Quotes4study

Truth and oil are ever above.

Proverb.

Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil O'er books consum'd the midnight oil?

JOHN GAY. 1688-1732.     _Fables. Part i. The Shepherd and the Philosopher._

Yes, you find people ready enough to do the good Samaritan without the oil and twopence.

_Sydney Smith._

Our natures are like oil; compound us with anything, yet still we strive to swim upon the top.

_Beaumont and Fletcher._

~Praise.~--Expect not praise without envy until you are dead. Honors bestowed on the illustrious dead have in them no admixture of envy; for the living pity the dead; and pity and envy, like oil and vinegar, assimilate not.--_Colton._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

The World is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last lights off the black West went Oh morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with the warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Man without patience is the lamp without oil, and pride in a rage is a bad counsellor.

_A. de Musset._

May we not find a great truth in the very position in which God placed His chosen people? It certainly teaches us that to be holy, or sanctified, we must be a separate people--living in the world, but not of it--as oil, that may be mixed, but cannot be combined with water.--_Guthrie._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

Tell me, doc. Tell me. Why do they have wars?” I shook my head. Was there ever a good reason? To make the world safe for democracy? To stop the death camps? To free the slaves? Maybe. Those were better reasons than cheap oil. But up close, no matter what the reason, it was husbands and sons and brothers who never came home.

Mike Resnick

Documentation is the castor oil of programming.

Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much.

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge.

Charles Lindbergh

>Oil, wine, and friends improve by age.= _It. Pr._ [Greek: oimoi; ti d' oimoi? thneta gar peponthamen]--Alas! but why alas? We only suffer what other mortals do. [Greek: oinou de meket' ontos, ouk estin Kypris]--Where there is no longer any wine there is no love. _Euripides._ [Greek: hokosa pharmaka ouk ietai sideros ietai, hosa sideros ouk ietai pyr ietai]--What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.

_Hippocrates._

A business with an income at its heels Furnishes always oil for its own wheels.

WILLIAM COWPER. 1731-1800.     _Retirement. Line 614._

In virtues nothing earthly could surpass her, Save thine "incomparable oil," Macassar!

LORD BYRON 1788-1824.     _Don Juan. Canto i. Stanza 17._

To pour oil on the fire is not the way to quench it.

Proverb.

If you desire to enjoy my light, you must supply oil to my lamp.

Proverb.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. [Speech, “Where Do We Go From Here?” by Martin Luther King, Jr. made to the Tenth Anniversary Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C) in Atlanta on August 16, 1967. Dr. King projected in it the issues which led to Poor People’s March on Washington. From Foner, Philip S., The Voice of Black America: New York, 1972.] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again! . . .[ Ibid .] What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. . . . [ Ibid .] Another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power. [Ibid.] Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like the U.A.W. to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.” [Ibid.] Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. [Ibid.] [A] host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated. [Ibid.] [T]he Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” [Ibid.] One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn’t get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic – that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.” He said, in other words, “Your whole structure must be changed.” A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them — make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again!” [Ibid.] [L]et us go out with a “divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout “White Power!” — when nobody will shout “Black Power!” — but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. [Ibid.]

King Jr., Martin Luther.

Christianity wants nothing so much in the world as sunny people, and the old are hungrier for love than for bread, and the Oil of Joy is very cheap, and if you can help the poor on with a Garment of Praise it will be better for them than blankets. The Programme of Christianity, p. 33.

Henry Drummond     Beautiful Thoughts

In order that you may not quench the Spirit, you must make it a constant study to know what is the mind of the Spirit. You must discriminate with the utmost care between His suggestions and the suggestions of your own deceitful heart. You will keep in constant recollection what are the offices of the Spirit as described by Christ in the Gospel of John. You will be on your guard against impulsive movements, inconsiderate acts, rash words. You will abide in prayer. Search the Word. Confess Christ on all possible occasions. Seek the society of His people. Shrink from conformity to the world, its vain fashions, unmeaning etiquette. Be scrupulous in your reading. "What I say unto you, I say unto all, watch!" "Have oil in your lamps." "Quench not the Spirit."--_Bowen._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

What makes the SAT bad is that it has nothing to do with what kids learn in high school. As a result, it creates a sort of shadow curriculum that furthers the goals of neither educators nor students.… The SAT has been sold as snake oil; it measured intelligence, verified high school GPA, and predicted college grades. In fact, it’s never done the first two at all, nor a particularly good job at the third.” Yet students who don’t test well or who aren’t particularly strong at the kind of reasoning the SAT assesses can find themselves making compromises on their collegiate futures—all because we’ve come to accept that intelligence comes with a number. This notion is pervasive, and it extends well beyond academia. Remember the bell‐shaped curve we discussed earlier? It presents itself every time I ask people how intelligent they think they are because we’ve come to define intelligence far too narrowly. We think we know the answer to the question, “How intelligent are you?” The real answer, though, is that the question itself is the wrong one to ask.

Ken Robinson

Food fills the wame and keeps us livin'; / Though life's a gift no worth receivin', / When heavy dragg'd wi' pine and grievin'; / But oil'd by thee, the wheels o' life gae doonhill scrievin' / Wi' rattlin' glee.

_Burns, on Scotch drink._

Death but supplies the oil for the inextinguishable lamp of life.

_Coleridge._

Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities and the fountain of all our diseases. As a lamp is choked by a superabundance of oil, a fire extinguished by an excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by intemperate diet.

_Burton._

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.

_Cervantes._

Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough.

PLINY THE ELDER. 23-79 A. D.     _Natural History. Book ii. Sect. 234._

At 5:00 a.m. the clubs get going properly; the Forbes stumble down from their loggias, grinning and swaying tipsily. They are all dressed the same, in expensive striped silk shirts tucked into designer jeans, all tanned and plump and glistening with money and self-satisfaction. They join the cattle on the dance floor. Everyone is wrecked by now and bounces around sweating, so fast it’s almost in slow motion. They exchange these sweet, simple glances of mutual recognition, as if the masks have come off and they’re all in on one big joke. And then you realize how equal the Forbes and the girls really are. They all clambered out of one Soviet world. The oil geyser has shot them to different financial universes, but they still understand each other perfectly. And their sweet, simple glances seem to say how amusing this whole masquerade is, that yesterday we were all living in communal flats and singing Soviet anthems and thinking Levis and powdered milk were the height of luxury, and now we’re surrounded by luxury cars and jets and sticky Prosecco. And though many westerners tell me they think Russians are obsessed with money, I think they’re wrong: the cash has come so fast, like glitter shaken in a snow globe, that it feels totally unreal, not something to hoard and save but to twirl and dance in like feathers in a pillow fight and cut like papier-mâché into different, quickly changing masks. At 5:00 a.m. the music goes faster and faster, and in the throbbing, snowing night the cattle become Forbeses and the Forbeses cattle, moving so fast now they can see the traces of themselves caught in the strobe across the dance floor. The guys and girls look at themselves and think: “Did that really happen to me? Is that me there? With all the Maybachs and rapes and gangsters and mass graves and penthouses and sparkly dresses?

Peter Pomerantsev

Our wasted oil unprofitably burns, Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.

WILLIAM COWPER. 1731-1800.     _Conversation. Line 357._

~Kindness.~--Yes! you may find people ready enough to do the Samaritan without the oil and twopence.--_Sydney Smith._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Oleum et operam perdidi=--I have lost both the oil and my pains.

Plautus.

Our Garrick 's a salad; for in him we see Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 1728-1774.     _Retaliation. Line 11._

~Good-humor.~--Honest good-humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and the laughter abundant.--_Washington Irving._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

Whilst a man confideth in Providence, he should not slacken his own exertions; for without labour he is unworthy to obtain the oil from the seed.

_Hitopadesa._

An handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse.

OLD TESTAMENT.     _1 Kings xvii. 12._

My Father, I am coming. Nothing on the mean plain shall keep me away from the holy heights. Help me to climb fast, and keep Thou my foot, lest it fall upon the hard rock! At Thy bidding I come, so Thou wilt not mock my heart. Bring with Thee honey from heaven, yea, milk and wine, and oil for my soul's good, and stay the sun in his course, or the time will be too short in which to look upon Thy face, and to hear Thy gentle voice.

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

That inexhaustible good-nature, which is the most precious gift of Heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.--_Washington Irving._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.

Oscar Wilde

You find people ready enough to do the Samaritan, without the oil and twopence.

SYDNEY SMITH. 1769-1845.     _Lady Holland's Memoir. Vol. i. p. 261._

Why does pouring oil on the sea make it clear and calm? Is it for that the winds, slipping the smooth oil, have no force, nor cause any waves? The great god Pan is dead.[740-2]

PLUTARCH. 46(?)-120(?) A. D.     _Why the Oracles cease to give Answers._

If life, like the olive, is a bitter fruit, then grasp both with the press and they will yield the sweetest oil.

_Jean Paul._

A century after Colonel Drake’s invention of the first successful oil well, only one percent of America’s physical work is done by man himself.

Atlantic Refining Corporation.

That jewell'd mass of millinery, That oil'd and curl'd Assyrian Bull.

ALFRED TENNYSON. 1809- ----.     _Maud. Part i. vi. Stanza 6._

If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pits of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being. However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it. This is my position, and as always, I refuse to be compromised on matters of principle.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The oil and wine of merry meeting.--_Washington Irving._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail.

OLD TESTAMENT.     _1 Kings xvii. 16._

Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

OLD TESTAMENT.     _Isaiah lxi. 3._

***** Special AI Seminar (abstract)

It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge

in order to perform well in complex domains.  But knowledge alone is not

sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well.  Accordingly,

we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call

"wisdom engineering".  As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a

wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought.

IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom

about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so

forth.  IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic

rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base.  IMMANUEL

succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed

in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those

underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory

of value, and Husserl's phenomenology.  In this seminar, we will describe

IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture.  We will also briefly

discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.

Fortune Cookie

I am covered with pure vegetable oil and I am writing a best seller!

Fortune Cookie

A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.

A swift-flowing steam does not grow stagnant.

Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.

Software rots if not used.

These are great mysteries.

        -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

Fortune Cookie

If Love Were Oil, I'd Be About A Quart Low

        -- Book title by Lewis Grizzard

Fortune Cookie

        Accidents cause History.

If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the

Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not

have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil</p>

could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and

the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.

        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

Fortune Cookie

After this was written there appeared a remarkable posthumous memoir that

throws some doubt on Millikan's leading role in these experiments.  Harvey

Fletcher (1884-1981), who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago,

at Millikan's suggestion worked on the measurement of electronic charge for

his doctoral thesis, and co-authored some of the early papers on this subject

with Millikan.  Fletcher left a manuscript with a friend with instructions

that it be published after his death; the manuscript was published in

Physics Today, June 1982, page 43.  In it, Fletcher claims that he was the

first to do the experiment with oil drops, was the first to measure charges on

single droplets, and may have been the first to suggest the use of oil.

According to Fletcher, he had expected to be co-authored with Millikan on

the crucial first article announcing the measurement of the electronic

charge, but was talked out of this by Millikan.

        -- Steven Weinberg, "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles"

Robert Millikan is generally credited with making the first really

precise measurement of the charge on an electron and was awarded the

Nobel Prize in 1923.

Fortune Cookie

Disco oil bussing will create a throbbing naugahide pipeline running

straight to the tropics from the rug producing regions and devalue the dollar!

Fortune Cookie

Drilling for oil is boring.

Fortune Cookie

Are you selling NYLON OIL WELLS??  If so, we can use TWO DOZEN!!

Fortune Cookie

If you don't strike oil in twenty minutes, stop boring.

        -- Andrew Carnegie, on public speaking

Fortune Cookie

Mmmmmm-MMMMMM!!  A plate of STEAMING PIECES of a PIG mixed with the

shreds of SEVERAL CHICKENS!! ... Oh BOY!!  I'm about to swallow a

TORN-OFF section of a COW'S LEFT LEG soaked in COTTONSEED OIL and

SUGAR!! ... Let's see ... Next, I'll have the GROUND-UP flesh of CUTE,

BABY LAMBS fried in the MELTED, FATTY TISSUES from a warm-blooded

animal someone once PETTED!! ... YUM!!  That was GOOD!!  For DESSERT,

I'll have a TOFU BURGER with BEAN SPROUTS on a stone-ground, WHOLE

WHEAT BUN!!

Fortune Cookie

The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.

Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using

other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern

countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so

far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill

and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons.  None of the animals turned into

>oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer.

        -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"

Fortune Cookie

Wanna tell you all a story 'bout a man named Jed,

A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.

But then one day he was shootin' at some food,

When up through the ground come a bubblin' crude -- oil, that is;

    black gold; 'Texas tea' ...

Well the next thing ya know, old Jed's a millionaire.

The kinfolk said, 'Jed, move away from there!'

They said, 'Californy is the place ya oughta be',

So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly -- Hills, that is;

    swimmin' pools; movie stars.

Fortune Cookie

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