The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.
A. A. GillRead
If New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is slightly deaf, and doesn't suffer fools gladly.
Interpretation
This quote personifies cities with distinct characteristics, highlighting London's unique complexity and wisdom.
In this quote, A. A. Gill amusingly characterizes major cities as people with specific traits. New York is depicted as brash and confident, Paris as flirtatious, Rome as charismatic, and Berlin as mischievous. In contrast, London is portrayed as an old lady with wisdom, slight deafness, and a critical view of foolishness, suggesting that it has a rich history and a discerning nature that comes with age.
In practice
In a discussion about the personality of major cities when giving a travel presentation.
The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.
If the world were to end tomorrow and we could choose to save only one thing as the explanation and memorial to who we were, then we couldn't do better than the Natural History Museum, although it wouldn't contain a single human. The systematic Linnean order, the vast inquisitiveness and range of collated knowledge and beauty would tell all that is the best of us.
Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.
Being able to afford everything you desire is not, by any means, the worst thing that can happen to you. But, depressingly, and more profoundly, neither is it the best.
America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.
Celebrity is a national drama whose characters' parts and plots are written by the tabloids, gossip columnists, websites and interactive buttons. The famous don't actually have to turn up to their own lives at all.
True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
I am a person who feels guilty for crimes I have not committed, or have not committed in years. The police search the train station for a serial rapist and I cover my face with a newspaper, wondering if maybe I did it in my sleep. The last thing I stole was an eight-track tape, but to this day I'm unable to enter a store without feeling like a shoplifter. It's all the anxiety with none of the free stuff.
You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Paty, which is collective and immortal.
Now I can only pray that there may be a God -- and a heaven -- or something better.
Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, / The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.
I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.