February 5, 2010

“Nature abhors a vacuum” – The Famous Writers Edition


FAMOUS PROVERBIAL QUOTE:

“Nature abhors a vacuum.”
       François Rabelais (c. 1494-1553)
       Gargantua and Pantagruel (1534)
       Quoting an old Latin proverb (“Natura abhorret vacuum.”)


WILLIAMS COUNTERQUOTE:

BRICK: “Well, they say nature hates a vacuum, Big Daddy.”
BIG DADDY: “That’s what they say, but sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.”
       Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
       American playwright
       Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)


MENCKEN COUNTERQUOTE:

“Nature abhors a moron.”
       H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
       American journalist, critic and curmudgeon
       Chrestomathy (1949)


THOREAU COUNTERQUOTE:

“Most men are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a  vacuum, and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man’s nobler faculties.”
       Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
       American writer and philosopher
       Entry in his Journal, April 27, 1854


PARKER COUNTERQUOTE:

“They seldom hear, when they are spoken to;
It’s because their heads are so full
Of little gems of old-world philosophy —
You know the old crack:
Nietzsche abhors a vacuum.”
       Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
       American writer and wit
       In her poem “College Boys: A Hymn of Hate” 
       The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (2001)


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