Amusement Quotes - Page 11

• I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Reading, Awards

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• Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Motivation

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

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• I am once more seated under my own vine and fig tree ... and hope to spend the remainder of my days in peaceful retirement, making political pursuits yield to the more rational amusement of cultivating the earth.

  George Washington

  Hope, Peace, Retirement

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1796). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”

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• All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

  H. L. Mencken

  Zoos, Freedom, Political

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.365, Vintage

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• Those who are devoted to amusements; who love the society of those who love pleasure, have an aversion to religious exercises.

  Ellen G. White

  Religious, Exercise, Aversion

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• All the old history was written for the amusement of the ruling classes. The lower classes couldn't read, and their rulers didn't care about remembering what happened to them.

  Frank Zappa

  Class, Care, Remember

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.200, Simon and Schuster

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• Dancing is an excellent amusement for young people, especially for those of sedentary occupations. Its excellence consists in exciting a cheerfulness of the mind, highly essential to health; in bracing the muscles of the body, and in producing copious perspiration.....The body must perspire, or must be out of order.

  Noah Webster

  Order, People, Dancing

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• But, look, Washington is a town that creates myths for its own existence and its own amusement, and I was a subject of myth, sort of like Grendel in Beowulf - you know, not seen very often but often talked about.

  Karl Rove

  Looks, Towns, Existence

  Interview with Mike Allen, www.politico.com. March, 11, 2010.

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• Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits; it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses.

  William Cobbett

  Dance, Animal, People

  William Cobbett (2006). “Advice to Young Men”, p.33, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and again to their love and perished too often in some ordinary commonplace flight undertaken for pure amusement.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Jealous, Fighting

  Sir Winston Churchill, Andrew Scotland (1965). “Churchill on men and events: a selection from "Thoughts and adventures" and "Great contemporaries"”

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• It oughtn't to need a war to make us talk to each other in buses, and invent our own amusements in the evenings, and live simply, and eat sparingly, and recover the use of our legs, and get up early enough to see the sun rise.

  Jan Struther

  War, Up Early, Civilization

  "Mrs. Miniver".

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• The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Idols, Gentleman, Quality

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.48, e-artnow

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• In a series of wonderful essays, Evan Handler gives himself up to us - warts and all. To our amusement and bemusement we share in his emotional growth as he struggles to mature. I not only laughed along with him but felt that I too had grown a little along the way. Who could ask for more?

  Lewis Black

  Struggle, Emotional, Giving

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• All the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.

  Strom Thurmond

  Home, School, Army

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• In the mind of all, fiction, in the logical sense, has been the coin of necessity;—in that of poets of amusement—in that of the priest and the lawyer of mischievous immorality in the shape of mischievous ambition,—and too often both priest and lawyer have framed or made in part this instrument.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Ambition, Mind, Fiction

  Jeremy Bentham, John Bowring (1843). “The Works”, p.199

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• Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights,' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

  Sloane Crosley

  Christmas, Frustration, Light

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• Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.

  Jonathan Swift

  Hands, Whales, Tubs

  Jonathan Swift, William Wotton (1811). “A tale of a tub,: written for the universal improvement of mankind. To which is added, An account of a battle between the ancient and modern books in St. James's Library”, p.43

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• Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

  Neil Postman

  Laughter, Sea, Voice

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• The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Games, Chess Game, Mind

  François Danican Philidor, Sir William Jones, Benjamin Franklin (1824). “An Easy Introduction to the Game of Chess: Containing One Hundred Examples of Games and a Great Variety of Critical Situations and Conclusions ; Including the Whole of Philidor's Analysis with Copious Selections from Stamma, the Calabrois, &c”, p.237

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• I have read that the secret of gallantry is to accept the pleasures of life leisurely, and its inconveniences with a shrug; as well as that, among other requisites, the gallant person will always consider the world with a smile of toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful — being thoroughly persuaded that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational.

  James Branch Cabell

  Heaven, Secret, World

  James Branch Cabell (2005). “Beyond Life”, p.130, Cosimo, Inc.

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• America is said to have the highest per capita boredom of any spot on earth! We know that because we have the greatest number of artificial amusements of any country. People have become so empty that they can't even entertain themselves. They have to pay other people to amuse them, to make then laugh, to try to make them feel warm and happy and comfortable for a few minutes, to try to lose that awful, frightening, hollow feeling-that terrible, dreaded feeling of being lost and alone.

  Billy Graham

  Country, Numbers, America

  Billy Graham (1995). “Billy Graham: The Inspirational Writings”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

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• Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics ... would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.

  Franz Karl Achard

  Historical, Mind, Connections

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• A man who can laugh at himself is truly blessed, for he will never lack for amusement.

  James Carlos Blake

  Blessed, Men, Laughing

  James Carlos Blake (2010). “Handsome Harry: A Novel”, p.80, Zondervan

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• I believe this thought, of the possibility of death - if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong.

  Lewis Carroll

  Death, Believe, Tests

  Lewis Carroll (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (Illustrated)”, p.265, Delphi Classics

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• I think hiccup cures were really invented for the amusement of the patient's friends.

  Bill Watterson

  Thinking, Hiccups, Patient

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