What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

   —George Bernard Shaw

You cannot fix what you cannot face.

—James Baldwin

One some hill of despair the bonfire you kindle can light the great sky – though it’s true, of course, to make it burn you have to throw yourself in.

 —Galway Kinnell

 

Until the Lions get their own historian, tales of the hunt will always glorify the Hunter.

—an African proverb

I think language does bring us together. Fragile and misleading as it is, it’s the best communication we’ve got, and poetry is language at its most intense and potentially fulfilling. Poems do bring people together.

—William Stafford

It took me 15 years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

—Robert Benchley

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

—John Ruskin

Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

A society in which everyone works is not necessarily a free society and may indeed be a slave cosiety; on the other hand, a society in which there is widespread economic insecurity can turn freedom into a barren and vapid right for millions of people.

—Eleanor Roosevelt

 

Those who expect to reap the blessings of liberty must undergo the fatigues of supporting it.

—Thomas Paine

 

It is good that war is so horrible, or we may grow to like it.

—Robert E. Lee

 

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor bastard die for his country.

 —General George Patton

 

To punish and destroy the oppressor is merely to initiate a new cycle of violence and oppression. The only real liberation is that which liberates both the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time from the same tyrannical automatism of the violent process, which contains in itself the curse of irreversibility.

 —Thomas Merton

 

I was a strong rooter for the USA_in World War II. I_kept myself very well informed on that war, even though I was only a child. My father had told me that when the USA_won that war we’d have bubble gum again. You might say I had a stake in that war. Also as soon as the USA_won that war I could quit collecting newspapers for General Eisenhower. I_couldn’t imaging what he wanted with that many copies of the Kansas City Star.After a while, I began to envision General Eisenhower sitting over in Europe somewhere behind a sort of fortress of newspapers, chewing bubble gum.

—Calvin Trillin

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

 —George Orwell

 

Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.

—Gore Vidal

 

Art is basic.

—bumper sticker

 

Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.

—Frank Zappa

 

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.

—Cicero

 

A man can only do what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

 —Albert Schweitzer

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. All are invited to submit quotations for inclusion here. They may be sent to Gleanings, c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470 or emailed to editor@thebee.com.)