Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Will Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor. He was one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s.

Known as Oklahoma's favorite son, Rogers was born to a prominent Cherokee Nation family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). He traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, and became a world-famous figure. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was adored by the American people. He was the leading political wit of the Progressive Era, and was the top-paid Hollywood movie star at the time. Rogers died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed in Alaska.

His vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion, and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that was readily appreciated by a national audience, with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

Rogers even provided an epigram on his most famous epigram:
When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident like." I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.

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Quotes·Quotations by Will Rogers

Art

¶ See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails? [to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo]

Education

¶ Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

Life

¶ Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious.

¶ You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.

Star

¶ I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. 

Worry

¶ Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers

Images

Wikimedia Commons

Will Smith (1968- )

Will Smith (1968- )

Willard Christopher "Will" Smith, Jr. (born September 25, 1968), also known by his stage name The Fresh Prince, is an American actor, producer, and rapper. He has enjoyed success in television, film and music. In April 2007, Newsweek called him the most powerful actor in Hollywood. Smith has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, two Academy Awards, and has won multiple Grammy Awards.

In the late 1980s, Smith achieved modest fame as a rapper under the name The Fresh Prince. In 1990, his popularity increased dramatically when he starred in the popular television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The show ran for nearly six years (1990–1996) on NBC and has been syndicated consistently on various networks since then. In the mid-1990s, Smith moved from television to film, and ultimately starred in numerous blockbuster films. He is the only actor to have eight consecutive films gross over $100 million in the domestic box office and the only one to have eight consecutive films in which he starred open at #1 spot in the domestic box office tally.

Fourteen of the nineteen fiction films he has acted in have accumulated worldwide gross earnings of over $100 million, and four took in over $500 million in global box office receipts. As of 2011, his films have grossed $5.7 billion in global box office. His most financially successful films have been Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Independence Day, the Men in Black films, I, Robot, I Am Legend, Hancock, Wild Wild West, Enemy of the State, Shark Tale, Hitch, and Seven Pounds. He also earned critical praise for his performances in Six Degrees of Separation, Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness, receiving Best Actor Oscar nominations for the latter two.

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Quotes·Quotation by Will Smith


Will Smith as Alex Hitch Hitchens from Hitch (2005)

¶ Because that's what people do. They leap, and hope to God they can fly, because otherwise you just drop like a rock, wondering the whole way down, why in the hell did I jump? But here I am, Sarah, falling, and there's only one person who makes me feel like I can fly. It's you.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Smith

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Born	7 April 1770 Wordsworth House, Cockermouth, England
Died	23 April 1850 (aged 80) Cumberland, England
Occupation	Poet
Alma mater	Cambridge University
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable work(s)	Lyrical Ballads, Poems in Two Volumes, The Excursion

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

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Quotes

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth

Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)

Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)

The Wicked Witch of the West is a fictional character and the most significant antagonist in L. Frank Baum's children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In Baum's subsequent Oz books, it is the Nome King who is the principal villain; the Wicked Witch of the West is rarely even referred to again after being destroyed in the first book.

The witch's most popular depiction was in the classic 1939 movie based on Baum's book. In that film adaptation, as in Gregory Maguire's revisionist Oz novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and its musical adaptation Wicked, the Witch of the West is the sister of the Wicked Witch of the East, although this is neither stated nor implied in the original novel.

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Versions in performance media

The 1939 movie

In the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz, Margaret Hamilton plays the Wicked Witch of the West as a stooped, green-skinned witch dressed in a long black dress with a black pointed hat. This representation of the Wicked Witch has become a standard for what witches look like and an archetype for human wickedness. While this relationship is not mentioned in Baum's books, in the movie, the Witch is the sister of the Wicked Witch of the East. In fact, she appears in the film much earlier on than in Baum's original novel, demanding the Munchkins reveal who killed her sister, not long after Dorothy's arrival in Oz. She is described by the Good Witch of the North Glinda as "worse than the other one." Therefore, the Witch's role is made much more prominent than in the novel, as she seeks revenge against Dorothy for destroying her sister, even though it was an "accident". She is more menacing than her literary counterpart, making Dorothy too afraid to ever lose her temper with the Witch. She makes sure that Dorothy knows her power when Dorothy meets the Tin Man by throwing a fire ball at them after which she waits to see if Dorothy is too afraid to go on. Before Dorothy and her friends get to the city, the Witch casts a spell of sleeping poppies, the poppies fail to work do Glinda's good magic spell of snow. She then gets on her broom to show more of her power to Dorothy, after Dorothy and her friends see the Wizard they want out to get her broom, she knew they are coming so she sends her flying monkeys unlike Baum's original depiction. The Golden Cap is not mentioned, but the Witch does hold and then angrily cast away a costume piece that could be considered the cap (It greatly resembles the Cap in depicted in W W. Denslow's original illustrations for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, after the poppies fail to work. She is killed when Dorothy throws the water when she lights a fire to threaten the Scarecrow. The character ranks No. 4 in the American Film Institute's list of the 50 Best Movie Villains of All Time, making her the highest ranking female villain, as well as placing 90th on Empire's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

On a 1976 episode of Sesame Street, the Wicked Witch, once again played by Margaret Hamilton, drops her broom and falls onto the street. In order to get the broom back, she must prove that she can be nice. Everyone is scared of her, except for Big Bird and Oscar. After she proves that she is nice, Big Bird is upset when the time comes for her to leave. She reassures him that one day she'll return. The episode was poorly received by parents of frightened young children, and was never aired again. The fate of the footage is unknown.

