Censuring Joseph Stalin at a public meeting, Soviet premier Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was interrupted by a voice from the audience. "You were one of Stalin's colleagues," shouted the heckler. "Why didn't you stop him?"
—Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
Santayana inherited his simple and unostentatious habits from his father. Once he asked the senior Santayana why he always traveled third class. "Because there's no fourth class," his father said.
—Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
As a punishment for refusing to serve in the army, poet Robert Lowell was imprisoned for five months by the U.S. courts. While waiting to be transferred to Connecticut to serve the sentence, Lowell spent a few days in New York's West Street Jail. During his stay there he was put in a cell next to Louie Lepke, a convicted member of Murder Incorporated. "I'm in for killing," Lepke told the poet. "What are you in for?" Lowell answered, "Oh, I'm in for refusing to kill.
—Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
By nature, French artist Edgar Degas was conservative. His friend the etcher Jean-Louis Forain believed in progress. Forain had recently installed that newfangled invention, the telephone. Arranging to have a friend phone him during the meal, he invited Degas to dinner. The phone rang; Forain rushed to answer it, then returned, beaming with pride. Degas merely said, "So that's the telephone. It rings and you run.
—Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
A patient complaining of melancholy consulted Dr. John Abernethy. After an examination the doctor pronounced, "You need amusement. Go and hear the comedian Grimaldi; he will make you laugh, and that will be better for you than any drugs." Said the patient, "I am Grimaldi.
—Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
In 1927, when he began his courtship of Dorothy Thompson, Sinclair Lewis followed her across Europe, all the way to Moscow. At Moscow Airport… the press was waiting to greet him. "What brought you to Russia?" Lewis was asked.
—Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
More quotations tagged with “quiet”
Money… buys privacy, silence. The less money you have, the noisier it is; the thinner your walls, the closer your neighbors.… The first thing you notice when you step into the house or apartment of a rich person is how quiet it is.
—Fran Lebowitz
The time in our own life when we came closest to being convinced by silence was one time at sea in a light fall of snow. We heard nothing—no gravel, no wind, no waves, no wolves, no bell buoy. It was convincing and it was beautiful.
—E. B. White
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
—Henry David Thoreau
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
—George Bernard Shaw
At that moment, I missed my mother more than I had ever imagined possible and wanted only to live somewhere quiet and beautiful with her alone, but also at that moment I wanted only to see her lying dead, all withered and in a coffin at my feet.
—Jamaica Kincaid
History
1 Jan 2016
Added
26 Oct 2026
Wording changed
Previous wording
Censuring Joseph Stalin at a public meeting, Soviet premier Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was interrupted by a voice from the audience. "You were one of Stalin's colleagues," shouted the heckler. "Why didn't you stop him?"