Samuel Westing Quotes

Today I have gathered together my nearest and dearest, my sixteen nieces and nephews (Sit down, Grace Windsor Wexler!) to view the body of your Uncle Sam for the last time. Tomorrow its ashes will be scattered to the four winds. I, Samuel W. Westing, hereby swear that I did not die of natural causes. My life was taken from me–by one of you! ~ Ellen Raskin

O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I really admire paintings that look like an actual snapshot - I think that's just extraordinary. ~ Samuel Barnett

The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout. ~ Samuel Johnson

Sometimes it's the princess who kills the dragon and saves the prince. ~ Samuel E. Lowe

I wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others. ~ John Steinbeck

Nothing is difficult, when gain and honour unite their influence. ~ Samuel Johnson

Breathing is a fascinating thing to watch in a woman. ~ Samuel R. Delany

The compartmentalization of His voice to set times we commune with Him is a dangerous place to live. Is it our goal to spend the slightest amount of time possible with the Lord and still be in relationship with Him? ~ Eric Samuel Timm

Never take literally what is said out of anger! They are said just to hurt you – sometimes the opposite could be true! ~ Ravi Samuel

Name, no, nothing is nameable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun. ~ Samuel Beckett

Of the judicial department of the Government, the Supreme Court is the head and representative, and to it must come for final decision all the great legal questions which may arise under the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the United States. ~ Samuel Freeman Miller

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion. ~ Samuel Butler

I can't go on, I'll go on. ~ Samuel Beckett

Let every book-worm, when in any fragrant, scarce old tome, he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it the widest circulation that newspapers and magazines, penny and halfpenny, can afford. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Those that he loved so long and sees no more, Loved and still loves,-not dead, but gone before,- He gathers round him. ~ Samuel Rogers

The difference in the education of men and women must give the former great advantages over the latter, even where geniuses are equal. ~ Samuel Richardson

We will stand by our friends and administer a stinging rebuke to men or parties who are either indifferent, negligent, or hostile, and, wherever opportunity affords, to secure the election of intelligent, honest, earnest trade unionists, with clear, unblemished, paid-up union cards in their possession. ~ Samuel Gompers

[T]he Papist and the Arminian on the one extremity, enthroneth Nature, and extolleth proud merit, and abaseth Christ and free grace. The Familist, libertine, and Antinomian, on a contrary extremity and opposition, turn man into a block, and make him into a mere patient in the way to heaven. ~ Samuel Rutherford

You tell a soul or even God Hisself what you seen when the rougarou changes , or even that you met one, and a year ain't passed, you're liable to change to one yourself. ~ Samuel Snoek-Brown

When a guy gets out and gets his face ground into the real world he comes up angry, wants to know how it works, and he'll believe anybody who tells him how, right or wrong. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade. ~ Samuel Johnson

Allegories drawn to great length will always break. ~ Samuel Johnson

There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber. ~ Samuel Johnson

The one concern of the Devil is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayer-less studies, prayer-less work, prayer-less religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray. ~ Samuel Chadwick

But these great minds cannot avoid doing extraordinary things! ~ Samuel Richardson

All bodies have spirits and pneumatical parts within them; but the main differences between animate and inanimate, are two: the first is, that the spirit of things animate are all contained within themselves, and are branched in veins and secret canals, as blood is; and, in living creatures, the spirits have not only branches, but certain cells or seats, where the principal spirits do reside, and whereunto the rest do resort: but the spirits in things inanimate are shut in, and cut off by the tangible parts, and are not pervious one to another, as air is in snow.Bacon'sNatural History,No 601. ~ Samuel Johnson

It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art. ~ Samuel Johnson

When better cherries are not to be had,
We needs must take the seeming best of bad. ~ Samuel Daniel

A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of of being in danger. ~ Samuel Johnson

As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatised as plagiarism. The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost compensate for invention; and an inferior genius may, without any imputation of servility, pursue the paths of the ancients, provided he declines to tread in their footsteps. ~ Samuel Johnson

The rules of prudence, like the laws of the stone tables, are for the most part prohibitive. "Thou shalt not" is their characteristic formula. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty. ~ Samuel Johnson

...in a universe where both information and misinformation are constantly suspect, reviewed and drifing as they must be (constantly) by and between the two, a moment when either information or misinformation turns out to be harmless must bloom, when surrounded by the workings of desire and terror, into the offered sign of all about it, making and marking all about it innocent by contamination. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence. ~ Samuel Johnson

Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea! every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No one ever became great by imitation. ~ Samuel Johnson

ABNODATION (ABNODA'TION) n.s.[abnodatio, Lat.] The act of cutting away knots from trees;a term of gardening.Dict. ~ Samuel Johnson

Wit is that which has been often thought, but never before was well expressed. ~ Samuel Johnson

A books should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it. ~ Samuel Johnson

This is the pain that will inform all other pains from now on. You have lost your mother. That is the primal pain, what we call it in German. There will never be another pain like this pain. You cannot ready yourself for it because it is unimaginable. ~ David Samuel Levinson

In a word, if any kind of slavery can be vindicated by the Holy Scriptures, we are already sure our making and holding the Negroes our slaves, as we do, cannot be vindicated by any thing we can find there, but is condemned by the whole of divine revelation. ~ Samuel Hopkins

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into the short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind. ~ Samuel Johnson

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything. ~ Samuel Butler

'Tis a month before the month of May,
And the spring comes slowly up this way. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Be virtuous and you will be vicious. ~ Samuel Butler

Will and George were doing well in business, and Joe was writing letters home in rhymed verse and making as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful.

Samuel wrote to Joe, sayings, "I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you'd take a cookie on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother. Your last letter only made her think you are not well. Your mother does not believe there are many ills uncurable by good strong soup. She puts your brave attack on the structure of our civilization down to a stomach ache. It worries her. Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven't even got a shovel yet. ~ John Steinbeck

If I was dead, I wouldn't know I was dead. That's the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death. ~ Samuel Beckett