Famous Wonder Years Quotes & Sayings

No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs. To — Charles Dickens

The most famous of these is the Law of Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all debts would be automatically cancelled "in the Sabbath year" (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be released. — David Graeber

The director mentions the whispers about Clifton's sexual orientation, a supposed gig on a porn site years ago, a rumor about a very famous actor and a tryst in Santa Barbara and Clifton's denial in a Rolling Stone cover story about the very famous actor's new movie which Clifton had a small part in: 'We're so into girls it's ridiculous. — Bret Easton Ellis

A lot of people thought I got famous as a studio artist, then decided to cash in on it. But it actually was just a matter of survival for many years, and I felt it was really important for me to be able to say whatever I wanted with my street art and fine art. — Shepard Fairey

There are a thousand small honest breweries in this country that because they have been too poor and localized to compete with the big boys have been forced to close, or else operate under famous names while they turn out yeast, or hops, or some other important but unnamed ingredient of the main company's beer. Now, with the trains full of soldiers and supplies rather than pale ale, perhaps people far from the great breweries will turn again to their local beer factories and discover, as their fathers did thirty years ago, that a beer carried quietly three miles is better than one shot across three thousand on a fast freight. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

When I was seven years old, I fell in love with a series published by Bobbs-Merrill called 'The Childhood of Famous Americans.' In it, historical figures like Clara Barton, Nancy Hanks, Elias Howe, Patrick Henry, and dozens more came to life for me as children. — Ann Hood

Back inside, I'm shown an antique cabinet in which members of the community, famous for their homegrown produce, dried herbs.
The Oneida Community was an upstate tourist attraction right from the start, second, Valesky says, to Niagara Falls. I'm taking the same guided tour offered a hundred and fifty years ago to prim rubbernecks who came here to peep at sex fiends. I wonder how many of my vacationing forebears went home disappointed? They thought they were taking the train to Gomorrah but instead they got to watch herbs dry. Valesky opens a drawer in the herb cabinet so I can get a whiff. He mentions that back in the day, when one tourist was shown the cabinet she rudely asked her community-member guide, "What's that odor?" To which the guide replied, "Perhaps it's the odor of crushed selfishness." Valesky grins. "How about that for a utopian answer?" To my not particularly utopian nose, crushed selfishness smells a lot like cilantro. — Sarah Vowell

The moment somebody becomes famous, 15 years gets knocked off their life. They're gonna get divorced a few times, they're gonna be addicted to things, they're gonna be in therapy. — Moby

I had a bowl cut for years, and glasses. When Harry Potter became famous, I looked just like him. — Joe Jonas

A famous Japanese Zen master, Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, said that unless you can explain Zen in words that a fisherman will comprehend, you don't know what you're talking about. Some fifty years ago a UCLA professor told me the same thing about applied mathematics. We like to hide from the truth behind foreign-sounding words or mathematical lingo. There's a saying: The truth is always encountered but rarely perceived. If we don't perceive it, we can't help ourselves and we can't much help anyone else. — Jeff Bridges

I am a famous artist. I make millions. But I frequently see debut shows of unknown artists with prices that are double of mine ... what they're really doing is barely getting by and helping me sell 1,000 paintings a year effortlessly, because they make my paintings look like such a bargain. Thank you to all the egotistical art students! — Mark Kostabi

I remember being superyoung, like nine or ten years old, and thinking, 'Man, I wonder what famous people eat for breakfast. They must have some special kind of cereal!' My mind was so warped by the idea of fame. — Bo Burnham

He was disorganized, forgetful, perpetually dissolute, and famous for his tremendous benders. One year he missed fifty straight weekly meetings at the Office of Works. His supervision of the office was so poor that one man was discovered to have been on holiday for three years. When sober, however, he was much liked and widely praised for his charm, good nature, and architectural vision. A bust of him in the National Portrait Gallery in London shows him clean shaven (and indeed clean, a slightly unusual condition for him), with a very full head of hair and a face that seems curiously mournful or perhaps just slightly hungover. Despite — Bill Bryson

Timothy Leary declared that personal computers had become the new LSD and years later revised his famous mantra to proclaim, Turn on, boot up, jack in. — Walter Isaacson

And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it'll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off. — Kevin Hart

I really don't know anything else because my brothers were famous when I was two years old. So I know nothing else, no other life. — Janet Jackson

For years, I'd say yes to almost everything, trying to be nice and generous. Feeling obliged to be of service to the world. Maybe also a fear of being forgotten if I don't. But I paid the ultimate price in doing that, because for all those years, I got almost no work done! Some famous authors have written about this: that if they said yes to every request, then they'd never have time to write another book again. — Derek Sivers

I do know something about the news world. I was sitting on the floors of newsrooms since I was seven years old, and I've been around them my whole life. I understand that someone looks at a story with famous people in it, and you want to put it out. — George Clooney

(Alfred's sister, Olive Deering, was famous in those years for her sentiments during her filming of the endless DeMille epic The Ten Commandments: "Who do I have to fuck to get off this picture?") — Lee Grant

