Top 100 Wilbur's Quotes
#1. The night seemed long. Wilbur's stomach was empty and his mind was full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep.
E.B. White
#2. I grew up in Rhodesia on my father's ranch and every year he used to take us on safari in some remote area of the wilderness.
Wilbur Smith
#3. They have been taught nothing but destruction and learned nothing except that a man's desires can be achieved simply by killing anybody who stands in his way.
Wilbur Smith
#4. Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.
Richard Wilbur
#5. The fundamentals are the U.S. is going to end up being a net exporter of natural gas. That's going to be wonderful to help our balance of payments, reduce our dependence on a lot of countries that aren't so crazy about us, and change many, many parts of what goes on here.
Wilbur Ross
#6. I don't know how many lions and leopards I've shot. I've shot two elephants, which was enough - never again. It's a melancholy and moving thing to hunt an elephant. It's like shooting an old man.
Wilbur Smith
#7. She's probably so mesmerized by her own beauty she can't move away from the mirror," I hear Wilbur stage-whisper. "It's why I'm always late." Then he knocks on the door as well. "Look away from the reflection, baby," he shouts through the wood. "Just look away and the spell will be broken.
Holly Smale
#8. It is not tricks of sense But the time's fright within me which distracts Least fancies into violence
Richard Wilbur
#9. I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins; he's better than Richard Wilbur; he's better than me.
Sherman Alexie
#10. At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.
Wilbur Smith
#11. It's probably true that everyone has a book in them, although it may not be a very good one.
Wilbur Smith
#12. Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.
Wilbur Smith
#13. A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.
Wilbur Smith
#14. My wife Hillary sometimes accuses me of trying to reinvent the 19th century. In some ways she's right because I like things that I can understand and that aren't too complicated.
Wilbur Ross
#15. Every one of them was armed, every one a trained soldier who had killed and would not hesitate to kill again.
Wilbur Smith
#16. Authors can only soft sell the environment. Create a wonderful story around the environment involving the characters that leaves a lasting impression on the reader's mind.
Wilbur Smith
#17. Nick? Any idea?"
Nick coughs too. "Nope. No idea at all."
Wilbur gives him a stern look. "So what was the point in doing all the Jane Austen stuff if she doesn't know about it, Poodle-bottom?
Holly Smale
#18. When David Livingstone discovered the Victoria Falls he said, "Sights such as these must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight,"' Hector told her softly.
Wilbur Smith
#19. For the past few years my fans have made it very clear that they would like to read my novels and revisit my family of characters faster than I can write them. For them, I am willing to make a change to my working methods so the stories in my head can reach the page more frequently.
Wilbur Smith
#21. Wilbur would remark that if he were to give a young man advice on how to get ahead in life, he would say, Pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio.
David McCullough
#22. Always be suspicious of easy work, Dr. Wilbur Larch once said to Homer Wells.
John Irving
#23. Unless we think of others and do something for them, we miss one of the greatest sources of happiness.
Ray Lyman Wilbur
#24. As they slithered up the muddy bank, scores of tiny silver fish that had been feasting on the open wounds were slow to relinquish their hold and were drawn out with the carcasses. Stranded upon the mud-banks, they flopped and quivered like stars that had fallen to earth.
Wilbur Smith
#25. I'm not a good father and they're not children any more; the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and, because of what the law was, they went with their mothers and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life and they were not my people any more.
Wilbur Smith
#27. Too many things on my mind, said Wilbur.
Well, said the goose, that's not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I've too many things under my behind.
E.B. White
#28. I know it's politically incorrect but I enjoy things like the kick boxing and cock fighting.
Wilbur Smith
#29. If I have to die, then it's best to do so before I see everything I love, the land, the animals, the people, all of it destroyed.
Wilbur Smith
#30. It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell. Wilbur Storey
Harold Holzer
#31. I read all of Rider Haggard's books. For me he had the romance of Africa with a little bit of mysticism. I'm delighted to be looked on as his heir and be categorised as an adventure novelist because that's exactly what I am.
Wilbur Smith
#32. Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.
Wilbur Smith
#34. I shot my first lion at the age of 14 when a pride threatened my father's livestock while he was away on holiday.
Wilbur Smith
#35. I think it's natural for any manager to want to grow his business. The question is at what rate, and in what direction, and in what format?
Wilbur Ross
#36. we arrived at the army's main encampment all
Wilbur Smith
#37. It's a strange paradox that a man gifted with too many talents can fritter them all away without developing a single one to its full.