Margaret Hamilton also played The Wicked Witch of the West on The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1978), and reprised her role several times on stage, most notably at The Saint Louis Opera House.

Hamilton also appeared as herself on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. In this appearance, she demonstrated how her costume and acting skills made her appear to be the Witch, and assured her young viewers that there was nothing about her to be feared, because her portrayal in the film was only make-believe.

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Quotes·Quotation by Wicked Witch of the West

Margaret Hamilton as Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz

¶ I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Witch_of_the_West

Frances Wright (1795-1852)

Frances Wright

Frances Wright (September 6 1795 – December 13 1852), also widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scotland-born lecturer, writer, feminist, abolitionist, and utopian, who became a U. S. citizen in 1825.

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@ Your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry — tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors. By their own creed you hold your reason from their God. Go! ask them why he gave it. [Lecture III: Of the more Important Divisions and Essential Parts of Knowledge]

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http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Frances_Wright

Steven WRIGHT

Steven Wright

Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and film producer.[1]

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Quotes·Quotations by Steven Wright

Animal

@ Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

@ Imagine if birds were tickled by feathers. You'd see a flock of birds come by, laughing hysterically!

¶

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Wright

Grand Inquisitor Silecio

Grand Inquisitor Silecio

@ Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But, fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.



http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Fountain

West Africa

West Africa

West Africa, also called Western Africa and the West of Africa, is the westernmost region of the African continent.

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West African Proverb

Sun

¶ The sun is the king of torches.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Africa

Western world and Westerner

Western world and Westerner

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident (from Latin: occidens "sunset, West"; as contrasted with the Orient), is a term referring to different nations depending on the context. There is no agreed upon definition about what all these nations have in common apart from having a significant population of European descent.

Although the term originally had a literal geographic meaning, contrasting Europe with the linked cultures of civilizations of the Near East (Muslim world), South Asia and remote Far East (Sinosphere), today it has little geographic relevance. Nations generally accepted to be part of the Western world occupy both hemispheres created by the arbitrary division of the earth at Greenwich or strongly related to Europe.

The concept of the Western part of the earth has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization in Europe, with the advent of Christianity. In the modern era, Western culture has been heavily influenced by the traditions of Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, Age of Enlightenment, and shaped by the expansive colonialism of the 16th-20th centuries. Its political usage was temporarily informed by a mutual antagonism with the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War in the mid-to-late 20th Century (1945–1991).

In the contemporary cultural meaning, the Western world includes many countries of Europe as well as many countries of European colonial origin in the Americas and Oceania, such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, etc.

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Western Proverb

Advice

¶ A rose too often smelled loses its fragrance.

¶ An onion will not produce a rose.

¶ Extremes meet.

Attitude

¶ From the same flower the bee extracts honey and the wasp gall.

¶ Soft and fair goes far.

Beauty

¶ A rose is sweeter in the bud than full blown.

¶ Beauty draws more than oxen.

¶ Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

¶ Beauty without virtue is a flower without perfume.

¶ Casting pearls before swine.

Care

¶ Care killed the cat.

Confidence

¶ Good wine needs no bush.

Cooperation

¶ It takes two to tango.

Drink

¶ Bacchus kills more than Mars.

Endeavor

¶ He that will thrive, must rise at five.

¶ God helps the early riser.

Flower

¶ Personality is to a man what perfume is to a flower.

Friend

¶ A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody.

¶ A life wthout a friend is a life without a sun.

¶ It is his friends that make or mar a man.

Gentleman

¶ Manners and money make a gentleman.

God

¶ God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

Happiness

¶ Every rose has its thorn.

Honesty

¶ Honesty is the best policy.

Imitation

¶ Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Journey

¶ A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Kindness

¶ Kindness is worth more than beauty.

Money

¶ Every man has his price.

¶ Money can't buy happiness.

¶ Money is like an eel in the hand.

¶ Money makes money.

¶ Money ruins many.

¶ No work, no money.

¶ To repay borrowed money is the best way to use money.

Parting

¶ Rats desert sinking ship.

Sagacity

¶ It is not every flower that smells sweet.

Self-care

¶ Likeness causes liking.

¶ No shame, no honor.

Spring

¶ April Showers bring May flowers.

Time

¶ The tree is known by its fruit.

¶ Time is money.

Wisdom

¶ Every cloud has a silver lining.

¶ If you would enjoy the fruit, pluck not the flower.

¶ Painted flowers have no scent.

¶ There is no new thing under the sun.

Sylvia Weis (In Time)

Sylvia Weis (In Time)

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Amanda Seyfried as Sylvia Weis from In Time (2011)

@ Sylvia Weis: We're not meant to live like this. We're not meant to live forever. Although I do wonder, Father, if you've ever lived a day in your life.