Quotes4study

"Tonight she gets sacked", said Mr. Samsa, but he received no reply from either his wife or his daughter as the charwoman seemed to have destroyed the peace they had only just gained. They got up and went over to the window where they remained with their arms around each other. Mr. Samsa twisted round in his chair to look at them and sat there watching for a while. Then he called out: "Come here, then. Let's forget about all that old stuff, shall we. Come and give me a bit of attention". The two women immediately did as he said, hurrying over to him where they kissed him and hugged him and then they quickly finished their letters.

Franz Kafka     Metamorphosis

Everything's great in this good old world;

(This is the stuff they can always use.)

God's in his heaven, the hill's dew-pearled;

(This will provide for baby's shoes.)

Hunger and War do not mean a thing;

Everything's rosy where'er we roam;

Hark, how the little birds gaily sing!

(This is what fetches the bacon home.)

        -- Dorothy Parker, "The Far Sighted Muse"

Fortune Cookie

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak

    For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --

    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,

    And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,

    Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose

    That your eye was as steady as ever;

Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --

    What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"

    Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

    Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"

Fortune Cookie

FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN:    #5

Trust:

    The average woman would really like to be told if her mate is fooling

around behind her back.  This same woman wouldn't tell her best friend if

she knew the best friends' mate was having an affair.  She'll tell all her

OTHER friends, however.  The average man won't say anything if he knows that

one of his friend's mates is fooling around, and he'd rather not know if

his mate is having an affair either, out of fear that it might be with one

of his friends.  He will tell all his friends about his own affairs, though,

so they can be ready if he needs an alibi.

Driving:

    A typical man thinks he's Mario Andretti as soon as he slips behind

the wheel of his car.  The fact that it's an 8-year-old Honda doesn't keep

him from trying to out-accelerate the guy in the Porsche who's attempting

to cut him off; freeway on-ramps are exciting challenges to see who has The

Right Stuff on the morning commute.  Does he or doesn't he?  Only his body

shop knows for sure.  Insurance companies understand this behavior, and

price their policies accordingly.

    A woman will slow down to let a car merge in front of her, and get

rear-ended by another woman who was busy adding the finishing touches to

her makeup.

Fortune Cookie

Terence, this is stupid stuff:

You eat your victuals fast enough;

There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,

To see the rate you drink your beer.

But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,

It gives a chap the belly-ache.

The cow, the old cow, she is dead;

It sleeps well the horned head:

We poor lads, 'tis our turn now

To hear such tunes as killed the cow.

Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme

Your friends to death before their time.

Moping, melancholy mad:

Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.

        -- A. E. Housman

Fortune Cookie

MEMORIES OF MY FAMILY MEETINGS still are a source of strength to me.  I

remember we'd all get into the car -- I forget what kind it was -- and

drive and drive.

I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some bees there. The

smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we

played.  I remember a bigger, older guy whom we called "Dad."  We'd eat

some stuff or not and then I think we went home.

I guess some things never leave you.

        -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.

Fortune Cookie

Connector Conspiracy, n:

    [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10,

    none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of

    manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything)

    to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old</p>

    stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive

    interface devices.

Fortune Cookie

hacker, n.:

    Originally, any person with a knack for coercing stubborn inanimate

    things; hence, a person with a happy knack, later contracted by the

    mythical philosopher Frisbee Frobenius to the common usage, 'hack'.

    In olden times, upon completion of some particularly atrocious body

    of coding that happened to work well, culpable programmers would gather

    in a small circle around a first edition of Knuth's Best Volume I by

    candlelight, and proceed to get very drunk while sporadically rending

    the following ditty:

        Hacker's Fight Song

        He's a Hack!  He's a Hack!

        He's a guy with the happy knack!

        Never bungles, never shirks,

        Always gets his stuff to work!

All take a drink (important!)

Fortune Cookie

"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth."  I usually pick one small

topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the

beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is "mere."  I too can

see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or more?

The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel

my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which

I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one

is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all

apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.

What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?*  It does not do harm to the

mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than

any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak

of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but

if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

        -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)

Fortune Cookie

Asked how she felt being the first woman to make a major-league team, she

said, "Like a pig in mud," or words to that effect, and then turned and

released a squirt of tobacco juice from the wad of rum soaked plug in her

right cheek.  She chewed a rare brand of plug called Stuff It, which she

learned to chew when she was playing Nicaraguan summer ball.  She told the

writers, "They were so mean to me down there you couldn't write it in your

newspaper.  I took a gun everywhere I went, even to bed.  *Especially* to

bed.  Guys were after me like you can't believe.  That's when I started

chewing tobacco -- because no matter how bad anybody treats you, it's not

as bad as this.  This is the worst chew in the world.  After this,

everything else is peaches and cream."  The writers elected Gentleman Jim,

the Sparrow's P.R. guy, to bite off a chunk and tell them how it tasted,

and as he sat and chewed it tears ran down his old sunburnt cheeks and he

couldn't talk for a while. Then he whispered, "You've been chewing this for

two years?  God, I had no idea it was so hard to be a woman."

        -- Garrison Keillor

Fortune Cookie

"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers

    That your lectures bore people to death.

Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --

    Don't you think that you should save your breath?"

"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"

    Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

    Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"

Fortune Cookie

    Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and

tries to hide behind a beard.  No good.  There are still too many people

and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking.  He moves to the

outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,

caretaker included.  He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,

day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.

