All men love peace in their armchairs after dinner; but they disbelieve the other nations's professions, rightly measuring its sincerity by their own. - Oscar Firkins: Memoirs and Letters.
Oscar W. Firkins
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More Oscar W. Firkins
All men love peace in their armchairs after dinner; but they disbelieve the other nations's professi... OSCAR W. FIRKINS Humor is not a postscript or an incidental afterthought; it is a serious and weighty part of the wor... OSCAR W. FIRKINS The touch of reality is salvation for the man who smothers amid forms and shadows. A blind man would... OSCAR W. FIRKINS Humor is not a postscript or an incidental afterthought; it is a serious and weighty part of the wor... OSCAR W. FIRKINS All men love peace in their armchairs after dinner; but they disbelieve the other nations's profess... OSCAR W. FIRKINS Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm schizophrenic, and so am I. OSCAR LEVANT What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left. OSCAR LEVANT There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. OSCAR LEVANT Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry,... OSCAR WILDE It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. OSCAR WILDE The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. OSCAR WILDE We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. OSCAR WILDE I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. OSCAR WILDE Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us. OSCAR WILDE The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation. OSCAR WILDE A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her. OSCAR WILDE True friends stab you in the front. OSCAR WILDE Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities. OSCAR WILDE It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. OSCAR WILDE Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. OSCAR WILDE It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly. OSCAR WILDE The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. OSCAR WILDE Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. OSCAR WILDE Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. OSCAR WILDE A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it. OSCAR LEVANT I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give... OSCAR WILDE In its primary aspect, a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Veneti... OSCAR WILDE Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. OSCAR WILDE Writing bores me so. OSCAR WILDE There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies. OSCAR WILDE Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. OSCAR WILDE Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to ... OSCAR WILDE 'The Lady's World' should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women's... OSCAR WILDE There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose. OSCAR WILDE In married life three is company and two none. OSCAR WILDE I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of sim... OSCAR WILDE Charity creates a multitude of sins. OSCAR WILDE What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying. OSCAR WILDE If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world. OSCAR WILDE Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. OSCAR WILDE The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is ... OSCAR WILDE No man is rich enough to buy back his past. OSCAR WILDE There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. OSCAR WILDE Everything popular is wrong. OSCAR WILDE To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. OSCAR WILDE Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is ... OSCAR WILDE I lived in Montreal from the time I was 12 until I was 16. OSCAR TAVERAS Play for Canada? Why not? I have a Canadian passport. OSCAR TAVERAS I work very hard at my game. OSCAR TAVERAS My father was an outfielder in the Milwaukee system before he hurt his elbow. OSCAR TAVERAS I feel comfortable any position I play. It doesn't matter. OSCAR TAVERAS I try to work on my defense every game, every practice. OSCAR TAVERAS I will try to give my 100% in the field and do my job. OSCAR TAVERAS The Olympics were great, because you had to make the team, and then go to the games. Now, I don'... OSCAR ROBERTSON I think that teaching coaches are the norm now. OSCAR ROBERTSON But I like to think an athlete is an athlete. OSCAR ROBERTSON We're all Americans trying to compete. Magic was competing for his team and Larry for his team. OSCAR ROBERTSON I think that basketball players should get the job done no matter how it looks on the screen. OSCAR ROBERTSON I don't blame David Stern because a player gets on the court and he doesn't put out competit... OSCAR ROBERTSON But if people are buying the products, naturally they're gonna use them. OSCAR ROBERTSON You see what happens in college and high school games today - a three-point shot or a dunk. I think ... OSCAR ROBERTSON You look at today, it's a different situation. You have a game that has been transformed into a ... OSCAR ROBERTSON This is where young players today want to land. They want to be NBA players because of the money. OSCAR ROBERTSON I don't think that players learn how to play any other aspect of the game in high school or coll... OSCAR ROBERTSON But I think the image that's thrown out on television is a bad image. Because you see players wh... OSCAR ROBERTSON Basketball is basketball. OSCAR ROBERTSON You've got to learn the footwork, the positioning, how to box out, how to pass, how to shoot you... OSCAR ROBERTSON Now, I guess, people want stars. People are trying to invent stars. OSCAR ROBERTSON I was taught to play that way when I was in high school and even before I got to high school. OSCAR ROBERTSON You don't cut anywhere, don't pick down anywhere, don't double screen, no weak side pick... OSCAR ROBERTSON When you play against different