Busy Quotes (page 74)
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you have to be able to answer those questions plainly and clearly. There can be qualifications and “get-outs,” but the answers must remain comprehensible, because they define you. They add up to a political, not merely personal, character. This requires thought, detailed analysis and intellectual rigour. Politics is a far more intellectual business than is often realized. You may think: Well, if it’s simplicity that’s required, you don’t need a whole lot of detail. Wrong. The simplicity is...
Tony Blair
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser - in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
Abraham Lincoln
The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
You ask me what it means to be irrelevant? The feeling is akin to visiting your old house as a wandering ghost with unfinished business. Imagine going back: the structure is familiar , but the door is now metal instead of wood, the walls have been painted a garish pink , the easy chair you loved so much is gone . Your office is now the family room and your beloved bookcases have been replaced by a brand-new television set . This is your house, and it is not. And you are no longer relevant to...
Azar Nafisi
In a world where nearly everything that passes for art is tinny and commercial and often, in addition, hollow and academic, I argue--by reason and by banging the table--for an old-fashioned view of what art is and does and what the fundamental business of critics ought therefore to be. Not that I want joy taken out of the arts; but even frothy entertainment is not harmed by a touch of moral responsibility, at least an evasion of too fashionable simplifications.
John Gardner
There's a man who's been out sailing. In a decade full of dreams. And he takes her to a schooner. And he treats her like a queen. Bearing beads from California. With their amber stones and green. He has called her from the harbor. He has kissed her with his freedom. He has heard her off to starboard. In the breaking and the breathing. Of the water weeds. While she was busy being free
Joni Mitchell
First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and third---before long the best lines cancel out---and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the picture have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children...
F. Scott Fitzgerald