WIT’S IN A NAME

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” –William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

Well, what Shakespeare wrote is all smell and good, but if you give a whit, That which we call anything by any other name isn’t worth a whit without wit. For one thing, wit is part of many a whole, such as the name of the guy named ZIEMOWIT (.15 and 1:42 into this short clip):

Whether it be at the end of ZiemoWIT, or at the beginning of WITtnauer (as in Albert Wittnauer, founder of the famous Wittnauer watch company), wit in a name is the name of the game in this post — whether (w)it be in the names of persons, places, things, titles, or quotes, to wit:

Two Wit PERSONS: Forenamed above

Two Wit PLACES:
WITCH ISLAND, Lincoln County, Maine
WIT’S END: https://dorothyparker.com/dorothy-parker-haunts/wits-end

Two Wit THINGS:
WITCH HUNT: What Donald Trump woefully wails that he is the victim of.
WITENAGEMOT: An Anglo-Saxon advisory council to the high king (not to be confused with a WITTY BON MOT, which is a witticism beneath a king.

Two Wit TITLES:
“WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION”: 1957 courtroom drama directed by Billy Wilder in which Marlene Dietrich is the witness and Donald Trump — make that Tyrone Power (sorry, my bad) — is the prosecuted.
“WITCHCRAFT”:

Two Wit QUOTES:
“Wit lies in the likeness of things that are different, and in the difference of things that are alike.” –Madame de Stael
“Next to being witty yourself, the best thing is being able to quote another’s wit.” –Christian Bovee  

If you think this post is witless, please let it go, because I’m at WIT’S END.

DON’T ASK

You Asked For It (according to my previous post) — but this post is a different story, so….

 

By a weird coincidence, ASK ME NO QUESTIONS AND I’LL TELL YOU NO LIES (a quote attributed to 18th century Irish novelist, playwright and poet Oliver Goldsmith) is my springboard for this post of “Don’t Ask” quotes — thus sparing you the fate of my last post, which subjected you to some questionable poems.

Let’s plunge right in with perhaps the most famous DON’T ASK quote (at least in America):

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” –John F. Kennedy

Here’s another famous one (in jazz circles), leveled at squares:

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” –Louis Armstrong

If you have a humorous bone in your body, the next three should bring a smile to your face:

“Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, Why me? Then a voice answers, Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.” –Charles M. Schulz

“Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people see things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.” –George Carlin

“When your mother asks, “Do you want a piece of advice?’, it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.” –Erma Bombeck

Now for some serious stuff:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” –Saint Augustine

“If you ask me whether the election of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream, I say, ‘No, it’s just a down payment.” –John Lewis

To close, here’s a quote I like which is a stretch to fit the category, but since it’s the birthday of the author, don’t ask me to re-think its inclusion here:

“Thinkers think and doers do. But until the thinkers do and the doers think, progress will be just another word in the already overburdened vocabulary.” –Francois de La Rochefoucauld (9/15/1613–3/17/1680)

I think that does it for now. How’s that for progress?

 

 

YOU ASKED FOR IT! YOU GOT IT!

My last post featured poetry which one of you commented that you wanted more of. So, it is by popular demand (who am I to deny my adoring readers?) that my Fats friend and I are bound to reply:

The initials of that reader are mm. No, mistermuse isn’t the mm who asked for more. If you must know, it was magicmermaid, who I assume is a real person (not that mistermuse isn’t real — as real, at least, as magicmermaid….or as you, for that matter). You are real, aren’t you? — if not, just pretend you are, because mistermuse can use the reassurance.

THE FAUX PAS OF POSITIVE THINKING

“Doubt is not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” –Voltaire

I can live with
Uncertainty and doubt —
It’s know-it-alls
I have my doubts about.

THE PETER PRINCIPLE

“I am not young enough to know everything.” –Sir James M. Barrie (author of the play subtitled The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up)

Sorry that things didn’t quite Pan out
(except in Neverland….or thereabout).

HOW TO BETTER CULTIVATE KNOWLEDGE

“Scholars esteem knowledge not for its use in attaining other values, but as a value in itself.” –Max Eastman

Know,
Weigh,

Hoe
Say.

