The Divine Art

One of Shakespeare’s titles The Comedy of Errors my mother loved quoting from as a narrative for life in our home. Shakespeare’s play, loosely based on an earlier title Menaechmi by the Roman playwright Plautus, was first performed on December 28th 1594. Playwright and poet-Shakespeare, we all know and some of us love, provided us with this text that after 407 years managed to deliver continuously meaningful messages. The messages this play communicated when recycled through my mother’s interpretive style seemed more malleable than formal critical analysis might suggest, but its ideology nonetheless rang through the hallowed halls of hearth and home for us. The art of writing by far is “the divine art.”

Life is much richer with Shakespeare to quote from. Quotation gems offer a wealth of wisdom coupled with wit and perhaps a dose of cynicism. We grow to understand life is best served with a sense of humor and that the ridicule of the cynic reminds us what morose could be. Most of the following quotes are literary in nature:

• "His ignorance is encyclopedic" - Abba Eban (1915-)
• "I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better. " - A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)
• "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. " - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
• "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." - Saint Augustine (354-430)
• "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
• "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
• "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
• "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."- Galileo Galilei
• "The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work." - Emile Zola (1840-1902)
• "This book fills a much-needed gap." - Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
• "The full use of your powers along lines of excellence." - Definition of "happiness" by John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
• "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
  The copyright of the article The Divine Art in Fourth Estate is owned by Donna L. Quesinberry. Permission to republish The Divine Art in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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