Great Fault

It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.

-- Anthony Trollope (1815 - 1882), successful and prolific English novelist of the Victorian era, Phineas Finn (1869) Chapter 13

Understandable And Clear

Dear friends, the election result is not final yet, but it is understandable and clear.  The election result is painful for us, but clear.  The responsibility of governing was not given to us.  I have congratulated the winner.

-- Hungarian Prime Minister and Trump ally Viktor Orban conceding to opposition candidate Peter Magyar, whose party won two-thirds of seats in parliament, ending Orban's 16-year rule (12 April 2026)

A Tautology

A good poem is a tautology.  It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken.  The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it.  Classical odes grow from "and" or "because", romantic lyrics from "but" or "if".  Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.

-- Alasdair James Gray (1934 - 2019), award-winning Scottish writer and artist, Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983) "Prometheus", pp. 208-9

An Exception

Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.

-- William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830), English writer remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823) No. 305

People With Control

People with real power never fear of losing it.  People with control think of little else.

-- Joseph "Joss" Hill Whedon (1964 -), American screenwriter, film and television director and producer, "Mom, He's Doing It Again..", at Whedonesque.com (10 November 2007)

Stubborn

Facts are stubborn things.

-- Tobias George Smollett (1721 - 1771), Scottish novelist, translator, historian, and editor, Gil Blas (1749), Book X, Chap. 1

A Thin Red Line

There's only a thin red line between the sane and the mad.

-- James Jones (1921 - 1977), American author, The Thin Red Line (1962) "Old midwestern saying" created by Jones for his story, as stated in James Jones: An American Literary Orientalist Master (1998) by Steven R. Carter