Robert Blyth Quotes

Men know how to read printed books; they do not know how to read the unprinted ones. They can play on a stringed harp, but not on a stringless one. Applying themselves to the superficial instead of the profound, how should they understand music or poetry?From the Saikontan, by Kojisei (circa 1600) cited in Haiku by Robert Blyth, circa 1947 Tokyo, p. 73. ~ Kojisei

A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment. ~ Robert C. Martin

I almost flunked first grade and also the second, third, forth, and fifth; but my younger brother was in the grade behind me and he was a brain and nobody wanted to have me be in the same grade as him, so they kept passing me. I never learned how to spell, graduated from eighth grade counting on my fingers to do simple addition, and in general was not a resounding academic success. ~ Robert Munsch

Birds which are the same color as the foliage in which they nest are less likely to be disturbed by other birds who want to drop in and chat, and therefore last longer. ~ Robert Benchley

For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished that the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure, But the main thing is, does it hold good measure Heaven soon sets right all other matters! ~ Robert Browning

A missing girl is missing only to the people who notice. ~ Robert P. Kolker

A coach is often responsible to an irresponsible public. ~ Robert Zuppke

To pick up a cigarette wrapper or wine label or an old letter or the end of a carton is my way of dealing with those things that do not originate in me, in my I. ~ Robert Motherwell

In the time it takes you to understand a 14-year-old, he turns 15. ~ Robert Breault

Objectivity is a fallacy ... there are different opinions, but you dont give them equal weight. ~ Robert Bazell

So, Blair keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe. ~ Robert Mugabe

People think you get one idea for a cartoon every week, and that's not the way it works. You usually get 10 or 15, and you're - certainly when I was a cartoonist, before I was a cartoon editor, you're rushing to do what is called the batch. When I was doing that, I liked to have, in general, about 10 cartoons. ~ Robert Mankoff

Many people will have nothing at the end of their working lives. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

I'd rather be a piece of work than a piece of shit. ~ Robert Kirkman

Everything in physiology follows the rule that too much can be as bad as too little. There are optimal points of allostatic balance. For example, while a moderate amount of exercise generally increases bone mass, thirty-year-old athletes who run 40 to 50 miles a week can wind up with decalcified bones, decreased bone mass, increased risk of stress fractures and scoliosis (sideways curvature of the spine) - their skeletons look like those of seventy-year-olds. To put exercise in perspective, imagine this: sit with a group of hunter-gatherers from the African grasslands and explain to them that in our world we have so much food and so much free time that some of us run 26 miles in a day, simply for the sheer pleasure of it. They are likely to say, "Are you crazy? That's stressful." Throughout hominid history, if you're running 26 miles in a day, you're either very intent on eating someone or someone's very intent on eating you. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON ~ Robert Greene

Life will hit you hard, regardless of what you do - adventurer, business person, king. ~ Robert J. Crane

As I explain at some length in 'The Crystal Sun' this particular angle, which we can call the 'golden angle,' is the precise value of the acute angle of of a right-angled 'golden triangle' that embodies the golden mean proportion ....

The Danish art historian Else Kielland established with conclusive and absolutely overwhelming evidence and analysis that this angle was the basis for all Egyptian art and architecture. She did this in her monumental work 'Geometry in Egyptian Art' .....

The King's Chamber inside the Great Pyramid embodies no fewer than eight occurrences of the golden angle, and the coffer in the chamber embodies yet more. ~ Robert K. G. Temple

(On Dickens) No other writer is quite as good at making marriage vows about remaining together "till death us do part" sound more like a suicide pact. ~ Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

They say that when god was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I would desire to have no other prison than a library, and to be chained together with as many good authors. ~ Robert Burton

Long. Not interesting. Coffee?" "No thanks. I'm trying to cut back." "I thought coffee was a prerequisite for being a cop." "That's donuts. What do lawyers eat?" "Each other. ~ Robert Dugoni

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. ~ Robert C. Martin

How different our national perspective would be had Johnson, rather than Nixon, served from 1969 to 1973. ~ Robert Dallek

It was baking hot in the square when we came out after lunch with our bags and the rod-case to go to Burguete. People were on top of the bus, and others were climbing up a ladder. Bill went up and Robert sat beside Bill to save a place for me, and I went back in the hotel to get a couple of bottles of wine to take with us. When I came out the bus was crowded. Men and women were sitting on all the baggage and boxes on top, and the women all had their fans going in the sun. It certainly was hot. Robert climbed down and fitted into the place he had saved on the one wooden seat that ran across the top. Robert Cohn stood in the shade of the arcade waiting for us to start. A Basque with a big leather wine-bag in his lap lay across the top of the bus in front of our seat, leaning back against our legs. He offered the wine-skin to Bill and to me, and when I tipped it up to drink he imitated the sound of a klaxon motor-horn so well and so suddenly that spilled some of the wine, and everybody laughed. He apologized and made me take another drink. He made the klaxon again a little later, and it fooled me the second time. He was very good at it. The Basques liked it. The man next to Bill was talking to him in Spanish and Bill was not getting it, so he offered the man one of the bottles of wine. The man waved it away. He said it was too hot and he had drunk too much at lunch. When Bill offered the bottle the second time he took a long drink, and then the bottle went all over that part of ~ Ernest Hemingway

I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera. ~ Mira Sorvino

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls. ~ Robert Southwell

Haunted Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine, Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing And lay ghost hands on everything, But leave the noonday's warm sunshine To living lads for mirth and wine. I met you suddenly down the street, Strangers assume your phantom faces, You grin at me from daylight places, Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet Dead men down the morning street. ~ Robert Graves

When our god fails to respond in the ways we expect, we humans tend to respond in one of two ways. We either blindly intensify our acts of worship or lash out in righteous anger. ~ Robert Glover

Love is a that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own ... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy ~ Robert A. Heinlein

When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity ... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others ~ Robert Greene

It's hard, sometimes, when nothing's stopping you, to know what's stopping you. ~ Robert Breault

Women feel the most secure when they see true love for themselves in their partner's eyes. And for them, security equals happiness. ~ Robert Black

I think that if a person wants to remain vegetarian, they're just going to have to go hungry. ~ Robert Atkins

Critical pessimists, such as media critics Mark Crispin Miller, Noam Chomsky, and Robert McChesney, focus primarily on the obstacles to achieving a more democratic society. In the process, they often exaggerate the power of big media in order to frighten readers into taking action. I don't disagree with their concern about media concentration, but the way they frame the debate is self-defeating insofar as it disempowers consumers even as it seeks to mobilize them. Far too much media reform rhetoric rests on melodramatic discourse about victimization and vulnerability, seduction and manipulation, "propaganda machines" and "weapons of mass deception". Again and again, this version of the media reform movement has ignored the complexity of the public's relationship to popular culture and sided with those opposed to a more diverse and participatory culture. The politics of critical utopianism is founded on a notion of empowerment; the politics of critical pessimism on a politics of victimization. One focuses on what we are doing with media, and the other on what media is doing to us. As with previous revolutions, the media reform movement is gaining momentum at a time when people are starting to feel more empowered, not when they are at their weakest. ~ Henry Jenkins