Picked Quotes
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The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
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More Picked Quotes
He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
stanley baldwin— Winston Churchill
The Mao quote is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me. The use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat -- at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing.
anita dunn— CNN interview, October 16, 2009. [5]
The moment Colin sat down, Hollis asked Hassan, "Would you like to say grace?" "Sure thing." Hassan cleared his throat. "Bismallah." Then he picked up his fork. "That's it?" Hollis wondered. "That's it. We are a terse people. Terse, and also hungry."
john green— An Abundance of Katherines, Hollis Wells and Hassan Harbish (2006, p. 62)
Nick swore he'd die with this boots on, on some exotic safari, but he found his Kilimanjaro in a hospital on Earth, where they'd cured everything that was bothering him, except for the galloping pneumonia he'd picked up in the hospital. That had been, roughly, two hundred and fifty years ago. I'd been a pallbearer.
roger zelazny— Isle of the Dead
This song goes out to those with coke bottle glasses, to all you lonely kids who were the last picked in gym classes. We got your back, detract your malefactors - all you up in the back, unite like Thundercats!
2 Skinnee J's— "Riot Nrrrd" (1998)
He picked her up out of the dirt and turned her into the clod she was today.
lisa alther— Original Sins, pt. 4, ch. 1 (1981)
Never tell me that not one star of all That slip from heaven at night and softly fall Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.
— 1923 'A Star in a Stoneboat'.
Up rode the Duke on a loverly white 'orse,To find out the cause of the bother,He looked at the musket and then at Old Sam,And he talked to Old Sam like a brother'Sam, Sam, pick oop tha' musket'The Duke said as quiet as could be,'Sam, Sam pick oop tha' musket,Coom on lad, just to please me'Alright Duke,' said Old Sam, 'just for thee I'll oblige,And to show thee I meant no offence',So Sam picked it up, 'Gradely, lad' said the Duke,'Right-o boys... let battle commence.'
stanley holloway— "Old Sam Small" monologue
A little is fine, but the minute you start believing that you’ve picked the only right one out of the 4,200 or so on offer, you need to get a grip on yourself. Once you start thinking that it’s okay to hate someone that chose one of the 4,199 others... snap out of it.
arthur m. jolly— Arthur M. Jolly, in The Questionnaire (2010)
— This is in reference to religion and religious zeal.
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it.
groucho marx— To S J Perelman about his book Dawn Ginsbergh’s Revenge (1929), as quoted in LIFE (9 February 1962)
To create a balance of power and pedigree in the house, Hunter sent five bucks off to an ad he'd seen in the back pages of a magazine and received his mail-order doctor-of-divinity degree. He began referring to himself as Dr. Thompson and punctuated remarks with his afterword: "I am, after all, a doctor." Friends picked up on the joke, and he was "the Good Doctor" for the rest of his life.
william mckeen— Chapter 6, Stranger In A Strange Land, p. 89
He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: "After dinner, the men moved into the living room," and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all night. I wrote back that this particular comma was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.
james thurber— The Years with Ross (Little Brown & Co, 1957, p. 267)
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
winston churchill— On Stanley Baldwin, as cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), Ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 322 ISBN 1586486381Also quoted by Kay Halle in Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill's Wit (1966)
I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.
fyodor dostoevsky— The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)
Just heard Gen. White's proclamation that we "have Russia zeroed in from all directions." I am waiting now for Vannevar Bush and Ed Teller to announce that our new supersensitive radar picked up a rash of heart tremors from the direction of the USSR, immediately after White's remarkably insignificant statement, I could almost hear Karl Marx laughing in his tomb.
karl marx— Hunter S. Thompson, in a letter to Lieutenant Colonel Frank Campbell (29 November 1957) published in The Proud Highway : Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (2001), p. 76
Throughout history, females have picked providers for mates. Males pick anything.
Margaret Mead— Attributed to M. Mead in: Gerald F. Lieberman (1985) 3,500 good quotes for speakers. p.114
Will darted back to the gutter, and picked up the knife, and the fight was over. The young man, cut and battered, clambered up the step, and saw Will standing above him holding the knife; he stared with a sickly anger and then turned and fled.
philip pullman— Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels
You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled.
françois rabelais— Chapter 50. (Fourth Book (1548, 1552))
Neither of us said a word as we picked our way down the path for the next quarter of an hour, and the sky receded to a deep violet. I had the illusion that, as it got darker, it moved away from us, expanding like a bubble, rushing away at a million light-years an hour, and as it whooshed past stars, we began to see them.
neal stephenson— Part 8, "Orithena"
I picked up and balanced them all... and found there the blade that suited me the way Excalibur suited Arthur.
— Robert A. Heinlein, in Glory Road (1963), Ch. 5
Ike has picked a cabinet of eight millionaires and one plumber.
— T.R.B. (Richard Strout), "Washington Wire", New Republic (December 15, 1952), p. 3. The plumber was secretary of labor Martin Durkin of Chicago, head of the Journeyman Plumbers and Steamfitters Union. See William Safire, Safire's Political Dictionary (1968), p. 195–96.
I picked up and balanced them all... and found there the blade that suited me the way Excalibur suited Arthur . I've never seen one quite like it so I don't know what to call it. …:;It balanced in the forte less than two inches from the guard, yet the blade was heavy enough to chop bone. It was the sort of sword that feels as if it were an extension of your body.
— Robert A. Heinlein, in Glory Road (1963), Ch. 5
A diamond was laying in the street covered with dirt. Many fools passed by. Someone who knew diamonds picked it up.
— Sakhi, 171; translation by Yashwant K. Malaiya based on that of Puran Sahib.
Naw, that's an old trick I picked up at Benny's shooting gallery on Coney Island. And if you don't quit stalling, I'll show you some other tricks I learned in Brooklyn.
— Who: Lou Spinelli
— Source: "You, Murderer" [Episode 6x15]
— Note: Says this before being bludgeoned with a statue by his cheating wife, Betty Spinelli.
You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled.
— François Rabelais, Works, Book IV, Chapter L.
[I first picked up a spraycan] the day someone ram-raided the Halford's round the corner from our house.
— Venue magazine (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)
A current under sea picked his bones in whispers.
— 1922 The Waste Land, pt.4,'Death by Water'.
picked up his crumbs.
arthur murphy— The Upholsterer; or, What News? (1757-58), Act i.
A mermaid found a swimming lad picked him for her own, Pressed her body to his body, Laughed; and plunging down Forgot in cruel happiness That even lovers drown.
— William Butler Yeats, "A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid" (1926).
