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"Science is the discovery of how God does things."
-- John G. Lake, missionary, from The Ministry of Healing and Miracles
(tract), circa 1920s.
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"Son, you are now going out into the wide, wide, world to make your own way, and it is a very good thing to do, as there are no more opportunities for you in this burg. I am only sorry that I am not able to bankroll you to a very large start, but not having any potatoes to give you, I am now going to stake you to some very valuable advice, which I personally collect in my years of experience around and about, and I hope and trust you will always bear this advice in mind. 'Son, no matter how far you travel, or how smart you get always remember this: Some day, somewhere, a guy is going to come to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is never broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that the jack of spades will jump out of this deck and squirt cider in your ear. But son, do not bet him, for as sure as you do you are going to get an ear full of cider.'" --Damon Runyon, from "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown," circa 1940s.
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"I'm not really a writer, Bloom. I'm a farmer who writes." -- William Faulkner to screenwriter Harold Jack Bloom, collaborators on the 1955 Howard Hawks film, “Land of the Pharaohs” as quoted in Schmucks with Underwoods, Conversations with Hollywood’s Classic Screenwriters by Max Wilk, Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, N.Y., 2004, Page 289.
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"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) writer and film critic.
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"I’ll give you the whole secret of short story writing. Here it is. Rule I: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule II. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself you’ll never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
"I get a story thoroughly in mind before I sit down at my writing table. Then I write it out quickly; and, without revising it mail it to the editor. In this way I am able to judge my stories as the public judges them. I've seen stories in print that I wouldn't recognize as my own.
"Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life--that's the stimulant for a story writer. -- William Sidney Porter (O. Henry), 1909
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"Life is full of odd events from which one can learn practically nothing at all." -- Michael Kelly (1957-2003), late editor, columnist, war correspondent.
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“The thing to remember is that the six million Jews who were murdered would, today, be the parents and grandparents of 20 million.” – Former Laconia (N.H.) Mayor Edwin I. Chertok
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"Don't look back, something might be gaining on you."
-- Baseball player Leroy "Satchel" Page, circa 1950s
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"Justice has nothing to do with what goes on a in a courtroom. Justice is what comes out of a courtroom." -- Clarence Darrow
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"In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls." -- Lenny Bruce
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"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -- Aesop (c. 550 B.C.) legendary Greek author of fables.
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"How do we believe what eyes cannot see? When you see a big wigwam,
do you think the raccoons built it, or the foxes, or that it built itself?
Certainly not. Look at the house of this great world. Look at the sun, the
moon, the stars. Doesn't it look as though a very powerful, wise Being built
it? We can't see Him with our eyes, but look at his works."
-- From John Eliot's first sermon to the Algonquins (circa 1600s), as
conveyed by Pulitzer Prize winning author Ola Winslow (John Eliot, Apostle
to the Indians, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1968).
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