“It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.” — H.L. Mencken
Quotations
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“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.” — Tom Stoppard
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“I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face, and not Gary Cooper.” — Gary Cooper, declining the lead role in Gone with the Wind
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“Space travel is utter bilge.” — Astronomer Royal Richard Van Der Riet Woolley, 1956
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“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” — H.M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927
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“Just so-so in center field.” -– New York Daily News on the debut of Willie Mays, 1951
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“I’m sorry, Mr Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.” — San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a submission by Rudyard Kipling, 1889
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“It will be gone by June.” — Variety, writing off rock ‘n’ roll, 1955
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“When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her?” — Montaigne
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“Oh no! Not another fucking elf!” — Oxford English professor Hugo Dyson, interrupting J.R.R. Tolkien during an early reading from The Lord of the Rings