James Lipton > Quotes

“As I played the venereal game, like Tom Sawyer whitewashing his fence, I found that spectators didn’t stay spectators long. If you should feel the urge, there are more brushes in the pail.”
― James Lipton, An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition

“Our language, one of our most precious natural resources in the English-speaking countries, is also a dwindling one that deserves at least as much protection as our woodlands, streams and whooping cranes. We don’t write letters, we make long-distance calls; we don’t read, we are talked to, in the resolutely twelve-year-old vocabulary of radio and television. Under the banner of Timesaving we are offered only the abbreviated, the abridged, the aborted. Our Noble Eightfold Path consists entirely of shortcuts.”
― James Lipton, An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition

“In a language-besotted country that was about to give birth to an age of literary genius the likes of which the world had never seen, and will probably never see again, Dame Juliana and her contemporaries had turned "science" into art, solemn pedantry into airy fantasy, and the English language into a playground without fences.”
― James Lipton, An Exaltation of Business and Finance

“The reader of this book may already know the popular philological story that usually takes Oxford as its locale. In it, four dons, each representing a different academic discipline and therefore a different viewpoint, were flapping along the Oxford High when their path was crossed by a small but conspicuous group of prostitutes. The quickest of the dons muttered, “A jam of tarts.”” The second, obviously a fellow in Music, riposted, ‘“No, a flourish of strumpets.”’ From the third, apparently an expert on nineteenth-century English literature, came, ‘““Not at all...an essay of Trollope’s.”” The fourth—Modern English Literature—said, “An anthology of pros.” (I have heard versions that included “‘a peal of Jezebels,” ‘‘a smelting of ores” and even “a troop of horse,” but this begins to be flogging a dead one. )”
― James Lipton, An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition