Bartlett Quotes & Sayings

Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food — Albert Allen Bartlett

Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they're here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

We have an obligation to spread amateur baseball both at home and abroad. Building up the game at all levels - Little League, Babe Ruth Leagues, the colleges - is in our own self-interest. That's where the pool of talent is - and also of fans. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I can be a little obsessive about avoiding colds and flu. Thera Zinc Echinacea lozenges are awesome, and I almost always have some with me. — Murray Bartlett

I'm not going to sit here now and say 'do this,' or 'do that.' But you must - must - expunge any vestige of racism. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Jesus' mission was not to make a big deal of himself or to elevate his followers to positions of power, authority, and prestige through identification with him. It was rather to point through and beyond himself to God and to God's coming reign on earth, and to invite his followers to find their voice in bearing witness to this transforming, redemptive God — David L. Bartlett

I drove on, and between the north and southbound lanes a construction crew worked under daylight-bright industrial lamps. I saw them through a gauzy fog of dust and strong light...they wore blood-red vests and hardhats and massive goggles, and as the road sank I saw that the workers were bone thin, with skeletal jaws and long teeth. They labored on platforms over gaping holes in the earth, and among the men, piled atop rickety pallets, lolled babies, piles of them, in ashy cerements. I could not tell whether the crew was excavating or burying them. — Matthew M. Bartlett

With all due respect to Speaker Hastert, trying to eliminate the IRS by adopting a national retail sales tax is a very dumb idea. — Bruce Bartlett

Firstly I commit my Soul into the hands of God, its great and benevolent author. — Josiah Bartlett

People will say I'm an idealist. I hope so. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The stories we are told as children do, undoubtedly, mark us for life. They are often stories of dark and terrible things, and we are usually told them just before the lights are turned out and we are left alone; but we love them. We love them when we first hear them, and even when we are grown, and think we have forgotten them entirely, they never lose their power over us. — Neil Bartlett

I ask for your indulgence when I march out quotations. This is the double syndrome of men who write for a living and men who are over forty. The young smoke pot - we inhale from our Bartlett's. — Rod Serling

All play aspires to the condition of paradise ... through play in all its forms ... we hope to achieve a state that our larger Greco-Roman, Judeo- Christian culture has always known was lost. Where it exists, we do not know, although we always have envisioned it as a garden ... always as removed, as an enclosed green place ... Paradise is an ancient dream ... It is a dream of ourselves as better than we are, back to what we were. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

No one man is superior to the game. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I always strive to create a setting that leaves the readers' imagination room to roam. That way, every reader sees the story through their own eyes. — P.S. Bartlett

As I grew up, I knew that as a building it was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid of Giza, the nation's capital, the czar's winter palace, and the Louvre - except, of course, that it was better than all of those inconsequential places. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

So I think we shouldn't be overly concerned about the decline in personal saving at this particular moment and time, but it's something we certainly need to keep an eye on. — Bruce Bartlett

The last romantic novel I think I read was 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles.' — Bartlett Sher

A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operation of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Speaking personally, I didn't think 40 would be a big issue, and I don't think I have issues about age, but there are naturally some big questions that come up at that point in your life. — Murray Bartlett

On a good day, I view the job [of president] as directing an orchestra. On the dark days, it is more like that of a clutch
engaging the engine to effect forward motion, while taking greater friction. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

When a pagan race comes in contact with a Christian race, they are converted, absorbed, or exterminated. — Joseph R. Bartlett

Among nonclassical ions the ratio of conceptual difficulty to molecular weight reaches a maximum with the cyclopropylcarbinyl-cyclobutyl system. — Paul Doughty Bartlett

THE SIGNORA HAD NO business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a court-yard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy! — E. M. Forster

No person and no character is beyond redemption, ultimately. That's the great thing about playing a character that has kind of a dark side; there's room to explore the opposite. — Murray Bartlett

I valued that half-dream state of being lost in a book so much that I limited the number of pages I let myself read each day in order to put off the inevitable end, my banishment from that world — Allison Hoover Bartlett

The conservative side of our political spectrum has had an outsized voice over the last few years. I think especially since the establishment of Fox News, which has created an echo chamber in which people just hear the same ideas repeated ad infinitum. And you know, it's just basic advertising, basically. You hear the same idea over and over again. Or you can call it propaganda if you like. — Bruce Bartlett

As she rattles on, about Violet, about Gemma Sterling, about the Bartlett Dirt, I don't say anything else. I suddenly don't want Bren or Charlie to talk about Violet, because I want to keep her to myself, like the Christmas I was eight - back when Christmases were still good - and got my first guitar, which I named No Trespassing, as in no one could touch it but me. — Jennifer Niven

The difference between a person who appreciates books, even loves them, and a collector is not only degrees of affection, I realized. For the former, the bookshelf is a kind of memoir; there are my childhood books, my college books, my favorite novels, my inexplicable choices. Many matchmaking and social networking websites offer a place for members to list what they're reading for just this reason: books can reveal a lot about a person. This is particularly true of the collector, for whom the bookshelf is a reflection not just of what he has read but profoundly of who he is: 'Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they can come alive in him; it is he who comes alive in them,' wrote cultural critic Walter Benjamin. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

You can drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on every continental shelf and atop every hill in America for that matter, and you still won't reverse the fact that our oil production is in permanent decline. We're just sopping up what's left, digging ourselves into a deeper hole. — Roscoe Bartlett

Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The first law of sustainability: population growth and/or growth in the rate of consumption of resources cannot be sustained — Albert Allen Bartlett

It wasn't to be endured! For half an hour, the Captain shot off salvo after salvo of the very worst sort of profanity. He started with the sun and ran down the list of planets, satellites, asteroids, comets, to the very meteors themselves. He was starting on the nearer fixed stars, when he collapsed from sheer nervous exhaustion. He was so excited that he never thought to ask us what we were doing in the storeroom in the first place, and for that Whitefield and I were duly grateful.
But Captain Bartlett is no fool. Having purged his system of its nervous tension, he saw clearly that that which cannot be cured must be endured. — Isaac Asimov

The banishment for life of Pete Rose from baseball is a sad end if a sorry episode. One of the game's greatest players has engaged in a variety of acts which have stained the game, and he must now live with the consequences of those acts. There is absolutely no deal for reinstatement. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do. — Bruce Bartlett

Many of my sharpest critics have decided to take a position of ignoring me - because they feel that by attacking me, they would draw attention to my book and give me more publicity and help me sell more books. So I think that they decided that the best thing for them to do is to say nothing. Also, I think that some of my critics simply can't refute my argument - and so it's easier for them to ignore it as well, so that they're not forced to confront the logical contradiction in their own position. — Bruce Bartlett

I think [Guettel is] probably one of our most special writers now, pushing things in ways that are unique. — Bartlett Sher

When a day goes by and I haven't written anything, I better have been doing something worth writing about. — P.S. Bartlett

A book is much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

When it comes down to it, Hillary Clinton will very much excite the Republican faithful to get out and work hard. I don't know if a similar case can be made if Obama is the candidate. — Dan Bartlett

Replace a goal of obedience with one of connection and trust instead. Children are drawn to follow those to whom they are emotionally connected. By parenting not for obedience but for relationship, kids are naturally inclined to follow your lead. — Kelly Bartlett

Infatuation is the language of a beautiful eye upon a sensitive heart. — Joseph R. Bartlett

Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Romance is about putting things aright after some tragedy has put them asunder. It is about restoration of the right relations among things - and going home is where that restoration occurs because that is where it matters most. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

There ought to be something about computers and artificial intelligence [in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations]. Surely somebody somewhere said something memorable. — Justin Kaplan

All I ever wanted to be president of was the American League. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Look at him, lying there. Why should he need me to give him strength
to watch over him, and always be worrying how he's feeling? Surely he'll find it himself. Isn't that what we believe, that we do always somehow find the strength? That the path will lead out of the forest; that the riddle will be solved; that the child never dies. — Neil Bartlett

The dark net is a world of power and freedom: of expression, of creativity, of information, of ideas. Power and freedom endow our creative and our destructive faculties. The dark net magnifies both, making it easier to explore every desire, to act on every dark impulse, to indulge every neurosis. — Jamie Bartlett

Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today. As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, it's just nonsense. It's just made up. — Bruce Bartlett

When we were working on 'Looking' in San Francisco, I bought a new bike from Mission Bicycle Company, which I'm completely in love with. — Murray Bartlett

Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America's most privileged version of the level field. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

I believe any decline would lock in a Fed increase with some certainty. — Bruce Bartlett

Being offended is a choice. I believe that. You don't have - you don't hear a word and you have to be offended. — John Bartlett

I will work for energy policies that recognize oil won't last forever. — Roscoe Bartlett

[Victoria Clark] is one of those people who has the rarest combination of gifts. I can put her in any classical play tomorrow because she such an extraordinary actress. — Bartlett Sher

I always wanted to live outside of Australia ... because I think it's good to see the world and get out of where you've been living, particularly if you're from somewhere like Australia, which is so isolated from the rest of the world. I chose New York because there was such a great choice of acting classes and it's such an intense place. — Murray Bartlett

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

To go from Yale to the National League is simply to go from one form of management to another. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

My writing is a lens into the possibilities of the American experience. — Charles Bartlett Johnson

So I predicted the need to work my glutes. — Ashley Bartlett

The professionals must set a good example. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

It's probably this way with a lot of professionals: At first the BlackBerry is a savior, because it makes you mobile, but then it becomes a curse, because you're at a restaurant and looking down at it under the table. — Dan Bartlett

Of all the vices incident to man, lying is the most mean, most contemptible; it evinces a very weak, depraved heart, which shrinks at the exposure of motives and of actions. — Josiah Bartlett

This is not the first time in my life where you know going into a job that you're going to hear in stereo what was wrong with what you did. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

After all, much of the fondness avid readers, and certainly collectors, have for their books is related to the books' physical bodies. As much as they are vessels for stories (and poetry, reference information, etc.), books are historical artifacts and repositories for memories-we like to recall who gave books to us, where we were when we read them, how old we were, and so on. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

