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?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

OLD BUSINESS

Rufus T. Firefly: And now, members of the Cabinet — we’ll take up old business.
Mistermuse: I wish to discuss my previous post, GNOME DE PLUME.
Firefly: Sit down. That’s new business. No old business? Very well — then we’ll take up new business.
Mistermuse: Now, about GNOME DE PLUME.
Firefly: Too late. That’s old business already. Sit down.

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Old business or not, I owe it to my royal leaders — I mean my loyal readers — to give them the correct answers to the quiz in my last post, and I’m no longer going to leave them (my loyal readers) hanging, which is too good for ’em  anyway (my royal leaders, that is) . Besides, I have no new business to write about, so it’s either this or nothing (and no, you don’t get to choose). So sit back, have a nice bowl of hot Duck Soup, and enjoy seeing how many of the following noms de plume you didn’t get right, you ignorant Sylvanians!

ARTEMUS WARD / Charles Farrar Browne
GEORGE SAND / Aurore Dupin
GEORGE ELIOT / Mary Anne Evans
LEWIS CARROLL / Charles Dodgson
SYLVIA PLATH / Victoria Lucas

GEORGE ORWELL / Eric Blair
ISAK DINESEN / Karen Blixen
ANATOLE FRANCE / Jacques Anatole Thibault
SIDNEY SHELDON / Sidney Schechtel
O. HENRY / William Sydney Porter

ANNE RICE / Howard Allen Frances O’Brien
AYN RAND / Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum
C. S. FORESTER / Cecil Smith
VOLTAIRE / Francois Marie Arouet
DANIEL DEFOE / Daniel Foe

Hail, hail Fredonia!