Wilbur Smith
#38. I live in Cape Town but my favourite holiday destination is Hermanus, a little seaside town about a 90-minute drive away, over the pass and down to the sea, on the sunshine coast. It's where I love to escape to with my wife for a weekend every now and again.
Wilbur Smith
#39. That's no pig," answered Hassan in English. "That's a goddamned monster." The pig stopped its rotting and looked up at them. "I mean. Wilbur is a fugging pig. Babe is a fugging pig. That thing was birthed from the loins of Iblis." (Arabic: Satan)
John Green
#40. 'Winnie The Witch' transgresses all cultural boundaries. Amusingly, there have been attempts to deconstruct the meaning of the books - that Winnie represents society and Wilbur the disabled - but I think it's just a great story.
Korky Paul
#41. All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it's my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk.
Wilbur Smith
#42. They say if you drink Zambezi water with your mother's milk, you are always a slave of Africa, and I am.
Wilbur Smith
#43. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a bank being big. In fact, there are some good arguments about universality of geography that in theory, if you have all your eggs in one little community, and some big employer goes out, that could be your downfall.
Wilbur Ross
#44. They say I'm worth either €200 million, €100 million, €50 million or €10 million, but that's something between God, the HMRC and myself.
Wilbur Smith
#45. I hate politics. I like to write about it, but to get involved in it, to try and make a lot of ignorant people do what you want them to do, waste of time. Go and write a book. It's more important and it'll last longer.
Wilbur Smith
#46. Cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones, wrote the poet Richard Wilbur, and even in the atomic era it was hard to see how the physicist's swarming clouds of particles could give rise to the hard-edged world of everyday sight and touch.
James Gleick
#47. What is worrisome about that is the U.S. standard of living. I think it is very difficult to envision our standard of living being preserved if we are in an economy where all people do is flip hamburgers, wait on people in stores, and sue each other. It's not much of a basis for an economy.
Wilbur Ross
#49. Jessie reached for 'Ten Bright Ideas to Light Up Your Sales'. It was on her bedside table, right next to 'Charlotte's Web'. Jessie's hand hovered. She looked longingly at Wilbur and Fern watching Charlotte hanging b a thread.
But this was war, and she couldn't stop to read for fun.
Jacqueline Davies
#50. In other parts of the world, they have double-bed sheets," wrote Wilbur Larch in A Brief History of St. Cloud's. "Here in St. Cloud's we do without - we just do without.
John Irving
#51. That's the main business of the poem!-to see if you can't make up a language that sets all your selves talking at once-all of them being fair to each other.
Richard Wilbur
#52. They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy-just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.
Wilbur Smith
#53. Men become wise just as they become rich, more by what they save than by what they receive.
Wilbur Wright
#54. Many people have compared me to the Victorian adventure writer, Rider Haggard. I accept that as a compliment. As a boy growing up in Central Africa I read all Haggard's African novels.
Wilbur Smith
#55. Despite the fact that I spend a lot of time in London, Switzerland and New York, Africa is the place I know and love best, and my heart will always lie here.
Wilbur Smith
#56. What is our praise or pride but to imagine excellence and try to make it? What does it say over the door of heaven; but, homo (sapiens) fecit?
Richard Wilbur
#57. There's nothing so aphrodisiacal for a woman as money and success.
Wilbur Smith
#58. It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.
E.B. White
#59. There is a future for the auto parts industry, but it needs a consolidation and a rationalization of geography in that most suppliers have facilities in the U.S., although most of their customers are overseas.
Wilbur Ross
#60. We know what boredom is: it is a dull
Impatience or a fierce velleity,
A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude,
To make or do. In the strict sense, of course,
We invent nothing, merely bearing witness
To what each morning brings again to light
Richard Wilbur
#61. To me, my characters are more real than most people I meet.
Wilbur Smith
#62. I love the sea as much as I love the veldt of Africa.
Wilbur Smith
#63. I work on my novels wherever I have a PC, and I have four or five places around the world where I do have a PC. These days you can just slip a little flash drive into your top pocket, fly for 12 hours, come to another place, plug it into a computer and you are away again.
Wilbur Smith
#65. As regards to personal safety, you do have to be careful not to put yourself at risk when travelling in South Africa. You don't want to go out exploring at night, for example.
Wilbur Smith
#66. Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.
Richard Wilbur
#67. He mad no moral judgements. He accepted mankind as he found it, and looked for the profit to be made from its strengths or weaknesses.
Wilbur Smith
#68. Shipping has a great oversupply of vessels that came from over-ordering a few years back. We think 2014 may be when it turns around.
Wilbur Ross
#69. You don't turn out as many books as I did then by sitting around, being cozy with the family.