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him
his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition
no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him
neither name nor money to bequeath
a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil. — William Makepeace Thackeray

My mother was a famous photographer for actresses, including Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and so many. I remember I went to school close to my mother's studio, and for years, I went to the studio after school and just watched how she captured these beauties. — Dario Argento

In a famous Middletown study of Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, mothers were asked to rank the qualities they most desire in their children. At the top of the list were conformity and strict obedience. More than fifty years later, when the Middletown survey was replicated, mothers placed autonomy and independence first. The healthiest parenting probably promotes a balance of these qualities in children. — Richard Louv

The truth is, anybody that becomes famous is an ass for a year and a half. You've got to give them a year and a half, two years. They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is. — Bill Murray

Forrest Mims is the author of the famous book 'Getting Started in Electronics,' published by RadioShack for many years. I bought the book in the 1980s and had a blast making the projects in it. When I was editor-in-chief of 'MAKE,' I asked Forrest to write a column for the magazine, called 'The Backyard Scientist.' — Mark Frauenfelder

The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people. — Marianne Williamson

She went on to Seishin University, the famous women's private college, and studied abroad in France for two years. A couple of years after she got back I had a chance to see her, and when I did, I was floored. I'm not sure how to put it, but she seemed faded. Like something that's been exposed to strong sunlight for a long time and the color fades. She looked much the same as before. Still beautiful, still with a nice figure ... but she seemed paler, fainter than before. It made me feel like I should grab the TV remote to ramp up the color intensity. It was a weird experience. It was hard to imagine that someone could, in the space of just a few years, visibly diminish like that. — Haruki Murakami

Today, women in general are more likely to do housework than men - cooking and cleaning. But why is that? Is it because women are born with a cooking gene or because over years they have been socialized to see cooking as their role? I was going to say that perhaps women are born with a cooking gene until I remembered that the majority of famous cooks in the world - who are given the fancy title of "chef" - are men. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Do you know who Samuel Langhorne Clemens is, Antonio?" Bessie asked.
"No, chood I?" he said.
"He is best known as Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," she said.
"I have herd of the story, but I hav not red the booc," he said.
"Well, you should read it," she said. "It is excellent reading. An American classic. Mark Twain worked in Schoharie for a while," she said.
"Is that so?" he said.
"Yes, he worked as a brakeman on the Schoharie railroad station on Depot Street the winter of 1879, three years after he wrote his famous book," Bessie said.
"Why would he do that, a famos author?" Antonio asked.
"A self-published author, I should add. — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

Most people tend to excuse themselves with the opportunities they have in life, with how many years of school they have, with the people around them. And in doing so, they fail in realizing many other things, such as the fact that not many are lucky enough to give birth to a world bestseller on spirituality, wealth and success in life. Yes, your child may be a little reincarnation of an awesome buddhist monk, of an alchemist or a famous knight templar. Why most people can't see these things, and keep looking at the past for answers, is something that still puzzles me. — Robin Sacredfire

For some years now I have been considering the idea of making a watch that our agents could sell at a more modest price than our Rolex watches, and yet one that could attain the standards of dependability for which Rolex is famous, I decided to form a separate company, with the object of making and marketing this new watch. It is called the Tudor Watch Company. — Hans Wilsdorf

I count no more my wasted tears;
They left no echo of their fall;
I mourn no more my lonesome years;
This blessed hour atones for all.
I fear not all that Time or Fate
May bring to burden heart or brow,-
Strong in the love that came so late,
Our souls shall keep it always now! — Elizabeth Chase Allen

Then he took me to look at the Maastricht animal, still today one of the world's most famous fossils. (Though the Netherlands has repeatedly asked for it back, the French have held on to it for more than two hundred years.) — Elizabeth Kolbert

There's people that say "It's not fair You have all that stuff." I wasn't born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you're new at this- and by "new at it." I mean 15 years in, or even 20- you're just starting to grow traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that's in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute. — Louis C.K.

I came to the United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I'd become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia. So I wanted to play bad guys. — Alan Dale

So far as we know, the gray-mustached working class approved these executions. So far as we know, from the blazing Komsomols right up to the Party leaders and the legendary army commanders, the entire vanguard waxed unanimous in approving these executions. Famous revolutionaries, theoreticians, and prophets, seven years before their own inglorious destruction, welcomed the roar of the crowd, not guessing then that their own time stood on the threshold, that soon their own names would be dragged down in that roar of "Scum!" "Filth! — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Travel in a rocket at 99 percent the speed of light and you'll enjoy the consequential sevenfold time dilation: from your perspective nothing has changed; you have aged a decade in ten years' worth of travel. But upon returning to Earth you'd find that seventy years have passed and none of your old friends are still alive to greet you. (For the famous formula that lets you calculate the slowdown of time at any speed you care to consider, see the Lorentz transformation in Appendix 1.) Then the truth rather than the theory — Robert Lanza

I have been exploring [Mexico City's] La Merced, [a public market famous for prostitution,] on and off for the last 23 years. The prostitutes and their world have been the main subjects of my photographs. — Maya Goded