Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
| There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart. -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" | |
| Compliment, n.: When you say something to another which everyone knows isn't true. | |
| "`That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.'" - Marvin's first ever compliment about anybody. | |
| A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. -- Victor Hugo | |
| Never pay a compliment as if expecting a receipt. | |
| "Quite frankly, I don't like you humans. After what you all have done, I find being 'inhuman' a compliment." -- Spider Robinson, "Callahan's Secret" | |
| To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. | |