KNOW PROBLEM

“If reality wants to get in touch, it knows where I am.” –Phil Proctor

But if reality says,
“Hello there, it’s me” —
How would you know
Absent a show of real ID?

 

 

 

 

 

 

IT’S ABOUT A QUOTER TO NINE

Several days ago, one of my readers said she’s partial to humorous quotes, so I’ve been thinking about spending a whole lot of time thinking about devoting a post to things others have said which are funnier than what I say….but after searching high (brow) and low (brow), eye gave up. See what I mean?

Ha ha! Just kidding. Believe it or not, I was able to find nine selections funnier-than-mine (well, maybe somewhat funnier), though I’m sure I would’ve said them first if I’d thought of them first. Some of the nine guys & gals I’m about to quote said what they said before I was even born, thus taking unfair advantage of circumstances beyond my control. But this is my blog, so as a quoter of quotes, I at least get to determine the subject matter of the quotes I quote, and the quotes I’ve chosen to quote are quotes about quotes….and I quote:

“A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself – always a laborious business.” –A. A. Milne

“I googled the quote ‘Power means not having to respond.’ Nothing happened.” –John Alejandro King [what “Power means” sounds like something Trump might say, except nothing Trump says is worth quoting]

“Quotation: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.” –Ambrose Bierce

“There are two kinds of marriages: where a husband quotes the wife, and where the wife quotes the husband.” –Clifford Odets

“You can tell a really wonderful quote by the fact that it’s attributed to a whole raft of wits.” –Anna Quindlen

“I have made it a rule that whenever I say something stupid, I immediately attribute it to Dr. Johnson, Marcus Aurelius or Dorothy Parker.” –George Mikes

“That woman speaks eighteen languages and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.” –Dorothy Parker

“You can always depend on children to quote you correctly, especially when it’s something you shouldn’t have said.” –Evan Esar

“I can’t see what Jack Warner [Warner Bros. movie mogul] can do with an Oscar – it can’t say Yes.” –Al Jolson

:

THE TREASURE OF JOHN HUSTON

Huston would have agreed with [Orson] Welles, who declared, “I’m awfully tired of old men saying they have no regrets. We’re loaded with, burdened with, staggering under, regrets.” –Jeffrey Meyers, from his biography JOHN HUSTON: COURAGE AND ART

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I must admit that JOHN HUSTON (born August 5, 1906) is not the kind of human being I admire — however, he IS the kind of film maker I admire. Yes, he made his share of clunkers, but few directors made more of my all-time favorite films than he: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, Beat The Devil — and yet, he had more than his share of things to regret, as he himself admitted (more on that shortly).

But first, here are two classic scenes from THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE:

The second scene features the great actor Walter Huston (father of John) doing his incomparable dance in the gold-flecked dirt of the Sierra Madre mountains:

Getting back to John Huston’s regrettable qualities, Jeffrey Meyers (in his excellent bio) compares Huston to Ernest Hemingway: “Hemingway had four wives, Huston had five (and all of his marriages ended badly). Each married increasingly younger women and, while married, fell in love with a series of women even younger than their wives. Huston, however, [unlike Hemingway] was unashamedly promiscuous. Both had three children and were difficult, demanding and frequently absent fathers.”

“In the last paragraph of his autobiography, Huston brooded over his guilty regrets about family, finances, alcohol, tobacco and matrimony. Huston could be noble, generous and kind, as well as selfish, callous and cruel. But he should be remembered for his intellect, his imagination and his charm.”

I, of course, cannot remember him thusly because I did not know him. But I can remember him for his films, and so I do. Who could forget the black bird….

….or The African Queen:

One of those clunkers I mentioned was THE BIBLE (1966), an ungodly bad epic which he both directed and starred in. But those can be forgiven in light of the above trinity of masterpieces. If that doesn’t Beat The Devil….

 

 

 

I COULD HAVE ROMANCED ALL NIGHT….

I could have….that is, if I were fifty years younger. But why bemoan it if Mother Nature no longer shores up the animal in me? Still, she’s no spring chicken herself, so you’d think she’d cut old geezers like me some slack.

