Your Quote of the Day

@spendius,

Quote:

What anybody makes of that, vonny, is a function of the type of sense of humour they have.

Whatever the experts say I think MP was taking the piss from first to last.

I actually agree with you: he was poking fun at the flowery and pretentious language of a certain French class. The proof is that his grandmother (a mountain of wisdom in the book) faults Legrandin for "speaking a little too well, a little too much like a book, for not using a vocabulary as natural as his loosely knotted Lavallière neckties".

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

In Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, the narrator remembers a magic lantern he had in his room, in Combray, that showed the image of Golo riding his horse towards Genevieve's castle. He says: "... and I would fall into the arms of my mother, whom the misfortunes of Geneviève de Brabant had made all the dearer to me, just as the crimes of Golo had driven me to a more than ordinarily scrupulous examination of my own conscience."

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"It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless."
-- Giacomo Casanova

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Don't fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else's expense.
- Harvey Mackay

1 Reply

@vonny,

Tripe vonny.

Was Mr Mackay a dour Scotsman?

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@spendius,

". . . ; our social personality is a creation of the thoughts of other people."

Marcel Proust. Overture.

BTW Olivier--I did some Googling on the reference in the Overture to Thetis and Aristaeus and it revealed the major vulnerability of M. Swann. Among other things.

The paragraph beginning "But if anyone. . ." to "unsuspected treasures" is worth a little study. (Pages 18--19 in my Volume 1).

I'm off reading it again.

1 Reply

@spendius,

What do you make of the reference to Aristaeus and Thetis? He is quoting a story by Virgil. Do you know that story by any chance?

http://www.authorama.com/remembrance-of-things-past-1.html

1 Reply

“As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

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@spendius,

Quote:

Tripe vonny.

Was Mr Mackay a dour Scotsman?

Harvey Mackay (born 1932 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is a businessman and columnist. Mackay is perhaps best known as the author of five business bestsellers. He is a nationally syndicated columnist, and one of America's most popular business speakers. He is also founder, Chairman and CEO of Mackay Envelope Corporation, whose story he tells in anecdotes sprinkled throughout his books.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Quote:

What do you make of the reference to Aristaeus and Thetis?

As my persistent down-thumber is determined to reduce the thread to his or her own level, I had better not say.

The mythological figures are not introduced gratuitously but one might have to be on a second reading to see that.

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@vonny,

Quote:

You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth. People who feel like they're being listened to feel accepted and appreciated. They feel like they're being taken seriously and what they say really matters.
Harvey Mackay

Harvey Mackay.

A bit patronising eh, not to say manipulative.

1 Reply

@spendius,

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"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
- H.L. Mencken

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What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, or uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.
- Victor Cherbuliez

1 Reply

@vonny,

"It's being so cheerful as keeps me going."

Mona Lott.

1 Reply

@spendius,

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“There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go--if there are no doors or windows--he walks through a wall.”
― Bernard Malamud

1 Reply

@edgarblythe,

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

-- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

1 Reply

@anonymously99,

Loving it. Cannot argue with this.

1 Reply

@Germlat,

I can. It says that if you haven't known defeat, suffering, struggle and loss, and have found your way out of the depths, you can't be beautiful. And that those who have known those things and have not yet found their way out of the depth can't be beautiful either.

Which is not a beautiful idea to me.

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