(Used to be) Springwood Colquhouns: Surprising Vocabulary

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Surprising Vocabulary

As I drove her to Tanderra (Vacation Care) this morning, Ishbel was telling me about an incident that happened yesterday when Tanderra were visiting an Aboriginal centre. One boy (let's call him Boy 1) was trying to spoil the artwork of another (Boy 2). When Boy 2 went to tell the Tanderra staff about it, Boy 1 apparently "smite" Boy 2 on the face with a boomerang.
"He 'smite' him?" I queried.
"Yes, it means he hit him across the face," she replied with all the authority a seven year old can muster.

"Smite". Can't imagine where she got that one from . . . Had me giggling.

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"QUOTE UNQUOTE"

‘The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den’ - Phillip Adams.
Starting a novel is like opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing - Iris Murdoch, Under the Net 1954
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it - JD Salinger
I have sometimes dreamt that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards – their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble – the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.” – Virginia Woolf from The Common Reader
A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life - Norman Cousins – US editor (1915-1990)
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it – PJ O’Rourke
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - nut no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how. - Doris Lessing, author.
Imagine that no-one had encouraged you to understand those funny little squiggles on the page called words that can make you gasp or can make you cry. You'd be a smaller person living in a smaller world - Home Page of the Reading Agency
I don't believe that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, and that's been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians. - Graham Chapman from Episode 10 of Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1970
Th' first thing to have in a libry is a shelf. Fr'm time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure. But th's shelf is th' main thing. - Finley Peter Dunne, "Books" Mr Dooley SaysYou see
There are two types of books in libraries: Catherine Cooksons and non-Catherine Cooksons. The non-Catherine Cooksons are big books on Britain's Railways from the Air for men to browse through while their wives choose a Cookson. - Guy Browning, The Guardian, 2003
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. — Groucho MARX