Moving on from my love life of fond memory: Wouldn’t it be loverly if I instead celebrated the 164th birthday of my near-contemporary George Bernard Shaw with a selection of songs from MY FAIR LADY (based on his play PYGMALION), followed by a bit of biography, a serving of Shaw quotes, and a nightcap of Shavian brew-haha.

From “Wouldn’t It Be” to “I Could Have”….

In this scene, Stanley Holloway is seen lifting his spirits on his last night of ‘freedom’:

Next in line, the bit of bio:

https://www.biography.com/writer/george-bernard-shaw

Now sink your teeth into the quotes:

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

There is only one sort of genuine Socialism, the democratic sort, by which I mean the organization of society for the benefit of the whole people.

We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists.

….which leads us to the brew-haha / brouhaha between Shaw and fellow socialist H.G. Wells (click on the title below the cartoon caricature):

….which takes us at a social difference to

THE END

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES

lie, n. a false statement known to be false by the person who makes it.
lie, v. to be in a horizontal or flat position; to exist; have its place.  –World Book Dictionary

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So, where does the truth lie? Attempts to address that question, it seems to me, lie in the assumption that we know objectively what truth is. Should we settle for the negative defining of truth as being the opposite of “lie, n“? I don’t know that most of us want to — or need to — go deeper into the jungle of truth than that, but if you’re of a mind to take the path of beast resistance, you can start here:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201808/what-is-truth

In our dystopian sub-culture of “fake news,” half-truths, whole-cloth fabrications and false narratives in which truth is what President Trump says it is and science is fiction, it isn’t always simple to disentangle truth from the deluge of prevarication and misrepresentations which is Trump’s stock in trade  — and he knows it. Who can fact check it all fast enough? The old saying remains relevant: “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”

And speaking of quotes which remain relevant, try these on for wise:

Carlyle said, “A lie cannot live.” It shows he did not know how to tell them. –Mark Twain

If at first you’re not believed, lie, lie again.–Evan Esar (not Trump, believe it or not)

The pursuit of truth shall set you free, even if you never catch up with it. –Clarence Darrow

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie. –Austin O’Malley

Truth is more important than facts. –Frank Lloyd Wright

All men are born truthful and die liars. –Marquis de Vauvenargues

And so it goes. Would I lie to you?

 

THE FIX IS OFF (for now)

Something has come up to postpone my out-of-town daughter’s Father’s Day visit until the following weekend ….so my browser problem will remain on hold, and without resolution, until the (offspring’s) fix is in. Meanwhile, back at the rant, I’ve finished reading the outspoken CARROLL O’CONNOR’s autobiography wherein he vents about many things. So, to fill in, let’s take up where my last post left off. After all, it’s All In The Family.

O’Connor had a very varied pre-Archie Bunker life. Like many in their early adult years, he couldn’t find his niche. “I could not shake off a feeling of foolishness—a man of 26 plodding through the days and months with no plan, no answer for anyone who might ask “What are you going to do with yourself?” The eventual answer, after many dead-end turns, turned out to be acting….and, finally, stardom (which came with an Archie Bunker mentality).

I — no doubt like most who read autobiographies — do so primarily to learn more about the author, his/her life and times. But I’ll also admit to the guilty pleasure of learning what the author thought of well-known contemporaries — in fact, such opinions may offer insights into other personalities and professions, which broaden (for better or worse) what I thought I knew about them. So, what were O’Connor’s impressions of….

JOHN WAYNE: “He perceived America as the preeminent hero-nation, virtually a land of heroes in which he himself felt heroic (and actually was, as I knew him) and infused that perception into all his roles as naturally as if it were one of the primary  emotions.”

JEAN STAPLETON: “Jean’s idea of Edith Bunker was not only original and perfectly suited to the American audience, but very comical and emotionally moving. If ever anything on television changed the country, not radically, not even obviously, it was the performance of Jean and the example of Edith. Did our series effectively attack bigotry and racism? We thought so at the time –”

HARRY TRUMAN: “Nobody expected Truman to take part in a Korean civil war, if one should begin. His military chiefs had no battle plan; on the contrary, they had a plan for getting out of the way — withdrawing to Japan. I thought Truman was totally wrong — his political vision faulty, his practical leadership unintelligent, his moral justification false. For me, the issue of morality in war– whether or not it is a “just war” — turns on the question of choice. When you wage war because you have no choice you are acting justly. But when you have a reasonable choice and choose to wage war, you can’t call your war just.”

