“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde, in Lady Windemere’s Fan
“my husband… recently took up the gentle art of bee-keeping. After a disastrous start… he triumphed with a ninth-place finish in the fiercely fought honey competition at the Royal Winter Fair. He and his fellow drones… beat out literally tens of entries from all over the province…”
Margaret Wente in Globe & Mail December 24, 2004
“The first five florists I called from the phone book knew nothing about carpet or tile. And suddenly I’m the idiot!”
Emailed by a friend without attribution April 12, 2024
“a noodle shop between two skyscrapers.”
The self-deprecating self-assessment of incoming Japanese Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi, quoted in Ottawa Citizen July 25, 1998 [and he duly died after less than two undistinguished years in office... but it’s not obvious that his predecessor or successor were skyscrapers either].
“With your usual rapid grasp of the inessentials, you regard the mushrooms as the most important element of Mr. Hillerman’s plan.”
A character in Jack Hitt, ed., The Perfect Murder
“As the ostrich observed, Where is everybody?”
Anthony Boucher, The Case of the Seven Sneezes (1942), quoted in “Top Ten Detective Fiction Wise Cracks” compiled by “Gramps", in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 2 #6 Issue 15 (April-May 1999)
“Most of us can keep a secret. It’s the people we tell it to who can’t.”
In The Buzzer (published by BC Transit) Jan. 14, 1994, not attributed.
“’her reception o’ me this blessed day, whilk I excuse on account of perturbation of mind, was muckle on the north side o’ friendly…’”
Baillie Nicol Jarvie in Sir Walter Scott Rob Roy