Hoi Quotes & Sayings

The boarding school memoir or novel is an enduring literary subgenre, from 1950s classics such as The Catcher in the Rye to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Doust's recognisably Australian contribution to the genre draws on his own experiences in a West Australian boarding school in this clever, polished, detail-rich debut novel. From the opening pages, the reader is wholly transported into the head of Jack Muir, a sensitive, sharp-eyed boy from small-town WA who is constantly measured (unfavourably) against his goldenboy brother. The distinctive, masterfully inhabited adolescent narrator recalls the narrator in darkly funny coming-of-age memoir Hoi Polloi (Craig Sherborne) - as does the juxtaposition of stark naivety and carefully mined knowingness.' - Bookseller+Publisher — Jon Doust

Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can't take this. No one can. — Steven Pressfield

Nonetheless, as Katharine knew, they were having a splendid time, especially because of their work, but also in good measure because of the "Kitty Hawkers," whose consistent friendliness and desire to be of help, whose stories and ways of looking at life and expressing their opinions, made an enormous difference. The brothers were now hearing, as they had not before, words like "disremember" for "forget" and such expressions as "I'll not be seeing you tomorrow," or smooth water described being "slick calm." "Hoi toide" was "high tide. — David McCullough

If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, 'tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgment is a mere lottery. — John Dryden

Around 1900, according to music writer Alex Ross, classical audiences were no longer allowed to shout, eat, and chat during a performance.2 One was expected to sit immobile and listen with rapt attention. Ross hints that this was a way of keeping the hoi polloi out of the new symphony halls and opera houses. — David Byrne

Some people were born just so they could be buried. — Donald Ray Pollock

It is a much wiser policy to plant acre after acre of orchids and lead one's life in solitude encompassed by their sheltering stems, than to surround oneself with the hoi polloi and so court the same pointless misanthropic disgust as befell Timon of Athens. Society is forever holding forth about fairness and justice. If it really believes these to be of such importance, it might do well to kill off a few dozen petty criminals per day, and use their carcasses to fertilize and give life to countless fields of flowers. — Soseki Natsume

And let's debunk one bit of writer myth while we're here: Doing a seventeenth revision on a project does not make a writer an artist or move him above the writer hoi polloi any more than dressing entirely in black or wearing tweed jackets with leather elbow patches or big, black drover coats. These are all affectations, and smack of dilettantism. Real writers, and real artists, finish books and move on to the next project. — Holly Lisle

To be looked upon as a fool by an idiot is a true connoisseur's delight. — Georges Courteline

Ha ha ha ha!
Tee-hee-hee!
Mwa-ha mwa-ha!
Kee kee kee!
Ho ho ho ho!
Haw-hee-haw!
Heh heh heh heh!
Gah guffaw!
Hoo hoo hoo hoo!
Hoi hoi-eee!
Ba ha ha ha!
Tsee tsee tsee!
Giggle, titter,
snicker, crow,
laughter makes
my 'happy' grow! — Richelle E. Goodrich

Hoi, hoi u embleer hrair! M'saion ule' hraka vair! — Richard Adams

I come from the sort of family in which, at the age of ten, I was told I must always say hoi polloi, never "the hoi polloi," because hoi meant "the," and two "the's" were redundant
indeed something only hoi polloi would say. — Anne Fadiman

My mistake was in underestimating the emotional force of a song you have already hear a thousand times. — Augusten Burroughs

Blood pounded in Ruth's ears. She had never felt weaker or more confused. This was the moment she'd been living for, but the only thought she could muster was that her mother had not been Phyllis, as she'd been told, but Phoebe. The — Anita Diamant

I suspect it's because Truman Democrats have been replaced by Gruber Democrats - self-styled elitists who feed lavishly at the public trough and think government should serve them, not the hoi polloi they disdain and deceive. — Jack Kelly

Fact is, famous people say fame stinks because they love it so - like a secret restaurant or holiday island they don't want the hoi polloi to get their grubby paws on. — Julie Burchill

I understood it now, understood a lot of things I had never understood before. And mostly I understood what a woman could mean to a man. Before, she had been a pair of eyes, and a shape, something to get excited about. Now she seemed something to lean on, and draw something from, that nothing else could give me. I thought of books I had read, about worship of the Earth, and how she was always called Mother, and none of it made much sense, but those big round breasts did, when I put my head on them, and they began to tremble, and I began to tremble. — James M. Cain

The old footage of my dad, I always knew we were cut from the same cloth, because my dad was such a renegade and always marched to the beat of his own drum. To see where we were both dancing and being silly together, it's too beautiful for words. I was really happy to have that. — Juliette Lewis

Anapana means breath and sati means mindfulness. Tang Hoi translated it as "Guarding the Mind." The Anapanasati Sutra, that is, is the sutra on using one's breath to maintain mindfulness. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The departure of our boys to foreign parts with the ever-present possibility that they might never return, taught the real value of photography to every father and mother. To many a mother the photograph of her boy in his country's uniform was the one never-failing consolation. — Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr.

What we are headed for is a sort of social structure in which the highbrows are the elite, the middlebrows are the bourgeoisie and the lowbrows are hoi polloi. — Russell Lynes