Submitted For Your Perusal

The King James Version puts it thusly:

“And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.”

(Source: The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses.)

“No matter how good an essay or report might be, a missing staple says a lot. Unstapled work says that the writer either doesn’t know what finished work looks like or isn’t willing to take the care necessary to produce it. Unstapled work says that the writer couldn’t be bothered to use a stapler in a library or residence hall or ask a friend … Unstapled work might also indicate a failure to follow directions, as many course assignments carry a reminder to staple. Worse perhaps than the absence of a staple are turned-down upper-left corners, which seem to acknowledge that there’s something wrong, but that the writer can’t be bothered to fix the problem properly.” —Michael Leddy

“The conclusion was clear: Why would anyone want to feel like this? Although I never became a teetotaler, I knew — especially when I woke up the next morning with a hangover — that I would cast my lot with caffeine, not with alcohol. Why would I wish my senses to be dulled when they could be sharpened? Why would I wish to forget when I could remember? Why would I wish to mumble when I could scintillate? Of course, since even in those days I was a loquacious workaholic who liked to stay up late, you might think I’d pick a drug that would nudge me closer to the center of the bell curve instead of pushing me farther out on the edge — but of course I didn’t. Who does? Don’t we all just keep doing the things that make us even more like ourselves?” —Anne Fadiman

“And it was never by once a year that they were brought together anyway, and that was on the neutral, dereligionized ground of Thanksgiving, when everybody gets to eat the same thing, nobody sneaking off to eat funny stuff — no kugel, no gefilte fish, no bitter herbs, just one colossal turkey for two hundred and fifty million people — one colossal turkey feeds all. A moratorium on funny foods and funny ways and religious exclusivity, a moratorium on the three-thousand year-old nostalgia of the Jews, a moratorium on Christ and the cross and the crucifixion for the Christians, when everyone in New Jersey and elsewhere can be more passive about their irrationalities than they are the rest of the year. A moratorium on all the grievances and resentments, and not only for the Dwyers and the Levovs but for everyone in America who is suspicious of everyone else. It is the American pastorl par excellence and it lasts twenty-four hours.” —Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“Quincy calls me a nickname: ‘Smelly.’” —Michael Jackson

“The crisis of Islam, he argues, is a crisis of masculinity. He speaks of ‘centuries of humiliation,’ first by the west, latterly by Israel. ‘How do you get back God’s favour? You come to a T-junction: one says, less religion; the other says, more religion and you turn to the right. Absolutely desperate.’” —Martin Amis