Curmudgeonly Sort Quotes & Sayings

I was born Moishe Ketzelbourd but the Indians call me Maurice Cougar. — Ben Katchor

Confederate surgeons usually performed "circular" amputations. They made a 360-degree cut through the skin, then scrunched it up like a shirt cuff. After sawing through the muscle and bone, they inched the skin back down to wrap the stump. This method led to less scarring and infection. Union surgeons preferred "flap" amputations: doctors left two flaps of flesh hanging beside the wound to fold over after they'd sawed through. This method was quicker and provided a more comfortable stump for prosthetics. Altogether, surgeons lopped off 60,000 fingers, toes, hands, feet, and limbs during the war. — Sam Kean

More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock. That means absent fathers. — Don Lemon

What was the apostrophe doing there? Did the doctor own the Meescham? And what was it with exclamation marks? Did people not know what they were for? Surprise, anger, joy - that's what exclamation marks were for. They had nothing to do with who resided where. — Kate DiCamillo

Less a point on a map and more a region of the soul, but it is a path I can follow. — Jessica Khoury

Lazy Lob and crazy Cob
are weaving webs to wind me.
I am far more sweet than other meat,
but still they cannot find me!
Here am I, naughty little fly;
you are fat and lazy.
You cannot trap me, though you try,
in your cobwebs crazy. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Some people keep God in a Sunday morning box and say, 'Hey, I did my religious duty.' That's fine, but the scripture says to pray without ceasing. And I think that means all through the day you're talking to God. Even if it's in your thoughts. — Joel Osteen

Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Rooke had no idea whether the natives had a word for treachery. His conversations with Tagaran had never traveled in that direction.
Even in English, treachery was a word with a broader reach than it was entitled to. What it boiled down to was that the men in this hut had been taught to fight by certain rules. Not fighting in accordance with those rules was treachery. (in reference to the aboriginals as they fought the English- English method vs. American or connection to - American vs. terrorist). — Kate Greenway

Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend. — Edward O. Wilson

The dreams we dream today will be the light to the generation to come. — Euginia Herlihy

Each experience through which we pass operates ultimately for our good. This is a correct attitude to adopt and we must be able to see it in that light. — Henry S. Haskins