Black life is ambiguous, and a kaleidoscope of meanings, rich, multi-sided ... we have frozen our vision in figures that caricature, at best the complexity of our lives and leave the real artistic chore of interpretation unfinished. — Charles Bartlett Johnson

More butter please. — Thomas Bartlett

There was a natural resource in the affective devotion to the saints and to Jesus, and a similar intensity of devotion inevitably became directed to the ordinary human.7 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the paragon of courtly love at the courts of Angers and Poitiers, was a grandchild of Guillaume, duke of Aquitaine, the first known troubadour. In many of Guillaume's love songs 'the vocabulary and emotional fervor hitherto ordinarily used to express man's love for God are transferred to the liturgical worship of woman, and vice versa.'8 The layering of Christian feeling and the new romantic spirit is also witnessed in the roman courtois, the epic stories filled with legendary material and hinged on figures of woman, mystery and quest. — Anthony Bartlett

He was interested in the sudden friendship between two women so apparently dissimilar as Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish. They were always in each other's company, with Lucy a slighted third. Miss Lavish he believed he understood, but Miss Bartlett might reveal unknown depths of strangeness, though not, perhaps, of meaning. — E. M. Forster

Oh, nice one, honey. Yes. Clever. That's becoming quite a familiar quotation in its own right, isn't it? Maybe I should just add it to the next edition. 'Mother was right.' Author: Mrs. Bartlett, world-renowned nag. Year: 1859. Attribution: A short play entitled Every Goddamn Weekend! — John Bartlett

You meet new people. We just spent two hours with people we didn't know before, just talking about the Badgers. — Steve Bartlett

Jesus loves me! This I know
As He loved so long ago
Taking children on His knee
Saying, Let them come to Me. — Anna Bartlett Warner

For me, baseball is the most nourishing game outside of literature. They both are re-tellings of human experience. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

It had a crisp paper jacket, unlike the paper-covered library books I was used to, and the way the pages parted, I could tell I was the first to open it ... I valued that half-dream state of being lost in a book so much that I limited the number of pages I let myself read each day in order to put off the inevitable end, my banishment from that world. I still do this. — Allison Hoover Bartlett

It is not enough to offer a smorgasbord of courses. We must insure that students are not just eating at one end of the table. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

It's obvious that a lot of Tea Party members tend to be elderly. You've seen that famous sign, 'Tell the government to keep its hands off my Medicare.' And I think as long as the government does keep its hands off their Medicare, they're fine with talking about low taxes. But once they start to realize that the Republicans really do want to not just cut Medicare, but essentially abolish it, you know, I just think those people are not going to be part of the Tea Party. They're going to be over with Occupy Wall Street. — Bruce Bartlett

This filing spike is a result of bad information being pushed on people, and then they file for bankruptcy out of fear. — Steve Bartlett

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Those of us who believe in princesses are often laughed at. But I believe the world needs princesses and dukes and queens and kings. We need people who glitter and shine and make a room silent with their entrance. We need them the same way we need ice cream and soccer and music and stories. Oh, how we need stories. — Beverly Bartlett

Jesus loves me, this I know ... — Anna Bartlett Warner

Reservation should be under 'Bartlett.' Right, that's two T's. Yes. 'Bart-let-et.' — John Bartlett

I will fight for budget honesty and eliminating the deficit to reduce the transfer of debt to younger generations. — Roscoe Bartlett

It is a law of nature that a dream carried for too long inside you must, eventually, begin to rot. — Neil Bartlett

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government. — Bruce Bartlett

The university is our culture's assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't. — Josiah Bartlett

There's bound to be a recovery in [capital spending] sometime soon. We have had basically no capital investment for about year. At some point, machinery wears out, and you've got to replace it. — Bruce Bartlett

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. — Albert A. Bartlett

Writing is my refuge. It's where I go. It's where I find that integrity I have. — Charles Bartlett Johnson

Americans like to believe we can overcome all obstacles and always triumph in the end, but that's not real life and a steady diet of stories like that will give you a pretty unhealthy view of reality. — Bartlett Sher

Americans have been remarkably devoted to the capacity for belief, to idealism. That's why we get into trouble all the time. We're always viewed as naive. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

Our personal natal horoscope provides us with a powerful tool for understanding our own energy signature and how it [one person, or, a group] is affected by other energy forms including matter. — Robert Allen Bartlett

bread were being baked, or gold or silver purified in a furnace." Afterwards the Christians of Smyrna wish to collect his remains, desiring "to have a share in his holy flesh." Before they are allowed to do so, they have to overcome the objections of pagans and — Robert Bartlett

To resist him that is set in authority is evil — John Bartlett

I'm a real nature lover, so whenever possible, I like to get to the beach or get to a forest or get somewhere there's fresh air. Apart from that, I'm a film addict and a DVD freak. — Murray Bartlett

Daffy-down-dilly came up in the cold, Through the brown mould Although the March breeze blew keen on her face, Although the white snow lay in many a place. — Anna Bartlett Warner

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her. Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called 'Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!' The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett, who stood brown against the view. — E. M. Forster

Al Gore may think Medicare is at a crossroads, but his plan puts it on a highway to bankruptcy. — Dan Bartlett