Your Quote of the Day

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
― Flannery O'Connor

Love that, edgar. I've often said that we shouldn't encourage some of these people by letting them write. You end up with people like Dan Brown and John Grisham actually becoming best-selling authors. They should have been stifled while there was still time.

I have not sampled Dan Brown. Grisham, I cannot read.

Neither can I. I've tried Grisham a couple of times and always end up giving up and throwing the silly book across the room. The man has real difficulty writing a comprehensible sentence in the English language.

“If you believe you're a poet, then you're saved.”
― Gregory Corso

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Presently, I'm reading The Dog Stars by Peter Heller:


So far, a very solid read:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Dog-Stars-Peter-Heller/dp/0307959945

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.” ― Markus Zusak

“I'd rather have friends who care than friends who agree with me.”
Arlo Guthrie

Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.
William Shakespeare

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
― Salvador Dalí

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.
Samuel Beckett

I love Beckett, euro.

When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.
Peter Marshall

I like some of Beckett's plays 'Waiting for Godot' being one but I find a lot of his work, well bleak. I would be a greater admirer of Sean O'Casey.

I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely.
A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.
Sean O'Casey

“This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: -- / To speak of bloody power as right divine,/ And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,/ And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine.”
Vachel Lindsay

"Tom Paine, that filthy little atheist"
Theodore Roosevelt

I took this from a web site, but forgot to get the url:

One reason (Roosevelt said this) might be that Paine had published a work in 1794 called "Age of Reason" in which he criticized the Bible and Christianity, dismissing both as false and calling Christianity fundamentally immoral.

In reality, Paine was neither little (he stood 5' 10"), nor was he an atheist. He was a deist, believing that God created nature and that was the end of God's contribution.

A very important part of the Irish way of life is death. See if anybody else anywhere else in the world dies that's the end of it they're dead but in Ireland when somebody dies we lay them out and watch them for a couple of days. It's called a wake. And it's great, it's a party, a send off. The fella is laid out on the table and there's drinking and dancing and all the food you can eat and all of your friends come from all over the place and they all stand around the wake table looking at you, with a glass in their hands looking at you and they say "Here's to your health". The terrible thing about dying over there [Ireland] is you miss your own wake. It's the best day of your life. You've paid for everything and you can't join in. Mind you if you did you'd be drinking on your own.

Dave Allen

“Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.”
Donal Henahan

“Throughout history, the leaders of countries have been very particular of what songs should be sung. We know the power of songs.”
Pete Seeger