Libitum Quotes & Sayings

From a policymaker's point of view, [the back door] must look like a perfect solution. "We'll hold onto a separate copy of the keys, and we'll try to keep them really, really safe so that only in an emergency and if it's authorized by a court will we bring out those keys and use them." And, from a policy point of view, when you describe it that way, who could be against that? — Matt Blaze

General" stands here for the individual who goes into action, whether freely or forcedly. Since anarchy offers him an especially favorable charge, this type is permanent today. Thus, "general" has a universal rather than a special meaning. It can be replaced ad libitum. It refers not to a profession but to a condition. The latter may also crop up in a coolie, in which case it is particularly effective. — Ernst Junger

You don't die in the United States, you underachieve. — Jerzy Kosinski

To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, 'to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.' For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. — Thomas Jefferson

Anecdotes coagulate into a script where all voices are the voice of The People, ignoring differences in race, class, and gender. Perhaps this is meant to support the liberal fantasy that more and better democracy will melt away painful antagonisms, or render them peripheral. But this neutral treatment feels bleak, despite the cheerful DIY aesthetic. Where everyone is supposedly a citizen, no one is a person. — Anonymous

I mean, I didn't - I should have demanded attention of the boss maybe, or something like that that might have backfired. This I would just take as it came. — James Stockdale

Combinatorial analysis, in the trivial sense of manipulating binomial and multinomial coefficients, and formally expanding powers of infinite series by applications ad libitum and ad nauseamque of the multinomial theorem, represented the best that academic mathematics could do in the Germany of the late 18th century. — Richard Askey

I hoped they saw right through my death mask to my sad and fiery soul, though I doubt they saw me at all. — Ottessa Moshfegh

Original minds are not distinguished by being the first to see a new thing, but instead by seeing the old, familiar thing that is over-looked as something new. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You think that's the solution to everything, don't you, Bane? Drinking and dancing and making love ... but I tell you this, something is coming, and we'd be fools to ignore it."
"When have I ever claimed not to be a fool? — Cassandra Clare

Examples ... which might be multiplied ad libitum, show how difficult it often is for an experimenter to interpret his results without the aid of mathematics. — John William Strutt

By the time it has gotten dressed, it has become he; has become already more or less George - though still not the whole George they demand and are prepared to recognize. Those who call him on the phone at this hour of the morning would be bewildered, maybe even scared, if they could realize what this three-quarters-human thing is what they are talking to. But, of course, they never could - its voice's mimicry of their George is nearly perfect. — Christopher Isherwood

And here it is worth while remembering, since we are discussing Not Writing for Children, that neither the Sleeping Beauty nor Rumpelstiltzkin was really written for children. In fact, none of the fundamental fairy stories was ever written at all. They all arose spontaneously from the folk and were transmitted orally from generation to generation to unlettered listeners of all ages. — P.L. Travers