MOVIE WRITERS, “though marvelously reliable in inventing space creatures — shriveled humanoids and hugely swollen insects — are unreliable in depicting intelligent life on earth.”

AGENTS “are generally shrewd, knowing, clever people; good company, good friends. They have made my career; they make all careers; they are the most important people in the business.”

ACTORS: “I shall never forget my first professional play rehearsal at The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, in the spring of 1951 — the immediate cordiality of my new friends the actors: they greeted me like an intimate. Now after all these years I am still unfailingly comforted, encouraged and elated in the company of actors. There is something about the work these dear neurotics do, investigating every kind of human character, that  develops in them an extraordinary tolerance, forgiveness and good humor. I commend their company even to normal folk.”

….and I commend this book of Carroll’s to you.

PHILOSPHER STONED

If there’s one thing I think we can all agree on about Donald Trump, it’s that he isn’t a philosopher. If, however, he can be said to have one guiding precept remotely resembling a philosophy, it has to be IT’S ALL ABOUT ME….or, secondarily, DON’T BLAME ME (which happens to be the title of a song I was going to link here until — faster than you can say Niccollo Machiavelli — Google removed share, embed & copy from their music clips, leaving technologically-challenged mistermuse at a loss as to how to post them).

Be that as it may, I got to thinking that if THE DONALD were a lit-wit (rather than a nitwit) who wished to appear philosophical, there must be any number of wise philosophical quotes he might plagiarize to his greater glory (or, if he were stoned, learn from). Here are some I drug up which could fill the (Duck’s) bill:

There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed if repeated often enough. — William James, American philosopher

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others. –Oscar Wilde, Irish wit, poet and playwright

Any man can be a philosopher if he only thinks enough about his own foolishness. –Edgar Watson Howe, American novelist and editor

Philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it. –Karl Marx, German philosopher, political theorist and socialist revolutionary

If I killed everyone who was stupid, I wouldn’t have time to sleep. –Tamora Pierce, American fantasy fiction writer

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. –Plato, Greek philosopher

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end. — Immanuel Kant, German philosopher

Philosophers before Kant had a tremendous advantage over philosophers after Kant, in that they didn’t have to spend years studying Kant.  –Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, writer and social critic

Only one philosopher in history had a perfect alibi for doing nothing, and his name was I. Kant. –Evan Esar, American humorist

TRUTH BE TOLD….so it is said

When I come across a quote I love, and which is so true that it hits home (home being where the heart is), I often tell Cupid to get lost while I grab a pen, because in my heart….

Yes, I want to be alone so I can write down said truth on whatever scrap of paper is handy before I get distracted and forget it….even then, I often don’t recall where I left that lovely quote, and Cupid will call me stupid (but then, aren’t we all when Cupid is involved?).

Anyway, I haven’t written a post since I got home from the (soap) opera six days of our lives ago, so today I thought I’d seek out and gather up some of the bold and beautiful quotations I misplaced, for you alone (you ARE alone, aren’t you?):

“I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.” –Audrey Hepburn, actress

“In Genesis, it says that it is not good for a man to be alone, but sometimes it is a great relief. –John Barrymore, actor

“Solitude is un-American.” –Erica Jong, novelist and poet

“All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” –Blaise Pascal, writer, inventor, and theologian

“The trouble with opera in the United States is that it is trying to sell caviar to a hamburger-eating country.” –Helen Traubel, opera singer

“Opera: a play about life in another world whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures, and no postures but attitudes.” –Ambrose Bierce

“Opera: where anything that is too stupid to be spoken, is sung.” –Voltaire

“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.” –Aldous Huxley

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” –Mark Twain

“There is a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.” –Maya Angelou

I will close with a timely quote in which the words alone, opera, and truth do not appear….but I would say that truer words were never spoken (despite who said them):
“Democracy counts heads without regard to what’s in them.” –Lenin