Wilbur Smith
#70. Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.
E.B. White
#71. Cape Town's beaches are superb and while the water on the Atlantic side is damn cold, it's very pleasant on the other side. Bring your golf clubs if you play - Cape Town has some fabulous golf courses.
Wilbur Smith
#72. You cannot just keep borrowing more and more and keep spending more and more without eventually having a day of reckoning.
Wilbur Ross
#73. We're in the business not so much of being contrarians deliberately, but rather we like to take perceived risk instead of actual risk. And what I mean by that is that you get paid for taking a risk that people think is risky, you particularly don't get paid for taking actual risk.
Wilbur Ross
#74. Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest," Mrs. Grogan was saying, "and peace at last." Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud's, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he'd come a long way and still had a long way to go.
John Irving
#75. What I wanted to do was see if we couldn't balance the budget.
Wilbur Mills
#76. I still get enormous pleasure and a sense of fulfillment out of writing a book that I'm proud of. I see myself as a bit like a jewel-maker who can sit back and admire his work.
Wilbur Smith
#77. There was always a pass through the reef where the sweet water inhibited the growth of the coral. As
Wilbur Smith
#78. I write my books in my head, and not in a specific study with a view. The view is from my inner eyes.
Wilbur Smith
#79. The possibility of circular reasoning arises-that is, using the temperature record to derive a key input to climate models that are then tested against the temperature record.
Theodore Wilbur Anderson
#80. Books and bottles breed generosity, and the bibliophile and the oenophile og through life scattering largesse from their libraries and cellars
Holless Wilbur Allen
#81. Once in his lifetime every artist feels the hand of God and creates something that comes alive.
Crane Wilbur
#82. I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background.
Wilbur Smith
#83. The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle.
Richard Wilbur
#84. But those set to guard a treasure, are too often those who loot it.
Wilbur Smith
#85. I Don't Have Time For Both A Wife And An Airplane.
Wilbur Wright
#86. The promising young poets, the hopefuls? I'd name Richard Wilbur, Peter Viereck, Karl Shapiro, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Ciardi...Leonard Bacon...but it is still too early to assertions. They're all 'in the field.' It remains to be seen how many will cross the finish line.
Robert Frost
#87. I'm not perfect and I know it. I've done all sorts of things that are frowned upon these days - big-game hunting, fishing. I still enjoy fishing but I don't kill warm-blooded animals any more - I make an exception with birds sometimes.
Wilbur Smith
#88. When I vacate this sack of old bones I won't care what you do with it. Bury or burn it but don't make much fuss.
Wilbur Smith
#89. The mistake the apartheid government made was they gave the black people nothing, so they had nothing to lose. But now a lot of the former freedom-fighters are big-time capitalists. They've been given directorships in every major company. They're billionaires!
Wilbur Smith
#90. I also know how ruthless and reckless young women can be when their ovaries overheat. My darling little Tehuti's Gonads had caught fire at the first sight of him. I could think of no feasible way to quench the flames.
Wilbur Smith
#91. Picasso had nicknamed Georges Braque "Wilbur," thereby becoming "Orville" in their Wright Brothers-like ambition to get painting off the ground of conventional representation.
Peter Schjeldahl
#92. Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'
Wilbur Smith
#93. What I like about writing is the sense of godlike power it gives you.
Wilbur Smith
#94. Sometimes you are garrulous, Taita.' Pharaoh was less than captivated by my lecture on the palace architecture. 'Get on
Wilbur Smith
#95. Tanka
Black-and-white Holsteins
Crowd downfield at feeding time,
Mingling their blotches.
It is like ice breaking up
In a dark, swollen river.
Richard Wilbur
#96. If the Wright brother were alive today Wilbur would have to fire Orville to reduce costs.
Herb Kelleher
#97. The first story I ever sold was to 'Argosy' magazine, which no longer exists. That issue also contained work by several other more celebrated writers, like Ray Bradbury - so I felt I had at least one toe on the ladder.
Wilbur Smith
#98. Almost everything in 'A Day With Wilbur Robinson' has some basis in truth. And yes, my sister did pay me to feed her grapes while she talked to her boyfriend on the phone.
William Joyce
#99. Caught Summer is always an imagined time. Time gave it, yes, but time out of any mind. There must be prime In the heart to beget that season, to reach past rain and find Riding the palest days Its perfect blaze.
Richard Wilbur
#100. Probably the greatest need in the Church today is a body of men who are absolutely devoted, every selfish purpose and plan given up, to the one great end of magnifying the Lord Jesus Christ in the midst of the nation.
Wilbur Moorehead Smith
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