Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I think in a play it's wise to just sit back and watch other actors and be able to shape it from the audience.
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You grow up and change your look. I feel different from how I did in my Playboy days. Now I think I'm in charge of toning down my look or not.
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Were the ironies of taxation any better: raising money for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges, and spending it on blowing up schools and hospitals and roads and bridges in self-defeating wars?
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I have found an honest and excellent man Eugène Manet, brother of Edouard Manet who, I believe, sincerely loves me. I have entered into the positive life after having lived for a long time in by chimeras.
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Only good questions deserve good answers.
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perhaps these men in the House Caucus Room [Committee on Un-American Activities] are determined to spread silence: to frighten those voices which will shout no, and ask questions, defend the few, attack cruelty and proclaim the rights and dignity of man. ... America is going to look very strange to Americans and they will not be at home here, for the air will slowly become unbreathable to all forms of life except sheep.
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The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
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I've been in this game since 1937. My biggest thrill was when I was in Milwaukee and I told them I was leaving. It was the loudest ovation I ever got.
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But I remember more dearly autumn afternoons in bottoms that lay intensely silent under old great trees
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I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
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A man who is truthful and does not mean ill even to his adversary will be slow to believe charges even against his foes. He will, however, try to understand the viewpoints of his opponents and will always keep an open mind and seek every opportunity of serving his opponents.
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A fool's bolt is soon shot.
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To say that one need art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.
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Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
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It's the Point of Your View that Decides What You See - / One Man's Flop Is Another Man's Hit. / From Manners to Movies, the Picture Keeps Changing / Depending Upon Where You Sit.
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Tobacco smoke is the one element in which, by our European manners, men can sit silent together without embarrassment, and where no man is bound to speak one word more than he has actually and veritably got to say. Nay, rather every man is admonished and enjoined by the laws of honor, and even of personal ease, to stop short of that point; and at all events to hold his peace and take to his pipe again the instant he has spoken his meaning, if he chance to have any.
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This journey then, is nothing more, yet nothing less than a period of acclimating to a new way of seeing, a time of transition and revelation as it gradually comes upon "that" which remains when there is no self. this is not a journey for those who expect love and bliss, rather, it is for the hardy who have been tried by fire and have come to rest in a tough, immovable trust in "that" which lies beyond the known, beyond the self, beyond union and even beyond love and trust itself.
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Gentleness is the great point to be obtained in the study of manners.
