Things that Bansai left for us

[Toeprint]

"To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography."
— George Santayana

bansaisequoia
November 2, 2012, 3:33 pm
He degrades hillbillies who've never been more than 50km from their birthplace. What a dreadful indignity.

[Toeprint]

"The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself... The act of voting is in itself the defining moment."
— Jeff Melvoin

bansaisequoia
July 5, 2010, 8:24 pm
One of the teleplays he wrote for Northern Exposure involves the mayoral race in Cicely, Alaska.

[Toeprint]

"It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish."
— Aeschylus

bansaisequoia
April 29, 2010, 6:27 pm
I don't have to try. They just assume I'm foolish, anyway.

[Toeprint]

"A man's identity is not best thought of as the way in which he is separated from his fellows but the way in which he is united with them."
— Robert Terwilliger

bansaisequoia
October 26, 2010, 4:21 am
Robert Terwilliger is the name of Krusty the Klown's former sidekick, "Sideshow Bob."
LLapp
November 6, 2015, 12:57 pm
So it turns out that bansais was not kidding: Robert Underdunk Terwilliger, PhD, is indeed a Simpsons character. And I see, thanks to Google, that there are a couple dozen other Robert Tewilligers, and one of them is a pastor in Kalamazoo. I guess we'll never know which one of them is the author of this quote.

[Toeprint]

"We didn't starve, but we didn't eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was."
— Bernard Malamud

bansaisequoia
February 25, 2012, 7:24 pm
Will an ill chicken sicken you?

[Toeprint]

"Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica."
— Stephen Leacock

bansaisequoia
May 19, 2012, 12:56 am
Obviously. Alice in Wonderland is much shorter that all those volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica.

[Toeprint]

"Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation. "
— Unattributed

abra
February 18, 2017, 5:52 pm
So, this bansaisequoia guy, ya think maybe he's a robot? )
artcnet
April 24, 2017, 2:49 am
a robot with a fast computer
LLapp
May 7, 2017, 6:17 pm
Bansais is the embodiment of this quote.

[Toeprint]

"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work. "
— Thomas Carlyle

bansaisequoia
July 28, 2011, 2:39 pm
If I'm lucky, I may receive such remuneration before retirement.

[Toeprint]

"The kind man feeds his beast before sitting down to dinner."
— Hebrew Proverb

bansaisequoia
January 31, 2012, 8:53 pm
I'm the kind of man who's a cruel beast to his beast.

[Toeprint]

"Nobody gets to live life backwards. Look ahead -- that's where your future lies."
— Ann Landers

peejay
July 26, 2009, 4:08 pm
Except for Benjamin Button.
bonszaisequioa
February 22, 2010, 11:31 am
And Merlin in "The Once And Future King."

[Toeprint]

"They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?"
— Jeanette Winterson

bansaisequoia
May 22, 2010, 3:35 pm
I've undergone years of intense therapy after having seen unique snowflakes as a child.

[Toeprint]

"Fools gawp at masterpieces - wise men set out to outdo masterpieces. "
— Unattributed

bansaisequoia
August 28, 2009, 7:33 pm
gawp?
Lurker
September 4, 2009, 2:28 pm
Webster's: To stare open-mouthed; gawk or gape

[Toeprint]

"Poetry: the best words in the best order."
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

[Note: The colon was not in the original puzzle. It has since been added.]

saipanwriter
July 29, 2011, 2:40 am
It seems like there should be some form of punctuation between the word poetry and the rest of the phrase.
bansaisequoia
March 12, 2012, 6:30 pm
This doesn't seem to be an example of the best words in the best order.

[Toeprint]

"There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge. "
— Napoleon Hill

bonsaisekuoia
February 25, 2010, 3:02 pm
Therefore, if I don't acknowledge my limitations, I'm omniscient.

[Toeprint]

"After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. "
— H.L. Mencken

pootie49
March 30, 2009, 6:58 pm
and voila cryptograms.org
sonofcarc
July 1, 2009, 5:41 pm
Who -- Shakespeare?
maradnu
July 3, 2009, 1:28 am
Mencken talking about himself again?
bansaisequoia
September 7, 2009, 12:19 am
John Bartlett?