Category Archives: Quotes of Note

“Age doesn’t alter one’s outlook on the world, Belle.  The essential person is always there.  Sometimes, I’m perfectly horrified to look at myself in the mirror and see an ancient crone staring back.  I feel no different than I did … Continue reading →

“He was always so plausible.  Many People have believed that his version of events was the true one, give or take a few murders, a few beautiful seductresses, a few one-eyed monsters.  Even I believed him, from time to time.  … Continue reading →

“The young man, they found, was a naturalist, an astronomer, a geographer, a geologist, a botanist, an authority on Indian antiquities, a linguist, an artist—an academy unto himself, as the poet Goethe [one of Humboldt’s friends] would say. He was … Continue reading →

“Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader’s imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a … Continue reading →

“Miss Brodie was easily the equal of both sisters together, she was the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle and they were only the squares on the other two sides.” – Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean … Continue reading →

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore … Continue reading →

Throughout Guns, Germs, and Steel author Jared Diamond makes the point over and over that we shouldn’t judge “primitive” people as being unintelligent simply because they don’t possess the same knowledge database that we have.  In the example below Diamond … Continue reading →