people from all walks of life you can't do the same thing agains... OSCAR ROBERTSON I think that everyone should be able to dribble. Everyone should be able to pass. Otherwise, why are... OSCAR ROBERTSON When you go into a game on offense, you make a couple moves and see what the defender is going to do... OSCAR ROBERTSON It's a sad commentary when I have to say that sometimes in our country we are real sensitive to ... OSCAR ROBERTSON You need a teaching coach who understands the game of basketball, not just some guy coming on the co... OSCAR ROBERTSON It's like all guys want to do is make a dunk, grab their shirt and yell out and scream - they co... OSCAR ROBERTSON I'd like to think that the nature of the two teams - Boston being a championship team over the y... OSCAR ROBERTSON I wasn't happy with my performance at the World Championships in Daegu. I had an unbelievable ra... OSCAR PISTORIUS I am also hugely excited to then be competing to defend my three Paralympic titles at the Paralympic... OSCAR PISTORIUS Rio in four years; I've got more inspiration in the last two, three weeks. I'm sure I'm ... OSCAR PISTORIUS I want to wake up every day and feel that I'm training harder than my competitors, that I'm ... OSCAR PISTORIUS I don't want to be competing in a sport where I feel that I'm here not on my talent and my h... OSCAR PISTORIUS I have run two Olympic 'A' standard times over the past 12 months and with the time I ran at... OSCAR PISTORIUS These have always been my legs. I train harder than other guys, eat better, sleep better and wake up... OSCAR PISTORIUS Everyone has setbacks. I'm no different. I happen to have no legs. That's pretty much the fa... OSCAR PISTORIUS The more I accomplish, the more pressure I put on myself. OSCAR PISTORIUS I can have my goals, and I can have my dreams. My goal is to make the finals and improve my position... OSCAR PISTORIUS I don't see myself as disabled. There's nothing I can't do that able-bodied athletes can... OSCAR PISTORIUS I still find it strange, I suppose, when I say to someone, 'Can you just pass me my leg?' Bu... OSCAR PISTORIUS When you're competing, you don't have the choice of what the weather will be like. It really... OSCAR PISTORIUS Putting on my legs is like putting on my shoes. I understand that's how some people might think ... OSCAR PISTORIUS Out of the tens of thousands of prosthetic legs they've made, there's never been any 400-met... OSCAR PISTORIUS I have a strong sense that I have to educate people about disability. OSCAR PISTORIUS My parents didn't give me any scope to feel sorry for myself. They were just like 'go play w... OSCAR PISTORIUS To have been selected to represent Team South Africa at the London 2012 Olympic Games in the individ... OSCAR PISTORIUS I'd like to show people that if you put the hard work in and you believe in yourself, then you c... OSCAR PISTORIUS I have no one style. OSCAR PETERSON I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as l... OSCAR PETERSON I am the worlds laziest writer. OSCAR PETERSON We're not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour. OSCAR PETERSON If you have something to say of any worth then people will listen to you. OSCAR PETERSON I don't do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn't care less. I... OSCAR PETERSON I play as I feel. OSCAR PETERSON Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jaz... OSCAR PETERSON It's the group sound that's important, even when you're playing a solo. OSCAR PETERSON You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at a... OSCAR PETERSON Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine ... OSCAR PETERSON I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musi... OSCAR PETERSON The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you ... OSCAR PETERSON I remember, growing up, if something big - God forbid - happened, the first jokes you heard on the s... OSCAR NUNEZ Ricky Gervais is a genius. OSCAR NUNEZ Quality attracts quality. People want to be on a good show. OSCAR NUNEZ Yeah, I just don't break. I don't. And there's only one person I know who's a better... OSCAR NUNEZ Stand-up, I find it really difficult. It's not really my thing. OSCAR NUNEZ I've always just been attracted to comedy. OSCAR NUNEZ I am Cuban, my parents are Cuban, and I was not adopted. OSCAR NUNEZ I've always loved improv. It's my thing. OSCAR NUNEZ I'm pretty much a straight guy on 'The Office.' We can't all be crazies. You need so... OSCAR NUNEZ I still use quill and parchment. I do e-mails, and I write, but I don't go around surfing too mu... OSCAR NUNEZ I like game shows. OSCAR NUNEZ I watched TV religiously when I was a kid, but nowadays - with the Internet - there's so many pe... OSCAR NUNEZ I like freedom. I wake up in the morning and say, 'I don't know, should I have a popsicle or... OSCAR NUNEZ Life in California is beautiful. OSCAR NUNEZ When students leave college, they are like children who know nothing about the problems of life, and... OSCAR NIEMEYER I enter my studio at 9 a.m. I have lunch here, I return right away to my work and I go out to dinner... OSCAR NIEMEYER Sometimes I lose a whole morning waiting on journalists and other people who look for me. But I alwa... OSCAR NIEMEYER I think of myself as no more than 60. What I could do at 60, I can still do now. OSCAR NIEMEYER I am a Brazilian before I am an architect. I cannot separate the two. OSCAR NIEMEYER I like talking to priests, to Catholics. Everyone has their beliefs. OSCAR NIEMEYER I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say. OSCAR NIEMEYER It was the drawing that led me to architecture, the search for light and astonishing forms. OSCAR NIEMEYER Form follows beauty. OSCAR NIEMEYER There is no reason to design buildings that are more basic and rectilinear, because with concrete yo... OSCAR NIEMEYER Architecture is my work, and I've spent my whole life at a drawing board, but life is more