Mortimer Quotes

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree? ~ Mortimer J. Adler

I was standing amid floor-to-ceiling shelves of books in wonder and awe when my view of stories suddenly and forever changed. There were enormous piles of books lying in corners. Books covered the walls. Books even lined the staircases as you went up from one floor to the next. It was as if this used bookstore was not just a place for selling used books; it was like the infrastructure itself was made up of books. There were books to hold more books, stories built out of stories.

I was standing in Daedalus Books in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I had recently read Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book. I was alive with the desire to read. But at that particular moment, my glee turned to horror. For whatever reason, the truth of the numbers suddenly hit me. The year before, I had read about thirty books. For me, that was a new record. But then I started counting. I was in my early twenties, and with any luck I'd live at least fifty more years. At that rate, I'd have about 1,500 books in me, give or take.

There were more books than that on the single wall I was staring at.

That's when I had a realization of my mortality. My desire outpaced reality. I simply didn't have the life to read what I wanted to read.

Suddenly my choices in that bookstore became a profound act of deciding. The Latin root of the word decide - cise or cide - is to "cut off' or "kill." The idea is that to choose anything means to kill off other options you m ~ Justin Whitmel Earley

There was a magnetism to the Mortimer women, and they knew it, and they used it. It was their right, this witchery; they'd given up their souls for it. ~ Claire Legrand

A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism. ~ John Mortimer

The thing I miss about L.A. is time. I feel like I had much more time there, partly because no one is ever really doing anything. ~ Emily Mortimer

There is only one situation I can think of in which men and women make an effort to read better than they usually do. It is when they are in love and reading a love letter. ~ Mortimer Adler

I don't think you ever feel a success really because everything could always be done better than you've done it ... ~ John Mortimer

You don't have to be brilliant at everything. You just have to have the courage to put yourself in the line of fire. ~ Emily Mortimer

maybe she should take out a book and read, for it don't make no sense to just lean against the shop front, doing nothing, and she start to search in her bag, when she hear Pansy shout, "Lord Jesus! Oh God, help me!" Pansy bawling for help louder and louder, so Grace get frighten. She drop her schoolbag, run quick into the shop, and push on the door to the back room with all her might. After a couple tries, it fly open. Staring at her are one pair of feet with brown socks, one pair of feet with no socks, four legs with no covering and Mortimer's bare bottom rising and falling with a motion that remind her of when he was using the saw. Grace look, turn right around, march out, pick up her school bag, and start walking home. First she is furious with Pansy, but then she start to laugh. Mortimer have a nice body, but he is short. Pansy is a good-sized girl. Grace remember Gramps say, "Tiny insects pollinate sizeable flowers, ~ Pamela Mordecai

Each time a girl approached the table, Mortimer would smile. Like this: And each time the girl would shriek and run away. ~ Kelly DiPucchio

You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think. ~ Mortimer Adler

In short, we can only learn from our "betters". ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared. ~ Mortimer Adler

Often thought that you had just the kind of commonplace gifts that a host of commonplace people want to find at their service. An old servant of mine who lives in Mortimer Street ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Remember Bacon's recommendation to the reader: Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

I'm happily married to Peter senior; we're best friends as well as lovers, which is probably the best recipe for a successful relationship. We live in a lovely part of England. ~ Carole Mortimer

The secret of good health and happiness is to have rather small illnesses throughout your life which you can rely on to stop you doing anything you don't want to do. ~ John Mortimer

Literature is a means to delight the mind and embolden the spirit. ~ Ian Mortimer

When I was fourteen I had the world at my feet but somebody didn't do their job properly and allowed me to sin. ~ Penelope Mortimer

The communion that can be achieved by human conversation is of great significance for our private lives...It is the spiritual parallel of the physical union by which lovers try to become one. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

[The Truth Seeker is] Devoted to: science, morals, free thought, free discussions, liberalism, sexual equality, labor reform, progression, free education and whatever tends to elevate and emancipate the human race.
Opposed to: priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, dogmas, creeds, false theology, superstition, bigotry, ignorance, monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, tyranny, oppression, and everything that degrades or burdens mankind mentally or physically. ~ De Robigne Mortimer Bennett

There were moments where I was being kicked in the stomach, and even though I had this brace on to protect me, I still had to prepare myself for it . You can't be relaxed when that's happening. You have to brace your muscles. I can remember thinking as it was about to happen "Wasn't that how Houdini died?" I think it was. ~ Emily Mortimer

