Alan > Alan's Quotes

“Good teachers get fired; great teachers, killed--Socrates, Christ, and Giordano Bruno.”
― Alan W. Powers

“I practice Dying--every night--
But have not learned to, still--
Though Talented--by Mortal bones--
For such a common Skill.”
― Alan W. Powers

“Trovo la televisione molto educativa. Ogni volta che qualcuno la accende, vado in biblioteca e leggo un buon libro.”
― Groucho Marx

“Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; then to that twenty, add a hundred more; a thousand to that hundred: so kiss on, to make that thousand up a million. treble that million, and when that is done, let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun!”
― Robert Herrick

“The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.”
― Robert Frost

“Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“La seule excuse de Dieu c'est de ne pas exister.”
― Stendhal

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Forse non ci sono giorni della nostra adolescenza vissuti con altrettanta pienezza di quelli che abbiamo creduto di trascorrere senza averli vissuti, quelli passati in compagnia del libro prediletto. Tutto ciò che li riempiva agli occhi degli altri e che noi evitavamo come un ostacolo volgare a un piacere divino: il gioco che un amico veniva a proporci proprio nel punto più interessante, l’ape fastidiosa o il raggio di sole che ci costringevano ad alzare gli occhi dalla pagina o a cambiare posto, la merenda che ci avevano fatto portar dietro e che lasciavamo sul banco lì accanto senza toccarla, mentre il sole sopra di noi diminuiva di intensità nel cielo blu, la cena per la quale si era dovuti rientrare e durante la quale non abbiamo pensato ad altro che a quando saremmo tornati di sopra a finire il capitolo interrotto[...]”
― Marcel Proust, Del piacere di leggere

“Heifers, younger, are another matter,
Goofy, quick to spook, gangly. They
Galumpf about, attack afraid and
Retreat feeling real brave. There's no
Understanding 'em, that's just
The way they are.
--Ars Docentis”
― Alan W. Powers, Westport Soundings

“The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency.”
― Lewis Thomas

“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Siempre imaginé que el Paraíso sería algún tipo de biblioteca.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Reality is not always probable, or likely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Lo spirito libero crea un'economia a se medesimo consona e non può creare perciò un'economia comunistica che è economia asservita ad un'idea, qualunque sia, imposta da una volontà, per definizione e per ragion di vita, intollerante di qualsiasi volontà diversa.
Lo spirito, se è libero, crea un'economica varia, in cui coesistono proprietà privata e proprietà di gruppi, di corpi, di amministrazioni statali, coesistono classi di industriali, di commercianti, di agricoltori, di professionisti, di artisti, le une dalle altre diverse, tutte traenti da sorgenti proprie i mezzi materiali di vita, capaci di vivere, se occorre, in povertà ma senza dover chiedere l'elemosina del vivere ad un'unica forza, si chiami questa stato, tiranno, classe dominante, sacerdozio intollerante delle fedi diverse da quella ortodossa.”
― Luigi Einaudi, Liberismo e liberalismo

“from "After the Fall"

When Kennedy dropped from the sky
To honor the poet Frost, ...
So MacLeish spoke.."Not
To mention Robert Frost. For Frost,
Of course, is another matter, as he
Always was, spoke to the throng an the one
Hatless in October, but days before
Dallas and November.”
― Alan W. Powers, Westport Soundings

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut”
― Albert Einstein

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson

“A lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.”
― Ruth K. Westheimer

“Idea For A Short Documentary Film

Representatives of different food products manufacturers try to open their own packaging.”
― Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance

“to become a great saint, it is no bad first step to be a big sinner.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 1492: The Year the World Began

“Capitalism seems to have failed and is now stigmatized as greed. A reaction against individual excess is driving the world back to collective values. Fear of terror overrides rights; fear of slumps subverts free markets. Consumption levels and urbanization are simply unsustainable at recent rates in the face of environmental change. The throwaway society is headed for the trash heap. People who sense that “modernity” is ending proclaim a “postmodern age.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 1492: The Year the World Began

“Only three routes of upward mobility were available to socially ambitious upstarts such as Columbus: war, the Church, and the sea. Columbus probably contemplated all three: he wanted a clerical career for one of his brothers, and fancied himself as “a captain of cavaliers and conquests.” But seafaring was a natural choice, especially for a boy from a maritime community as single-minded as that of Genoa. Opportunities for employment and profit abounded.”
― Felipe Fernández-Armesto, 1492: The Year the World Began

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”
― George Orwell