impor... OSCAR NIEMEYER My work is not about 'form follows function,' but 'form follows beauty' or, even bet... OSCAR NIEMEYER The artistic capability of reinforced concrete is so fantastic - that is the way to go. OSCAR NIEMEYER I search for surprise in my architecture. A work of art should cause the emotion of newness. OSCAR NIEMEYER For me beauty is valued more than anything - the beauty that is manifest in a curved line or in an a... OSCAR NIEMEYER Surprise is key in all art. OSCAR NIEMEYER Architecture is invention. OSCAR NIEMEYER Architecture will always express the technical and social progress of the country in which it is car... OSCAR NIEMEYER It is not with architecture that one can disseminate any political ideology. OSCAR NIEMEYER Curves are the essence of my work because they are the essence of Brazil, pure and simple. OSCAR NIEMEYER I think a lot of Bernstein - but not as much as he does. OSCAR LEVANT Once Dwight Eisenhower makes up his mind, he's full of indecision. OSCAR LEVANT I don't drink. I don't like it. It makes me feel good. OSCAR LEVANT I have no trouble with y enemies. But my god damn friends... they are the ones that keep me walking ... OSCAR LEVANT I'm a study of a man in chaos in search of frenzy. OSCAR LEVANT I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin. OSCAR LEVANT I've given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself. OSCAR LEVANT Schizophrenia beats dining alone. OSCAR LEVANT Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember. OSCAR LEVANT Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision. OSCAR LEVANT I get attached to things: I wear the same jeans for a year. OSCAR ISAAC I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino act... OSCAR ISAAC I come from a place where everything about me, even my body language, is saying: I mean you no harm.... OSCAR ISAAC When I'm creating a character, I don't see it so much as playing someone else as just playin... OSCAR ISAAC The first movie I can remember seeing in the theater was 'Return of the Jedi.' I can remembe... OSCAR ISAAC For me, with a character, you start with the shoes. OSCAR ISAAC I like the idea of the comedy of resilience. OSCAR ISAAC Humans are mutants, everything's a mutant - things that evolve. OSCAR ISAAC A lot of very successful businessmen share some of these sociopathic traits - a lack of empathy, see... OSCAR ISAAC I always joked with my parents. I told them, 'If I don't make it as an actor, my fallback is... OSCAR ISAAC That first play I did in New York, Rogelio Martinez's 'When It's Cocktail Time in Cuba,&... OSCAR ISAAC The better I am at observing moments in life, the better I'll be at showing them in my acting. OSCAR ISAAC The self-made man that some people believe is a myth? It could be, because you do it on the backs of... OSCAR ISAAC I always like teaser trailers because they don't give too much away, you know? They give just a ... OSCAR ISAAC Cats are impossible to work with. They're just very difficult because you can't really train... OSCAR ISAAC Our morality is based on so many factors: of where we were born, who we were born to, what values we... OSCAR ISAAC I think that when you decide to dedicate yourself to creative endeavors and surround yourself with p... OSCAR ISAAC You can't try to be authentic. You either are or you aren't. OSCAR ISAAC I've done movies I'm very proud of, but there's always a sense of: 'Come see this sh... OSCAR ISAAC Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye th... OSCAR ISAAC I've never been much of a guitarist. I mean, I've played forever, but I was always more of a... OSCAR ISAAC I like being like a chameleon who transforms himself with each role. OSCAR ISAAC I think that's why often people in creative fields can feel so alone is because there's a co... OSCAR ISAAC 'Mojave' is a very wild, throwback film with these two dudes going after each other. OSCAR ISAAC All the sounds of the earth are like music. OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN If you don't have a dream, how are you going to make a dream come true? OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN Things said by political parties are different from the decisions of the government which are taken ... OSCAR FERNANDES Politicisation of terrorism for narrow gains is not good for society in general and the country in p... OSCAR FERNANDES Terrorism should be seen in the light of the country's security and not from the narrow perspect... OSCAR FERNANDES Of course, I have given my engineers some headaches over the years, but they go with me. I have alwa... OSCAR NIEMEYER I once said cynically of a politician, Hell double-cross that bridge when he comes to it. OSCAR LEVANT The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thin... OSCAR WILDE We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows th... OSCAR WILDE The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him. OSCAR WILDE Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by... OSCAR WILDE Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments. OSCAR WILDE Yet each man kills the thing he loves from all let this be heard some does it with a bitter look som... OSCAR WILDE When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her. OSCAR WILDE There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows... OSCAR WILDE One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually u... OSCAR WILDE The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. OSCAR WILDE This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again. OSCAR WILDE From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point... OSCAR WILDE His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except ... OSCAR WILDE An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work o... OSCAR WILDE Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succ... OSCAR WILDE I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics. OSCAR WILDE