Every time you start a new job, you're starting from the beginning again and it's terrifying. And you feel like you're going to be fired and told to go home and never to darken the doors of these people ever again. ~ Emily Mortimer

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum. ~ John Mortimer

Rumpole, you must move with the times."
"If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them. ~ John Mortimer

This tottered ensign of my ancestors
Which swept the desert shore of that dead sea
Whereof we got the name of Mortimer,
Will I advance upon these castle-walls.
Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport,
And sing aloud the knell of Gaveston! ~ Christopher Marlowe

I was determined not to become an American citizen but I did it for completely cynical reasons: to avoid paying inheritance tax in the U.S. ~ Emily Mortimer

This memory was both happy and sad: happy because it was so pleasant, and sad because it made Penelope think about how much she missed Swanburne
the girls, the teachers, Miss Mortimer. Or perhaps it was her own much younger self, that pint-sized person whom she could never be again, whom she missed. It was hard to say. ~ Maryrose Wood

O, to bring back the great Homeric time, The simple manners and the deed sublime: When the wise Wanderer, often foiled by Fate, Through the long furrow drave the ploughshare straight. ~ Mortimer Collins

Surely, if Mother Nature had been consulted, she would never have consented to building a city in New Orleans. ~ Mortimer Zuckerman

It's very difficult to find the time or the money for people to organize rehearsals for some movies. It staggers me how little preparation often goes into these scenes which are difficult and complicated. You think, "God, it's crazy. I've never met this person before and here I am having to work at how to do a whole performance on the set." It was great to have a few days of just talking to Michael [Caine]and Daniel [Barber] and thinking about the characters and the relationship between them before we started shooting. ~ Emily Mortimer

I like to mix it up, yeah. I don't sort of think, 'Oh, I need to do a comedy, I've done three dramas this year.' I don't think of it like that, but I definitely from project to project I feel like I want to just do something different all of the time and stop, I don't want to bore myself or anyone else. ~ Emily Mortimer

I wake up early. At 6:30 A.M., I'm at my most optimistic. ~ Emily Mortimer

Great speed in reading is a dubious achievement; it is of value only if what you have to read is not worth reading. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Death a friend that alone can bring the peace his treasures cannot purchase, and remove the pain his physicians cannot cure. ~ Mortimer Collins

So much dung, filth, and entrails of dead beasts and other corruptions is cast into ditches, rivers and other waterways, and many other places, within about and near to the cities, boroughs and towns of the realm ... that the air is greatly corrupted and infected and many maladies and other intolerable diseases do daily happen ... '64 They ordered fines of £20 to be levied on all those who had not remedied the situation within a year, and passed the responsibility for keeping the streets clean to local officers. ~ Ian Mortimer

Understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Even a cursory perusal reveals a very great range of reference. There is hardly a single human action that has not been called - in one way or another - an act of love. Nor is the range confined to the human sphere. If you proceed far enough in your reading, you will find that love has been attributed to almost everything in the universe; that is, everything that exists has been said by someone either to love or to be loved - or both. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

The first dictionaries were glossaries of Homeric words, intended to help Romans read the Iliad and Odyssey as well as other Greek literature employing the 'archaic' Homeric vocabulary. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

I guess secrets are part of the fabric of everybody's lives. I mean everybody's lives, and guilt is part of the fabric of everybody's lives. ~ Emily Mortimer

YOUNGER MORTIMER: Fear'd am I more than lov'd; - let me be fear'd,
And, when I frown, make all the court look pale. ~ Christopher Marlowe

When we were young, we said the hell with it and used our breasts as shields. But the tears fall so easy when they take away love. ~ Penelope Mortimer

Up the stairs I found an imposing headquarters, decorated with the portraits and busts of solemn, whiskered old darlings who, no doubt, bled their customers with leeches and passed on the information to alarmed small boys that self-abuse leads to blindness. ~ John Mortimer

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian. ~ Mortimer Adler

The trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine, and you have yours; and our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he does not lose - that is, he ends up holding the same opinions he started with. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

A good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable - books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

To this day, most institutions of higher learning either do not know how to instruct students in reading beyond the elementary level, or lack the facilities and personnel to do so. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Alfie Dawlish. Invented all sorts of imaginary ailments for the family at the Manor so he could rob them and treat the village for nothing. It was his primitive version of the Health Service ~ John Mortimer

