Letter Quotes - 2
More Letter Quotes
Next to a letter from home,Captain Miller, your organization is the greatest morale builder in the ETO.
James Harold Doolittle— 1944 Of Glenn Miller's wartime band. Comment on stage after a concert for the troops at Wycombe Abbey, 29 Jul. The words were later attributed to General Eisenhower in the publicity for the film The Glenn Miller Story (1954).
The bearer of this letter is an old friend of mine not quite the right side of the blanket as they say in fact he is the son of a first rate butcher but his mother was a decent family called Hyssopps of the Glen so you see he is not so bad and is desireus of being the correct article.
daisy ashford— Chapter 5 (The Young Visiters (1919))
He pronounced the letter R (littera canina) very hard – a certaine signe of a Satyricall Witt.
john aubrey— "John Milton"
A good face, they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World?
Henry Fielding— Book IX, ch. 5
Inevitably, we’ve fastened on those last memorable lines about hope, optimism and love. But the letter was, at its heart, a manifesto for social democracy. And if there was one word that might sum up Jack Layton’s unabashed, social democratic message, it would be “generosity.” He wanted, in the simplest and most visceral terms, a more generous Canada.
jack layton— Stephen Lewis' Eulogy for Jack Layton
It's ten years since I heard, andThen one day a letter comes.It's neutral stuff, until IDelve into the envelopeAgain and find your photo,Handsome still, and not a lineTo tell me why you sent it.
edward lucie-smith— Poem A Former Lover
The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of books we haven't read, stretches out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A.
Alberto Manguel— Endpaper Pages, p. 309
There were a lot of people who were willing to write a letter for me. Not because I was academically inclined, but because I worked hard.
smith, leighton w., jr.— On his admission to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1958 as an appointment of US congressman Frank W. Boykin, as quoted in Afterburner : Naval Aviators and the Vietnam War (2004) by John Darrell Sherwood, Ch. 20 : Leighton Warren Smith and the Fall of Thanh Hoa, p. 272
One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter: “Beware. You will never get out of this world alive.”
john steinbeck— “The Mail I’ve Seen” Saturday Review (3 August 1956)
Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one’s thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.
ludwig wittgenstein— p. 75e (Culture and Value (1980))
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
Blaise Pascal— In Provincial Letters: Letter XVI; similar statements have been attributed to Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, Cicero, and others besides.
He sent me a letter from India, where I think he got a fellowship to spend a year or so. He sent me a letter that read, I've just met a wonderful guru who can read minds. "I want you to" Allen had a way of saying "I want you to do this, I want you to do that" "I want you to get him a position in the Philosophy Department." I wrote back, "Dear Allen, the members of the Philosophy Department want nothing so little as to have their minds read."
jacques barzun— On Allen Ginsberg, in "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Jacques Barzun, Idea Man", interview with Roger Gathman, The Austin Chronicle (2000-10-13)
The only road, the sure road to unquestioned credit and a sound financial condition is the exact and punctual fulfilment of every pecuniary obligation, public and private, according to its letter and spirit.
rutherford b. hayes— Speech at New England Society Dinner, Brooklyn (21 December 1880).
Goethe said, “The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing”; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: “I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary.” These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds.
Randall Jarrell— “The Obscurity of the Poet”, p. 17
Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. ... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.
george pólya— p. 148 (How to Solve It (1945))
"That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming down?" "It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light. It's Dust ." Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.
philip pullman— Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay
Fame is a four letter word and like tape, or zoom, or face, or pain, or life, or love, what ultimately matters is what we do with it.
fred rogers— When introduced to the TV Hall of Fame YouTube video
I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
unknown— Often attributed to Mark Twain but believed to be said by Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar
In either event he could only adhere to the letter of the law, but then for every yea in the law there was a nay, and it always boiled down to simple expediency. Like a psychiatric diagnosis, it could always be juggled around to fit anything you chose.
— p. 79 (They'd Rather Be Right (1954))
Showing that if a good face is a letter of recommendation, a good heart is a letter of credit.
Lytton— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, What Will He Do With It? (1858), Book II. Title of Ch, XI.
A piece of simple goodness a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.
— Douglas Jerrold, Specimens of Jerrold's Wit, The Postman's Budget.
Ev'n so, with all submission, I * * * * * Send you each year a homely letter, Who may return me much a better.
Matthew Prior— Matthew Prior, Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd, line 23.
Go, little letter, apace, apace, Fly; Fly to the light in the valley below Tell my wish to her dewy blue eye.
— Alfred Tennyson, The Letter, Stanza 2.
At this every lady drew up her mouth as if going to pronounce the letter P.
— Oliver Goldsmith, letter to Robert Bryanton. Sept., 1758
If I must either attribute to some Judges a reverence more for the letter than the spirit, caution carried too far, an over-anxiousness to keep themselves within the most clearly - defined limits of their authority, or ascribe to others an arbitrary and unwarrantable assumption of legislative power, I elect the former.
— Knight-Bruce, L.J., Boyse v. Rossborough (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 5 (N. S.) Ch., p. 331.
A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
honoré de balzac— Letters of Two Brides, Part I, chapter XXXI (1841-1842).
For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter Of the Eternal's language; on earth it is called Forgiveness!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Children of the Lord's Supper, line 214
Surely this Qur’an is the rope of Allah, and a manifest Light (nur), and a beneficial cure. Therefore, busy yourselves with the recitation of it, for Allah - The Mighty and Glorious – grants the reward of ten good deeds to you for every letter which is recited.
— Biharul Anwar, Volume 92, Page 19 (Shi'ite Hadith)
Nobody wants an apology letter 14 years later.
lennon parham— American actress and writer
What is it? A letter confirming your reservation at the nuthouse?
art smith— National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), played by E. G. Marshall
