Gregg > Gregg's Quotes

“Philosophers are composed of flesh and blood as well as other human creatures; and however sublimated and refined the theory of these may be, a little practical frailty is as incident to them as to other mortals. It is, indeed, in theory only, and not in practice, as we have before hinted, that consists the difference: for though such great beings think much better and more wisely, they always act exactly like other men. They know very well how to subdue all appetites and passions, and to despise both pain and pleasure; and this knowledge affords much delightful contemplation, and is easily acquired; but the practice would be vexatious and troublesome; and, therefore, the same wisdom which teaches them to know this, teaches them to avoid carrying it into execution.”
― Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

“Oh my God, you're like Obnoxious and Annoying had an ass baby!”
― Christopher Moore, Bite Me

“Hate is by far the greatest pleasure; men love in haste, but detest in leisure. ”
― George Gordon Byron

“I hear you don't write any more," he says...
"Not true," I inform him. "You should see the margins of my student papers."
"Not the same as writing a book though, right?"
"Almost identical," I assure him. "Both go largely unread.”
― Richard Russo, Straight Man

“The world is everything that is the case.”
― Wittgenstein Ludwig

“Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“My wretched dragon is perplexed.”
― William Butler Yeats

“I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be a king, alive and fifty all at the same time. ”
― James Goldman, The Lion in Winter

“How happy is the lot of the mathematician! He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve. No cashier writes a letter to the press complaining about the incomprehensibility of Modern Mathematics and comparing it unfavorably with the good old days when mathematicians were content to paper irregularly shaped rooms and fill bathtubs without closing the waste pipe.”
― W.H. Auden

“What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“the superfluity of the comforts of like destroys all joy in satisfying one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation...is just what makes the choice of occupation insoluble difficult and destroys the need and even the possibility of having an occupation. p 1209”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“My afternoon comp class is not persuaded. In fact, they feel ill-treated...I've read three short essays aloud, anonymously, for the purpose of inspiring discussion or, failing discussion, private misgiving. It's my hope that if the majority of these intellectually addled young folk actually hear their words aloud, if they are forced to digest not only their advice to me but the logic that led to this advice, they will, if not change their minds, at least become acquainted with doubt.”
― Richard Russo, Straight Man

“People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.”
― Maria Semple, Where'd You Go, Bernadette

“[My] explanation makes such immediate sense that I can give it up only reluctantly, a necessary concession to my physician's expertise. This is the way my students feel, I realize, when I suggest stylistic revisions. They like the sentence the way they wrote it. They defer to my greater knowledge and experience because they must, but they still like the way the original sentence sounded when it had a dangling modifier, and they secretly suspect that my judgment, while generally sound, may be flawed in this instance. And they're a little miffed at my insistence...”
― Richard Russo, Straight Man

“He regarded his briefcase. It was full of student papers—114 essays entitled “What I Wish.” He had been putting off reading them for over a week. He opened the briefcase, then paused, reluctant to look inside. How many student papers had he read in these twelve years? How many strokes of his red pen had he made? How many times had he underlined it’s and written its. Was there ever a student who didn’t make a mischievous younger brother the subject of an essay? Was there ever a student who didn’t make four syllables out of “mischievous”? This was the twelfth in a series of senior classes that Miles was trying to raise to an acceptable level of English usage, and like the previous eleven, this class would graduate in the spring to make room for another class in the fall, and he would read the same errors over again. This annual renewal of ignorance, together with the sad fact that most of his students had been drilled in what he taught since they were in the fifth grade, left him with a vague sense of futility that made it hard for him to read student writing. But while he had lost his urge to read student papers, he had not lost his guilt about not reading them, so he carried around with him, like a conscience...”
― Jon Hassler, Staggerford

“The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957

“of writing instruction in both K–12 schools and colleges is a symptom of this cluelessness among professionals. We would not likely see such inconsistency, after all, if any one or two approaches to teaching writing had had any discernible success. To mention just a few examples of this inconsistency, some K–12 teachers (but not all) virtually equate good writing with correct grammar, but when and if those students get to college they are often told that grammar is overrated, if not completely unimportant. In some cases, students encounter these confusingly conflicting attitudes toward grammar side by side both in K–12 and college. In a similarly confusing way, “writing” in K–12 often means creative writing or personal narrative, but in college the term shifts without warning to mean rigorous exposition, analysis, and argument. This shift often comes as a surprise or shock to students—if they become aware of it at all—because neither K–12 schools nor colleges take responsibility for informing students about it, much less explaining and justifying it.”
― Mark Bauerlein, The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism

“People speak of misfortunes and sufferings,” remarked Pierre, “but if at this moment I were asked: ‘Would you rather be what you were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?’ then for heaven’s sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh! We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according to whether they want rain or fine weather: “The wind has blown the clouds away,” or, “The wind has brought up the clouds.” And in the same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events, and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that power produces events.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“She craved a tall glass of the fresh-squeezed lemonade from the pitcher she’d left chilling in the fridge. Two glasses served with a generous slice of pound cake with orange glaze icing sounded twice as nice.”
― Ed Lynskey, Fur the Win

“A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him up for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.”
― W.B. Yeats

“Teaching is hard, because love of neighbor is hard. It is like Dorothy Day's favorite quote from Dostoevsky: love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. Instructing the ignorant (which is one of the spiritual works of mercy, and hence an act of charity) is hard work, especially when, as in our culture, the ignorant have previously been instructed to feel entitled to their ignorance (the dictum "no one can tell me what to believe" is most frequently uttered by those who have no interest in learning to think for themselves). The work is harsh and dreadful, for the soul feeds on beauty (nothing is more beautiful than truth), and ignorance is ughly and disheartening, like a paper written by a student who has never learned to write well and would rather be watching TV. It is an act of generosity and charity to read such a mess carefully and try to see what insight might lie behind the cliches and thoughtlessness, and it is a yet deeper charity to bear with the militant ignorance of students who think such writing ought to be good enough.”
― Kim Paffenroth, Augustine and Liberal Education

“To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this:
1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason.
2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right.
3. Charity is immoral.
4. Pay for your own fucking schools.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“There were also those who had grown weary of it and the oft-repeated phrase that what made it special was the quality of its people. “Odessa has an unspeakable ability to bullshit itself,” said Warren Burnett, a loquacious, liberal-minded lawyer who after roughly thirty years had fled the place like a refugee for the coastal waters near Houston. “Nothing could be sillier than we got good people here. We got the same cross-section of assholes as anywhere.”
― H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

“I work not only for the gathering and assimilation of knowledge, but also to teach the fact that one can be brilliant without being arrogant, that great intellectual capacity brings great responsibility, that the quest for knowledge should never supplant the joy of learning, that one with great capacities must learn to be tolerant and appreciate those with lesser or different absolutes,”
― H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

“She said also that they absolutely hated any assignment in which they had to interpret what they had read. If they had to think about anything, make critical judgments and deliberations, the cause was hopeless. The best they could be expected to do was regurgitate.”
― H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

“The solution to the problem of poor performance scores had been a new system of grading that would encourage students to stay in school as well as improve their self-esteem. Beyond these important, admirable goals, it also had a more immediate purpose: it would undoubtedly reduce the school’s notoriously high failure rate, which had become an embarrassment to the school and to the school board. Under the plan, equal weight was given to class participation (which to some teachers meant simply showing up, because how on earth were you supposed to quantify participation?), homework, weekly tests, and a final exam at the end of every six-week period. A student could flunk every weekly test as well as the final exam and still pass a course for that period.”
― H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream