Potent Quotables
Words worth remembering: Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain ... and "Ka-malaprops!"
I’ve always been drawn to a clever phrase.
Especially those found in quotes, but also in song lyrics. And epigrams. And aphorisms. And, if not overplayed into cliché, proverbs.
All writers are on a Quixotic quest for perfect diction — a deft expression that reveals sage wisdom or a pithy witticism. The most memorable become words to live by.
Great quotes are found in poems or excerpted from a text or speech. They may be spoken by a fictional character, cited from a manuscript, or organically sprung from the mind of the composer.
Regardless of provenance, the best of them resonate. They motivate us… make us laugh out loud … or take a hard look in the mirror. We find clarity or meaning where there is ambiguity. Ideally, they express how to bring out the better angels of our nature.
From the ancients Aristotle and Sun Tzu1 to 19th-century humorists Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain and those beyond — life's paths are better navigated by their simple yet profound advice.
Favorites
I have too many favorites to list. But here is a sampling …
“When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. ” ~ Boris Pasternak (from Doctor Zhivago)
七転び八起き “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” ~ Japanese proverb
“It’s better to be a warrior in the garden than a gardener in a war.” ~ Bruce Lee
“Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” — Robert J. Burdette
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” ~ Dr. Seuss
"Holding onto your anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” ~ Buddha
“The real problem of humanity … we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous.” ~ Edward O. Wilson (speaking about the 21st century).
And then there’s Shakespeare …
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!” ~ Hamlet (Act I, scene iii) by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s words, as spoken by Polonius to his son Laertes, elicit multiple meanings. It is important to be honest with yourself; however, the full quote carries a deeper message … a commitment to oneself and to others.
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) is the grandmaster of American literature — our most gifted storyteller whose wit and wisdom are fixtures as national gospel.
His stories of human folly and frailties are underscored by his uniquely rustic humor. He could be wistfully romantic, then savagely sarcastic, all in the same paragraph. Twain challenged the fundamental issues that faced the America of his time: racism, education, class barriers, political corruption and idolatry.
Ernest Hemingway exalted The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) as "the beginning and end" of American literature. Walt Whitman brought domestic vernacular into poetry, and Twain did it for prose.
Though he achieved worldwide fame, Twain’s personal life was marked by misfortune and tragedy. At the end of his life, he was virtually alone, having outlived his beloved wife Olivia (Livy) and daughters Suzy and Jean. His infant son, Langdon, died of diphtheria at 19 months. Only his daughter Clara (1874-1962) survived to carry on his legacy.
Twain was at his best with searing satire, cutting mankind down to size with short, farcical wisecracks.
“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.”
"Always respect your superiors; if you have any."
“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”
“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Remarkably, Twain's life coincided with consecutive appearances of Halley’s Comet.2 The celestial wanderer arrived the year Clemens was born (1835) and again upon his last breath (1910).
He predicted his ending …
“I came in with Halley's Comet,” Twain commented in 1909. “It is coming again next year. The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together. '”
Oscar Wilde
“Oscar Wilde lived more lives than one, and no single biography can ever compass his rich and extraordinary life.” — Neil McKenna, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2005)
Wilde’s biography reads like a Greek tragedy; his self-contradictions were integral to the complexity of his life. The United Kingdom’s (by way of Ireland) celebrated poet, iconoclast and Victorian playwright thought of the “self” as having multiple possibilities — and he certainly lived that way.
Wilde was a good boy. A bad boy. A good bad boy. On any given evening, the literary wunderkind was the toast of London’s elite, a genteel bon vivant and man about town. Later that night he would be scouring the low-born pubs in St. Giles Rookery or Whitechapel for young men to entertain a midnight dalliance.
But no one doubts his brilliance with the written word.
Wilde was drawn to motifs of duplication and duplicity: mirrors, portraits, doubles and dialogues. His most celebrated play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was a breakthrough. In Wilde’s hands, the double plot and themes of mistaken identity became something new: deception was transformed into a kind of displaced truthtelling.
The same held true in his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Gray, a hedonistic aristocrat, commissions a portrait by his friend Basil Hallward, an artist who is infatuated by Dorian’s beauty. But Dorian declares a Faustian wish — that the painting would age whilst he didn’t. Hauntingly, as the portrait ages, it visually records every one of Dorian's sins.
Wilde’s wit and wisdom still play well today, particularly through his epigrams …
"I can resist everything except temptation.”
"True friends stab you in the front." (think about it)
"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."
"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.
Best of the 20th Century
It is impossible to capsulize the most eventful and consequential century in history in a few words. Too broad in scope. Too wide of a horizon. More people were born and died in the 20th century than in the previous two millennia combined.
But here are a few quotes that defined the 20th century …
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” ~ Neil Armstrong
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” — Martin Luther King
“We have nothing to fear except fear itself.” ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“All you need is love.” ~ Lennon/McCartney
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” ~ Albert Einstein
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer, upon the Trinity test of the atomic bomb
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” ~ Nelson Mandela
And my early favorite for the 21st century …
Kamala Harris: “Ka-malaprops”
She is the Anti-Twain. The Contra Wilde.
Nobody in the 21st century does modern gibberish quite like Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States. Her pedantic prattling often leaves her audience scratching their heads. She is a walking, talking WTF.
Here are some of Madam Vice-President’s million-dollar gems …
“Talking about the significance of the passage of time, right, the significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do.” (3/21/22)
"I think that most of us who are devout public servants understand that we in government have great possibility in terms of the range at which we work as government." (2/6/23)
“But we all watched the television coverage of just yesterday. That’s on top of everything else that we know and don’t know yet, based on what we’ve just been able to see. And because we’ve seen it or not doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.” (3/10/22)
“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down.” (1/13/22)
All hail the Queen of Malapropism!
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Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.
Sun Tzu translates to “Master”
Halley’s Comet appears once every 76 years.
Great read, Jim. I collect quotes, and I will add a few of these to my list. I enjoy Yogisms, because they are funny, and true. You know, "The future ain't what it used to be."
One fact about Twain that blew me away when I learned it: He was instrumental in helping Ulysses Grant write and produce Grant’s memoir as Grant neared the end of his life. There is a great book about that relationship - “Grant and Twain: The Story of an American Friendship” by Mark Perry. Worth a read.