But I have to grow out of it, because it's very boring, really. Even when you're telling people how crap you are, you're still banging on about yourself. ~ Emily Mortimer

The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources. ~ John Mortimer

Human beings are curious, and especially curious about other human beings. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

It is only obvious that teaching is a very special art, sharing withonly two other arts-argriculture and medicin-an exceptionally important characteristic. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Such planetary alignments are thought to lead to local miasmas: concentrations of fetid air and noxious vapors. These miasmas are then blown on the wind and enter men's and women's bodies through the pores of their skin. once inside they disrupt the balance of the 'humours (the substances believed to control the body's functions), and people fall sick. ~ Ian Mortimer

I was worrying about the milk, about my children falling in love, about the creatures who crawled through the dark towards us, their ancestors, their loving assassins, breathing 'Why?' like a cold wind. ~ Penelope Mortimer

Archaeology is not a science, it's a vendetta. ~ Mortimer Wheeler

He does what he thinks God would do if God only knew the facts. ~ Mortimer Zuckerman

Sport, as I have discovered, fosters international hostility and leads the audience, no doubt from boredom, to assault and do grievous bodily harm while watching it. The fact that audiences at the National Theatre rarely break bottles over one another's heads, and that Opera fans seldom knee one another in the groin during the long intervals at Covent Garden, convinces me that theatre is safer than sport. ~ John Mortimer

The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes. ~ Emily Mortimer

I had watched Alfie, but I didn't consider it a prerequisite. Michael Caine was just extremely fabulous. He's one of the most professional actors I've ever worked with. I guess after a lifetime of doing it, you know what you're doing. He's incredibly uncomplaining, undemanding. ~ Emily Mortimer

This is how Mortimer Tate ended up killing the first three human beings he'd laid eyes on in nearly a decade. ~ Victor Gischler

Some people come alive at night. I'm hopeless by 9 p.m. Coffee and Cadbury buy me an extra half hour. Often I can't get my clothes off I'm so far gone. ~ Emily Mortimer

It's quite nice when you've been generally dissed about your irrelevancy and then suddenly have people coming on bended knee and saying we need you to come back. ~ Edward Mortimer

one learns to do by doing. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

According to the Theory of War, which teaches that the best way to avoid the inconvenience of war is to pursue it away from your own country, it is more sensible for us to fight our notorious enemy in his own realm, with the joint power of our allies, than it is to wait for him at our own doors. King Edward III (1339) ~ Ian Mortimer

If you read for understanding, reading for information will usually take care of itself. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

The great writers have always been great readers, but that does not mean that they read all the books that, in their day, were listed as the indispensable ones. In many cases, they read fewer books than are now required in most of our colleges, but what they did read, they read well. Because they had mastered these books, they became peers with their authors. They were entitled to become authorities in their own right. In the natural course of events, a good student frequently becomes a teacher, and so, too, a good reader becomes an author. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn't contain a single idea. ~ Mortimer Adler

I already feel a bit annoyed at myself for writing screenplays. It's a bit, I don't know, model-singer-dancer-actress that went to a posh school. There's something too weirdly predictable about it. ~ Emily Mortimer

I have tried to be honest with you, although I suppose that you would really have been more interested in my not being honest. Some of these things happened, and some were dreams. They were all true, as I understood truth. They are all real, as I understood reality. ~ Penelope Mortimer

She believed that, in an ideal world, the working class would rule the country, but she had no particular desire to ask any of them to tea. ~ John Mortimer

We acknowledge but one motive - to follow the truth as we know it, whithersoever it may lead us; but in our heart of hearts we are well assured that the truth which has made us free, will in the end make us glad also. ~ Mortimer Adler

Now there is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Leisure is not synonymous with time. Nor is it a noun. Leisure is a verb. I leisure. You leisure. ~ Mortimer Adler

I'm always sort of anticipating life being difficult, but on a basic level, that's sort of on the surface, on a basic level, I'm optimistic in the sense that I think it's all going to be alright in the end. ~ Emily Mortimer

These three rules of analytical reading - about terms, propositions, and arguments - can be brought to a head in an eighth rule, which governs the last step in the interpretation of a book's content. More than that, it ties together the first stage of analytical reading (outlining the structure) and the second stage (interpreting the contents). The last step in your attempt to discover what a book is about was the discovery of the major problems that the author tried to solve in the course of his book. (As ~ Mortimer J. Adler

