Sedulia's Quotations

Hannah Montana show: "I haven't looked at myself in like, half an hour"

I have to go to the bathroom. I haven't looked at myself in like, half an hour.

     --Bitchy teenage girl on the Hannah Montana show

Karle Wilson Baker: Let me grow lovely, growing old

Let me grow lovely, growing old--

so many fine things do; 

laces, and ivory, and gold, 

and silks need not be new;

and there is healing in old trees,

old streets a glamour hold;

why may not I, as well as these,

grow lovely, growing old?

   --Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960)

Æ: In the heart of age a child lay weeping

The Lonely

Lone and forgotten
through a long sleeping,
in the heart of age
a child woke weeping.
No invisible mother
was nigh him there
laughing and nodding
from earth and air.
No elfin comrades
came at his call
and the earth and the air
were blank as a wall.
The darkness thickened
upon him creeping,
in the heart of age
a child lay weeping.

   --Æ (pseudonym of George William Russell) (1867-1935), "The Lonely"

Henry James: Unusually amorous

As readers of the volume of letters began to note the unusually amorous tone in some of her brother-in-law's missives to younger men, Alice Gibbens James, steadfast and loyal to the end, wrote to her son: "People are putting a vile interpretation on those silly letters to young men. -- Poor dear Uncle Henry."

          --From a review by Colm Tóibín of Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens James (2009), by Susan E. Gunter. Published in the New York Review of Books, 11 June 2009. Alice Gibbens James was the wife of William James (1842-1910) and sister-in-law of Henry James (1843-1916) and Alice James (1848-1892). Above: a portrait of Henry James by Max Beerbohm.

Steve Harvey on men meeting women

We men are very simple people: if we like what we see, we're coming over there. If we don't want anything from you, we're not coming over there.

... He doesn't care anything about your personality or what you do for a living; your friends mean nothing to him, and whether you know Jesus is irrelevant. He just wants to know if he might be able to sleep with you, and he's talking to you to determine exactly how much he has to invest to get what he wants.

            --Steve Harvey (1957-) in Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man

Beverly Cleary: Growing up was the slowest thing there was

Ramona thought that growing up was the slowest thing there was, slower than waiting for Christmas to come. She had been waiting years just to get to kindergarten, and the last half hour was the slowest part of all.

         --Ramona the Pest, by Beverly Cleary (1916- )

Ski lift rage

Editor:

A buddy from college shared this story from a family ski trip out to Alta when he was boy, so it had to have been sometime in the early ’60s. They were standing in the early morning lift line all fired up for the day to begin when it became obvious that words were being exchanged at the front of the line. Much to their surprise, things heated up rather quickly and finally the frustrated lift attendant walked to the lift shack, grabbed a double-bladed axe, returned to the front of the line and promptly chopped the tip off of the guy’s ski. He then turned to the rest of the skiers standing in line and shouted, “Does anyone else not have a lift ticket?”

Keith Bauer
Director
Crested Butte Nordic Center

                        --Letter to the editor, Gunnison [Colorado] Country Times, 4 January 2009

Frank O'Connor on the two sexes

 
...the two sexes, for ever scouting about one another's encampments and bringing back horrible tales of what went on in them.

    --Irish writer Frank O'Connor [pen name of Michael O'Donovan] (1903-1966) in his autobiography My Father's Son

Bristol Palin baby daddy Levi Johnston: I don't want kids

I'm a fuckin' redneck. I live to play hockey ... I'll kick ass....I don't want kids.

   --Levi Johnston, the boyfriend of Bristol Palin, on his MySpace page (suddenly offline. The page had not been updated in a year). The two are planning to marry.

De Quincey: Children look with more searching gaze than adults

Into all the elementary feelings of man, children look with more searching gaze than adults.

  --Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) in Suspiria de Profundis (1845)