Smart Stuff

I like peasants - they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously.
Montesquieu

The poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul is irreparable.
Michel De Montaigne
It is with narrow-souled people as it is with narrow-necked bottles: the less
they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.
Alexander Pope
Minds that have nothing to confer
Find little to perceive.
William Wordsworth

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men
By strangers with a calm judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed we watch with dread
The lines of ink along the map turn red.
Marya Mannes

Patriotism is a lively sense of responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock
crowing on its own dunghill.
Richard Aldington
The nationalist has a broad hatred and a narrow love. He cannot stifle a
predilection for dead cities.
Andre Gide

Nature is a hanging judge. Anon
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Francis Bacon
I long for scenes where man hath never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept -
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.
John Clare
Nature […]

A little neglect may breed mischief…for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for
want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost.
Benjamin Franklin

“You just have to, that’s all.”
A news executive at KDLH-TV
in Duluth, Minnesota, when Pamela
Golden asked why she had to wear
tight-fitting sweaters and stand
sideways while delivering the
weather report, 1983
I keep reading between the lies.
Goodman Ace
speaking of newspapers
All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after […]

I find it hard to say, because when I was there it seemed to be shut.
Clement Freud
On being asked his opinion of New Zealand
Terrible Tragedy in the South Seas.
Three million people trapped alive!
Tom Scott
“Listener,” 1979
writing on New Zealand

To make ourselves invisible to creditors or to the envious, and even to our own
worries, we can take advantage here on earth of a great democratic institution -
in fact, democracy’s only success - the night.
Jean Giraudoux

To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right.
Thomas Paine