New York is great, but I miss L.A. - I feel like there was something exotic about L.A. that I kind of underestimated at the time. It was very unfamiliar to me. ~ Emily Mortimer

It will be cheering to know that many people are skillful chessplayers, though in many instances their brains, in a general way, compare unfavorably with the cognitive faculties of a rabbit. ~ James Mortimer

In Aristotelian terms, the good leader must have ethos, pathos and logos. The ethos is his moral character, the source of his ability to persuade. The pathos is his ability to touch feelings to move people emotionally. The logos is his ability to give solid reasons for an action, to move people intellectually. ~ Mortimer Adler

An educated person is one who, through the travail of his own life, has assimilated the ideas that make him representative of his culture. ~ Mortimer Adler

A practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Mortimer Delvile was tall and finely formed, his features, though not handsome, were full of expression, and a noble openness of manners and address spoke the elegance of his education, and the liberality of his mind. ~ Frances Burney

Natural erosion had reduced the critical barrier islands in the Gulf, the result of the destruction of some 300,000 acres of wetlands. This amounted to 30 miles of marshlands. ~ Mortimer Zuckerman

Reading is like skiing. When done well, when done by an expert, both reading and skiing are graceful, harmonious, activities. When done by a beginner, both are awkward, frustrating, and slow.
Learning to ski is one of the most humiliating experiences an adult can undergo (that is one reason to start young). After all, an adult has been walking for a long time; he knows where his feet are; he knows how to put one foot in front of the other in order to get somewhere. But as soon as he puts skis on his feet, it is as though he had to learn to walk all over again. He slips and slides, falls down, has trouble getting up, gets his skis crossed, tumbles again, and generally looks- and feels- like a fool.
Even the best instructor seems at first to be of no help. The ease with which the instructor performs actions that he says are simple but that the student secretly believes are impossible is almost insulting. How can you remember everything the instructors says you have to remember? Bend your knees. Look down the hill Keep your weight on the downhill ski. Keep your back straight, but nevertheless lean forward. The admonitions seem endless-how can you think about all that and still ski?
The point about skiing, of course, is that you should not be thinking about the separate acts that, together, make a smooth turn or series of linked turns- instead, you should merely be looking ahead of you down the hill, anticipating bumps and other skiers, enjoying the feel of th ~ Mortimer J. Adler

It is commonly said that a good horse should have fifteen properties and conditions, namely: three of a man, three of a woman, three of a fox, three of a hare and three of an ass: like a man, he should be bold, proud and hardy; like a woman, he should be fair breasted, fair of hair and easy to lie upon; like a fox, he should have a fair tail, short ears and go with a good trot; like a hare, he should have a great eye, a dry head and run well; and like an ass, he should have a big chin, a flat leg and a good hoof. ~ Ian Mortimer

When I'm panicked about my love handles, I go to the YMCA and get obsessed with Kid Rock videos as I'm on the running machine. ~ Emily Mortimer

The people look forbidding, solemn, marked by that impossible ideal, Communism, which, like Christianity, seemed to demand too much of humanity and, falling into the wrong hands, led too easily to horrible brutality. ~ John Mortimer

The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctor's surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they have something interesting to think about. ~ John Mortimer

It is better to eat the dog than be eaten by the dog', Montagu had remarked quietly to the king, after being dismissed from Mortimer's presence. ~ Ian Mortimer

My customary exercise consists of a short stroll from the Temple tube to Equity Court, and rising to object to impertinent questions put by prosecuting counsel. ~ John Mortimer

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry - dignified, solid, and reassuring. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper. ~ John Mortimer

Even when you have been somewhat enlightened by what you have read, you are called upon to continue the serach for significance. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire.
"Well?" said he.
"Do you not find it interesting?"
"To a collector of fairy-tales. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.
Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous. ~ John Mortimer

Can't you see? Before you knew the truth, we were happy. What's the god in ferreting out the truth all that time? It's always unpleasant."
"Is it only lies that are Pleasant?"
"Usually. That's why people tell them. To make life bearable. ~ Penelope Mortimer

Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

Mortimer Lindquist seemed to have finally given in to the inevitable. I'd seen him with a bad toupee, and with an even worse comb-over, but this was the first time I'd seen him sporting a full-on Charles Xavier. ~ Jim Butcher

Oh, Lord o' Light, ~ Roger Mortimer