    Nobody's cut the grass in months.  What's happened to that caretaker?

What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are

start to get curious.  A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.

Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared.  The senior

class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a

movie one night and stays out.  The town's up in arms, but just before the

police take action, the kids turn up.  They've found a purpose.  They go

home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going

now.  They're in a band.

        -- Ira Kaplan

Fortune Cookie

Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the

>old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent

I can find for "landskap").  These laws were written down sometime in the

13th century, but date back even down into Viking times.  The oldest one is

the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some

Christian stuff.  In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the

>Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc.  Here is

an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of

"lekare".

    "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it.  If an artist

    is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with

    fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring

    it out on the hillside.  Then they shall shave off all hair from the

    heifer's tail, and grease the tail.  Then the artist shall be given

    newly greased shoes.  Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,

    and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip.  If he can hold her, he

    shall have the animal.  If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what

    he received, shame and wounds."

Fortune Cookie

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. He went a mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying:

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"That drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb. "'Tis July's immortal Fourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we'd drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff."

Herman Melville     Moby Dick; or The Whale

So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their heads—it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king now. And when the king got done this husky up and says:

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that place would offer, till the following Monday.

Herman Melville     Moby Dick; or The Whale

At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff, which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often called attention to it: "How delightful that is!" he said.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

"It was a large old-fashioned pocket-book, stuffed full; but I guessed, at a glance, that it had anything in the world inside it, except money.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky     The Idiot

45:20. And leave nothing of your household stuff; for all the riches of Egypt shall be yours.

THE BOOK OF GENESIS     OLD TESTAMENT

And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by his aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the ship's work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of command. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was constructed.

Herman Melville     Moby Dick; or The Whale

I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Of course, I don't deny that there is sin in the peasants too. And the fire of corruption is spreading visibly, hourly, working from above downwards. The spirit of isolation is coming upon the people too. Money- lenders and devourers of the commune are rising up. Already the merchant grows more and more eager for rank, and strives to show himself cultured though he has not a trace of culture, and to this end meanly despises his old traditions, and is even ashamed of the faith of his fathers. He visits princes, though he is only a peasant corrupted. The peasants are rotting in drunkenness and cannot shake off the habit. And what cruelty to their wives, to their children even! All from drunkenness! I've seen in the factories children of nine years old, frail, rickety, bent and already depraved. The stuffy workshop, the din of machinery, work all day long, the vile language and the drink, the drink--is that what a little child's heart needs? He needs sunshine, childish play, good examples all about him, and at least a little love. There must be no more of this, monks, no more torturing of children, rise up and preach that, make haste, make haste!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky     The Brothers Karamazov

"In the morning, on my return home, I pick over my basket, I sort my things. This makes heaps in my room. I put the rags in a basket, the cores and stalks in a bucket, the linen in my cupboard, the woollen stuff in my commode, the old papers in the corner of the window, the things that are good to eat in my bowl, the bits of glass in my fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed."

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

They played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few shabby fruit-trees. In spite of the extreme surveillance and the severity of the punishments administered, when the wind had shaken the trees, they sometimes succeeded in picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or an inhabited pear on the sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty years ago by an old pupil, now Madame la Duchesse de----one of the most elegant women in Paris. I quote literally: "One hides one's pear or one's apple as best one may. When one goes up stairs to put the veil on the bed before supper, one stuffs them under one's pillow and at night one eats them in bed, and when one cannot do that, one eats them in the closet." That was one of their greatest luxuries.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab touch no land? does his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries no cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and their wants. She has a whole lake's contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She carries years' water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves. So that did you carry them the news that another flood had come; they would only answer--"Well, boys, here's the ark!"

Herman Melville     Moby Dick; or The Whale

The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive with ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them. His satellites--the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and various domestic serfs--were seeing him off.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot into the canoe—it might come good. There was a boy's old speckled straw hat on the floor; I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had had milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn't nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to carry off most of their stuff.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick! On deck there!--brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's eye. He's too far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there's time for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and not changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of Nantucket! The same!--the same!--the same to Noah as to me. There's a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They must lead somewhere--to something else than common land, more palmy than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old mast-head! What's this?--green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab's head! There's the difference now between man's old age and matter's. But aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all. By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way. I can't compare with it; and I've known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What's that he said? he should still go before me, my pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at the bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all night I've been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more thou told'st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-head--keep a good eye upon the whale, the while I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and tail."

Herman Melville     Moby Dick; or The Whale

One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head and very gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses—no, he only had one. He had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

20:25. Then Josaphat came, and all the people with him to take away the spoils of the dead, and they found among the dead bodies, stuff of various kinds, and garments, and most precious vessels: and they took them for themselves, insomuch that they could not carry all, nor in three days take away the spoils, the booty was so great.

THE SECOND BOOK OF PARALIPOMENON     OLD TESTAMENT

15:14. But all those things that were proved to be the peculiar goods of Holofernes, they gave to Judith in gold, and silver, and garments and precious stones, and all household stuff, and they all were delivered to her by the people.

THE BOOK OF JUDITH     OLD TESTAMENT

31:37. And searched all my household stuff? What hast thou found of all the substance of thy house? lay it here before my brethren, and thy brethren, and let them judge between me and thee.

THE BOOK OF GENESIS     OLD TESTAMENT

This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too—not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Index: