious use of sabotage. Thorstein Veblen
(That which) underlies everything in our national
life, including our spiritual life. Witness... that
in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for
daily bread. No one can worship God or love his
neighbor on an empty stomach. Woodrow Wilson
Riding a bicycle. Either you keep moving or you
fall down. John D. Wright
See also Capitalism, Commerce, Corporation,
Economics, Economy, Market-Place.
Businessman
(One who) has all the air, the distraction and
restlessness and hurry of... a criminal.
William Hazlitt
The most sensible people to be met with in
society... who argue from what they see and know.
William Hazlitt
One who gets the business and completes the
transaction?all the rest are clerks and laborers.
Elbert Hubbard
One who should keep moving about so people will
think he is doing big things. Jewish Saying
He who attempts to get people to believe he has
something they want.
Adapted from Gerald S. Lee
The only man above the hangman and the scavenger
who is forever apologizing for his occupation. He
is the only one who always seeks to make it appear,
when he attains the object of his labors, i.e., the
making of a great deal of money, that it was not
the object of his labors. Henry Louis Mencken
The visionless demigod of our new materialistic
myth. Eugene O'Neill
Someone who has read only newspapers since
leaving school.
Adapted from George Bernard Shaw
(Those so engaged) because the soul abhors a vacuum
and they have not discovered any continuous
employment for man's nobler faculties.
Henry David Thoreau
They are not units but fractions.
Woodrow Wilson
See also Capitalist, Merchant, Salesman.
Butler
See Servant.
Butter
Gold in the morning, silver at noon, lead at night.
English Proverb
Butter is life. Sanskrit Proverb
Butterfly
At best,
He's but a caterpillar, drest John Gay
The butterfly, an idle thing, nor honey makes, nor
yet can sting. Adapted from Adelaide O'Keefe
Exquisite child of the air. Alice F. Palmer
First grubs obscene, then wriggling worms, then
painted butterflies.
Adapted from Alexander Pope
Byron, Lord (1788-1824)
I really am the meekest and mildest of men since
Moses. Lord Byron
The grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme.
Lord Byron
A coxcomb who would have gone into hysterics if a
tailor had laughed at him. Ebenezer Elliott
Great only as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is
a child. Johann W. Goethe
He is great in so little a way. Charles Lamb
He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a
foot the deformity of which the beggars in the
street mimicked. Thomas B. Macaulay
A star that shot through the firmament.
Samuel Rogers
An exceedingly interesting person... a slave to the
vilest and most vulgar prejudices.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A denaturalized being who, having exhausted every
species of sensual gratification, and drained the
cup of sin. John Styles
The power of Byron's personality lies in the
splendid and imperishable excellence which covers
all his offences and outweighs all his defects: the
excellence of sincerity and strength.
Charles Algernon Swinburne
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