Archive for October, 2003
Quotations references
Livewire: Recycling Word Power - from Aristotle to ZapataSat Oct 11, 3:44 PM ET Add Technology - Reuters Internet Report to My Yahoo!
By Gunna Dickson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - At a loss for words? “Don’t have a cow!” Quote somebody. From Bart Simpson to Bartlett’s, famous quips and familiar quotations speak volumes on the Internet.
Related Links
• Bartleby.com
• The Quotations Page
• Dictionary of Quotations
• Quoteland.com
• www.creativequotations.com
Additional word power can transform you into a virtual Churchill, the most eloquent of statesmen, and give you the existentialist insight of Kierkegaard or the political cunning of Machiavelli. It can even impart a note of musical savvy via quotes from Bach to Tupac.
“A quotation in a speech, article or book, is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman,” the playwright Brendan Francis once said. “It speaks with authority.”
Indeed, for wit and conventional wisdom, zingers, declarations of love, or motivational thoughts, there is a deep well of inspiration online.
More than 86,000 entries make up the largest searchable database, Bartleby.com (http://www.bartleby.com), which combines the best of contemporary and classic passages, phrases and proverbs about all aspects of life.
The site contains the 10th edition of John Bartlett Familiar Quotations — 11,000 in all; The Columbia World of Quotations with 65,000 quotes by 5,000 authors on 6,500 subjects; and Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations (no relation to Bart!) featuring over 10,000 entries from 4,000 sources in 25 categories.
Too shy to express your true feelings? Let the Internet be your Cyrano de Bergerac.
Love is everywhere on the Web. It is described in its purest form by the artist and poet Kahlil Gibran (”Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit”) and Mother Teresa, who said “The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.”
The sentiments of author Erich Segal (”Love means never having to say you’re sorry”) and the Beatles (”All you need is love”) are more banal and commercial, but still effective.
“At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet,” is a platitude from Plato, but for true passion, the lovestruck can turn to Shakespeare: “Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”
A match for love as a strong emotion is anger. The Quotations Page (http://www.quotationspage.com), with a database of more than 15,000, is searchable by author or subject, with 14 entries for Anger.
But why get angry if you can get even? When it comes to the classic put-down, nobody does it better than the British.
Noel Coward’s “I like long walks, especially when they are being taken by people who annoy me,” or Winston Churchill’s perfect squelch, “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”
Alcohol and its effects get more light-hearted treatment from a couple of old-time funnymen. W.C. Fields: “A woman drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her,” and Henny Youngman: “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
Encouragement and motivation can be found under D for Dreams/Dreamers in the online Dictionary of Quotations at http://www.quotationreference.com. There is Eleanor Roosevelt’s “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of the dream” and Irishman Oscar Wilde’s “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Dr. Ferdinand Porsche incorporates both ideas into a practical application: “I couldn’t find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself.”
Quoteland.com (http://www.quoteland.com) is also arranged by topic — friends, life, happiness — Literary Quotations, Special Occasion Quotes, Sports, Reference Library and Internet Resources with general and historical reference links.
There are many proverbs — African, Sicilian, Scottish, Yiddish, Japanese and Chinese — and Quotations by Author, with notable quotes from Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) and Woody Allen, who quipped that “80 percent of success is showing up.”
There are encouraging words from Buddha (”He is able who thinks he is able”), Cervantes, Tiger Woods and Walt Disney. And practical wisdom from media mogul Rupert Murdoch (”The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks”), Microsoft’s Bill Gates (news - web sites) (”Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”) and U.S. Army Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (”Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.”)
Still more inspiration can be found at Creative Quotations (www.creativequotations.com), which provides famous quotes and biographical sources for more than 3,000 people and includes Search by Month and Birthday, Quotational Poetry and Themes of the Month.
A postscript: Churchill, though his powers of expression were legendary, nevertheless maintained that “short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”
Spier Falls, 24M
Sped through the shortest possible Spier Falls loop: 24.28 miles at 15.5 avg mph. It was a beautiful evening, the deer were out grazing, startling the cyclists. This was the first time I traveled this route clockwise–it’s actually quite nice in that direction.
The knees are still feeling a little strain. The muscles and lungs are fine.
Warm at 65ish degrees.
